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.

Korean Statistic of the Day: Reusable Paper

According to Statistics Korea, 81.3% of Korean office workers re-use the paper so that both sides would be printed. While this is a desirable practice overall as a matter of conservation, re-using the paper is sometimes known to cause public disclosure of sensitive information printed previously.

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.

Can North Korea Back Out Now?

Dear Korean,

Are things so dire in North Korea that war is the only way out?

Paul R.

Normally, the Korean only accepts questions via email and not through Twitter, Facebook or other channels. But this question, sent via Twitter, was just so spot-on that the Korean could not resist. 

(If you have a problem with this, please refer to the AAK! Policies. It is my blog, and I will do whatever the hell I damn well please with it. Don't be surprised if you visit this blog tomorrow and suddenly run into a foot fetish porno site. You just never know.)

Let us elaborate the question just a little bit. As North Korea escalates the tension, there is a fear that Kim Jong-un is putting himself into a position from which he cannot exit without some kind of military action. The thought is: if Kim Jong-un threatens to use force, he can't not use force if he wishes to maintain any level of credibility. 

Is this true? It may well be, but no one really knows. But here is the question we can actually answer: does this have to be true? For that question, the answer is a resounding no--because North Korea previously backed off after having taken even closer step toward the brink: it actually killed American soldiers at Panmunjeom.

(More after the jump.)

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.

Thoughts on NYT Article about the Oikos Shooting

Dear Korean,

Am I the only Korean American that thinks some of this article is patently ridiculous? Yes, 'han' is uniquely a Korean word, and even we Koreans like to pretend that it's a uniquely Korean thing. And I see that the writer is trying to be somewhat balanced in his treatment of the issue. Still, I can't help but think that whenever 'han' or 'jeong' is brought up to explain how Koreans act, it's a gesture of "othering" us. We, like people of any culture, are not so strange from the rest of humanity that our actions have to be explained in terms of unique emotions that westerners can't possibly understand.

David H.

David H. is speaking of this article by Jay Kang, a Korean American writer who wrote a lengthy feature regarding the Oikos College mass shooting for the New York Times. Regardless of precisely one may feel about it, it is a good read. The Korean would recommend reading it.

The Oikos Shooting occurred on April 2, 2012. The shooter was One L. Goh, a Korean immigrant. In the article discussing the shooting, Kang advances two major points. First is that, for a mass shooting that left behind seven dead people, the shooting at Oikos did not receive much attention, and was quickly forgotten--likely because the college was an obscure, technical school, and those who died were immigrants and racial minorities. After examining the lives of the victims who died in the shooting, Kang presents this points in a powerful manner:

It rakes at your guts, to watch your tragedies turn invisible. You know why it’s happening, but admitting it to yourself — that it has to do in some indivisible way with the value of immigrants’ lives — is something you’d rather not confront. The victims of the Oikos massacre came from Korean, Indian, Tibetan, Nigerian, Filipino and Guyanese backgrounds. They attended a low-cost, for-profit, poorly rated Korean-community nursing school in a completely featureless building set along the edge of a completely unremarkable part of Oakland. They were not held up as beacons for the possibilities of immigration, nor were they the faces of urban decay and the need for government assistance and intervention. They did not exist within any politicized realm. One Goh came from the same forgotten stock. And because the Oikos shooting occurred in a community that bore almost no resemblance to the rest of the country, the magnitude of the tragedy was contained almost entirely within the same small immigrant circles, many of whom fear that any talk about such terrible things will bring shame directly on them.

The Korean cannot help but admire Kang's writing prowess on display in this paragraph. "To watch your tragedies turn invisible." That is a fantastic phrase that very succinctly captures the lot of racial minorities in America.

The second point that Kang advances may be more controversial--and this is the point to which the questioner David objects. Kang notes that the Oikos shooting was the second mass-shooting involving a Korean American perpetrator since the Virginia Tech shooting with Cho Seung-hui. Kang attempts to find a Korean cultural trait that might connect the two shooters, and in the process speaks with Winston Chung, a child psychiatrist in the Bay Area:

Chung’s interest in One Goh and Seung-Hui Cho comes from a lifelong, personal investigation into han and hwabyung, two Korean cultural concepts that have no equivalent in the English language. By Western standards, the two words are remarkably similar. Both describe a state of hopeless, crippling sadness combined with anger at an unjust world. And both suggest entrapment by suppressed emotions. Both words have been a part of the Korean lexicon for as long as anyone can remember, their roots in the country’s history of occupation, war and poverty.

To the degree equal to which the Korean admired the earlier quoted paragraph, he cringes at this paragraph. One should be automatically suspicious when there is a claim that certain words or concepts are "untranslatable" or "have no equivalent." Also, in a previous post, I wrote that it makes little sense to talk about certain types of super special Korean emotion such as jeong. 

To be sure, Kang does not go so far as to blame some type of Korean essence as the culprit for a proliferation of Korean American mass shooters. (In fact, there is no such proliferation.) In this sense, the Korean would disagree with David H.'s assessment, even as I understand where he is coming from. Yes, I would agree that maybe the concepts like han and hwabyung were better left unintroduced, or at least not characterized something unique to Koreans that Anglophones cannot understand. But Kang is not exactly latching onto this concept to make a broad indictment about Koreans. (Kang's interview with the NPR on this point makes his intentions clearer.)

On that point, this paragraph was both revealing and puzzling to the Korean:

Two Korean-American men, five years apart, walked into their former places of education and executed innocent students. This, by definition, is a coincidence, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a single Korean-American who feels that way. I have no idea whether these killings came out of han or hwabyung or some other shared heritage, but it’s clear that the search for an explanation is far more threatening to the Korean-American community than whatever the actual answer might be.

This paragraph is revealing because it makes clear that Kang is not exactly blaming han or whatever cultural characteristic that is supposed to be unique to Koreans. Kang just wants to find some logic, any logic that might connect the two shooters, because as a Korean American man, he feels that connection may explain something about himself as well. Kang knows that it is a tenuous logic to latch onto han or hwabyung, so he refrains from completely buying into those concepts. But a tenuous logic might have to do when there is no other real logic.

But on a personal level, the paragraph was at the same time hugely puzzling. The Korean furrowed his brow at this sentence in particular:  "This, by definition, is a coincidence, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a single Korean-American who feels that way." Hard-pressed? I am a Korean American, and it never occurred to me that the connection between Virginia Tech shooting and Oikos shooting was anything other than coincidental. I know I am not alone in this. I am inclined to think that David H. might feel the same way. I certainly did not have the same kind of conversation that Kang and his Korean American friend had with my own Korean American friends. 

So this was the puzzling part. Kang does not actually think that the connection between the two shootings is not coincidental. (Please excuse the double negative.) Then why does Kang, and a lot of Korean Americans that he knows, feel that it was not coincidental? And why does the Korean, and a lot of Korean Americans that he knows, do not feel the same? What sets these two camps of Korean Americans apart? 

This is even more puzzling because, even as Kang talks about how he instantly understood the term "typical Korean father," he says his own father does not fit into that concept. I, on the other hand, would describe the Korean Father as a "typical Korean father"--yet I do not feel the compulsion to somehow connect the two shootings through some nebulous Korean essence. One might expect that Kang and I would have the opposite attitudes: Kang with nonchalance recognition of coincidence, and the Korean with brooding search for some kind of Korea-related explanation. Yet somewhere there is a twist along the way, and we stand on the opposite shores of where we are expected to be. So what, exactly, is it that separates Jay Kang and the Korean? 

Ever since the flare-up with Wesley Yang, I am sensing that there is an important fault line within the Korean American community that is only instinctively recognized. I feel that this is another manifestation of that fault line. How deep and how far that line runs is the question that requires more thought.

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