Korean Fact of the Day: PSY is No. 2

PSY's newest single, Gentleman, shattered the record by surpassing 100 million Youtube views in just four days. But in Korea, PSY is already old and busted. The new hotness? The legendary Jo Yong-pil [조용필]. Jo's Bounce, the title song from his newest album Hello, just took the number 1 spot on one of the Korean music charts (Bugs Real Time Chart) away from Gentleman.

By the way, Jo Yong-pil is 63 years old, and Hello is his 19th regular album. His musical achievements are enough to easily place him within top five of the most influential K-pop artists of all time. (And no, that should not be a spoiler.) There is a reason why Koreans refer to Jo as the "King of Singers" [가왕].

If you are curious, have a listen at Bounce.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

When Korea's E-Sports was at the Brink of Death

Dear Korean,

I heard there was a huge scandal regarding E-sports about 2-3 years ago. From what I've heard, the scale of the scandal was so big that it almost put an end to the E-Sports itself. Would you be willing to explain what exactly happened back then? How did the Koreans react to the scandal?

Avid gamer

It has been more than three years since the Korean wrote the post about the popularity of Starcraft in Korea. Incredibly, it is still one of the most frequently read posts of this blog. Consider this post to be a sequel: how illegal gambling and match-fixing nearly destroyed the world's first professional e-sports league in Korea.

First, a quick review on how Starcraft became a professional sport in Korea. Starcraft was released in 1998. For a game released at that time, Starcraft had an ambitious Internet-based multi-player gameplay. This was ambitious because, at the time, it was not clear who would be able to take advantage of this multi-player design. Remember that 15 years ago, only a small portion of the world's population had Internet, and most of those who did have Internet relied on dial-up connection through the phone lines, utterly inadequate for online gaming.

(source)

Korea, however, recognized the potential of the Internet early on, and began a massive public investment in installing a fiber-optic cable network throughout the country. The result was that, by the end of 20th century, Korea had a national broadband network that boasted the fastest Internet in the world by a wide margin. Using the unparalleled Internet infrastructure, Koreans begin playing Starcraft, the best Internet-based multi-player game available. The rest is history: Korea is the forefront of the worldwide e-sports, with televised video games and professional gamers with rock star-like status.

(The lesson: government is good, and it should be in the business of picking winners and losers. If Korean government did not take the initiative in the late 1990s to invest a fortune in installing fiber-optic cables, but waited instead for private companies to build their own, would Korea be a major player in the high-tech industry that it is today? Would Korea have created, seemingly out of thin air, professional e-sports leagues, an entire new multi-million dollar market that can only grow in importance in the age of the Internet? If you say yes, the Korean has some Ron Paul presidential memorabilia to sell to you.)

Starcraft began becoming professional around 2000. Independent Starcraft tournaments began sprouting up, and cable televisions in Korea would broadcast the matches. In fact, in many cases the cable TV stations were the ones hosting the tournaments, with a prize money funded by its sponsors in exchange for advertisement placements. Soon, a pattern emerged: Korea's Starcraft leagues and players operated somewhat like professional golf--a collection of different tournaments, with varying levels of competition, prize money, and prestige.

For the next several years, the popularity of professional Starcraft leagues would grow exponentially. Then came 2007.

(More after the jump.)

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Legalized Pot-Stepping

Dear Korean,

I've recently been getting into Korean dramas and picked The Moon Embracing the Sun as my first. In an early episode, they try to find an eligible girl for the prince to marry. In one scene they have a line of young girls entering through the palace gates and stepping on this wooden or stone thing with their right foot as part of their entry pathway. If this is part of real traditional process, why do they do this? I was thinking it might be to test their grace, as girls who slip would be instantly eliminated?

A new Drama fan.

Enough with the depressing North Korea news. Here is an obligatory installment of AAK! where the Korean, bound, gagged and with a gun pointed to his head, is forced to answer a question about Korean dramas.

 

The drama in question is 해를 품은 달, and this is the scene that the questioner is referring to:

(source)

What are the women stepping on? It is actually the lid of a very large, cast-iron pot. In a traditional Korean kitchen, it is common to have a giant pot, about two feet wide or larger, in which the rice for the whole family is cooked. The women are stepping on the lid of such a pot.

This custom was not limited to the royal court, by the way. The pot lid also made an appearance in a wedding for the noblemen. The new bride would be carried from her old family to her husband's house in a carriage, and the carriage would stop inside of the walls of the house. The pot lid would be placed at the ground next to the carriage, such that the new bride would step on the lid first before stepping on the ground.

Why? There are two theories, and either or both may be true. The first is the theory that the questioner guessed--to test the grace and balance of the women who will eventually be the queen. The grace and balance are not just for the sake of physical appearance; it was believed that a graceful walk over the lid would lead to a smooth, peaceful marriage. In the drama Queen Myeongseong [명성황후], the princess-to-be is seen slipping from the lid, portending a rocky marriage. (Remember folks--this is just a drama. There is no record as to whether Queen Myeongseong actually slipped from the lid.)

The second theory is more directly connected to superstition. The lid, for obvious reasons, represents the kitchen and the spirit residing there. By stepping on the lid, the new bride is making an acquaintance with the spirit of the new kitchen, in which she will undoubtedly spend a great deal of time. (Don't shoot me for the sexism here. The Korean is just a messenger.) Considering the more widespread custom involving the noblemen, this is probably the truer purpose of stepping on the pot lid. In fact, in case of a wedding of a noble family, the bride uses two hands to lift up the pot lid three times before leaving her house, as a way of saying farewell to the old kitchen spirit.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Korea Fact of the Day: Gaeseong Industrial Complex

Gaeseong Industrial Complex (GIC) is an industrial complex in Gaeseong, North Korea, which is developed jointly by the two Koreas:  South Korea supplies the corporations and capital equipments, and North Korea supplies the workers and the land. Every day, hundreds of South Korean workers--usually middle- and senior-managers--enter and exit North Korea to oversee the operations at the GIC.

As a part of its attempt to raise the tension in the region, North Korea has forbidden South Korean managerial workers from entering North Korea for the last six days. (South Korean workers who were at the GIC, however, were allowed to return home.) Yesterday, North Korea announced that it will shut down the GIC and withdraw all of its workers. Shutting down the GIC is probably the highest level of threat that North Korea may issue, short of actually attacking South Korea. This is because since its founding in 2005, the GIC never closed--not in the face of, for example, the shelling of Yeonpyeong-do in which North Korea actually attacked South Korean territory and killed four people.

Here is a collection of all relevant charts regarding the GIC, created by South Korea's Ministry of Unification. GIC hosts 123 corporations, which manufactured $460 million's worth of products in 2012. It employs over 53,000 North Korean laborers. Last year, nearly 246 vehicles crossed the Armistice Line from South Korea to North Korea every day to deliver supplies to the GIC.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

"Anonymous" Hacking of NK Website Leads to McCarthyian Witch Hunt in SK

The "hacktivist" group "Anonymous" made news by hacking into North Korea's propaganda websites, and seizing control of North Korean propaganda machine's Twitter and Flickr accounts. (One important note here: regardless of what they claim, it is extremely unlikely that Anonymous hacked into North Korea, as North Korea's propaganda sites are based out China.) 

Anonymous demands that Kim Jong-un resign and install direct democracy in North Korea. At the same time, apparently in order to prove that they indeed hacked into North Korea's propaganda site, Anonymous released the information of the membership of that website--the email addresses, date of birth and other personal information of more than 9,000 members of the propaganda site.

Well, these self-proclaimed freedom fighters probably did not anticipate what would have followed. It was apparent from the email addresses that many of them were of South Korean origin. For example, more than 1,400 email addresses ended in hanmail.net, a large email servicer in South Korea. Out of the 9,000 email addresses, more than 2,000 appear to be of South Korean origin. Seizing upon this, the South Korean far-right wingers engaged in a campaign of Internet stalking to indiscriminately reveal actual names, addresses, occupations and phone numbers of the South Korean individuals who joined the North Korean propaganda site.

As of this moment, there is simply no guarantee that the email addresses that Anonymous revealed in fact belong to North Korean sympathizers. From the emails, the opposite is more likely to be the case, as many of the emails belong to South Korean news organizations. The email addresses even include South Korean National Assembly and the conservative New Frontier Party. There is also the concern that the email addresses were fake or misappropriated. Some of the emails, for example, belong to the email of the webmasters that are publicly on display on large-scale websites.

But such subtleties are completely lost on South Korean right-wingers, who consider North Korean sympathizers to be the absolute evil that must be destroyed at all costs, even if the cost include basic civil liberties for democracy. Already, several South Koreans received a flood of emails and phone calls, shouting obscenities and death threats. South Korea's Supreme Prosecutor's Office vowed to investigate the South Korean members of the site as well, turning this episode into a veritable witch hunt.

Partly because the tyranny of North Korea is so horrific, it is often lost on people that South Korea's own fascist tyranny in the recent past was not much better than North Korea's communist tyranny, and the traces of such fascism still exert strong influences in South Korea. So we might soon see the tragicomedic spectacle of more than 2,000 South Koreans lined up to be prosecuted for daring to browse through a North Korean website.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.