Cheering on the test takers

I thought I heard some jets flying overhead this evening, but it may have been the sound of 584,934 test takers collectively sighing in relief.

A few years ago I walked by a nearby high school on the night before the suneung, or university entrance exam, and saw several students sitting in front of the school's gate. I didn't have a camera at the time, but I found photos online which depicted the same sort of thing:


I decided to walk by that school last night to see the students at work again, but instead...


I'm not sure why this was. Perhaps the schools chosen to 'host' the test change every year? Cheering for test takers took place elsewhere, as this photo from Myeongdong shows.


There's a more enthusiastic cheering section (complete with drums) pictured in this post. The Joongang Ilbo reported on some new guidelines for test monitors:

At today’s national College Scholastic Ability Test, female proctors have been asked not to do anything ― or wear anything ― that might distract anxious students from the difficult task at hand, according to the Education Ministry. Test takers in the past complained that they could not fully concentrate on the crucial test due to the distracting sound of clacking high heels and the smell of thick perfume, the ministry said.

I wonder if the smoke from this presumed electrical fire at a school in Daegu was distracting? If it was just an accident, then wow, what a terrible day for it to occur. The reporters were also out for the obligatory photos of students being escorted by the police to test sites, and of celebrity test takers (two years ago it was Moon Geun-young, this year it was two members of the Wondergirls).

One of the more worthwhile explorations of test day is the Metropolitician's video from last year.

Yu-na the Vampire Slayer

According to the Korea Times,

South Korean figure staking sensation Kim Yu-na rallied to win the women's title Saturday at the Cup of China, as she stayed on course for a berth at the Grand Prix final in December in Turin, Italy.

Kim Yu-na demonstrates her staking skills

Between those blades of steel and her sensational 'staking' skills, I think Kim Yu-na should be up to the challenge if the forces of evil should ever seek to invade a skating rink.

Her short program is here, and the long program is here. The stake was edited out of the performance on Giles Brian Orser's orders.

Fall

I have to say - I've really come to like eunhaeng namu (gingko trees) at this time of year...


The picture above shows a tree growing from the (sort of) pojang macha part of a former restaurant named, appropriately, the Eunhaeng Namu Jip. The owners moved awhile ago, leaving it empty. Below are some trees in a large park near Banghwa Station.


Now if we could just get some red in there...

Jaeil Jutaek redevelopment completed

The structure of the Seungyun 노블리안 ('Noblian,' meaning 'rich') apartment near my house, built over the last few months, was finished at Halloween. Here are the most recent photos of its rise (with some cribbing from a previous post). A more complete set can be found here, while all of the shots I've taken of this redevelopment, including those of the area before it was demolished, can be found here.

Aug. 15

Aug. 31

Sept. 9

Sept. 22

Oct. 6

Oct. 12

Oct. 23

Nov. 8

Here's a shot of the neighbourhood in May, 2005:


Below are more recent photos. Among the changes since then is the large building at bottom right which has been dismembered; above that, shrouded by trees, are row houses which have been demolished (and are currently being rebuilt as Dongbu Centreville apartments); the green-coloured apartments at top right which have been repainted and rebranded (from Shin-donga Apateu to Shin-donga Pamilie); across the fields at top left the massive Balsan development has been built (and is visible in the photos below); and of course, the Jaeil Jutaek redevelopment seen above - below you can see it's growth in the context of its surroundings.

Aug. 17

Sept. 17

Oct. 23

Nov. 8

It's not supposed to be finished until August of next year - I guess the interior work will take as long as building the external structure did.

Yusin lives on - at school

For those who don't know of the 1972 Yusin constitution, there's a little more information here. Needless to say it was one of the more unpleasant periods of the last 50 years to be living in South Korea, what with the ban on all public protest, people disappearing and being tortured at KCIA headquarters, etc. While this culture of punishment, and the stress that accompanied it, may be gone for most people, I can't help but wonder if it lingers on in Korean schools.

For example, a girl in grade four had this done to her by her homeroom teacher in Gapyeong in April of 2006:


This made the news a week and a half ago:

In the 38-second video clip, a teacher is seen striking the hips of two students in a push-up position with the sword. When one student stands up, unable to endure the beating, the teacher follows him to strike his back.[...]

The school, in Jeonju city in North Jeolla Province, said, "The two students often miss class without advance notification. The teacher spoke to them and the students promised not to skip class again but they didn't keep their word. The teacher punished them because they skipped class the previous afternoon, although it seems extreme."

I'm sure anyone who's taught here, even if they're not teaching in public schools, has heard stories of corporal punishment from students. It's not limited to middle and high schools, of course; one pointless story that stands out is of a girl who said she got hit on the hand with a stick by her teacher because of her test score. After I asked her what her score was, she said she got one question wrong. When I asked why she got hit, she told me everyone got one hit per wrong answer. Nice. One middle school girl I remember had had a teacher pinch her upper arm and twist his hand while doing so, leaving a purple bruise. There are also more mundane things like making students stand and squat while holding their ears. One student who received this punishment for being late was walking in obvious pain the next day. While that's not as bad as being hit, you do wonder why pain has to be used to discipline the students. One of my high school students told me she gets held back for 30 minutes after school and has to clean if she's less than 30 minutes late - a penalty which would seem to me to serve its purpose adequately, without need for physical pain.

This has come to light more in the past few years as cell phones with video cameras have become more common. Oranckay reacted as if this was a new development back in April of 2004 in a post titled "girls with video": "Teachers. Cops. Dirty old men. You’ve been warned!" Someone had taken this video of a teacher pummeling a high school girl in Suwon. Interestingly, this predates the Dog Poop Girl by a year, but then netizens weren't cyberstalking the teacher involved. At any rate, this may well be the first such clip. The video's also here on youtube.



A contemporary news clip about this video can be found here.

In November of 2006 another video appeared on the internet (it's also here):

The first-year high school student walked into her seventh period class late, where the teacher forced the girl to her knees and then struck her on the shoulders with a broom multiple times. Other students in the class filmed the incident with their mobile phones, and when the child’s parents saw the video they headed to the school the next day to demand a formal apology and the reprimand of the girl’s teacher.

Another video of a student being beaten (and I do mean beaten) by a teacher in Gimhae made the news in July of this year. A video can be seen here (hat tip to Occidentalism).

This example of a rather petty punishment was posted in February of this year, apparently from Suncheon. It seems more like a ritual to humiliate the students as much as possible, and may be an example of a teacher simply trying to waste time.



Speaking of humiliation, an article translated at Korea Beat describes the results of a poll of

1,248 middle and high school students across the country, finding that 11.2% had experienced having their hair cut by a teacher within the last three years, they announced on the 2nd. 16% of boys and 6.4% of girls had had such an experience, and 22.9% male high school students had.

They're not alway in the most fashionable style, either:


While the practice of grabbing young men with long hair and shaving their heads was, for the general population, confined to the era of authoritarian rulers (it ended in 1982), students in Korea still get to taste that little piece of the past in school. While so many aspects of the Korean education system were simply continued from the systems put in place by the Japanese (like this, for example), most students I've talked to will agree that one thing they like about Japan is the fact that students there can wear their hair however they like.


In mid-May of 2005 protests were held at Gwanghwamun against forced haircuts and calling for liberalization of rules on hair length, as this lengthy Joongang Ilbo article about the issue relates:

Students held a demonstration near Gwanghwamun in central Seoul on May 14, although teachers threatened that those participating in the protest would be subject to reprimands, and went to the area to try to discourage students from rallying. That day, 200 students gathered to protest, along with 400 teachers and, reportedly, 2,000 riot police.

Photos of a similar demonstration a week earlier, which protested against the pressure the system puts on students which often leads to suicide, can be found here (hat tip to the Metropolitician). For (many) more photos of shaved heads, and of bruises from beatings, to head over to nocut.idoo.net (this English page gives a bit of its history, and the photos can be found here). Or you can just watch this video, which compiles many of the photos from the site:



Worth noting is that, at least for most of the students I teach, hair restrictions have loosened a little, with both boys and girls allowed to wear slightly longer hair. Baby steps, I guess.

Going back to the issue of physical violence against students, this two part article from 2002, by teacher with a background in psychology and experience among Koreans in Canada, looks at the problem of corporate punishment in Korean schools (it's also in Korean here).

It has been my experience that the Korean educational system currently accepts, tolerates and legitimizes physical and psychological abuse in its schools. During the last two years, I have personally witnessed Korean teachers physically beat their students to the point that students bled.

On one occasion, a fellow Korean teacher slammed one of my student’s head against the teacher’s desk. This caused the student’s head to cut open and bleed. Other teachers kicked students in the stomach, or beat them with sticks, metal pipes, rods, and wooden bats. Female teachers pinched the cheeks of female students hard enough until tears ran. Elementary school students were beaten over their entire backside with a thick wooden branch while remaining in the push-up position. And on more than one occasion, students were sent to the hospital because of teacher abuse.

I have worked with approximately 180 teachers, and in my opinion more than 70% physically beat students as a method of classroom management and discipline. I have been told repeatedly, teachers beat students out of a deep sense of love. Oddly enough, teachers who beat students have told me they are fearful of sending their own children to the very schools that they teach because of this physical abuse. [...]

It's worth reading it all, even though I may not agree with everything. The second part of the article continues:

A new problem is now emerging out of corporal punishment. As role models, Korean teachers continue to demonstrate to their students that the most effective method of problem solving is through physical punishment. The lesson is simple: If you have a problem, use violence as the solution. Student-to-student violence, and bullying, is now becoming a national problem. These bright students learn more from what we ‘do,’ not from what we ‘say’ as teachers.[...]

The Korean government, on the other hand, has shown their position recently by endorsing physical abuse with specific parameters around the thickness (1cm) and length (50-60cm) of the stick, number of hits to the body (5-10), and so on. Thanks to the Ministry of Education, male students can now be lashed across the buttocks, and female students can be struck on the upper thighs.

The question of how institutional violence reflects on the behavior of students is one worth considering, but not in this post.

Sometimes they come back

A Joseon-era public cemetery on Seoul's outskirts

Ancestral worship, and a propitiation of daemons or spirits, the result of a timid and superstitious dread of the forces of Nature, are to the Korean in place of a religion. Both, I am inclined to believe, are the result of fear, the worship of ancestors being dictated far less by filial piety than by the dread that ancestral spirits may do harm to their descendants. This cult prevails from the king to the coolie. It inspires the costly splendors of the Kur-dong, as well as the spread of ancestral food in the humblest hovel on New Year's Eve.

The graves within an area of ten miles from the city wall are among the remarkable features of this singular capital. The dead have a monopoly on the fine hill slopes and southern aspects. A man who when alive is content with a mud hovel in a dingy alley, when dead must repose on a breezy hill slope with dignified and carefully tended surroundings. [...] The amount of land occupied by the dead is incredible.

- from Korea and Her Neighbours, Isabella Bird Bishop, 1898 (p. 61)

One interesting thing about the second paragraph, as well as the photo above, is that those graves have long since been built over. I wonder if all of those within the graves were carefully reburied, or if... they're still there. Think about that next time you're walking around near downtown Seoul (and why has there never been a horror movie that brings this up, anyways? All you'd have to do is blame the Japanese, and you'd have box office gold!).


The main reason for this post, speaking of horror stories ( "How can he be back?! I - I thought he was (politically) dead!"), was because I found an article about Lee Hoi-chang. Above is an image of the GNP's greatest nightmare - Lee Hoi-chang comes back to life, devours all of Lee Myung-bak's flesh (taking time to pose with his skull), and hands Chung Dong-young the presidency. Okay, that's not what this article is about; it's about how Lee Hoi-chang has "relocated nine of his ancestors' graves in the hopes of winning his third run in the presidential election." The article goes on to talk about how the belief in 'Poongsoo (or Fengshui) and the location of graves are related, and how Lee is not the only person who has relocated family members' graves in the hope of better political fortunes. It's well worth a read, as it reminds you that behind the LCD screens and cellphones there are superstitions which were old when Isabella Bird Bishop wrote about them 110 years ago.

Let them smear cake!

[Update] A student offered the opinion (regarding smearing cake) that cake isn't even liked all that much by many people, and that it serves a more ceremonial function at birthday parties; it's main purpose is to look good. I couldn't help but think of food used during chesa, some of which is left behind. Interesting. Another student's comments reminded me that other than sweets like yeot or yakgwa, intensely sweet desserts or candies haven't traditionally been part of the Korean diet, though Haitai Caramels have been around for quite a while. The following ad is from 1960:

[Original post]

A little while ago, Kevin at Big Hominid wrote about his students' reaction to pop-tarts and discussed the differences between Korean and western tastes in sweets:

It's a strange paradox of the Korean palate that Koreans love spicy food when it comes to meals, but seem to prefer cakes and cookies that, by Western standards, are woefully bland and desiccated, bereft of all oomph.

Be sure to read the entire post. I'd have to add that, due to the Korean taste for mayonnaise and ketchup, there is quite a bit of creaminess and sweetness to be found - but not usually in places were I might expect to find it at home (salads come to mind here). I never ate mayonnaise before I came here (I've never been a condiment person) but have learned to tolerate it; ketchup on the other hand I despise.

The first dessert that comes to mind, of course, is cake. I've always thought that most western style cakes in Korean (excluding Baskin Robbins ice cream cakes) taste like airy nothingness. The problem is not with secondary characteristics such as there sometimes being cherry tomatoes on top (or sweet potato inside). The problem lies at the core - the lack of flavour and sweetness in the cake itself and the icing - so I found myself nodding in agreement with everything Kevin wrote.

There are certain cultural differences that exist regarding cake as well. I remember the first time I ate cake in Korea (a few days after first arriving here), I noticed that my Korean co-workers were eating it with chopsticks. I thought, "Well that's different." Seconds after thinking that, one of these co-workers started laughing and pointing at me, saying, "He's using a spoon! That's so funny!" (thinking of those days, I just reminisced about the first wedding I attended in Korea here. It still rates as the weirdest one I've been to, other perhaps than a traditional wedding... at Lotte World).

Several years later in an adult class, which was mostly made up of middle school girls, a student bought a cake for my birthday, and after I blew out the candles, one of the girls scooped up a bit of icing from the cake and smeared it on my cheek. I'd never seen this before, but when I asked them, "Why are you putting icing on my cheek - ok, now make both cheeks?" they told me that it was very common for people to do that at birthday parties. Since then, I've seen it happen a few times. Some of my male Korean friends have told me that they like to mash the entire cake into their friends' faces on their birthdays.

Though I may not be a big fan of western style cakes sold in Korea, I can't help but think that mashing a piece into someone's face is no way to treat a cake. On the other hand, between the amount of uneaten sidedishes that are left behind when out for dinner in restaurants, and the requirement for anju to be ordered when drinking (even if no one is hungry), enormous amounts of food get wasted in Korean restaurants to begin with (at least, you hope those uneaten side dishes are going into the garbage). So perhaps wasting pieces of cake isn't considered to be a big deal by younger people who have grown up in relative affluence. Not that wasting food doesn't happen elsewhere, of course, but I've never seen someone order food in Canada and leave it untouched without taking it home, something I've seen many times here (when people are compelled to order anju at a bar even though they might have eaten already).

Coming up next - a new fad that is sweeping the nation:
Wasting food!

There may be another reason, which I thought of the other day. A week ago my friend and I realized we'd missed another friend's birthday, so I decided to make a cake for him the next time we went to his restaurant. I'm not sure if you can buy cake mixes at Hannam supermarket or such places, but I have a few cake mixes brought from home (and I have a small oven) so I made a cake and figured out how to make boiled icing (though the internet page with the recipe didn't emphasize the need to ice the cake as soon as you finish making the icing. As a result, the icing looked as haphazard as hardened lava, though it tasted fine. At any rate, I took it to the restaurant and pulled it out when my friend wasn't too busy with customers. After cutting it into pieces, a Korean friend who had had quite a bit to drink picked up a piece and motioned my friend over. I guess the beer had dulled my senses, because for some reason, in the second or two that this all occurred, I thought he was going to feed it to him (as in 'shove it in his mouth'). But no. Instead he shoved it into his face, it fell on the floor, and my drunken friend fell forward and spilled beer everywhere, apparently sending some onto the next table. Now, seeing as this was not a cake you could buy, I would imagine, anywhere in Korea, and seeing it was something I had made myself, I wasn't entirely happy that he'd basically just tossed a piece away (I probably would have been less happy at that moment if I'd noticed that he'd spilled beer onto the plate the cake was on, but a friend quickly dumped the beer out before anyone noticed, only telling me about it later). Now, at any birthday party I've seen happen at my friend's restaurant, people almost always share cake with the other customers. Since we'd annoyed the people at the next table, my friend gave them some cake to make amends, and I soon realized that, thought I'd made the cake for his (late) birthday, he hadn't even had a piece yet, so I managed to secure a tiny piece for him. I'm glad he liked it, but I wish he'd had more than just a spoonful.

The point of all this? I think it's pretty rare for Koreans to make cakes themselves, so the cake that gets smeared on people has been purchased somewhere. From the experience I had, the question that arises is this: If people normally made their own cakes here, would they be as ready to waste their own handiwork? Or can smearing cake on people's faces be just be seen as an aspect of the large scale waste of food that goes on in Korea to begin with?

'Tell me' the effect this will have...

After it was suggested that a celebrity may have taken part in a sex tape, members of the public are having a hard time trusting actors and singers. Yesterday, the actors seen above were filmed with cell phone cameras and digital cameras to ensure that nothing inappropriate occured while they posed with a child. Both later broke down and admitted they had lied about their university degrees.

While many articles have appeared insinuating that others in the celebrity community are as guilty of such crimes as the singer who may have appeared in a sex video, it appears many young people haven't received the proper education.


On Saturday, in an event that shocked the nation, hundreds of girls protested in front of S&M Entertainment demanding that boy band Superjunior date girls no older than 13 years old. After an agonizing debate, the group apparently gave into the protesters demands. After disappearing upstairs for 10 minutes, a number of girls left with what were said to be vouchers to Myeong-dong area stores in their possession.

An unnamed source at the Ministry of Information and Communication said that he was mystified as to how these pop stars could have behaved in such a way. He was also concerned about the behavior of the throngs of teenaged girls.

"We've done so much to discourage prostitution involving underaged girls," he said. He went on to describe the MIC's recent campaign, which involved concerts on university campuses* in an effort to counter the rising trend of men in their early twenties procuring underaged prostitutes. An advertising campaign also took place.

"They could be your daughters or younger sisters.
Do you really find such girls attractive?"

The spokesperson hinted that resignations within the ministry may occur within the next few days. "Many thought that using the Wondergirls in an ad campaign against teenage prostitution would be a good idea..." he said, his voice trailing off as a smile crept across his face.




* But really, do skip to 7:30 here and wonder just how much I'm taking the piss.

Musical odds and ends

I noticed that Mark over at Korea Pop Wars had put up links to some old Korean videos/live performances which are well worth watching. Worth noting is the youtube user who posted them, orienkorean. Following that link to his profile will turn up hundreds of Korean indie rock videos (from bands you've probably never heard of), as well as some older pop/rock music as well. Some more older music is also linked to here (and some of it is referred to in an older post of mine here).

One video he posted was the following, by byul (not female singer). Byul is an indie pop/electronic band who are also involved in design (every cd comes with a book of photos and art). Below is apparently the only video they've done, which is for one of the two songs they contributed to the 2001 movie "Take Care of My Cat" (they also did the soundtrack for "Cat" director Jeong Jae-eun's short "The Man with the Affair" from the 2003 omnibus "If you were me"). Their new cd/magazine is out on Wednesday.



Worth noting is that a few years ago at Koreanfilm.org, Darcy mentioned how he thought Wong Kar-wai's 1994 film Chungking Express did a good job of capturing what Hong Kong is like, and asked what Korean film captured what Korea was like. Take Care of My Cat was mentioned by many as being such a film, capturing as it does affluence and poverty, Seoul and Incheon, dance clubs and crumbling hovels, airports and police stations, text messages and migrant workers, and homeless and handicapped people.

3rd Line Butterfly is another good local indie band, though it's been three years since their last cd came out (which was far beyond what their other releases had hinted at). Someone once described them as 'Sonic Youth meets Sanullim", but you'd be wrong not to include the Velvet Underground as a rather large influence on the last cd. Anyways, here's the song '29, Suddenly'.



There's lots of other videos out there as well, something I've just started to notice in the last month. As for 3rd Line Butterfly, this song is pretty good too. I rather like Delispice's first cd, a song from which can be found here. 우리는 속옷도 생겼고 여자도 늘었다네 (known as the "Underwear Band" is also quite good; I set this video to their music. Oh, and I just thought of the group Gong Myeong, who I saw at the SSamzi sound festival in 2001 - a video of one of their performances can be found here. Their first cd is quite good, but their second cd rates as one of the most disappointing I've ever heard.

As for older stuff, there are a few videos of Sanullim playing live which are well worth a watch, such this one, and this as well. The second song in the first link sounded very familiar the first time I heard Sanullim's second album. It was then I realized I'd seen the guitarist play live at the cine-rock night at PiFan in Bucheon back in 2001, though I didn't know who he was at the time. Needless to say, their second album (from 1978) rocks, and I was pretty happy when a little soju bar in Apgujeong which had only lps played the entire album after I requested one song from it. Damn, I miss my vinyl collection.

For something fun (if you like Takako Minekawa and the anime Azumanga Daioh (Ajumanga Daewang in Korea)), this video (made by a fan) is pure genius. This official video is amusing as well. On the Japanese tip, off the top of my head there's also Cornelius, Salyu, Supercar, and for when you really want to piss off the neighbours, Melt Banana.

For something entirely idiotic, be sure to read this. Several hundred Superjunior fans gathered in front of SM entertainment to protest the inclusion of a new member to the group. And here I thought the protest by students against people gathering acorns in the forest (because the squirrels will starve) was dumb. Nope. These fans win the prize for the most moronic protest I've ever heard of. Also, Popseoul wonders why the hell the Wondergirl's song 'Tell Me' is so popular (do watch the video). In the past two weeks I've had numerous students either sing the song, write the lyrics in their notebooks, or ask me "What does 'tell me' mean?" ("Tell me why you want to know" would be a good answer). It is undeniably catchy, but I'm left needing something to drown it out. How about going back to it's source? Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express, Suicide's Ghost Rider, or, especially, Donna Summer's I Feel Love (all from 1977-78 - unless you want to go back to the Silver Apples in 1968).

Anyways, I just discovered this documentary on Nick Drake, so it's probably best to end this now.

Haunted houses, etc

After reading the story of Jelly's Halloween party at I got 2 shoes, I thought I'd post a few pics of the haunted house I've done every year for the past few years. It's evolved a bit but last year I found the most efficient way of making it work and just copied it again this year (referring to photos taken last year to help me out). It only took myself and another person an hour and a half to put it together this year. The webcam shot below shows the layout:

There should be black fabric was hanging down in several places; luckily it's not at the moment, or it would be more difficult to see everything. Picnic mats needed to be hung up to block out the light from the windows. Anyways, the kids enter from the right (that's the door in the foreground) and, guided by me with a flashlight, proceed to the bottom left, where they are shown the ghost at the top of this post, which is wrapped around a wall-mounted fan, so it has the appearance of moving. Then, behind the couch is a tunnel that they have to crawl through. I meet them at the other end tell them to look behind them, where they see this on the ceiling:


I've attached fishing line to it's arm and looped it over a push pin above it, so with a few tugs it looks like the arm is moving (well, it's startles some of the kids, I guess). Then the 'graveyard' is pointed out at the other end of the room, and as we start for the door one of my co-workers comes up behind them in a... Darth Maul mask. Unfortunately, the other, better, masks disappeared this year. Then as they run from him, another teacher chases them, and with blood makeup, bandages, and fake fangs, she is pretty scary. They I herd them out the door (where they get candy) and wait for the next group. What's missing in the photos is the music, which makes all the difference. I use the track "Aumgn", from Krautrock band Can's 1971 album "Tago Mago". It's about 10 minutes long, but an excerpt is here. Needless to say, it's an incredibly creepy track, and sets the mood as soon as you enter the room. Once the students enter the tunnel, I turn on another cd player next to the tunnel, which plays a track from Current 93's "Dog Blood Rising", so as to startle them even further (who knew declassified CIA psychological torture manuals could be so useful? Just kidding - it's not like we throw bags over their heads and send them to Syria; a flight to Uzbekistan is much cheaper). Anyways, the reactions range from jaded fourth graders who laugh at everything to younger kids who.... laugh at everything. Until they see the bandage-wrapped phantom, that is, and then they shriek like the little children they are. Heh heh heh. My favourite was the kid who laughed at everything and then when he saw her covered his eyes and ran away. I assume someone must have guided him to the classroom across the hall, because when I popped my head in a minute or two later, he was still covering his eyes.

And that's how we do Halloween in my neighbourhood.

Sorry for lack of posts; I've been down with a cold and just plain busy. I've got a half-dozen posts sitting in draft form - I just have to finish them. Unfortunately, current events always give me something else to write about...

Mobilizing intervention

As I mentioned here quite some time ago, anthropologist Linda Louis writes in Laying Claim to the Memory of May that

As a social process, the Korean cultural scenario for conflict resolution involves the public expression of grievances by both sides, as a means of informing the neighbors, of shaping local consensus, and of mustering popular support for each side of the argument.

It is above all else also a process that relies heavily on the involvement of a third, mediating party for a sucessful outcome. In fact, it is through the public airing of the dispute that the antagonists solicit the intervention of others. Intense verbal aggression and the public expression of grievances serve not as a prelude to physical violence, but function to mobilize third party intervention, to prevent just such an escalation in the dispute.

On February 16 of this year, an inmate was beaten by a prison guard and after seeing the inmate's swollen face, his father raised the issue with the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, as reported here (as well as here):

The National Human Rights Commission of Korea has made public a video clip of an Anyang Prison guard beating an inmate after the prison rejected the commission's call for the guard to be disciplined. "Even though it is clear that the prison guard beat the prisoner, Anyang Prison has refused to discipline the guard. Therefore, the NHRC has decided to release the video clip and let Korean citizens as a third party decide whether the incident is abuse or not," the human rights watchdog said on Sunday.

Nice to see the NHRC mobilizing third party intervention (though some think it's illegal here). Feel free to take part yourself:

Score with Samsung Card!

The photo below was linked to by the Marmot a few weeks ago and the only thing I could think of when I looked at it was how odd the woman's stance is. If she had been standing next to a Korean man I probably wouldn't have noticed it, but the juxtaposition with a foreigner really made her contrived pose stand out. Her pose is like something out of a Renaissance painting depicted Mary as purity defined, but her smile and the tilt of her head is more subservient, as if she was straight out of that Manet painting of the scene in a room salon (as the night drags on, of course, it's harder to maintain that smile). So is that what whoever was in charge of this photo shoot wanted to convey - purity and subservience?


A few days later I saw other images of Korean speaking women - except that this time they were foreigners.



I saw this advertisement in the theatre before watching the Simpsons Movie, so it really stood out, and things that look small in that video were very obvious on the big screen. My friend pointed out that the blond is a Canadian who's appeared on Minyeodeuli Suda (I immediately assumed they were from that show). A Korean comedian on Misuda was at the center of an uproar back in December (though the person most directly affected by this didn't show any anger over it when she was later interviewed). The show has apparently gone through a metomorphosis over the past few months, as discussed over at the Paint Roller blog. A few other ads featuring the women who have appeared on this show can be found here and here.

Anyways, regarding the ad above, there's not much more to say that it's really, really bizarre, especially looking at the Canadian woman. I can't say I've ever met a Canadian woman who acts anything like what we see above, though I have seen Korean women (especially in their teens and twenties) act in a similar manner, though nowhere near as exaggerated as in the ad. It reminds me of a conversation I had the other night discussing to what degree foreigners adopt (or copy, really) Korean mannerisms as they get to know the culture and language, and to what degree they retain their own cultures' mannerisms, such as when they add a slight bow to a handshake, or at the more elaborate end, learn Korean drinking ettiquette, which is quite a bit more complex than, say, Canadian ettiquette, but is necessary to have some knowledge of in order not to offend people. Now most likely, the behavior in this ad is more heavily influenced by its producers than by the fact that these women have acquired some of the mannerisms of Korean women their age, but at the same time, they would have had to draw on some sort of experience (perhaps just by watching TV) to be making the exaggerated facial expressions they did.



In the end, several questions are raised. I know the Canadian woman is not acting like a Canadian woman normally would, so I'm left assuming they're acting like Korean women; but what kind of Korean women? Or are they supposed to represent how Koreans think foreign women should act when they interact with Korean men (when speaking Korean)? Someone could really have fun writing about the construction of feminity in Korea in part by looking at this ad and looking at the whole Minyeoduli phenomenom. I'm not going to, mind you, but it's worth a few observations. Again, like the photo at the top of this post, where the Korean woman's pose stood out for me due to her standing next to a foreigner, in the ad above the behavior stands out and seems strange because it's being performed by foreign women. One thing that stands out is how childish they seem; at a guess, one might assume they're middle school girls standing outside SBS studios waiting for Superjunior to appear, not women in their twenties hearing about the benefits of using Samsung Card. It goes without saying that it's just an ad and that ads always construct fantasies of one type or another, but it's worth asking just what kind of fantasy they're trying to depict. Now, I rarely watch TV, but from what I've seen it seems Korean TV ads don't have the self-parody or sometimes a slightly subversive edge you find on North American TV (correct me if I'm wrong). A few people I know in marketing have told me ad companies often make one or two ads, and the good, funny ones are often turned down in favor of more 'straight and narrow' ads. The rejected ads do turn up from time to time after being leaked, such as this one (probably not safe for work).

Anyways, back to the kind of fantasy being depicted in the ad, or at least the depiction of these women, who speak and act Korean but are foreign, who seem to be acting like they're ten years younger than they are, and who are going way over the top in their depiction and looking quite silly, especially in the still shots:


Of course, making people look silly is pretty common; though foreigners are treated to this quite often, they shouldn't go thinking they're they only ones being targeted by any stretch of the imagination (oddly enough this clip caused a bit of a scandal). It's not so much the silliness or frivolousness of the ad that stood out, but once again the subservience, especially once the 'unattractive' middle-aged guy begins talking to the women and the women react by fawning over him Samsung Card. It happens so fast in the ad that I didn't notice what happens at the end until I saw this screenshot :


I'll leave it to you to imagine where they might be off to next. Perhaps someone in the marketing department came up with the slogan "Samsung Card: Helps average middle-aged men score with foreign women who act like they're thirteen," but decided to change it.


On a somewhat related note, there are lots of foreign actors doing ads on Japanese TV here. The Arnold Schwarzenegger ones have to be seen to be believed.