Reading too much into the Wonder Girls

Update:

Popseoul reported a week ago that a new trailer from the film 'Hellcats' (or 'I like it hot') showed Wonder Girl member An So-hee and co-star Kim Bum kissing, which then led to So-hee's fans inundating Kim's Cyworld homepage with akpeul, or "evil replies". He eventually shut his homepage down. On another note, this seems to be a clip from the auctioned off dinner date described below. Also, the Chosun Ilbo tells us that

Other experts say Wonder Girls and Girl Generation have brought middle-aged men to TV and the Internet.

Of course (in its English edition) it doesn't bother to try to explain why this might be...


[Original post]



The Wonder Girls. It seems everyone is talking about them these days, either castigating their dancing and singing skills, telling foreigners who don't like them to go home, or telling everyone criticizing them for their lack of talent to chill the hell out and get some perspective (a brilliant manouvre which guarantees that that Wonder Girls fans will not think you're anti and start leaving akpeul all over your minihompy). As for my opinion of "Tell Me", I haven't had the misfortune of having to hear it several times daily (until working on this post, at any rate), so I don't mind it that much - it's an innocuous enough, catchy bit of electro-pop.

I'm a little confused by the claims that Stacey Q's "Two of Hearts" and "Tell Me" are so similar - one person even said "Tell Me" borrowed the song structure of "Two of Hearts". A quick comparison, then, of "Two of Hearts" and "Tell Me":

ToH: verse chorus verse bridge chorus break verse bridge chorus
TM: verse chorus verse chorus break rap chorus

Feel free to Tell Me if you see something missing in the latter song - or let Robert Plant ask the appropriate question by skipping to 3:00 here. Seriously though, the only real similarity I see is the stuttered sample of "I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I need you" at the beginning of "Two of Hearts" (and if playing with vocal samples are all that's needed for a comparison, why not compare it to Sigue Sigue Sputnik's "Love Rocket F1-11"?), so we're not talking about a blatant copy like Wax's "Oppa" (of Cyndi Lauper's "She Bop"). That said, that small similarity is an important one, and the link between the song from 1986 and the song from 2007 was pointed out by the Metropolitician, who linked to this page, which is quite interesting, as you can hear a 1988 cover of "Two of Hearts" by the Korean girl group Setorae called "Haengbokhae". I also found this page, which has several pictures of Setorae from 1988, such as this one:


It's probably worth noting that the girls above are what 80's stars wore, and not the strange outfits worn by the Wonder Girls here. A page with videos turned this Setorae performance from 1988 up (beware of the ad at the end):



I like the Tron-ish stage and the off-beat clapping by the audience. Their dancing seems pretty innocuous stuff by today's standards. It would be hard to imagine them doing anything particularly provocative.


Moving along, I wondered if, among the late 1990s groups like Sechs Kies, Baby Vox, Fin.K.L., S.E.S., Shinhwa, and H.O.T., there were any groups that featured girls (or boys) as young as those in the Wonder Girls, and if so, what kind of dancing was involved. Yun Eun-hye would have been 15 when she joined Baby Vox, but as the other members were older, I thought the best comparison might be S.E.S., whose members were 16 or 17 when they started. At that age, however, they weren't dancing or dressing very provocatively.


It's funny how things change; back in 1998 their second album sold 650,000 copies, as compared to the measly 18,000 albums the Wonder Girls have sold in this era of internet downloading. As bubblegum pop goes, I rather like their song "Dreams Come True", but then it's actually a cover of Nylon Beat's song "Like a Fool", with a bridge (hey, there it is!) and rap added. I think the main reason I like it is because it (well, "Like a Fool", actually) was used in a memorable scene in Resurrection of the Little Match Girl.



Another group called Circle was brought to my attention in the comments section (thanks helikoppter). They first appeared in 1998, when most of the members where 14 or 15, though one was 12 (photo from here).


While it was said her age may have been controversial (in Korea) their image seems to have been based on being cute more than anything else; there's not much Wonder Girls-style gyrating to be seen in this video (or this one either):



Interesting that there seems to be Japanese-Korean members (they seem to have more of a J-pop sound to me, but seeing as I know next to nothing about J-pop, I don't know why I think that). I would be curious to see how this (perhaps international?) group came to be, but there's very little information about them that I could find. Needless to say, there's nothing in that video that would suggest this picture of Korean society painted in July, 1996:

All seem to be crazy to sell sex. TV entertainment programs, night shows, dramas and movies have already exceeded the limit. Under the noble name of arts, lewd dramas are making big profits for their producers on Taehangno Street and TV stations are desperate to raise their viewing rates by making more and more suggestive programs. Adults marketing products are all-out to attract young customers by stimulating their curiosity about sex. It is not going too far to say that our children today are nakedly exposed to obscene culture without restriction, and few appear to be trying to put the brake on this trend.

I wonder what he would have thought of the Wondergirls?



There's certainly a "girl power" aspect to both of their videos. In "Irony", above, they spy on one of there boyfriends and catch him with another girl, and then proceed to use a voodoo doll to torture him (torture in a funny way, I mean).


Then they go down to the club and confront him and get their revenge.





In "Tell Me", (here are the lyrics) bad things happen and So-hee turns into Wonder Girl to save the day, whether it's saving a baby in a carriage from being hit by a bus, fighting off a "burberry man" who's flashing the girls in their changing room...

Hopefully this dinner doesn't turn out this way

...or appearing to punish a bunch of bullies in her class.


While this all may appear "empowering", I think the way in which they're being clothed and marketed runs in another direction. At any rate, I think it's the dancing, and not the story told in the video that has made the song popular. As the Chosun Ilbo tells us about the 'Tell Me' video,

The Wonder Girls say they were stunned by the outfits and choreography for "Tell Me" when they first saw them. "We didn't like wearing the outfits. But once we shot the music video in them, it was fun," says So-hee, 15. The music at the time was still new to them and it wasn't easy to get the choreography right. "The choreography looks simple but it's actually quite complex. Small repetitive motions with the hips, chin and shoulders -- it makes a strong image," said the Wonder Girls.

The love of doing things in groups in Korea may also explain some of the popularity of the song, or more especially, the dance, which has many followers who have uploaded clips of their dancing, as we see here:



I thought of the group aspect being popular in regards to people doing this group dance together, but hadn't thought of it from the standpoint of participation in a larger collective, or "imagined community" as the Metropolitician put it here. The "Tell Me" collective may yet assimilate us all. Speaking of the dance, for those interested in it, you may want to look at this video, which shows the girls practicing for the 'Tell Me' video when Hyun-ah was still a part of the group. The choreography and video changed quite a bit in the final video, and you get an idea of how "quite complex" and difficult it was to learn the dance.



As you can see, Hyun-ah's presence there changed things quite a bit, as she was at the center for much of the video, including the solo dance during the break (which looks terrible there), as well as being dressed as Wonder Girl. Her departure from the band (she quit at the end of July, citing exhaustion) apparently led to So-hee being the centerpiece of the video. Earlier photos of the band reinforce the centrality of Hyun-ah, but I can't help but raise a question: Why are the three youngest girls (likely still 14 when this was taken) the only ones wearing miniskirts? And why are the older ones hidden at the back?


And again, in the Irony video, it's Hyun-ah and So-hee who are front and center gyrating as if they're riding a horse and slapping their asses.


It's been said that the young people who perform or watch these dances really don't know what they signify to older people, and that it's all quite innocent. Fair enough; I didn't really know what Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" was about when I was 15, so maybe I'm making too much of "innocent little dances" like this one (scroll to 5:20). But it is worth remembering that many of the 'normal' people doing the dance in the video above are not teenagers (the supposed market for this music). Sure, dressing them in quasi-school uniforms could have been to reinforce that they were "just like" their target audience, but it reinforces their youth not only for their peers, but for anyone else who's watching, including perhaps, just to throw in a statistic, the 800 men referred to in this article. Also worth thinking about is this question about "Tell Me": Just who is a retro-style '80s song supposed to appeal most to? As the girls said in that Chosun Ilbo article, "We really feel our popularity when 30-year-old guys ask us for autographs." While auctioning off dinners with stars for charity may be common thing for celebrities to do in Korea, isn't selling a dinner with two 15 year-old girls to these 30-year-old (or older) guys - five of whom collectively paid 20 million won for the privilege - a little... creepy?


And I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but why is the youngest (now 15), So-hee (who's considered to be the 'cutest'), the only one wearing a tight shirt in both videos? And after raising these questions, how does this ad (featuring 'So-hee') look?


So-hee has other projects on the go as well, including this film, the English title of which is Hellcats.


It will be released next January, and tells the story of three women in their 40s, 20s and teens. A trailer is here, and more photos are here. Seeing who her co-stars are here explains why she appeared with them in Vogue in October. The film was shot before 'Tell Me' came out, so I imagine Cinema Service is pretty happy with her popularity right now. All I can say is that I hope she acts better than she sings. Hold on - what was on that movie poster again?


Nah, a 15 year-old holding a shirtless man couldn't possibly be construed as having any other meaning, now could it? Come on. Who is this being aimed at?

As far as I can tell, Wonder Girls are the first teenaged female group to be marketed this way in Korea (if I'm wrong, do tell me ...er, no pun intended), in regards to (especially) their age, the way they're dressed, the retro style marketing which appeals to adults, and the emphasis on the youngest members.

I don't foresee that this will lead to death, destruction, and the end of Korea here ([In a movie trailer voice] "Next summer....what began 5000 years ago with Tangun will end... with the Wonder Girls"), and it should be noted that things are much, much more creepy in Japan, with it's gravure idol books and dvds (which provide the masses with buxom 11 year-olds and barely-covered 14 year-olds, to pick two examples from hundreds). It's not like provocative ads with 15 year-olds haven't caused a fuss in the U.S. in the past as well.

But when you think about some of the information I posted here from the 1990s, where 25% of middle and high school girls said they'd been sexually harrassed by their teachers and a writer railed against "adults who seek "younger" girls" and it was announced that bars that hired underaged girls were seeing a boom in business - all of this before a massive increase in runaways that likely fueled the growth of wonjo gyojae - one might think that men's perception of teenage girls in Korea is already problematic enough without the media working 24/7 to keep gyrating 15 year-olds in school uniforms who auction off dates with men in their thirties in the public eye.

Perceptions of teens in the mid-1990s

Here are some more articles from the Korea Times from July 1995 to July 1997, most of which refer to how changing youth behavior, especially regarding sex, was perceived, as well as the growing realization of how often children were victims of sexual abuse and harrassment. It seems that on the KINDS database an extra year was added (back to 1995) so I decided to see what I could find, and these seemed quite interesting. Most of these articles would fit about a quarter of the way down this post (in fact, there are brief references there to some of the things below in that post). This is pretty long, and though I've clipped bits here and there, most of the 15 articles remain intact (statistics and all).

Just for reference, the first noraebang (or 'singing room) appeared in Busan in early 1991 and by 1992 they had spread to Seoul (Antti has much more on this here; it's interesting that some saw noraebangs as a harmful Japanese influence). Something to think about when considering how many runaways were working in in such places three or four years later.


Girls Outnumber Boys Due to Earlier Maturing
1995-08-23

Following the tragic fire on [August 21, 1995, in which thirty-seven inmates were killed and 16 others injured] caused by arson at a rehabilitation center for runaway girls and prostitutes in Yongin, Kyonggi-do, alarm over the sharp increase in runaway teenagers is being sounded by schools and parents.

According to Education Ministry's statistics, the number of runaway students increased to 11,363 last year, a 23 percent hike from 1993. Among them, girls outnumbered boys 5,935 to 5,428, indicating an urgent need for more efforts to focus on girls. In particular, the number of runaway girls far exceeded that of boys at the middle school ages at 2,806 girls to 2,050 boys. By age, middle school runaways numbered 4,856, high school 6,428, and elementary schools 79. The larger number of runaway cases among middle school girls is attributed to their earlier maturing than boys. Leaving their homes, girls were also found to often travel with friends rather than running away by themselves, a ministry official said yesterday.

The runaways began to post a sharp rise in 1991, crossing the 10,000 mark for the first time, according to the ministry. Among those labeled as runaways last year, 1,843 had been expelled from school, 4,843 were suspended, and 4,677 were given minor school punishment. As to motives for running away, the ministry cited the lack of parents' attention to their children, poor school grades, the need for more of an allowance, and parents' unruly life style.

Meanwhile, the absence of proper facilities to protect teenage delinquents is cited as a serious problem in Korea, as proved by YMCA statistics, showing that 71.4 percent of runaway teenagers are making their living at adult entertainment facilities.

The government operates only 22 reformatories or rehabilitation centers mainly for homeless women or prostitutes across the nation, but they cannot afford to accommodate teenagers, due to the limited budget and lack of manpower. With no recourse the teenagers can turn to, the youths are certain to graduate to more aggravated delinquencies, including prostitution, to make a living, a YMCA counsellor said.

If the number of runaways passed 10,000 in 1991, then how could the 11,363 in 1994 be "a 23 percent hike from 1993"? An article I can't access reads in Google that "In 2001, the number of runaways in South Korea reached 61319 youths (23577 males and 37742 females) (The Commission of Youth Protection, 2002a)." Now that's quite an increase (notice the rate still skewed towards females), and is likely due to the fallout from the 1997 financial crisis. It also probably helps to show where the girls willing to take part in wonjo gyojae were coming from at that time.


Unlicensed Night Spots Serving Hotbed for Teenage Girls' Delinquencies
1995-08-24

With the number of teenage runaways sharply growing, nighttime entertainment facilities with no business licenses are becoming the target of public criticism for snaring the runaway girls. According to related business sources, unlicensed bars, in particular, are enjoying booms by preying on underage runaway girls, who have little means to support themselves away from home. A common way in which these bars lure in teenage girls are advertisements in newspapers and magazines guaranteeing big money plus free room and board.

As to why girls run away from home, the teacher cited their desire for a lavish lifestyle, apparently influenced by the overemphasis of materialism in this society. Some girls show off the presents from their "customers" like pagers and jewelry to their friends at schools, he claimed. Meanwhile, the night spots employing teenage girls, in turn, are enjoying booms in their business, by drawing more male customers. By a rough estimate, the number of women serving as "hostesses" at the night spots without licenses totalled some 200,000, four times as many as those at legalized facilities, according to an official of the association of the nation's entertainment business operators.

Compared to recent setbacks of the night-time entertainment businesses, the unlicensed spots increased to about 7,000, as of June, five times as many as the ordinary ones. While the ordinary facilities are reeling from strict regulations and limited operation hours, the illegal facilities are enjoying booms by drawing more customers thanks to the younger girls, according to a bar operator in Sinchon.
With the "sick" entertainment culture surviving in society, many other businesses might have to follow their lead to survive, he claimed.

Meanwhile, the law enforcement authorities are held responsible for the rampant spread of the illegal spots by taking no serious action against them. The bar owner in Sinchon went on to claim that many of the illegal facilities are operating under the connivance of the police. The ordinary entertainment spots, including night clubs and cabarets, lost more than 50,000 employees over the last three years, marking a 44 percent drop in the employee number last year, according to Seoul city statistics

Interesting. Unregulated businesses grow, fueled perhaps by the rising number of runaways. It begs the question of how popular teen prostitution was in the past (remember the main character (an old man) in Chae Man-sil's 1937 novel Peace Under Heaven trying with all his might to find a 14 year-old Kisaeng who will sleep with him?), and if it simply expanded in the 1990s (or had simply been brought to light by the media), or if that period saw a new trend rapidly appear. Interesting that "their desire for a lavish lifestyle, apparently influenced by the overemphasis of materialism" was mentioned, as well as the fact that "some girls show off the presents from their "customers" like pagers and jewelry". Such gift giving was more a marker of wonjo gyojae, and the popularity of wonjo gyojae has often been explained by the influence of materialism. It seems then that aspects of the 'charitable relationship' already existed, but what was needed was to make them 'free agents', which needed the innovation of the 'phone room' (which I would imagine came from Japan, though I don't know if anyone has ever researched that).

At any rate, in response to changing sexual attitudes in teens and a rising number of AIDs cases, a new program was promoted in schools.


`New Purity' Movement to Kick Off at Middle, High Schools in Sept.
1995-09-01

The Korean Federation for AIDS Affairs, Inc., will launch the "New Purity" Movement among middle and high school students across the nation to teach the prevention of AIDS from this month.As a growing number of adolescents tend to have sex at a younger age, the federation is kicking off a nationwide campaign to educate AIDS-ignorant teenagers about responsible and proper sexual behavior, said Chung Kyung-kyoon professor of medical sociology at Seoul National University. Prof. Chung, who heads the anti- AIDS organization, said that the movement is also being initiated to proliferate correct sexual attitudes, emphasizing its spiritual and mental aspects rather than the physical act itself.

Nine out of 10 HIV carriers in Korea are infected through sexual intercourse, illustrating the fact that irresponsible acts are the main catalyst of the deadly disease[.] Moreover, the infection of three Korean high school boys has alarmed citizens, leading them to pay more attention to the issue, he said. The group's successful education in AIDS prevention of over 30,000 students at 13 high schools during the first school semester is resulting in a more active promotion of the program with the participation of over 700 middle and high schools in Seoul. The lectures discuss the characteristics of HIV, channels of transmission, ways to prevent it and healthy sexual behavior.

The anti-AIDS organization has distributed a free video tape, titled "What is AIDS?" to each school which will be used for educational purposes from this month. Also membership cards, embossed with a heart and cross, representing love and purity, respectively, will be handed out from Dec. 1, which was designated as AIDS Day in Korea. The recipients will promise to show real love by adhering to "correct ideas about sexual activities," and practicing safe sex, regardless of whether they have had previous experience or not.

If your curious as to what the real focus is on with this program, read on:

This purity movement, originating in the virginity movement being promoted by religious groups in the United States and Europe, is scheduled to spread not only among teenagers but also students and adults, said Kwon Kwan-woo, a director general of the group.

An essay about this program is here.


`1 in 5 Sexual Abuse Victims Is Child Aged Under 13'
1995-10-11

One out of five sexually abused people in South Korea is a child under 13 years old, and fifty percent of the victims are under twenty years old, said a recent report, sending shock waves throughout society.The Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center (KSVRC) surveyed 501 cases of sex-related violations that took place during the first half of this year.

Of the 282 sexually abused, 149 were over the age of 20, 83 were 14 to 19 years old, and 50 were children or infants under 13. In 205 cases of sexual harassment, 72 or 35.1 percent of the victims were little girls, evidence of a disturbing trend towards paedophilia. As many as 317 cases of the total 501, 63.3 percent, were attacked by someone they knew or had seen. Among the 317 cases, superiors or coworkers in the workplace made up 81 cases or 25.6 percent, followed by neighbors with 20.8 percent, boyfriends with 6.9 percent, school teachers with 5.4 percent and schoolmates or friends with 5.0 percent.

Sex Education at Schools Will Be Stepped Up After Student Gave Birth
1996-07-08

Following hard on the heels of news that a middle school girl went into labor in the classroom last month [June 27], the government has announced it will strengthen sex education in schools, distributing, among other things, audio-visual educational materials to elementary, middle and high schools across the nation. The Health and Welfare Ministry said yesterday it will consult with the Education Ministry about establishing mother's health classes and increasing the number of hours currently allocated to sex education in elementary, middle and high school. At present, sex education is carried out during physical education classes.

Funds for the audio-visual sex education material production to be supplied free of charge to schools will be raised in cooperation with the Planned Parenthood Federation of Korea by collecting used telephone cards and returning them to Korea Telecom, said the ministry. It hopes to raise 6.7 million won by amassing 100,000 used phone cards this year, 67 million won (with 1 million cards) next year and 1.34 billion won (with 2 million cards) in 1998.

The shocking news of a middle school girl who became pregnant after she was raped on her way home from school and went into labor in the classroom last month had pushed the Health and Welfare Ministry to promote better sex education in schools. Afraid that she might be expelled from school, the young girl had kept her condition a secret from her teachers, parents and school mates. She was taking her final exams on June 27 when her water broke and she gave birth to a boy upon being rushed to the hospital.

Wearing an obstetrical binder when she began getting big, the middle school girl hid her pregnancy from her teachers and friends at school. According to her homeroom teacher, because she was always a quiet child, no one thought anything was amiss. And since her working parents spent little time at home, they too did not notice anything was wrong, she added.

Recycling phone cards? I wonder what came of that?


Health-Welfare, Education Ministries Clash Over Sex Education Curricula
1996-07-10

The Health-Welfare Ministry and Education Ministry are at odds over the inclusion of sex education classes in elementary, middle and high school curricula. Efforts by the Health-Welfare Ministry to convince the Education Ministry to establish new health education classes that would include sex education are being met with strong resistance from the latter.

Pointing out the rise in sex crimes, sexually transmitted diseases, drinking and smoking, and drug abuse among teen-agers, the Health-Welfare Ministry said schools should incorporate health education classes into their curricula so that students may protect themselves. More and more young people are being exposed to sex with the recent trend of sexual liberation in Korean society and, as a result, the number of kids troubled by the issue is growing day by day, said the ministry in its argument for schools to assume the role of teaching these youths proper countermeasures. While the Education Ministry concurs with the need for sex and health education in school, it believes that the existing system of teaching those courses as part of physical education classes is sufficient, snubbing the Health -Welfare Ministry's proposal for setting up separate classes.

It also said parents with conservative ideas about sex do not approve of teaching about contraception and other sex-related issues at schools. But a high-ranking Health-Welfare Ministry official said it was precisely this tendency to avoid discussions on the subject of sex in schools that is perpetuating the social problem and causing such unfortunate incidents as the young girl giving birth during class.

Keep in mind that it's been 11 years since th happened and there still aren't decent sex education programs in place within the Korean education system.


Society Epitomizes Obscene Culture
1996-07-11

Over the past few days, Koreans with a conscience must have been struck by the appropriateness of the phrase: "human in appearance but with the mind of an animal." The series of rapes of young girls that recently shocked society, still under the influence of Confucian tradition, at first struck the public dumb. But it soon reacted with indignation. "How could such a thing take place in this society? How? How?" Everybody is talking about the disappearance of morality and the need for a moral rearmament movement and appropriate sex education at schools.

A raped middle school girl went into labor in her classroom and gave birth in the ambulance on the way to hospital while her astonished teachers looked on helplessly. No one knew of the pregnancy of the 15-year-old latch-key girl at all. Before the people could calm themselves, they were informed of a brutal gang-rape of an 11-year-old parentless primary school girl by her 14 neighbors. How could people not wonder where the limit to men's evil lay?

Eleven of the 14 rapists living in Asan City were arrested yesterday. Another had fled and two others are middle school boys who cannot be tried under criminal law because of their age. If she had not written their names in her diary and taken poison in a suicide attempt in despair because of her plight, the neighbors would have continued to live their routine lives without any pangs of conscience. The seriousness of the Asan incident is that no villager moved to protect the young girl, even though word about the immorality was getting around in the village, and even middle school boys were involved. Other rape cases involving minors have made one headline after another. In Kangwon-do, a middle school girl living alone in a rented room was violated by the house owner and his son in turn.

Who is responsible for this evil? These incidents are probably only the tip of the iceberg. Korean society, which is implicated in this total moral collapse, should be called to account. The International Labor Organization (IL0) recently apologized for a "mistaken" report on child prostitution which cited South Korea as one of the countries where child prostitution is rampant. Thus, South Korea avoided disgrace. But, should it have? Korean society today all but epitomizes an obscene culture.

All seem to be crazy to sell sex. TV entertainment programs, night shows, dramas and movies have already exceeded the limit. Under the noble name of arts, lewd dramas are making big profits for their producers on Taehangno Street and TV stations are desperate to raise their viewing rates by making more and more suggestive programs. Adults marketing products are all-out to attract young customers by stimulating their curiosity about sex. It is not going too far to say that our children today are nakedly exposed to obscene culture without restriction, and few appear to be trying to put the brake on this trend.

It's a piece of cake for minors to see porno videos any time they want to. So-called "video rooms" are packed with minors, who are forbidden by law to enter them. Some of the video theaters, mostly located in the basements or higher floors of buildings, have a dozen or more closed compartments and some of them are even equipped with beds and are open through the night functioning as lodging facilities. The police know of the illegal business. The video rooms, however, are still doing business and are prospering. This is bizarre.

Those who are ruining public culture are committing even more vicious crimes than those who discharge poisonous wastewater into rivers. In particular, the influential mass media should refrain from titillating programming in their "all-or- nothing" competition to attract more viewers. The young girls involved in the incidents are the victims of an obscene culture that adults are creating.

By the way, those who visit red-light districts "may" be more human than those who raped the little girls.

Apparently some thought Korean society in 1996 was "nakedly obscene," though those who visited red-light districts were exempt from this, I guess.


More Education Urged to Curb Sex Problems
1997 7 12

Seoul City Education Office yesterday added its voice to the growing calls for more sex education in schools since a raped middle school girl went into labor in the classroom last month. Several horrifying cases of rape involving young girls over the past few days have sent shockwaves reverberating through society and a huge groundswell in support of better sex education has been the result.

In a report released yesterday by the Planned Parenthood Federation of Korea, most of the young girls who sought advice from the federation's counselling centers last year were concerned about unwanted pregnancies while boys asked about sexual urges and masturbation. The research was based on 14,896 cases it handled last year at its seven youth counseling centers nationwide.

Eighteen percent, or 814, of the total 4,654 girls that asked the center for advice wanted help with unwanted pregnancies as a result of rapes or sexual relationships. Among them, 27 percent were between 16 and 20 years old while 3 percent were aged 15 and below. Others who sought counselling on sexual relationships and related health problems numbered 11 and 8 percent respectively. Eight percent asked about adoption and contraceptives while 3 percent shared their anxieties about sexual urges. On the other hand, 24 percent of the 10,242 boys who called or visited the center wanted to discuss sexual urges, followed by 20 percent who had questions about masturbation. Fourteen percent asked for advice on sexual problems and related health issues and 8 percent sought help with intersexual relationships.

In 1991, 16 percent of young people said they were worried about relationships with the opposite sex but the number of teenagers worrying about it dropped to 9 percent last year. However, those anxious about masturbation and sexual urges increased significantly from 23 percent to 32 percent.

Meanwhile, the Education Ministry yesterday revealed that 29 middle and high school students have been suspended, expelled or reprimanded for sexual violence. It said nine middle school and 20 high school students were punished as of the end of May this year. Of them, eight were expelled, 15 were suspended from school and six got off with a warning.

The need for more sex education was reinforced a few months later in an incident which occurred not too far from where I live:


Teen Has Baby on Her Way to School
1996-10-17

A 17-year-old high school girl delivered a baby on her way to school in western Seoul with neither her family nor the school knowing of her pregnancy. At around 9 a.m. Tuesday in Tungchon-dong, Kangso-gu, a certain Kim attending the high school nearby was found with her newborn by neighbors at the restroom of a cornerstore. She was reported to have asked the shop owner for the use of the restroom to ease the pain in her belly. It was here where she gave birth to a baby boy. She was moved to a neighborhood clinic by emergency relief workers and released to her family later. The baby was handed over to the Holt Children's Services, the nation's leading adoption agency. Both the baby and the mother are healthy, the doctor said.

Friends of the girl said she has had a boyfriend since January when she was about to graduate from middle school and he could have fathered the baby. The matter is being probed. According to the school, she had moved from the province to Seoul and stayed with her married elder sister in Seoul. She was in the upper-middle group in her academic performance and never missed a day during the past and current semesters. As she is on the big side and had bound her belly with elastic bandages, nobody noticed her pregnancy.

The shocking incident vividly tells the openness but ignorance among teenagers about sex as well as their general unpreparedness. It is a testimony to her ignorance that the girl mistook the labor pains associated with childbirth as mere abdominal pain. In Korea, parents and teachers want students to remain conservative about sex while unwanted pregnancy and childbirth among teenagers are not rare. The young hardly find anyone to trust and confess their situation to.

Last summer, the public was shocked to learn about a middle school girl who began to go into labor at her classroom and later delivered a baby in an ambulance while being rushed to the hospital. Another incident involved a 12 year-old orphan who was sexually abused by several male adults who were all clansmen in Asan City, Chungchong-namdo. It was indeed unfortunate that the media projected the girls as "loose," while they failed to expose the offenders.

Interesting that the girls were considered to be "loose", though not surprising. Notice also that the baby was given up for adoption. The uproar from these incidents led to more reporting of sexual violence, as the following article reveals, though you wouldn't know it from the headline:


Sexual Violence on Children Continue to Grow
1997-01-15

The number of reports of sexual violence on children continued to grow at the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center (576-7127/8) over the past year, statistics show.Of the 1,179 sexual violence-related incidents handled by its counselors, 42.1 percent or 749 cases happened to adults whereas child victims and teeangers made up 33.7 percent and 23.6 percent of the cases, respectively. In particular, cases involving children were up 8.1 percent from 25.6 percent of the previous year.

Those who sought help at the agency related to sexual molestation grew from 40 percent in 1995 to 48.5 percent last year of all the sexual violence cases handled by the agency. "In the past, sexually-molested girls were too ashamed of themselves and of the incident and they wanted not to touch it. But, now, they are ready to fight against any sort of sexual violence and to speak out to get remuneration," a counselor of the agency explained.

The relief center extended its hotline services to 24 hours a day in July of last year following a shocking series of sexual assaults against young teenage girls were revealed. The total number of incidents handled by the agency last year jumped by 68 percent because of the 24-hour hot line service.

According to the analysis, children were raped or fondled by people around home, school or institutes such as teachers, school bus drivers, uncles, cousins, brother-in-laws, parents or other relatives. The victims were often coerced not through threats or violence but by being faked by their assaulters or showered with affection, money and gifts

16 in 100 Male High School Students Sexually Experienced: Survey
1997-02-10

About 16 in 100 male high school students in Korea are sexually experienced and the partners with whom they have had the experiences have mostly been girlfriends, a survey indicates. Korean high schoolboys are aged 15- 18 on average. The partners the boys said they had sex with were mostly their girlfriends (74.7 percent), followed by women they had met by chance (34.1 percent), prostitutes (16.6 percent), bargirls (11.09 percent), callgirls (9.4 percent), relatives (3.1 percent) and boyfriends (3.4 percent). The survey was conducted by the Sex Culture Institute of the Planned Parenthood Federation of Korea on 1,976 male students in nine major cities from Oct. 10 to Nov. 30.

Asked when they most often felt sexual urges, 65.4 percent said when viewing obscene scenes on TV or videos, followed by seeing women wearing sexually-appealing clothes like those exposing midriffs (54.6 percent), viewing porn films (45.1 percent) and seeing obscene moviehouses advertisements or movie posters (18.9 percent).

Students in the second year of high school were found to have the greatest access to lascivious materials through magazines or CD ROMs, while those in the first year gained theirs through PC communications, the survey showed. As for the frequency of access to obscene videotapes, students in small cities had more chance to get hold of them than their counterparts in big cities like Seoul. Asked how they felt when they saw obscene material, 27.1 percent said that they wanted to see more, 20.4 percent answered they wished to do it themselves, and 39.3 percent replied that they felt nothing in particular. Only 8.2 percent said they did not want to see any more.

As for ways they dealt with their sexual desires, masturbation topped with 49.7 percent and 46.6 percent said that they practiced self-control. However, 9.3 percent said that they went to prostitutes, 6.9 percent answered they made obscene telephone conversations and 3.1 percent replied they committed sexual assaults. About half of the boys questioned were opposed to sexual experiences for boy students, while 67.8 percent believed that girl students should not have them.

"Only 8.2 percent said they did not want to see any more". I suppose that means the other 91.8% were thought to be abnormal, then? Notice that 16.6% said that they went to prostitutes. Remember those high school students on the school trip in China?


25 Percent of Female Students Sexually Harassed by Educators: Survey
1997-06-18

Sexual harassment of female middle and high school students by educators - school teachers, hagwon instructors and private tutors - has reached grave proportions, according to a Women's Hotline survey released this week. One in every four or 722 of the 2,986 students polled said that their teachers have surreptitiously touched their backs and behinds. Among them, 126 (4.6%) answered that they have repeatedly experienced such treatment, making sexual harassment a serious problem for these teenagers.

In addition, 13.9 percent of respondents said that their teachers have intentionally come in extremely close physical contact with them and another 7.6 percent claim that their instructors have touched the area near their breasts. Sexually provocative words are even more widespread than physical contact - 20.4 percent of the middle and high school students answered that their teachers have made sexual jokes and comments to them. And how many students have had their bra straps snapped by their teachers? Five point two percent, according to the results of the Women's Hotline survey. To the question, "Have your teachers ever poked you in your breasts and buttocks?" Three point four percent answered yes. Another 1.6 percent said that their teachers had exposed themselves and asked to be touched, or touched the students under their clothing.

The Women's Hotline also found that 2.3 percent of respondents have been forced to kiss their instructors, 0.6 percent have been invited to have sex by their teachers and 15 students or 0.55 percent said they have engaged in such sexual relations. Seven girls or 0.2 percent of respondents confessed that they have repeatedly had intimate sexual contact with their instructors.

The poll was conducted in two intervals - during the first two weeks of December 1996 and for 10 days in February - by distributing questionnaires through student organizations and informal gatherings in schools, hagwons and churches. Of the 4,000 survey forms handed out, 1,464 were returned by middle-school students and 1,578 by high-schoolers. The surveys did not ask respondents to specify the gender of their teachers.

In the midst of that article one might get the idea there's a preference for teenage girls. The next article discusses a famous 1950s film as an introduction to a growing problem of violence in schools (by students). I'll look more closely at this later, but for now, it should be pointed out that there was a massive crackdown in 1995 which accomplished... nothing.


'97 Version of `Blackboard Jungle'
1997-07-04

The movie was shown in Korea under the Korean title of "Classroom of Violence," which may better describe what it was about. In reality, the blackboard jungle of 1997 in Korea has become a very, very serious social problem with no solution in sight. Instead of the strong rock'n'roll beat, youngsters of Korea in 1997 are listening to vulgar rap music, playing Japanese-made electronic games and reading Japanese comic books featuring sadistic violence and immoral sex. School violence has already crossed the limit.

A Japanese term, "ijime," is now a common word here, meaning a collective act of harassing other students, mostly by violent means, just for the fun of it. This trend is no laughing matter, as evidenced in many cases, in that the victims are weak and have no "influential" parents.

One of the most brutal cases was that of a 16-year-old high school boy, whose poor family relies on a government subsidy of 100,000 won a month as they are on the list of people whose livelihood is protected by the state. Not to mention the constant beatings, the school bullies from wealthy families extorted 50,000 won of the subsidy every month from him. As he could no longer endure the repeated beatings and extortion, he quit school, saying he would come back after the bullies graduate. Six of the bully boys were arrested by police, but showed no repentance at all like their rich parents. And their teacher insisted that they had done nothing wrong, dumbfounding the police. Teachers do not want to be held responsible and try to preserve the school's good name, but in reality are only aggravating the situation.

He goes on for a bit, but makes some interesting comments on another topic:

There are a considerable number of middle and high schoolgirls working at night spots such as "song rooms" employed to sell liquor as "hostesses." As long as such entertainment spots fatten their purses, any good plan to guide youths to the right path will be useless. As long as there exist adults who seek "younger" girls at entertainment spots and the notorious "college entrance exam hell," juvenile delinquency will never cease to exist.

Middle School Girls More Tolerant About Premarital Sex
1997-07-29

Whether they just think about it, or engage in it, middle school girls are more open-minded about sex than their seniors in high schools, while high school boys are more liberal about sex than their juniors.The majority of boys and girls consider their sexual drive to be a natural need of the body. These facts came to light in a survey done in May-June by the Korea Women's Association's Guidance Center on Family and Sex Affairs on 1,160 middle and high school students.

Asked about if both boys and girls should remain virgins before marriage, 50 percent of middle school girls and 68 percent of high school girls said yes. In the case of the other gender, 36 percent of middle school students and 28 percent of high school students agreed they should. Asked if sex is permissible before marriage if they love the person, 26 percent of middle school girls surveyed said it was, 5 percent more than the number of high school girls. Only 55 percent said they feel ashamed and confused about their sexual drive whereas 56 percent think it is a physiological phenomenon.

On the source of their knowledge on sex, the largest group, or 37 percent, cited friends and 27 percent said adult media. About a fifth, or 19 percent said public media was where they learned about the carnal act, while only 4.7 percent and 1.7 percent acquired such information from school teachers and parents respectively.

They "said public media was where they learned about the carnal act"? I doubt they were watching TV dramas. Last, but not least, is the case of the "red scarf":


7 Teenagers Arrested for Making, Distributing Porno Video Film
1997-07-16

Six high school boys and one teenage girl were arrested Monday by police for starring in, and distributing their own pornographic production. Seemingly unaware of the social consequences of their actions, the group huddled together, covering themselves to avoid the spotlight of local TV cameras, barely answering questions from reporters at a police station.

"This feels like a (bad) dream," said 17-year-old Kim, one of the teenage boys involved. Kim reportedly thought of making the video "for fun" after watching a similar Japanese pornographic movie. "I thought they were going to destroy the tape after it was over," said Choi, 15, the lone girl and middle school dropout, who was videotaped having sex with three of the teenage boys. Asked if any of her friends had ever made similar movies, Choi replied a simple "yes."

Kim reportedly met Choi at a school festival in September 1995. The two had an intimate relationship for sometime, he said. Choi left school in June 1996, to go work at a karaoke bar. She said she did so because of the constant bickering between her parents. A month later she was raped by four men, she said.

The filming of the act itself began in April last year, when Kim's school friend, Ahn, came to his home to watch the Japanese porn movie. Kim reportedly suggested the idea, called Choi over and took turns with Ahn in filming the sex acts. Kim later completed part two of the movie in August of the same year with Choi and another male friend from school, also called Choi. The movie was filmed in Kim's home when his parents were at work. Copies of the movie were passed among friends, and before long it became one of the hottest selling videos in the underground porn market, police said.

Among the arrested was the son of a high-ranking government official who said he got involved in the video's distribution "to make some money". "The fact that this video was being passed around school for nearly a year had been common knowledge, but nobody paid any real attention," YMCA advisor Seo Yon-kyong said, pointing out that it was an incident caused by "lack of attention towards teenagers on the part of society as a whole."

You certainly can't say that the media and the government weren't paying attention to teenagers as a group, though their perception of teenagers and youth behavior seems to be as of a cancer affecting the social organism that is the nation, which needed to be contained - as long as it did not involve actually talking about sex with them.

No child left untested

Here's a headline I found tonight, though in the KINDS database, it was missing the last word. I assure you it's not "teachers".

Mandatory Drug Test Will Be Conducted for Primary, Secondary School[...]

Starting next year, students will be subject to drug tests at schools under a government measure to fight increasing drug and other chemical abuses among youths, the Prime Minister's Office said yesterday.Under the "Anti-Drug Abuse Program," elementary, middle and high schools will conduct a "dope test" to determine whether students use hallucinogens, including butane gas and chemical glue. With the relatively stricter control on conventional drugs, youths in the nation are commonly using butane gas or chemical glues to be intoxicated.

The dope test involving urine samples will be administered to all of those aged 10 and above. Currently, schools only conduct physical fitness examinations once a year without any blood or urine checks. The Education and Health-Social Welfare Ministries will chart out a detailed program by next month to implement the urine drug tests. They will be conducted at schools in six major cities, next year, on a trial basis. The government will also set up a "Rehabilitation Center for Drug Addicts" in metropolitan areas to exclusively help youngsters get over their deadly habit.

Starting in 1997, every school in the nation will open anti-drug and health awareness courses jointly with civic groups such as pharmacists in respective communities, the PM's Office said. The Health-Social Welfare Ministry is considering lacing butane gas with a reeking odor that would repel students, as well as placing warnings on glue and gas containers.

I swear this is not satire. It's a Korea Times article from October 20, 1995. I can't help but remember the Gregory Henderson quote, "In the non-socialist world, I have so far sensed nothing comparable to the South Korean shadowing of the private by the public sphere."

Seriously though, do you think they were overreacting just a little? I guess the next time the police raid a bar in Itaewon and piss-test everyone in it, those who may want to complain can just think of this article, and remember that they wanted to piss test every child over the age of ten. The mind boggles. Here's a bit from an article a week later:

Teenagers' Drug Prevention Centers to Be Established in 7 Cities by 2000

A prevention center designed to awaken minors to the danger of drug abuse and to counsel drug users will be opened in big cities by the year 2000.The Health-Welfare Ministry has come up with the plan to fight increasing drug and chemical abuse among youths.

In an initial step, the ministry will intensify the programs at existing counselling offices dealing with drug abuse. These offices run by the Korea Headquarters for Anti-Drug Campaigning are in Seoul, Pusan, Inchon, Chonju, Chunchon, Wonju and Kangnung. Drug addiction among youths accounts for three in every four cases of substance abuse, according to the tally compiled by the headquarters.

Director general Lee Kyong-ho of the ministry's pharmaceutical bureau said, "Teenagers' drug taking has reached the point of zero tolerance and misdemeanors committed by drug-taking teenagers have emerged as a serious social problem." "Teenagers need to be properly educated on the hazards from drug abuse to protect themselves," he said.

An article from July 9, 1997, made it seem as if the kids weren't getting the message:

Nearly 8 Percent of Korean Teens Regard Drug Use as Innocuous

Nearly 8 percent of Korean middle and high school students believe the use of hallucinogenic drugs is innocuous, and a portion of them have used marijuana and methamphetamines, according to a study by the Korean Anti-Drug Campaign Center released yesterday.The study also reported that 4.5 percent say they would experiment with such substances if given the opportunity. Another 3.5 percent claim that they have gotten high on hallucinogens before.

Hallucinogenic substances favored by these young drug users include inhalants like butane gas and marijuana (3.5 percent), pain killers (1.5 percent), stimulants like methamphetamines (0.8 percent) and depressants (0.7 percent).

Notice the lack of any mention of the drug testing. The statistics from this March 21, 2000 article are interesting:

Drug Offenders in 30s, 40s Soar Amid Wide Income Gap

According to the 1999 Narcotics White Paper released by the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office yesterday, a total of 10,589 people were charged with narcotics offenses last year, a 26.8 percent increase from 8,350 in 1998.

The paper showed that the number of drug offenders in their teens and 20s has fallen since 1995, whereas the number of those in their 30s and 40s has soared.
Drug offenders in their 30s jumped from 1,884 in 1995 to 3,270 in 1998 and 4,260 last year, nearly a twofold increase during the five-year period. Those in their 40s also soared from 836 in 1995 to 1,667 in 1998 and 2,466 last year, a threefold rise.
As a result, drug offenders in their 30s and 40s accounted for 40.2 and 23.3 percent of the total, respectively, compared with 19.2 percent in their 20s and 0.5 percent in their teens.

The sharp rise in the number of drug offenders in their 30s and 40s was attributed largely to widening income disparities between the rich and poor, especially after the country suffered an unprecedented economic crisis in late 1997.

Notice those percentages add up to about 83%. At any rate, it seems to say that the teen numbers had dropped from "God save us! It's like the Imjin Waeran out there!" levels to a mere 0.5% of those arrested - if you believe those numbers lacking 17% above. If I had to guess the drug testing idea died a quiet death when the government realised that implementing it was far beyond its capacity.

Concrete Island

I've always liked this little ballpark-shaped grove of buildings near my house. The seam between two of the photos is visible, and is why you can see the same people twice at far left. I suppose you could make up a story about them...

Well thought-out regulations

[Update]

This comment may be useful to those wanting to extend an E2 which expires soon (perhaps even two months) after December 15. Last week that person apparently got a renewal 2.5 months early, and avoided the new regulations.

[Original Post]

"New visa rules may force some to return home", according to the Joongang Ilbo. Lovely. Isn't it nice when your visa is up a week after the new regulations come into force? This part is a bit of a head-scratcher:

English teachers are required to leave the country for their annual visa renewal. According to a press release the ministry issued on Friday, people who hold an E-2 visa will still be able to apply for the renewal at Korean consulates in a nearby third country, such as Japan or China.

I'm assuming 'renewal' means 'extension', which means anyone extending their visa gets a free trip to Japan, where they can get fingerprinted and photographed. What fun! Or by 'renewal' do they mean 'getting a new E-2 visa' (which would make more sense)? A free trip to Japan sounds fine to me, though I can't imagine academy owners will be pleased with it. And how making teachers who have committed to another contract leave the country helps keep out all the unqualified, fake-diploma-carrying, HIV carrying, drug-abusing, sex criminal English teachers is beyond me. Perhaps the immigration director got a thicker envelope from a representative of the local airlines than from the hagwon association.

From "bureaucracy's greatest hits", we get this:

Kim Soo-nam, deputy director at the Justice Ministry’s Korean Immigration Service, said the ministry would accept a criminal history report issued by foreign embassies here for the applicant. However, Kim added that so far, none of the embassies here have agreed to provide the service.

Well thanks for offering that option, deputy director Kim! It's nice to see you think foreign governments will pick up the slack when you implement changes too quickly. I'm also glad the following appeared in the Joongang Ilbo:

At least one foreign language school said it welcomes the new rules, as they may help improve the reputation of English teachers, which gets hurt based on just a handful of highly publicized incidents.

Which newspaper broke the story of and "highly publicized" 'English Spectrum-gate' again?

MTU leaders arrested

[Update]

Jamie over at Two Koreas has a worthwhile post looking at the Korean government response to the growth of undocumented workers in Korea. For example:

The Employment Permit System, designed to replace the discredited Industrial Trainee System, remains flawed in protecting migrant’s rights and encourages illegality as it has not been configured to factor in the actual costs of migration to individual workers (in the sense of hidden and illegal recruitment and brokerage costs that persist for migrants from particular regions; short, 1-3 year time horizons for employment that leaves both workers and employers with incentives to overstay the contract; and problems associated with the initial implementation of the EPS which ignored the majority of undocumented migrants in Korea by excluding them from access to permits).

Thus, a large portion of the increase in the number of undocumented year by year consists of overstayers rather than new migrants. Rather than correcting the system, the government, largely at the behest of the Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Government and Home Affairs, has chosen to pursue crackdowns on the undocumented while recruiting newer workers from overseas.

Regarding those who have been arrested, they are being treated well but they may be forcibly deported, as "it seems as though the Korean government is trying to arrange consent from the Bangladeshi and Nepalese embassies, even if they don't have passports, personal belongings or money to buy a plane ticket."

[Original post]



Let's start with the Hankyoreh:

Another reckless crackdown on migrant workers is underway. Yesterday three key officers in the Migrants’ Trade Union (Iju Nodongja Nodong Johap) were taken away by immigration agents. The three were clearly targeted. Just the other day two ethnic Koreans from China jumped off the roof of a Chinese speaking church in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, while trying to ditch agents there to arrest them, who then broke their legs and ankles. For how much longer is the government going to continue this inhumane crackdown?

The reason the government is going after foreign laborers with such zeal is said to be because of the rapid increase in the number of undocumented migrant workers. This kind of ruthless crackdown, however, is as bad a policy as one could have. There are said to be some 230,000 undocumented migrant laborers in Korea; is the government going to continue this way until it has grabbed them all?

In January this year, the Seoul High Court ruled in favor of foreign workers seeking to join a trade union despite their illegal status from overstaying visas. Since then the union has been very active. In August the government began yet another crackdown on migrant workers, though this one has been carried on much longer than those in the past. The full Hankyoreh article (excerpted above) talks about the increasing power immigration officers have been given to carry this out.

In the wake of the senseless deaths of migrant workers in a fire at Yeosu detention center this past February, (and in a rising number of workplace related deaths) it was hoped the government would review their policies, but they've, predictably, continued with the only policy they know: crackdown.

Perhaps it's a testament to how much of a threat the government sees them as; it has always targeted the organizers in the hope that if the head is lopped off, the body will die. This has always been a false hope on their part. Most of the migrant worker organizers I've known have been arrested and deported, and I know one of the men arrested on Tuesday. He's a really good person, and does not deserve to have this happen to him.

For all the idiocy (some might say racism) I quoted here, be sure that migrant workers are treated far, far worse than any westerners in Korea are. What's also creepy is the degree to which they watched the men before they were arrested. One of them "takes medication for his stomach and cholesterol and when he got to the jail, they already had it prepared for him."

Two Koreas has more on this here, and a call for solidarity is here.

No names

The saga of the 'exploding phone' seems to have reached its conclusion. The Chosun Ilbo reported on the incident yesterday:

A man in his 30s was killed on Wednesday in what is believed to have been a mobile-phone explosion. Around 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, a worker at a quarry in Cheongwon County, North Chungcheong Province found the backhoe operator identified as Seo (33). The worker told police he found Seo lying beside his backhoe and bleeding from the nose. His phone was on fire. The worker put out the fire and called emergency services. Seo was taken to hospital but pronounced dead on arrival.

There was a precedent for thinking the phone battery was to blame:

In June, the press reported that a 22-year-old welder was killed at a steel mill in Lanchow in China’s Gansu Province after the mobile phone in his chest pocket exploded. This was the first time a mobile-phone explosion has killed a person in Korea.

It said little about what phone was responsible:

Seo used the latest slide phone released by a leading Korean electronics company in April.

With the libel laws in Korea, newspapers not wanting to be sued can't name names. The Joongang Ilbo fudged and said

The cell phone was the product of a well-known South Korean electronics company, police officials said. However, police did not reveal the name of the manufacturer nor the type of the cell phone or battery.

Not true at all. The Korea Times let the cat out of the bag:

The phone was made by LG Electronics. The company said the battery was very unlikely to explode since it was wrapped in aluminum foil, not a solid container. The manufacturer of the lithium-ion polymer battery was also not identified. LG said a Japanese and a Korean firm are its two main battery suppliers.

The Times was also quick to report, once it became known, that it was a co-worker who accidentily killed the man in question.

Kwon, 58, said on Thursday night that he hit Seo, 33, while driving his excavator backward at a stone quarry in Cheongwon, North Chungcheong Province, the police said. The phone was on fire when he found Seo lying down on the ground, and he was too afraid to say about what had happened, the police said.

"I was moving the excavator and Seo was suddently out of my sight. I ran out and saw he was lying down bleeding and his cloths on fire,'' Kwon was quoted as saying by the police. ``All these happened in a moment, and I was too afraid about the accident. So I lied that the battery exploded and killed Seo."

A number of Korean and foreign newspapers incautiously reported that the phone explosion killed the man, even though LG Electronics, the manufacturer of the phone, flately denied such a possiblity, given that the lithium-ion polymer battery is not prone to explosion.

Well then, seeing how the media will eat up anything as fear-mongering as an exploding cell phone, perhaps the police shouldn't have announced the findings in its unfinished investigation so hastily. They won't get the blame, however.

It is not immediately known whether LG is to sue the newspapers and Internet news agencies that hastily blamed the firm for the man's death.

There may be two lessons from this: that the media (and police) should be more careful, and that the media should not be so hasty in revealing the source of public health hazards.

Article on the elderly who live alone

The Joongang Ilbo has a depressing article about the number of elderly people living alone.

According to the foundation, a 66-year-old woman living in alone in a rundown part of Mapo was found dead last month in her home two days after she died. The cause of death was starvation. She had no contact with relatives and had been refusing to get help from the district office.

Also in October, a 67-year-old man was found dead at home. Alerted by a bad smell, the landlord called police, who found a body that had been decaying for at least a month. The man had been suffering from tuberculosis. [...]

There are an estimated 880,000 elderly living alone currently, but the government expects the number to rise to 1 million by 2010.

I can't help but think of a Simpsons episode where their dog becomes a nuisance, and the family thinks about getting rid of the dog. Lisa responds thusly:

"This is our pet. We can question his integrity and disposition, but we can’t question his heart. Are you trying to teach us that the way to solve a problem with something you love, is to throw it away?"

The camera then pans across town to Grandpa Simpson in his room at the retirement home. He looks at the phone, which isn't ringing, picks it up, and says, "Hello? Is anyone there?" Though it is, to a degree, played for laughs, it was obviously commenting on a rather ugly aspect of (North) American society. Reading that "She had no contact with relatives", I can't help but think that it's too bad that this aspect of western society (or capitalist modernity in general) has become a trend in Korea as well. So much for "respecting your elders".

1941's "Volunteer"

Somewhere in Korea, 1941

I’ve been watching films from the box set "Unearthing the Past", which Mark over at Korea Pop Wars brought to my attention awhile ago. The box set consists of four of the oldest Korean films still in existence. Three are from 1941, and the other is from 1943. These, of course, are all films made during World War II, and were thus made when Korea was a colony of Japan. Needless to say, these films are windows into the past like no other. You get to see what Korea looked like at that time in moving pictures, but, since film was used as a propaganda device, especially in wartime, you also get to see how the Japanese tried to mold Koreans into good imperial citizens ready to sacrifice themselves for the empire.

What follows is a look at Volunteer (Jiwonbyeong), from 1941. While obviously a propaganda film, it’s also a very well crafted film. Director Ahn Seok-young and especially cinematographer Lee Myeong-woo really deserve credit – some of the shots are really well composed, and the film makes use of numerous tracking shots – not bad for a film shot in the countryside in 1941. A number of the screenshots below were chosen to illustrate how well composed many of the scenes are.


The film begins with a people waiting to see a troop train off at a station in the countryside. The main character, Choon-ho, talks with his friend who wants to become a driver, and then meets his fiancé Bun-ok and talks about wanting to get away from the countryside. He is then called to Seoul where the absentee landlord, (whose father respected his father) turns over the job of overseeing the land to the crafty Kim Deok-sam. The landlord’s sister, who obviously has a thing for Choon-ho, reproaches her brother for this decision, as she realizes this will affect Choon-ho’s financial situation negatively. Choon-ho returns home, and on his way sees young students doing military training in a field; he looks on wistfully.


He arrives home with gifts from Seoul and, while sitting with his mother, sister, and Bun-ok, has this exchange with his sister, who asks

- Did you buy a comfort kit?
- Yes. So you can write your name on the cover and send it.
- I have something to show you. I wrote a letter to a soldier at school the other day. He replied.
- [reading] “I am moved by your innocent, sincere letter.” Would you like it if I became a soldier too?
- That would be so nice. You would be a Korean soldier then?
- Yes, if I became a soldier
- Then I would write you a letter and send you a comfort kit.
[laughter]


But in a conversation with his friend after leaving a building with flags out front after a ‘lecture’, he reveals why he cannot become a soldier.

- The annexation is complete now, but young koreans should serve the empire at war too. Even if we want to, we are not allowed to do so. We are not eligible. How can we really work in unity like this?
- If such a time comes, are you willing to step forward?
- Don’t you know me yet? […] We have our duty.

The accompanying essay in the DVD set calls this scene “a rupture in the militarist propaganda film”, because it reveals that discrimination exists in the empire, which bars Koreans from joining the military. Have no fear; this will later be "surtured".

The landlord’s sister comes to visit and when Bun-ok sees her (a city girl) and Choon-ho together, she trails behind them, feeling rejected.


After seeing the sister off, Choon-ho runs into a Japanese friend who shows him a newspaper announcing the news that Koreans can now volunteer.

The smile on his face after reading this news disappears after he sees his friend, who was trying to hit on Bun-ok, sitting next to her.


After staring at each other for a full minute (in a scene that's unintentionally funny, recalling as it does so many TV dramas), they all part ways. Bun-ok then hears the crafty Kim Deok-sam trying to get her father to forget about Choon-ho and marry her to one of his sons. The following scene in his house is quite fun, as he’s obviously the ‘bad guy’ whose greed and lust are readily apparent (not for nothing is the chain of restaurants named after Nolbu, right?).


Meanwhile, Choon-ho is sitting at home in front of a map of Asia.


In one of the more bizarre, yet fascinating scenes, Choon-ho, dreams of joining the army. What follows are numerous shots where the soldiers march by in rows (several tracking shots are used), and the nature of this scene, with its military order and repetition, is utterly different from the rest of the film.







After this abrupt fetishization of the military, Choon-ho’s friend apologizes to Bun-ok, and she and Choon-ho eventually make up. In a nicely composed shot, the camera pans from her walking down the road, down to her shadow, which is joined by his, and back up to the couple again.


He admits that he will join the military. The results of the recruitment exam are published in the newspaper, which the landlord sees when shown it by his sister.

- Choon-ho passed the exam.
- See. You treated such an able man unkindly.
- I never knew.
- Who will look after his family after he joins a training camp?
- I should change my mind. I will help.

And just like that, joining the army is the deus ex machina which solves all the problems which arose from the landlord giving Kim Deok-sam the overseeing position.


The film ends as it began, with a crowd of people at the train station seeing off a troop train, except this time Choon-ho is on board. Bun-ok and his sister are there to see him off. What’s interesting is how stoic they are. His sister looks neither happy nor sad.

"Go off and die for the empire then, jerk."

In the final shot of the film, Bun-ok’s face is just as mysterious. Again, she’s neither happy nor sad, though perhaps the beginning of a smile can be discerned. Is this failure to cheer or bemoan his departure an example of sullen resistance to the Japanese propaganda effort (and censorship)? Or does it reflect a time when people were less likely to show emotion in public?


Whatever might explain the above shot, this shot is worth looking at:


The Japanese character (the one who told Choon-ho about the opening of the military to Korean volunteers) would likely be termed a caricature of a Japanese person today, except that this film was made at the height of the Japanese military control over every aspect of society in the Japanese empire. What the censors missed was this: in the final shot showing the Japanese character, he’s standing next to the crafty Kim Deok-sam and his sons, who were so clearly identified as the ‘bad guys’. Perhaps, in 1941, that was as much resistance as anyone could hope for.

It would get worse, however. In the aforementioned box set, three of the movies, including Volunteer, are from 1941. The other, Straits of Chosun, is from 1943, a year after it was deemed that every line in every movie had to be spoken in Japanese.

This film (like the other film from the box set I've seen so far), likely began as a typical story - in this case, of a man who loses his position and tries to get it back - which the Japanese authorities insisted be changed to add military propaganda elements. Those elements, which have all been described above, are easy to see in the film because they're so abruptly added in, often interrupting the flow of the story. Choon-ho's conflict with Kim Deok-sam likely would have made for a more interesting story, but the film as it stands is still well made, and is fascinating to examine as a piece of propaganda. It's because of these propaganda elements, however, that this film will never be considered a "worthy" piece of Korean cinema history. It certainly doesn't appear in the Korean Film Archive's top 100 films. Unfortunately, nationalist criteria seem to trump artistry or historical importance every time.

Up next: 1941's Homeless Angels, which weaves military themes into the story in a much more subtle way.