Ask a Korean!

Ask a Korean! News: Coffee in Korea -- Some Statistics

2012-01-25T22:35:00.001-05:00

There is an interesting new set of statistics about Korea's fervor for coffee, which was discussed in a recent post on this blog. Basically, the Korean's observation that gourmet coffee exploded in the last five years was correct. Between 2006 and 2011, the number of gourmet coffee shops increased nearly 10 times, and the revenue of gourmet coffee shops increased nearly 17 times.

There has been a 15% increase in the total consumption of coffee between 2006 and 2011 such that by 2011, every Korean over 15 years of age drank 1.4 cups of coffee every day. Although the vast majority of coffee consumption still comes in the form of instant coffee mix, between 2006 and 2011 the consumption of coffee beans increased by 19.2% every year.

Most importantly (for the purpose of showing the spread of high-end coffee,) the increase of high-end coffee consumption is coming from outside of Seoul. In the five largest cities in Korea after Seoul, the number of gourmet coffee shops increased by 24.1%, and their revenues by 96.8%. The same numbers for Seoul is 2.3% and 45.2%. Even within Seoul, the increase is not coming from the posh parts of the city, but from the grungier neighborhoods like Dobong-gu and Gangbuk-gu.

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Ask a Korean! News: Thousands of Anti-Regime Fliers Found in Cheongjin

2012-01-23T21:47:00.000-05:00

If North Korea falls in the next few years, remember this moment: reports from North Korea say that thousands of fliers denouncing Kim Jong-Un appeared in several locations in the city of Cheongjin. The fliers directly denounced Kim Jong-Un, saying "Down with Kim Jong-Un" and "There is no future with Kim Jong-Un." The paper quality of the flier was poor, which likely means that the fliers were made within North Korea. North Korean regime blockaded all roads in and out of Cheongjin, trying to find the culprit.

If there should be serious anti-regime movement, Cheongjin, the third-largest city in North Korea, may well be the epicenter of such movement. Cheongjin is an industrial center far away from Pyongyang, with a decent-sized middle class who is privy to outside information flowing from the nearby Rajin-Seonbong special economic zone.

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

Happy Lunar New Year!

2012-01-23T00:01:00.001-05:00

Hope you all had a delicious bowl of rice cake soup, and some sweet cash for bowing to your elders. Here are some old posts about Korea's celebration of lunar new year, and here is one about how North Korea celebrates the lunar new year.

-EDIT- To add a few questions about lunar new year . . .

Dear Korean,

As you may know, Chinese New Year is around the corner and it is widely seen as one of the largest annual celebrations in the world. It got me thinking, is Korean New Year (Seollal) celebrated among Korean's as widely as Chinese New Year among the Chinese? Or has it fallen out of practice like other traditional holidays?

Kevin B.

The Korean is not sure about calling lunar new year as "Chinese New Year" or "Korean New Year," but at any rate, seollal is still very much widely celebrated in Korea.

Dear Korean,

I'm a Korean American who immigrated to the U.S in late 1980. Maybe I'm wrong or just can't remember, but I'm pretty certain that people didn't celebrate Lunar New Year in South Korea back in the 1970s during Park Chung-Hee times. Would you happen to know when Lunar New Year became a holiday in South Korea?

Sae

The answer is: 1989. The Korean previously described the vacillation between solar and lunar new year in Korea. Short version of the story is that, although Koreans traditionally celebrated lunar new year, Japan imposed solar new year in the period leading up to the colonial times. But even after the liberation in 1945, Korea could not completely make up its mind about how many holidays to assign on each new year's day. In 1954, Korean government officially relegated the lunar new year to a regular working day, and instead made solar new year's day a three-day holiday. Subsequent Korean governments tried their best to get Korean people to celebrate the solar new year, by claiming that "double new year's day" [이중과세] was wasteful, and solar new year's day was more modern. This policy continued until 1985.

Promotional cartoon from Korean government, circa 1981
The old man is trying to direct people toward the lunar new year,
but over the shining buildings at the end of the road toward
the direction of "solar new year," it says "Modernization."
(source)

But old habits refused to die. In 1985, Korean government made an awkward compromise by designating lunar new year's day as "Folk Tradition Day" [민속의 날], and made it a one-day holiday. In 1989, Korean government finally relented and restored lunar new year's day as the proper "New Year's Day" [seollal, 설날], which was to be a three day holiday. The solar new year's day instead became a two-day holiday. Finally, in 1999, the solar new year's day became a one day holiday, and that is the system that is currently in use.

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

50 Most Influential K-Pop Artists: 22. Kim Chu-Ja

2012-01-20T22:32:00.001-05:00

[Series Index]

22. Kim Chu-Ja [김추자]

Years of Activity: 1969-1988

Discography:
Before It's Late [늦기전에] (1969)

Kim Chu-Ja Stereo Hit Album No. 1 [김추자 스테레오 힛트 앨범 No.1] (1970)

Kim Chu-Ja Stereo Hit Album No. 2 [김추자 스테레오 힛트 앨범 No.2] (1970)

Stereo Hit Album No. 3 [스테레오 힛트 앨범 No.3] (1971)

After Tonight [이 밤이 가면] (1972)

Beautiful Sunday (1973)

Kim Choo Ja (1973)

Where Should I Go (1974)

Kim Choo Ja (1974)

Now (1974)

Deserted Island [무인도] (1974)

Kim Choo Ja (1980)

Kim Choo Ja Vol. 1 (1980)

Kim Choo Ja Vol. 2 (1980)

The Way [가는 길] (1980)

Blow, the Wind [불어라 바람아] (1980)

Kim Chu-Ja Comeback [金秋子 컴백] (1988)

Representative Song: It's a Lie from After Tonight

거짓말이야
It's a Lie

거짓말이야
It's a lie
거짓말이야 거짓말이야
It's a lie, it's a lie
거짓말이야 거짓말이야
It's a lie, it's a lie
사랑도 거짓말 웃음도 거짓말
Love is a lie, smiles are lies too

거짓말이야
It's a lie
거짓말이야 거짓말이야
It's a lie, it's a lie
거짓말이야 거짓말이야
It's a lie, it's a lie
사랑도 거짓말 웃음도 거짓말
Love is a lie, smiles are lies too

그렇게도 잊었나
Is it really forgotten like that
세월따라 잊었나
Forgotten with the time
웃음 속에 만나고
Met in the smiles and
눈물 속에 헤어져
Parting in the tears
다시는 사랑 않으리
I will never love again
그대 잊으리
I will forget you

그대 나를 만나고
After you met me
나를 버렸지 나를 버렸지
You left me, you left me
거짓말이야 거짓말이야 거짓말이야
It's a lie, it's a lie, it's a lie
거짓말이야 거짓말이야
It's a lie, it's a lie

In 15 words or less: Queen of the 70s; Korean pop music's first sex symbol.

Maybe she should have been ranked higher because . . . Few other artists have dominated a decade like Kim Chu-Ja did.

Maybe she should have been ranked lower because . . . She did not create her own music.

Why is this artist important?
Kim Chu-Ja ruled the 1970s. This short and simple statement is quite enough to describe the entirety of Kim Chu-Ja's spectacular career. To be sure, her career was greatly helped by the genius of Shin Joong-Hyeon, who supplied the trend-setting psychedelic and soul music. But like with Lee Sora, the vessel of creativity matters. Without Kim Chu-Ja, Shin Joong-Hyeon could not have realized his vision either.

And boy, did Kim ever realize Shin's vision. Until Kim Chu-Ja, pop music in Korea featuring a woman was an ossified formula of the Japanese-influenced trot music sung in high pitch by a woman who was standing still, like a plastic mannequin with a voice box. Take, for example, the album cover of Lee Mi-Ja, the epitome of Korean female trot singer who preceded Kim Chu-Ja by about five years:

(source)

In contrast, take a look at Kim Chu-Ja's album cover.

(source)

And of course, this one.

Dayam!
(source)

Even in the conservative Korea of the 1970s, everything about Kim Chu-Ja was sexy. Her sultry, breathy voice charged Shin Joong-Hyeon's songs with implied debauchery. Unlike the emaciated female celebrities that would come to dominate the scene for the next 20 years, Kim Chu-Ja had plenty on her body that she was not afraid to show off in her dances. She wore tight jeans or mini skirts, with cleavage-boasting tops to boot. In short, Kim Chu-Ja was Korea's first female pop star who overtly used her sex appeal.

That is not to say that Kim Chu-Ja was no greater than the cheap pretty dolls that litter the Korean pop music scene today. Ultimately, it was her undeniable musical talent that made her the icon of the decade. But awakening the raw animal spirit that still animates Korean pop music to this day was Kim's defining achievement. If you got into K-pop because of KARA's butt dance, you have Kim Chu-Ja to thank.

Interesting trivia 1: Kim's song It's a Lie was banned by the military dictatorship, on the allegation that it instigates distrust. The military government also suspected her dance in It's a Lie to be a hand signal for North Korean spies.

Interesting trivia 2: When Kim refused the marriage proposal by her manager, her manager struck her face with a broken bottle. She received over 100 stitches and six plastic surgery operations as a result.

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

Pop Music Disappointments, and K-Pop

2012-01-19T22:35:00.000-05:00

The Korean saw this some time ago: 12 Extremely Disappointing Facts about Popular Music. Just to give a few samples:

Flo Rida's “Low” has sold 8 million copies – the same as The Beatles' “Hey Jude”
Creed has sold more records in the US than Jimi Hendrix
Katy Perry holds the same record as Michael Jackson for most number one singles from an album

The Korean found this to be pretty illustrative of what matters in K-Pop also. No one in his right mind would claim that "Low" is just as significant as "Hey Jude," or Katy Perry is better than Michael Jackson somehow, because the history of Anglophonic pop music is very well known. Yet if an alien landed on Earth tomorrow and studied the Earth's biggest pop stars by simply relying on album sales, she may come to the ghastly erroneous conclusion that puts Creed on the same plane as Hendrix.

The same goes to K-pop. Non-Korean fans of K-pop may well be an alien who just landed on Earth, because the full history of the pop music in Korea is not yet available in English. But know this: Korean pop music is much, much bigger than the pretty faces that are being pushed by media companies with hot stock prices. As there was the Beatles before Michael Jackson, and Elvis before the Beatles, there was Seo Taiji before Dongbangshinki, and Shin Joong-Hyeon before Seo Taiji, with countless other talented artists in between who shaped the course of Korean pop music.

The Korean hopes to have an opportunity to have a full exposition on the history of pop music in Korea in the near future. In the meantime, let's try to have some perspective as we enjoy the music.

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

Suicide in Korea Series: IV. How Suicide Spread in Korea

2012-01-18T22:06:00.001-05:00

[Series Index]

The last post discussed the global sociology of suicides, and how its implications are entirely applicable in Korea. In fact, one of the lessons that can be gleaned form the last post is this: there is nothing particularly "cultural" about Korea's trend of high suicides. This is an important point, because many observers like to make all kinds of arguments about Korea based on Korea's high suicide rate. This is a mistake -- common humanity is quite enough to explain the entirety of Korea's trend of high suicides. The global phenomenon of suicides clearly show that Korea's high level of suicide was something to be expected out of a country that rapidly industrialized. Every single country in the world has seen a dramatic rise in suicide rate as it industrialized. Every single country in the world that industrialized later than others saw its suicide rate faster than the countries that industrialized earlier. It would defy common sense if Korea was an exception.

This does not mean, however, that the precise way in which Korea came to have such high rate of suicide is uninteresting. As long as we do not draw the wrong conclusion -- i.e. Korea is culturally predisposed to high suicides -- the manner in which Korea experienced increased suicide is worth exploring. So in this post, we will take a discursive look at how suicide spread in Korea in the last 15 years or so.

I. Middle-Aged Men After Post-East Asian Financial Crisis

As the Korean explained in the previous post, if there was anything surprising about Korea's suicide trends, it was that the rate of suicide was extremely low as the country developed economically in the 1980s, not that the rate is as high as it is today. As recently as 1995, Korea's suicide rate was 10.8 per 100,000, lower than the current-day OECD average of 11.1 per 100,000. But by 1998, Korea's suicide rate exploded to 18.4 per 100,000. And it is safe to say that this astonishing rise is entirely due to East Asian Financial Crisis, which completely destroyed most of then-existing social safety nets in Korea.

(More after the jump.)

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

As one might be able to imagine, the first group to be negatively affected by the financial crisis was near-retirement age men. These men grew up in a world in which there never was a shortage of job, and as long as they had a job, everything -- housing, healthcare, children's education, retirement -- was taken care of. As Korea was undergoing the most devastating economic shock in its history, the rug was pulled underneath them. Their jobs were gone, and they were often too old to begin anew. In a conservative country in which men are expected to provide for their family, this sudden emasculation was, for many people, too much to bear.

The relevant statistics bear this out. In 1997, the suicide rate for Koreans aged 60-64 was 20 per 100,000. Just one year later in 1998, the same rate was 34.1 per 100,000. The same was true for Korean men aged 50-54: the suicide rate for them in 1996 was 30 per 100,000, while the same rate two years later in 1998 was 48.5 per 100,000.

II. Social Leaders

One suicide often serves as a model for another. Like many other diseases, suicide spreads through a defined community. Even as Korea's economy was recovering from the East Asian Financial Crisis, high suicide rate became the new normal for middle-aged Korean men. It is, therefore, not surprising that the a wave of suicide swept through the highest levels of Korea's leadership, which is mostly comprised of middle-aged men.

Perhaps the first post-financial crisis case of suicide by a well-known member of the leadership class was the death of Chung Mong-Heon, the president of Hyundai Asan. Hyundai Asan was a branch of Hyundai conglomerate that was in charge of developing the North Korean venture. Shortly before his death, Chung was under investigation for having channeled approximately $15 million to North Korean regime, at the bidding of the previous South Korean administration that sought to have a better relationship with North Korea.
Hyundai Asan, which opened the historic tourist courses in North Korea, was on the verge of bankruptcy. On August 4, 2003, Chung Mong-Heon jumped from his office, and fell 12th stories into his death.

Since then, suicide of social leaders usually came in response to public humiliation. Other notable social leaders who committed suicide since Chung's death include:

Ahn Sang-Yeong: In February 2004, former mayor of Busan hung himself in jail while being investigated on bribery charges.
Nam Sang-Guk: In March 2004, then-president of Daewoo Construction jumped off a bridge over the Han River while being investigated on attempting to bribe the president's brother. His suicide caused a particular row, as it came shortly after Korea's president publicly criticized Nam.
Park Tae-Yeong: In April 2004, then-provincial governor of Jeollanam-do jumped off a bridge over the Han River while being investigated on corruption charges.
Park Yong-Oh: In November 2009, former president of Doosan group, Korea's 15th largest company, hung himself at home. Park had lost control of his company to his brothers shortly before his suicide.
Lee Jae-Chan: In August 2010, then-president of Saehan Media and the grandson of Samsung's founder jumped out of his condo to his death. Lee's company, which was in the business of producing video cassette, was the one of the few ventures of the Samsung conglomerate.
Im Sang-Gyu: In June 2011, chancellor of Suncheon University and former Minister of Agriculture and Forestry found dead in his car, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. Im was under investigation for bribery charges.

But undoubtedly, the most infamous case of social leader's suicide was the suicide of former president Roh Moo-Hyun. Roh was being investigated on the allegation that he had received $6.4 million bribes. In May 2009, while hiking a hill near his house in Gyeongsangnam-do, Roh jumped from a cliff to his death.

III. Celebrities

By 2005, the contagion of suicide reached another group of high profile individuals -- that is, celebrities. Of course, celebrities occasionally committed suicide previous to 2005. Seo Ji-Won and Kim Gwang-Seok, for example, committed suicide in 1996. But since 2005, Korean celebrities took their lives at an alarming rate. Just to list the celebrity suicides since 2005 that were notable in one way or the other:

Lee Eun-Joo: A rising star who appeared in the biggest hit movie of the year, Taegukgi. Lee committed suicide in February 2005, at age 25. Her suicide caused a sensation, as it was the first major celebrity suicide in a decade.
Yuni: Debuted as an actress and also performed as an idol singer. Yuni committed suicide in January 2007, at age 26. Rumored to have been suffering from depression, caused partially by viciously negative Internet messages criticizing her transition into a singer who emphasized skin exposure.
Jeong Da-Bin: At one point, Jeong was the star of Nonstop 3, one of the most popular sitcoms in Korean television history. Yet by 2007, her career was going downhill. Jeong committed suicide in February 2007 at age 27, in her boyfriends house. There were allegations that she was actually murdered, but police investigation concluded the death as suicide.
Ahn Jae-Hwan: Ahn was a minor star who had over $4 million in debt due to several failing businesses. He committed suicide in September 2008, at age 36. There were also unproven allegations that he was actually murdered. Many people were also aghast at the negative comments on the Internet directed to Ahn's wife Jeong Seon-Hee, who made a politically unpopular remark on her radio show a few days before Ahn's passing.
Choi Jin-Sil: Choi may have been the biggest star in Korean television history. She had a tumultuous marriage and divorce with Jo Seong-Min, a baseball star five years junior. Her career suffered along with her divorce, but it was coming back to life. She committed suicide in October 2008, at age 40.
Jang Ja-Yeon: Jang was a minor star who committed suicide in March 2009, at age 29. Her suicide note caused a massive sensation, as it said that the management company forced her to have sex with media businessmen, including the head of Korea's largest newspaper. The police investigation, however, could not corroborate the charges.
Choi Jin-Yeong: The younger brother of Choi Jin-Sil was a famous actor in his own right. He was taking care of his sister's children. Choi committed suicide in March 2010, at age 39.
Park Yong-Ha: Park was a co-star in Winter Sonata, the first Korean drama that garnered international following and served as the foundation for the international popularity of Korean dramas. Park committed suicide in June 2010 at age 33. He was the first internationally-known Korean celebrity to have committed suicide.
Song Ji-Seon: Song was an anchorwoman for sports news. She claimed that she was dating a baseball player who was 8 years junior, who denied the claim. The day after the baseball player denied the claim, Song committed suicide in May 2011 at age 30.
Jeong Jong-Gwan: Jeong was a soccer player who was being investigated for fixing matches. He committed suicide in May 2011, at age 30.
Chae Dong-Ha: Chae was a former member of SG Wannabe, an idol group. Chae committed suicide in May 2011, at age 30. He was a first case of suicide among internationally popular singers.

Unfortunately, this list does not include many more minor celebrities who also committed suicide.

The celebrity suicides are particularly pernicious to the society at large, because the celebrities' young age and general appeal tend to cause emotional identification with the general public. Thus, suicides by celebrities fuel copycat suicides like none other. (This may partially explain why Korea's female suicide rate is higher than world average, particularly among women aged under 40 -- because young women generally are more susceptible to copycat suicides.)

In case of Korea, the copycat effect was immediate and visible. On the day after Choi Jin-Sil's death, for example, three women committed suicide in the exactly same manner as Choi, by hanging themselves with medical bandages. In 2008, October was the month with the highest number of suicides, with 65% more suicides compared to September.

Which group will the suicide contagion strike next? All suicidal trends are worrisome, but it is particularly dispiriting to see the group that appears to be next in line for the suicide contagion -- that is, bullied children. In the last few months, there has been a rash of suicides committed by middle school and high school children who were viciously bullied by their classmates. These news reports amplify the stories of these students who took their lives, planting ideas to other similarly situated children. (This, of course, is not to say that those stories do not deserve to be heard.) Fortunately, unlike social leaders, celebrities or even middle-aged men, the behaviors of school children can be modified more easily, as they spend their lives in a regulated environment, namely school. The recent rash of suicides did cause the government and civic groups to react quickly and present measures to address bullying and suicide prevention.

However, at bottom, it is too much to expect that any particular social group could be immune to suicides in a high suicide society. Many theories are given to explain Korea's high suicide rate in particular groups -- for example, a culture that emphasizes the importance of honor (to explain the spate of suicide among social leaders,) excessive stress caused by vicious attacks on the Internet (to explain the suicides among celebrities,) and so on. Those theories may well be true. But ultimately, as stated at the beginning of this article, Korea's high suicide rate is not being caused by one particular reason or another. Simply put, what is supposed to happen is happening in Korea now, as Korea traveled from pre-modernity to post-modernity in just 60 years. While it is certainly important to address the more proximate causes of high suicide rates in Korea, the most important ingredient may be time.

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

Today, TK Learned:

2012-01-17T22:09:00.000-05:00

. . . that rain means slower traffic.

Must-read piece on how East Asian Studies scholars in the U.S. attempted to silence Iris Chang, author of Rape of Nanking. [Sandcastle Empire]
File sharing is exactly like stealing. [The Atlantic]
Korean baseball teams hold spring camp in Arizona. [Arizona Daily Star]
Pvt. Danny Chen was forced by comrades to crawl 100 meters on gravel while being pelted with rocks, hours before he killed himself. [Daily Mail]
Hyundai Elantra is the 2012 North American Car of the Year [Yahoo]

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

Ask a Korean! News: The Business of K-Pop

2012-01-12T22:50:00.000-05:00

Here is a fun article from late last year about the business side of K-pop, and how the "idol industry" is dictated by business concerns.

* * *

YG-Version of Girls' Generation -- The Answer Lies In the Stock Market

On November 21, the media reported news about a new girl group by YG Entertainment ("YG") with a sensational headline. The headline from OSEN [TK: an entertainment newspaper] read: "YG's New Girl Group Contracted Not to Have Plastic Surgery." The story reported: "In its exclusive contract with a seven-member girl group to be debuted early next year, YG Entertainment is reported to include a clause that prohibited plastic surgery." It also quoted comments from a YG representative: "The new girl group is entirely consisted of members who did not receive any plastic surgery, and their contract with the company specifies that they would not receive any plastic surgery in the future." The representative further said: "The contract was made possible because the company focused on creating a new girl group that emphasizes the members' natural beauty."

The representative added: "This girl group began with looking at the pretty singers from other management companies, and wondering what color they would take if they performed YG's music. The previous color for YG emphasized talent, but good looks are now included as well. It will be a group that has not existed in the pop music market previously. This group already garnered attention because it would include Kim Eun-Bi, from Mnet's Superstar K 2. Right now it has seven members, although it could add one or two more. They are planning to debut by early next year."

The purpose of this news article appears to be rather clear, considering the timing and the content. The article ran two days before YG's initial public offering with KOSDAQ. It is common-sensical to view this as an information leaked in order to create a buzz right before the IPO. Regardless of the type of business, releasing information about a promising new product right before an IPO is not even a strategy -- it is just common sense.

YG Announces Plans to Benchmark Other Management Companies

But actually, the article was rather shocking, not in the least to the fans of YG, because the girl group described in the article is contrary to YG's original image as a label in every conceivable way. It was akin to YG attempting to imitate SM Entertainment, DSP Media or Core Contents Media. To a certain extent, it could be seen as a betrayal of YG's original direction. The article blatantly states: "This new girl group is the first group where YG can confidently say that we took the looks into account," and plastic surgery was unnecessary because of their excellent looks. By adding the extra bit about how they were "looking at the pretty singers from other management companies," YG reveals that it is benchmarking other management companies.

(More after the jump.)

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

So far, YG's label has aspired not simply to ignore the looks, but to actively recruit those who came up short in the looks. Big Mama is a prime example. Even as YG entered the idol market through Big Bang, it leaked such information as "the members were ignored by other management companies because of their looks." Thanks to this directionality, the idols from YG could garner the image of "idols beyond idols" or "actually talented idols," opening up the third market between idols and artists.

Also, by adding the information that the group was made up of seven members with possibly one or two more, the article implied a birth of a large girl group. It is a matter of course that the more members a group has, the less an image of talent the group projects because more members mean less role for each member in songs and performances. This is nearly a mathematical conclusion, and it is a conclusion that is hugely divergent from YG's directionality. As discussed above, YG is a label that discovered its own niche market. The large girl group described in the article appears to be an attempt to enter into the pre-existing idol market. In this sense, this group can hardly be called a YG idol -- they are merely created by YG.

New Girl Group Changes in Just Two Hours

But this is where it gets interesting. This shocking information was partially reversed in just two hours, by Star News. The Star News article, titled "YG's New Girl Group Has 5-7 Members, No Plastic Surgery Due to Their Age," contains a quote from YG representative: "The new girl group that will meet the fans next year will have 5-7 members, and the candidates are still undergoing rigorous competition because the membership is not finalized."

First, the number of members went from seven-plus to five-to-seven. And whereas the OSEN article said YG was confident that it could present pretty members without resorting to plastic surgery, the Star News article said: "We inserted the no-plastic surgery clause because every candidate for the new girl group is in her teens, aged between 15 to 19." The subsequent reports mostly followed the line in Star News rather than OSEN. This level of reversal cannot be explained in any way other than YG's intent to change the information and the nuance thereof. And the thought behind it must be the negative effect of the first article on the IPO on KOSDAQ.

The line about how YG prohibited plastic surgery because "it may be a health risk for teens, and it may work contrary to the teenage appeal" appears to focus on the public morality. Since YG lost a lot of points on the public morality front because of the marijuana incident involving G-Dragon, member of Big Bang, YG apparently is redirecting the plastic surgery point from praising the members' looks to covering the public morality front. The reduction of the number of members shows the consequence reduction of idol-ness, and the line about how the number of members is not yet determined served to mask the appearance of a micro-managing company.

In other words, the leaked information is redirecting the product from benchmarking other management companies to emphasizing YG's own business model. This is so particularly because the later article emphasized Kim Eun-Bi from Superstar K 2 even more, as Kim augments YG's own "talented idol" image. In just two hours, YG made a U-turn on the directionality of the new girl group.

Why the Benchmarking, and Why the U-Turn?

What explains this confusion? To deduce the answer, we must first figure out why YG leaked an information that appeared so remote from its own character at such a sensitive time period. The answer is actually easy: a successful IPO of an entertainment management company is much more than how much domestic market share it has.

Korea's entertainment market is small. When examined on the level of the scale or revenue, even the best labels are excellent mid-sized enterprise. A mid-size enterprise that plays in a gambling-like game, to boot. Thus, every investor is focused on the game of hallyu, the Korean Wave -- at least as far as stock market is concerned.

The world's second-largest market, i.e. Japan, is 30 to 40 times larger than Korean market. As the Japanese market begin to open up, the amount of money exchanging hands is exponentially greater. But the problem is that YG is not particularly strong in Japan. In Japan, YG is less successful than SM with Dongbangshinki and Girls' Generation and DSP with KARA. Strictly speaking, YG may not even be as successful as JYP Entertainment, which just launched 2PM in Japan. The best singles sale by Big Bang in Japan was last year's "Tell me good bye," which sold 46,449 copies. The YG label album that sold the most in Japan is also from last year's "Big Bang 2", which only sold 91,217 copies.

The same goes for 2NE1. The album "NOZLA", which was released this past September, sold 45,781 copies thus far -- decent for an album debut, but like Big Bang the singles sale is lagging. 2NE1's first Japanese single, "Go away," was released on November 16, and sold 13,581 copies in the first week. This is approximately 10,000 copies less than the debut singles by Rainbow or After School, and around the same number as "Madonna" by Secret. Given these numbers, the prevailing analysis is that 2NE1 is not headed toward a greater commercial success than Big Bang.

Thus, to convince the investors that YG will be successful in the Japanese market, YG may have been compelled to fade out YG's own colors and announce that it would emulate other management companies that had created better results in developing the Japanese market.

Then why reverse course in just two hours? Perhaps YG thought, regardless of the initial consideration, benchmarking other management companies would cause more anxiety among the investors after all. It would decrease the stability of the label, as it is attempting to do something new. It would also cause a concern that YG was abandoning its development of the American market -- in which YG had more success than others -- in favor of the Japanese market. As most analysts still believe that 2NE1 is better suited for the American market than Girls' Generation, it may appear that YG was retreating rather than advancing.

YG's Initial Thought Was Not Wrong

At any rate, YG's IPO happened on November 23, and immediately became a hit. The stock opened at KRW 68,000, double the offering price of KRW 34,000, and closed at the ceiling of KRW 78,200. By November 25, the stock price went up to KRW 97,200. Of course the price cooled thereafter, but YG's IPO so far has been a remarkable success.

However, looking back after having succeeded in the IPO, it must be noted that the first strategy by YG regarding the new girl group was not exactly wrong. The brand value of a management company does not persist simply by producing the same type of product. Given the speed of Korea's pop culture trend, change is necessary.

Currently, through 2NE1, YG is moving away from the hip-hop/R&B image of the label. "Ugly" by 2NE1 is deep into rock and electronica. It is a good strategy to keep fresh the existing groups with slightly different musical colors, while new groups gradually move away from the old business models to establish the difference -- like the way SM Entertainment gradually moved from H.O.T./S.E.S. (first generation) to Dongbangshinki/Girls' Generation (second generation) to ShiNee/f(X) (third generation).

In addition, even if hallyu expands to the U.S. and Europe, Japan is now the most important foreign market and always will be. The center of foreign market strategy will always remain in Asia. Japan, with the most transparent and enthusiastic market as well as geographical proximity, will have to serve as the base camp for exploring the foreign markets. There are always good reasons to create a model that enables a company to operate smoothly in Japan.

Thus, rather than producing another 2NE1, the original idea that may be derided as imitation in the short term could have been a better option for the management company, as it responds to both the needs of the label to reinvent itself as well as the necessity of establishing a base camp for developing overseas market. In fact, I would expect YG's new product would take that direction, regardless of what it said on news articles.

At any rate, should YG's new product create a clear hallyu effect, Korea's entire pop culture industry would benefit. As the IPO finished successfully, it is time for YG to concentrate on the final check-ups on the new product. I look forward to next year.

YG판 소녀시대 소동? 주식시장에 답있다 [Dong-A Ilbo]

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

Ask a Korean! Wiki: What is Weird About America?

2012-01-10T21:56:00.003-05:00

Dear Korean,

A friend posted this link to his Facebook profile a couple weeks ago. I had no idea that supermarket checkout-baggers were such a weird thing, that nobody uses checks anymore, and "that so much American cheese is coloured orange." It was mentioned a couple of times in the posting that most of the contributors were from Europe, which is fairly similar to the States, shared culture, politics, history etc.

I guess I'd like another perspective on "America's Quirks." I would love to hear the substantive, as well as the off-base insubstantive comments. What are the most striking differences you've noticed from living in the States for so long? What do Koreans living in/visiting the states bitch about when they're blowing off steam over a $13 (!!!) bottle of Chamisul?

Just Curious

Just off the top of his head, and keeping strictly on the frivolous side, here are a few things the Korean has found peculiar about America:

Wearing shoes indoors. HATE HATE HATE it. So disgusting. The Korean will never get over this.
Insane amount of soda drinking. The Korean is pretty certain that in his first year in America, he drank more soda than he ever drank in his life at age 16.
Ridiculous portions of food. (Discussed in this post.)
Ice in every drink.
Excessive use of napkins.
General preference for cooler temperature in everything (ambient, food, drinks, etc.)
Drinking alcohol only (i.e. without eating something at the same time.)
Music too loud in bars.
Cell phones have the same area code as any landline, instead of its own prefix. (In Korea, all cell phone numbers begin with 010 no matter where you live.)
To address a mail, going from small to large (i.e. "Number-Street-City-State-Country-ZIP") instead of large to small ("Country-Province-City-Number-ZIP").

The Korean will add more to the list as he thinks of additional items, but let's hear from the readers. What do you find peculiar about America?

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

Liberal Education and Coffee

2012-01-09T23:07:00.002-05:00

Korea famously boasts an excellent educational system, which sends over 80 percent of its high school students to college. But as Korean economy faces a persistent problem of youth unemployment, commentators are observing that Koreans are being over-educated. Essentially, the idea is that Korea has youth unemployment because it has too many college graduates. The following BBC article nicely captures that sentiment:

South Korea's education system is held up as a model around the world. Some 80% of its high-school students now go on to further education. But according to South Korea's president, that academic success is creating its own "social problem" - a youth unemployment rate of 6.7% in October, more than twice the national average, even as parts of the labour market are hungry for workers.

"Because there are so many people graduating from university at the moment, and looking only for high-end jobs, there's a mismatch between the job-hunters, and the positions available," explains Kim Hwan Sik, director of vocational training at the Education Ministry.

South Korea's Wasted Youth [BBC]

(Aside: In a typical BBC fashion, it messed up the name of Korean grandmother interviewed in the article by referring to her as Ms. Eun Ju-sung. In all likelihood the lady's name would be Ms. Ju Sung-Eun, and in no event should she be referred to as Ms. Ju-sung. Readers of this blog would know that BBC is prone to egregious errors when it comes to covering Korea.)

The Korean thinks the idea that Korea has "too many college graduates" is incorrect, for a number of reasons. To give a short (and incomplete) summary of the reasons:

The idea ignores the fact that Korea currently has the lowest birthrate in the world, which means Korea will soon face a severe shortage of people generally, and young people in particular. Whatever youth unemployment there exists currently is a temporary problem.
Research on this topic shows that it is not the college degree that hinders employment, but differences in other skills. In other words, the young unemployed population is unemployed not because their standards are too high, but because they are not desirable candidates for the employers.
The idea is based on the erroneous premise that as long as we deny people from attending college, we can sufficiently crush their aspirations enough for them to accept menial jobs.

In this post, however, the Korean exclusively wants to discuss the reason he considers the most important, that is: 4. Liberal education has value that reaches far beyond employment, such that it enriches the society even if the educated people are unemployed.

To be sure, the benefits of liberal education is not obvious -- which is partially why Korean president Lee Myeong-Bak has said: "A soccer player does not need a diploma from Seoul National University; he only needs to kick the ball well," as he joined the chorus of observation that Koreans are getting over-educated. But in some rare instances, one can get a clear and unobstructed glimpse of the benefits of liberal education manifested in a society. One of those rare instances involve coffee in Korea.

(source)

(More after the jump)

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

Let us back up for a bit and get some terminologies and history straight. First, about the term "liberal education." There may be many definitions of the term, but as good as any is the definition offered by the Association of American Colleges and Universities: "philosophy of education that empowers individuals with broad knowledge and transferable skills." Under this definition, liberal education prefers to produce generalists rather than specialists. Instead of focusing on a specific area, liberal education asks the students to be broadly knowledgeable about various topics and cultivate the life skills that can be used in any situation.

Korea's educational system, including primary (K-6th grade), secondary (7th-12th grade) and tertiary (college and beyond) education, is strongly premised on the philosophy of liberal education. Korea's colleges are set up similarly as American colleges, which generally emphasize liberal education. More importantly, Korea's middle and high schools demand the students to be proficient in a number of subjects at the same time -- as many as 15 subjects in high school which includes Korean, English, math, science, social studies, literature, ethics, music, fine arts, etc. Students have relatively few choices for electives. Critics of Korean educational system argue (mistakenly, in the Korean's estimation,) that this system is wasteful for students, whose energy would be better served by specializing in a number of electives.

Second, about coffee in Korea. As the Korean explained previously, Korean people's love for coffee runs deep. Although coffee obviously is a recent introduction to Korea, virtually every Korean at every level of society -- rich, poor, urban, rural, old, young -- loves drinking coffee. Korea's love for coffee, however, did not translate to a particularly high quality of coffee. For a long time, and for the most part, the only coffee available in Korea was the Tasters' Choice instant coffee mix, intermixed with a healthy dose of coffee creamer and sugar. Even as recently as five years ago, the only coffee that was halfway decent in Korea was from a handful of Starbucks outlets, located primarily in Seoul.

Now, here is the main point: in the last five years, the quality of coffee in Korea improved astronomically. To be sure, Tasters' Choice instant coffee mix remains popular among Koreans, particularly in the older generation. (It is the only coffee that the Korean Father drinks, for example.) But gone are the days when the choices for a decent coffee in Seoul were between Starbucks and Starbucks. (Emphasis on the word "decent" here -- Starbucks in Korea is just as good as Starbucks in America, so you can guess the quality of the best coffee Korea had to offer as recently as five years ago.)

There are more than a dozen "gourmet coffee" chains in Korea, and the average quality of coffee available from those coffee shops is incomparably better than the quality of the average coffee available just five years ago. When one seeks out the best coffee shops of Seoul, their coffee compares favorably to any coffee that the Korean has ever had around the world. (New York Times noticed, apparently.) The Korean can say without any hesitation that five years ago, Seoul had worse coffee than Washington D.C. Now? Seoul is blowing D.C. out of the coffee mug.

But how did this happen? Korea's tradition is extremely short. And just five years ago, excellent coffee in Korea was completely unavailable. Korea is a country marked by fast changes, but even the Korean himself did not expect this. How does a country go from shitty coffee to excellent coffee in just five years?

The big part of the answer is Korea's liberal education. This may seem unlikely -- what does educational system have to do with coffee quality? But think about what is required for a general increase in quality of coffee over the whole society. It is not enough to have a small cohort of specialists. Even if Korea had a small number of world-class coffee roasters, those roasters won't be able to make a living if they could not sell their coffee. The general public needs to have the ability to make fine distinctions, separate good from the bad, and support the work of the specialists by paying for their product.

Here is where the value of liberal education shines. Few Koreans ever received a detailed, professional education in coffee. However, they received an education in a number of different subjects, such that they grow to have a certain body of meta-skills that connects the different knowledge gained from all the different subjects. If the population of a given country has a stronger set of such meta-skills, that country ends up operating at a higher level.

The application of chain of events is extremely subtle, and rarely can one isolate the contribution of the meta-skill in any given social enhancement. Korea's improvement in coffee quality, however, provides as clear a picture as one could get. One of the meta-skills acquired through liberal education is an appreciation of fine differences, gained through art, music and literature. Give better coffee to a population that knows how to make small distinctions, and what happens? Coffee quality improves dramatically.

Of course, even in this best case scenario that shows the benefits of liberal education, the causal mechanism is not neat. There are certainly other intervening factors. If Koreans had not loved coffee (however crappy that coffee was) for the last few decades, it is doubtful that they were able to notice and go for improved coffee, even if they had the best liberal education possible. (This is probably why, for example, pasta in Korea is still not that great, although the quality of pasta in Korea also has been improving significantly in recent years.) Certainly some part of the trend is fueled by hipster poseurism, with a number of people going along with the trend without truly understanding the coffee quality in an effort to look cool. But regardless of these caveats (and there may be more,) the main point holds: there is no way the quality of coffee over an entire country could improve so dramatically in just five years, unless you have a liberally educated population capable of making fine distinctions.

In fact, how Korea came to have good coffee is a scale model of how Korea came to be a first-world country at an unprecedented speed. The improvement of coffee quality in Korea is merely the improvement of Korean society, writ small. One thing must always remember this about Korea: no country in the history of mankind has gone from one of the poorest countries in the world to one of the richest in just 60 years, while going from a dictatorship to a democracy to boot. And a major reason why Koreans could have pulled off such a miracle is because Koreans consistently employed a version of liberal education -- a Confucianism-based educational philosophy that is designed to build a whole person, rather than injecting specialized knowledge as if adding options to a car.

(Aside: Here is a Washington Post article that makes the same point, stated slightly differently.)

This point is worth reiterating: a society with liberally educated people operates at a higher level. Of course specialized knowledge is necessary, especially in today's world dominated by technology. Yet equally necessary are liberally educated people who have a strong set of meta-skills applicable to all fields of knowledge. Those educated people appreciate the specialists' works and support the specialists by consuming such works. They provide feedback in a way that helps the specialists do better in their fields. They provide a political and social structure -- democracy, free enterprise and the like -- in which the specialists can truly shine.

Most importantly, liberally educated people do better in a rapidly changing world. Even if the world may appear to be changing into a completely different place, the relevant meta-skills remain the same as long as it is humans who are driving the change. The specialized skill du jour may change with time, but the meta-skills that are required to quickly pick up the new specialized skill and/or understand the product of the specialized skill do not change. The stronger the population's meta-skills, the faster the population is able to adopt to the rapidly changing world.

Koreans had no historical experience with coffee, but now have good-to-excellent coffee. Koreans had no historical experience with democracy, but now have the most robust democracy in Asia. Koreans had no historical experience with modern shipbuilding, steel production or consumer electronics, but now are world leaders in those industries. Liberal education in Korea made such rapid adaptation and advancement possible.

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

Documentary about Tiger JK, with English Subtitles

2012-01-09T22:51:00.000-05:00

Reader Marc H. sent along some links for a nice documentary showing Tiger JK and his family, conveniently subtitled with English. You can watch it here, and part 2 is here.

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

Kim Jong-Il's Death - Bonus Question: Do South Koreans Care About Reunification?

2012-01-06T22:06:00.002-05:00

Dear Korean,

I heard B.R. Myers on a radio interview recently. His idea of the biggest threat to the regime is something like this:

"The biggest risk to the regime is that the North Korean public is growing increasingly aware that the South Koreans basically just don't care about the North. The regime has convinced through propaganda that the North needs to sacrifice and lead difficult, poor lives so they can one day kick the Yankees out of the South and reunify. But here's the problem. The South doesn't actually hate America. The South doesn't want to live under the North Korean leader (whoever it is). The South really just has no interest in reunification and is scared of the costs. And the North Korean public is very slowly realizing this."

How convincing does the Korean find this argument? Is North Korea a subject that most Southerners are not particularly interested in? Whats your take on this argument?

Corey N.

This question was in the comment section of an earlier post. Against his questions policy, the Korean will feature this question because it is quite relevant to the current situation. The Korean thinks that, as knowledgeable about North Korea as Prof. Myers is, he is slightly overstating his case.

Let's take this question in stages -- the first level is: do South Koreans care about North Korea?

This is not to say that Prof. Myers is doing this, but it is very easy to misinterpret the way South Koreans feel about reunification. From an outside point of view, one may fairly surmise that South Koreans must think about North Korea constantly, every day, all the time, because North Korea presents such a huge existential threat to South Korea. But when faced with reality, South Koreans rarely think about North Korea because there is not much more one can do other than ignoring the danger to some degree. The situation is not unlike post-9/11 New York, where New Yorkers were able to continue with their lives despite living with the possibility of another horrendous terrorist attack. And often, outside observers over-interpret this type of indifference into something more.

But this is a mistake -- the fact that South Koreans do not constantly talk about North Korea and plan their lives around North Korea does not mean South Koreans do not care about North Korea. In fact, South Koreans care a great deal about North Korea. To give a reference point, South Koreans (as a whole) care more about North Korea than Americans (as a whole) care about gay rights. North Korea is a huge social issue in South Korea such that a lot of South Korean public policies revolve around North Korea and a lot of bright South Korean minds are focused on how to deal with North Korea.

(More after the jump.)

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

If we accept that South Koreans generally care about North Korea, the next question is -- do South Koreans want reunification about North Korea?

On this question, the answer is somewhat subtle. The fairest way of characterizing the sentiment would be that South Koreans are conflicted, but slightly leaning more toward wanting reunification. At the level of the general public, there are sincerely held sentiments going both ways, and both ways are quite reasonable. South Korean public believes in Korean nationalism, and thinks that the tyranny in North Korea must end through reunification. At the same time, South Korean public is genuinely worried about the potential chaos and cost following the reunification.

But the critical next question is -- does this South Korean public ambivalence matter? Finally at this point, the question is not a matter of facts, but of opinions. And here, the Korean believes that it does not matter that much, because of the reason that the Korean pointed out in an earlier post: Korea is a leadership-oriented society.

Again at the level of general public, there is genuine ambivalence about reunification. On any given day, depending on the circumstances, that ambivalence can tilt more in favor of or against reunification. But there is no meaningful group of people who strongly clamor for reunification right away, nor is there a meaningful group of people who vocally oppose reunification. In such a situation, it is very important to focus on the sentiment toward reunification at the leadership level, not at the general public level -- because it will be South Korea's leadership that will determine the direction toward which South Korea will head.

South Korea's leadership (i.e. politicians, journalists, professors and other opinion-makers) by and large reflects the public's ambivalence. But importantly, at the leadership level, there is a group of people who are vocally in favor of reunification. On the other hand, there is no group of people at the leadership level who are sincerely opposed to reunification. At most, there may be some leaders who express deep concern over the cost of the reunification. In this type of situation, South Korean public can be persuaded to favor reunification, despite their reservation.

And that is pretty much exactly what is happening now. Although there may be moments when the South Korean public feels negatively about reunification, such negativity almost never percolates to the leadership level such that there is a sustained movement away from reunification. That may happen in a decade if North Korea shows no sign of change and the generation of young South Koreans who knew North Korea only as a nuisance come of age in the mainstream Korean society. But as of now, such movement is not there. Given this, Prof. Myers' point that South Koreans "just don't care about the north" or that South Korea "just has no interest in reunification" is an overstatement.

But the Korean is willing to give Prof. Myers a benefit of doubt. Perhaps the overstatement was because it was a radio interview, in which one can be a little more hurried with word choices compared to a written work. And at any rate, South Korea's interest in North Korea is not Prof. Myers' main point. His main point is that North Koreans' realizing the true conditions of South Korea presents a threat to the North Korean regime, because it weakens the regime's propaganda that says the people of South Korea are constantly looking toward North Korea to be rescued from the imperialistic wolves from America. And that much is most certainly true.

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

Lose Weight with Korean Diet - Part 1

2012-01-05T22:10:00.002-05:00

Dear Korean,

I have been trying to lose weight. I have lost some, but I am down to the last ten pounds, and can not seem to dispel the weight. Most of the weight loss information I obtain seems to be wrong, so I need a new perspective. I thought viewing weight loss through another culture's view point might help me. How can Korean diet help lose weight?

Audrey

Given that weight loss is always high on the list of new year's resolutions, the Korean figured this is a good question to open up the new year. Can Korean diet help you lose weight? Allow the Korean to put it this way: Korea is the thinnest country in the developed world, while America is the fattest. As of 2009, only 3.5% of Koreans over the age of 15 was obese. The same number in America was an astounding 34.3%. Obviously, there are reasons other than diet that Koreans are slimmer than Americans. (For one, ready availability of public transportation in most cities, leading to more walking. Genetics, for another.) But it should be equally obvious that Korean diet and eating habits have a great deal to do with the svelte figures of Koreans.

A few more caveats about Korean food and eating habits are necessary. First, as Korea is a country marked by rapid change, Korea's diet and eating habits are changing rapidly as well. For example, the unhealthy kinds of Western food are freely available in Korea, and Koreans have come to eat a great deal of them because they taste great. The Korean will present the healthy kind of Korean diet and eating habits here, but that is not to say that everyone in Korea eats in a traditional manner.

Second, even if we confined ourselves to traditional Korean food and eating habits, there are still certain things about traditional Korean food and eating habits that are rather unhealthy. An easy example is sodium -- generally, Korean food has a lot of salt. (Remember, kimchi is essentially salted cabbages, and Koreans eat a ton of it!) Another easy example is that the way Koreans drink, particularly as they eat. Again, the Korean will remind everyone that this post is not saying: "If you ate exactly the way Koreans ate, you will lose weight." Rather, the point of this post is to say: "there are a lot of healthy things that Korean food and eating habits have, about which people would do well to learn."

With that said, let's get right to it. How can you lose weight like a Korean?

1. Eat Less

If you must only take away one point from this post, take away this point: Koreans are slim because they eat less. Forget all those gimmicky diets for a minute, and focus on the obvious -- if you eat a lot, of course you will gain weight! As long as you lower the caloric intake enough, you can lose weight while eating nothing but Twinkies and powdered doughnuts.

Here is an alarming observation. Based on the Korean's experience, American portions are between 50 to 100% larger than Korean portions. This is particularly egregious at restaurants. The Korean is not small at all -- he is 6' 1", 195 pounds. Yet he can comfortably split, say, one order of fried rice from a nearby Chinese food into a full lunch and dinner. However, the Korean sees plenty of people around him in the restaurant, finishing the entire order in one sitting.

(More after the jump.)

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

Just think about this -- for every meal, Americans eat as much as double the amount of food that Koreans eat. How could you possibly not get fat with that much food? Don't be deceived by "one order" of food in America -- nobody needs to eat that much. Split one order into two meals. Or if that is still too much temptation, immediately throw away half of the food that you ordered. The Korean absolutely hates wasting food as much as you do, but consider it as a price to pay to lose weight. Or better yet, do what Koreans do and . . .

2. Cook at Home

If you cook at home, you can control the portion, adjust the level of unhealthy elements in food, and avoid the delicious but unhealthy things with which restaurants and processed food companies cram their food. As the Korean said earlier, Koreans' eating habits are changing, and fewer Koreans eat home-cooked meals. But it has been the Korean's experience that Koreans eat at home more frequently.

To be fair, the fact that Koreans are more likely to eat home-cooked meal is not completely positive, because it is women who are staying home to cook. But as far as health and weight loss is concerned, there should be no question that home-cooked meals are better.

But of course, it would depend on what you eat at home. So . . .

3. Eat More Vegetables

For this point, a picture will be better than a thousand words. A little bit of background is necessary here. The Korean Parents visited the Korean's house in the winter of 2010, and the Korean Mother prepared a party meal for the Korean In-Laws and some friends. This is what the prepared table looked like:

First, notice the portion size. It may not look like much, but this much food plus a bowl of rice for each person fed eight fully grown adults. Second, notice what kind of food was being served. The Korean made it easy in the next picture. Red square is for meat, blue hexagon is for seafood, and green circles are for vegetables.

Just look at the amount of vegetable involved at a party table. Volume-wise, the Korean would say at least 80% of the total food served was vegetables. Compare this to, say, a typical Thanksgiving dinner, where the massive turkey is the highlight of the meal. (And even the vegetables involved in a Thanksgiving meal is soaked in butter and/or sugar.) Note that this party table is not anything special, but just a larger version of an everyday Korean meal, which is comprised of a bowl of rice, some soup, and a few side dishes. And the vast majority of such side dishes are vegetables.

One must remember that traditional Korean cuisine is born out of poverty, not opulence. Because of that, most of Korean cuisine is not very rich, nor do they require extremely sophisticated cooking methods, unlike Chinese or French cuisine, for example. But such heritage of poverty actually makes Korean cuisine the perfect diet food, precisely because it relies so much on vegetables. There are over a thousand edible herbs in Korea, and Korean cuisine completely maximizes their use. In fact, regardless of the popularity of Korean BBQ (a distinctly American phenomenon of meat-loving,) traditional Korean cuisine is nearly vegetarian. This is the right way to eat.

(Aside: Here is another reason why the Korean hates David Chang -- he apparently "had no idea there were such endless varieties of namul," or vegetable side dishes, until he visited Korea recently. Namul is the backbone of any Korean cuisine! What a fraud.)

The Korean does understand the difficulty that Americans face when it comes to eating vegetables -- they are just so darn plain. How many different kinds of salad can one eat in a row? To make vegetables a permanent part of your life, it is not enough to like vegetables. You have to be addicted to vegetables. And to be addicted to vegetables, you should . . .

4. Use Spices

Here is another defining characteristic of Korean cuisine -- it uses tons of spices and condiments. In fact, some of the spices and condiments are themselves a complicated dish. For example, this is how to make bean paste (doenjang 된장): boil beans, grind the boiled beans into pulp, shape the ground beans into large chunks, dry the chunks in a warm room, hang the chunks in the sun for a few months, soak the chunks in water for a month, then add salt and ferment for a few months. All this, for just one condiment!

The result of using so many spices and condiments is that although Korean food utilizes mostly simple, vegetable-based ingredients, the finished dish (when done correctly) ends up having a complicated, layered flavor profile. And this is what makes Korean vegetable dishes not just delicious, but addictive. This is especially true with kimchi, probably the most complex Korean vegetable dish. (One Washington Post food writer called kimchi "cabbage crack," although regrettably she got her start with a recipe from David Chang. Gaah!)

Okay then, just what are you supposed to cook and eat? The Korean will get to that in the next post in the series.

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

Today, TK Learned:

2012-01-03T22:52:00.000-05:00

. . . that it has been an unusually mild winter in Washington D.C.

R.I.P. Gordon Hirabayashi, 1918-2012. America owes a debt to him. [Angry Asian Man]
What's wrong with worrying too much about national debt? "[F]amilies have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base." [New York Times]
Only one employee is mowing the entire U.C. Berkeley campus, and some professors don't have telephones. [Washington Post]
More schooling leads to higher IQ. [Marginal Revolution]
Ban Ki-Moon's humor is of a painful kind. [Foreign Policy]

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

Ask a Korean! News: North Korea Bans the Use of Foreign Currency

2012-01-03T22:44:00.000-05:00

Apparently, the first order of business in post-Kim Jong-Il North Korea is to ban the use of foreign currency in markets, such as American dollar or Chinese renminbi, with a potential death penalty against those who violate the order. The order came down on Dec. 30 of last year. This move signifies that Kim Jong-Un is willing to keep trying to revert to a communistic, controlled economy, although the last attempt at reverting to a controlled economy -- the currency reform (apparently done at Kim Jong-Un's initiative also) -- was a miserable failure.

There is no reason to believe that this measure will have a different fate. Some North Korean watchers go so far as to say that this order can't be actually implemented, because it is practically impossible to stop the use of foreign currency in North Korean market. At the wholesale level, virtually all transactions are done in either dollars or yuan. If the regime does try to enforce this order, North Korean commerce (what little there is) would be completely paralyzed.

The more Kim Jong-Un tries to strengthen his grip over his country, the more quickly it will slip away. The total loss of control won't be long.

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

Most Popular AAK! Posts of 2011

2011-12-31T15:18:00.000-05:00

Here is a quick look at the most popular AAK! posts of 2011, by page view.

Most Viewed Posts of 2011 (All-Time)

1. Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Korean Men
2. The Ultimate Korean Looks List

3. AAK! Wiki: Oppa! Oppa! Oppa!

4. Why is StarCraft Popular in Korea?

5. Dog Meat in Korea

The never-ending quest of the Internet for Korean men will never end.

Most Viewed Posts of 2011 (Written in 2011)

1. Training of North Korean Special Forces

2. The Korean's Response to Wesley Yang's New York Magazine Story

3. How to Make Yourself Attractive to Korean Men (Special Guest Post by I'm No Picasso)

4. Tiger Moms are Superior

5. Picture from 1992 Los Angeles Riot

Thank you everyone for reading this blog. See you next year!

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

Kim Jong-Il's Death -- Assorted North Korea Questions

2011-12-30T22:16:00.002-05:00

To round out the posts about Kim Jong-Il's death, here are all the North Korea-related questions received in the last few days.

Dear Korean,

I read this on CNN:

In addition, the South Korean government asked church groups to refrain from lighting Christmas trees near the demilitarized zone between the two countries due to the North's mourning period. The Christmas trees have been deemed a symbol of psychological warfare, and North Korea threatened in the past to retaliate if the South lights the trees.

How can a Christmas tree be psychological warfare?

Philipp

The Christmas tree thing goes back to a controversy a few days before Kim Jong-Il died, and the report from CNN is slightly inaccurate. It is not about Christmas trees -- it is about a single Christmas tree. In particular, the one that is 100 feet tall, right near the Armistice Line.

There has been a 100 feet tall watch tower since 1971 at Aegi-bong, which just across the river from North Korea. In 2010, after North Korea shelled Yeonpyeong-do, South Korean government decided to engage in "psychological warfare," and one of the weapons of choice was to allow Yoido Full Gospel Church (the largest Pentecostal church in the world, with 1 million members,) to turn the watch tower into a giant Christmas tree. This is what it looks like, from last year's lighting.

(source)

Of course, North Korea did not take this kindly, and threatened to destroy the tower. Again this year, strong words were exchanged about the Christmas tree just before Kim Jong-Il died. And as reported, South Korean government decided to not light the Christmas tree this year.

All of this is rather ironic, because Kim Il-Sung was born into a devoutly Christian family in Pyongyang.

(More after the jump.)

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

Dear Korean,

I happened across your site while doing some research on the Korean monarchy. I was speculating as to whether the 'cult' of personality being built around NK's dictators has some historical precedence in Korean attitudes towards their monarchs? Is there any link? Or is the current cult of personality in NK a relatively new phenomenon?

jc

A lot of people -- including South Korean intellectuals -- are fond of linking the personality cult of North Korea with the past monarchies in Korea, e.g. the Joseon Dynasty. The Korean believes that this is a mistake borne out of ignorance about how the kings of Joseon Dynasty operated.

To be sure, it may be fair to point out some level of connection, given that Korean kings were treated like, well, kings, i.e. treated with extraordinary care. The Korean's favorite example is: the excrement of Joseon kings were called "cherry blossom," and was immediately wrapped in silk after, um, "production," to be shown to the doctor resident in the palace.

But on the whole, traditional Korea almost never had a personality cult around the king. In fact, very rarely did traditional Korea even have an extremely strong monarch in the mold of Louis XIV. For the most part through its history, Joseon Dynasty was a country ruled by a relatively weak king and a large bureaucracy of Confucian scholars who shaped most of the national policies. The personality cult in the mold of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il simply has no precedent in traditional Korea.

Dear Korean,

But what about the military? From everything I've seen, it appears that the military leaders are solidly behind the status quo. After all, if the regime were to topple, they'd have to find real jobs and would lose their access to what apparently passes for the good life in North Korea. And the rank-and-file soldiers seem well fed, warmly dressed, and reasonably healthy, and presumably may support the status quo, too. Or is my off-the-wall assessment simply wrong?

Doug C.

The Korean would say that the assessment is correct up to a certain point. It is true that, compared to the rest of the population, North Korean soldiers are relatively well fed, warmly dressed and reasonably healthy -- which is why North Korean military has not rebelled yet. (If they did, that would really be the end of North Korea.)

But it is important to note that such relative comfort is no thanks to the regime itself. The formal rationing system in North Korea is almost completely destroyed, such that the military is acting on its own to feed itself. The military does this by extorting from the civilians around them, essentially setting up a feudal fiefdom around the bases. Certain military bases have gone so far as to set up their own trading companies that sell weapons and natural resources to China. Also, as Mr. Joo Seong-Ha pointed out, there is virtually no discipline left in North Korean military, particularly at the level of ordinary soldiers who grew up during the mass famine in early 1990s. This means that the military supports the regime not on an ideological basis, but on a transactional basis -- in other words, the military will support the Kim Jong-Un regime only to the extent that the regime would let the military take its share.

Having a highly corrupt military that is slowly slipping outside the sphere of his influence is obviously not a good situation for Kim Jong-Un. Yet should Kim Jong-Un incautiously attempt to root out the corruption in military, it is entirely possible that the military would turn against him -- a disastrous consequence that would almost certainly result in the fall of North Korean regime. This is an added challenge for the young new ruler, and another reason why the Korean is hopeful that North Korean regime is not for much longer.

Dear Korean,

I've always wondered if South Korea maintains an action plan for the sudden and complete collapse of North Korea, as in "We're now responsible for millions of starving people, not to mention one million soldiers and lots of guns and a nuclear arsenal, so starting tomorrow we're going to do x, y, and z.

Don W.

Actually, it is not (just) up to South Korea to have an action plan on what to do on the day when North Korea collapses. For situations that are DEFCON 3 and above, Republic of Korea - United States Combined Forces Command handles the situation. The ROK-US CFC has a series of Operation Plans that deal with different situations in North Korea, and the proposed OPLAN 5029 details the action plan in case of a sudden collapse of North Korea. OPLAN 5029 has five scenarios to which CFC may have to respond: (1) coup d'etat; (2) mass defection of North Korean people; (3) humanitarian aid following a massive natural disaster; (4) foreigner(s) being held hostage in North Korea, and; (5) the regime loses control over the weapons of mass destruction, and such weapons are exported out of North Korea.

OPLAN 5029 was only proposed and is not yet officially adopted, because Korea and U.S. could not settle their disagreement about which country would take the lead role in the operation, especially in the scenario involving weapons of mass destruction. But regardless of OPLAN 5029's official adoption, there seem to be few reasons to doubt that ROK-US CFC would know what to do in case of a sudden collapse of North Korea.

In addition, South Korea has a mid-range plan of what to do with North Korea in the 3 to 6 months time frame. Although details are not available to the public, each ministry in the South Korean government has an action plan of what to do in North Korea in case of a reunification. (So for example, Ministry of Education has a plan on the school curriculum to be implemented in North Korea.)

As to what the Korean thinks of what ought to happen . . .

Dear Korean,

I'm curious about your views on Korean reunification. Not so much the if, when and why but more on how, in a practical sense how would one begin integration of the two halves of Korea? During my brief year in SK as an exchange student my Korean classmates seemed almost apathetic to the north and the issue of reunification seemed an impossible and unwanted task to most of them.

And while I would be the first to cheer on the collapse of the north I can't see how the people of the north could be integrated into a new, united country remotely resembling the South Korea we have today. Of course my insight is quite limited so your views on the matter would be much appreciated.

Chris

The Korean has not been thinking too hard on exactly what should happen, so he cannot give a full, detailed plan on how the integration should proceed. But he does have a few reasons to think that the integration process, which will certainly be difficult, may go smoother than one might think.

1. Korean nationalism is powerful. When it comes to Korea, never, ever, ever underestimate the power of Korean nationalism. Both in South and North Korea, nationalism has been mobilized to achieve remarkable things, albeit in diametrically opposing directions. South Korea achieved wealth and democracy at a speed unprecedented in human history. North Korea became the only country in human history in which an industrialized country backslid into a massive famine. Either way, Korean nationalism is a powerful thing.

After reunification, there surely will be an undercurrent of mistrust and hostility between former North and South Koreans, going in both directions. But such undercurrent will have a difficult time getting articulated in public and at the leadership level, because Korean nationalism and the idea of "one people" [한민족] is simply too powerful. In fact, that South Koreans still broadly support reunification after 60 years of constant terrorist and military attacks by North Korea is a reflection of just how strong Korean nationalism is.

2. Korea is an leadership-oriented society. Relatively speaking, Koreans generally trust the social leaders to know better and do the right thing. This is not to say Korean people are sheep -- remember that South Korea was also a dictatorship only slight better than North Korea until the 1980s, but South Korea democratized because of the relentless protests by democratization activists. By "leadership-oriented society," the Korean only means that Korea is a society in which ordinary people are willing to sacrifice their personal interest in favor of the national direction set by the leadership.

Reunification would certainly entail sacrifices, particularly on South Koreans who would have to subsidize North Korea for quite some time. Yet because of the strength of nationalism described above, South Korean leadership would almost uniformly call for such sacrifices. And Korean people would generally respond to those calls favorably.

3. North Koreans are used to law and order. A common worry about reunification goes like this: "What if North Korea degenerates into a complete chaos? How could anyone restore law and order?" But one must remember that although North Korea suffers from dire poverty, it is still a modern country used to modern law and order. North Korea is not, say, Somalia, which constantly degenerates into warring factions because its people have little experience with modern and centralized state. In contrast, North Koreans have plenty of experience living in a modern, organized state. (In fact, the problem in North Korea is too much organized state.) North Koreans are used to be being educated and working in an organized environment, which would make their repatriation to an industrial economy relatively smooth.

4. Migration is sticky. Another common worry about reunification is: "What if the poor North Koreans flood and paralyze South Korea?" The Korean is pretty sure that after reunification, North Koreans would come down to South Korea in enough numbers to disrupt the status quo for South Korea. But he does not believe that it would come to a point of total chaos.

A general truth about human migration is that it is sticky. Total migration, in which the entire population migrates, is extremely rare and only confined to situations in which there is an existential threat to that population. (For example, migration in the wake of Rwandan genocide or the war in Kosovo.) Absent such existential threat, people generally do not like to move from where they are, even if there were zero restriction in their movement and it is very likely that their living conditions would significantly improve elsewhere.

Here is an interesting case -- Poland after joining the European Union. After joining the EU in 2004, Ireland, Sweden and United Kingdom immediately opened their doors to Polish immigrants. All three countries have a per capita GDP that is more than double of the per capita GDP is Poland. In other words, in 2004, Polish people had the freedom to move out of Poland to a much wealthier country any time they wanted to. And sure enough, many Polish people did take that chance. But did the elimination of border empty out Poland? Hardly -- between 2004 and 2009, a little more than 200,000 people moved out of Poland, in a country that has more than 38 million people. What is more, the number of emigrants peaked in 2006, and by 2009 the figure returned to the level of Poland's pre-EU days. Clearly, 200,000 is not a small number. But it is hardly the case that Poland emptied out.

Yes, yes, the Korean knows that the difference between South and North Korean per capital GDP is more like 15 times than double. It is not as if the Korean is advocating for a full-blown, open-South-Korea-immediately policy as soon as the reunification is achieved. For a short term, it would probably be necessary to implement some level of movement control. But the Poland example is nonetheless a data point. As long as South Korea can quickly build up North Korean economy, there would be more incentives for North Koreans to stay than migrate South. And such build-up can happen rather quickly because . . .

5. South Korea has a ton of construction experience, and there is a lot of money in the world. One must remember that South Korea got its start on building its national economy by engaging in huge infrastructure projects, both domestically and abroad. For example, water pipeline construction in Libya by Dongah Construction, completed in 1991, was the largest construction project in the world at the time. Reunification would mean a series of huge, huge infrastructure projects in North Korea, because North Korea pretty much needs everything -- roads, rails, airports, power plants, aqueducts, sewage, large buildings, high speed Internet, everything. Only a handful of countries around the world have the necessary expertise to engage in such broad-based building projects, and South Korea is one of the best. Such infrastructure project could double as massive job creators for North Korean people. When there is a hope for a better life in the place they live, people don't move.

But how to pay for all that? This is where the second factor comes in. Right now, there is a lot of money in the world. Or to be more precise, there is a lot of liquidity in the world -- huge flows of cash that are not being invested because of the volatility in world markets. If North Korean regime falls in, say, the next five years, suddenly the greatest risk factor for the world's 15th largest economy is gone, and one of the most experienced countries in the world in massive infrastructure construction needs money. Who wouldn't want to lend money to Korea at an attractive rate in that situation? This is partially why Goldman Sachs forecast that by 2050, unified Korea will have a larger economy than Japan, Germany and France.

Of course, the Korean is not saying that it will be a cakewalk and everything will be hunky-dory. There will certainly be all kinds of ghastly issues in the short term, like discrimination, crime, and various injustices that are prone to happen in a major upheaval. Even in the long term, North Korea may become like the American South -- still relatively poor and somewhat discriminated against, even after 150 years since the Civil War. But the Korean believes that the worst cases scenarios that people fear, i.e. total chaos and mayhem, long-term economic depression, etc., are unlikely.

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

Best of the Worst 2011

2011-12-29T22:18:00.002-05:00

End of the year is coming . . . which can only mean one thing . . . the annual list of worst questions of the year!! Compared to the ridiculous glory of last year, this year's crop has been relatively tame -- but still, there are some real doozies.

Every email below is a real one, copy/pasted without any editing. The worst email of the year is at the bottom.

* * *

re: (no subject)

Hi!I dont know if i am using the right address,but if its not please bear with me and help me find the right address.I just recently read some articles about korean men in the internet and got me interested.I just want to know if its possible for korean men to date a black woman especially from Africa.If so,do you have a website where somebody can go through it and check if they korean men looking for black women?Can korean men marry black women from Africa and those already have children?If you are going to use that website where you publicise the replies,please use Pee as my name.Thank you and hope to hear from you soon.Bye!

"Pee" means "urine" in English and "blood" in Korean. Either way, it won't attract too many guys.

re: birthday cakes

Do you have a recipe for a birthday cake?

Thank you

Jane

Sorry, the Korean is a good cook, but baking is another matter.

(More after the jump.)

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

re: Can I give you dog articles?

Hi,

I was checking out your site [WEBSITE REDACTED] and saw that you publish articles and content related to dogs & pets.

Would you be interested in publishing more dog-related articles that would be totally unique and exclusive to your website at no cost to you? You can find out more about it athttp://askakorean.blogspot.com

but here's a little more info.

We have a team of full time writers with extensive backgrounds in the pet industry. What we prefer to do, instead of sending articles to the article directories, is to find other website publishers who use quality content & maintain mutually beneficial relationships.

For you, that means unique content - which means two things. First, you'll get more bang out of the search engines when the article is exclusive to your site. Second, your visitors won't be able to find the article anywhere besides your site.

For our partners (who pay the writers), it allows them to expand our overall reach. When a reader likes the article, they sometimes click through to the partner site, which gives them some exposure that they wouldn't have had otherwise.

So if exclusive content sounds appealing to you, just grab a free account athttp://askakorean.blogspot.com

Here's some sample articles in the library right now (there's usually at least 200 articles in there at any given time):

The ABCs of Puppy Classes

Preventing the Theft or Loss of Your Dog

Massage - Rubbing Your Dog the Right Way

Tips for Exercising Your Dog

Health Issues for Senior Dogs - Eyes, Ears & Tumors

The articles will have a link back to one of our partner's sites. That's what's in it for us. You get fresh new unique content, we get some extra eyeballs to our partners. We only partner with high quality sites.... examples are Dogster, Oh My Dog Supplies, Facebook, and Youtube.

Remember - once you publish an article, we will NEVER send it anywhere else.

If you have any questions, you can certainly reply to this email. Or read more & sign up for your free account at:

http://askakorean.blogspot.com

Thanks,

[NAME REDACTED]

Editor - [WEBSITE REDACTED]

Unless the website also features proper ways of cooking dog meat, the Korean is not interested. (Upon learning about this email, the editor of the website emailed to apologize -- apparently it was a mix-up by a company that handles PR for the website.)

re: ROKMC Pohang HQ

Dear Korean,
How can I contact the ROKMC HQ in Pohang to inquire about someone?

I don't speak Korean, just English. And I'm not in Korea.

Here's my story:
I'm going mad. I haven't heard from the boyfriend for 3 weeks now and I don't know what to think of it. Could he be in training? He's been in the service for a little more than a year now. Do they still have trainings that last for a month? Could he have left me cold-heartedly by not talking to me instantly? Could there be something wrong with him right now? Injured?I'm a mess. Been trying to call but his phone just keeps on ringing. We almost always talked daily. I really don't know what to do. Calling the parents is not even an option.

Please help! Sound advice would be very much appreciated, or ROKMC HQ details, whichever is more appropriate with this madness!

TIA,
GK

Your boyfriend went to the military, not to a boyscout camp. What's the point of calling his phone?

re: How act and look like a korean fob

Can you tell me everything to do with acting and looking Korean fob. Like what they wear, how they talk, what their hair looks like, what they eat, what music they listen to and more stuff like that...? I might be a wannabe but i don't care.

Here is one thing you can do to act like a Korean -- stop emailing this blog.

re: ask korean girl

ask korean girl for short time play.howmuch money i pay...thank's

You're welcom'e.

re: (no subject)

can you speak Korean?

아니요.

re: asking for the frequent used words in italy

Ho we say in italy

good day, good bye

please

the menu please

can you please help me

You should ask an Italian.

re: hey

My name is elena and I am looking for old korean man that wants to have hot sex with sexy woman. Please contact me I live in korea town ca.

Didn't know there was a city called "Korea Town" in Canada.

re: OK, I'VE STUDIED YOUR BLOG/WEB SITE & THE JURY IS IN

Bonjour,

Nearly 4 years ago, in response to my reading about French racism on your site, your response to me was I needed to study your blog site and kiss your ass (sorry, I'm not gay and have nothing against gays, but I don't kiss guys in the "mouth").

Regarding the French being racist, no I'm not going to defend or justify it. It is absolutely shameful. However, when I see the racism exhibited by Koreans......! Well, let's just say they should start an organization calledKKKK: Korean Ku Klux Klan!

NOW I DO HAVE SOME GOOD NEWS FOR YOU: Believe it or not, I took your advice, and spent quite a bit of time reading the blogs at your site. NOW HERE'S THE BAD NEWS: While reading and studying the articles at your site, I did so while comparing it to what I consider to be the gold standard of "Ask A....." blog sites: Gustavo Arellano's "Ask A Mexican".

My conclusion: Your site is like quite a number items imported from Korea: A cheap, knock off imitation!

Now go criticize and stop the racism in your Korean culture, as well as in the culture of your adopted country of America (and once you're completely done with that, you can then take on the racism of anyone else you damn well want)!

A bientot,

Ai-Chi Hua Hua

Wow, you held a grudge for 4 years against some random dude on the Internet? Your life must be wonderful.

re: (no subject)

I have a Korean boyfriend. Which sentence that Korean boys want to listen to the most. I just know only one which my boyfriend taught me " ne namja chingu changsaengnim " = my boyfriend is handsome hahahahaha.. He is such a baby. Thanks in advance

The Korean is pretty sure that the sentence is "Take off your pants."

re: (no subject)

Hello, i have a Q...

actually, it's not so easy, but ....my craizy dream is find korean boy friend, please, help me to find way ... how???

i am in USA, Omaha, NE. Maybe attend to some churches?

/ I am single, but have a doughter (3 years old). also have PhD degree!

thank you so much (Avietta, 29)

please, e-mail me back, if you need I give u more details, why looking for korean and e.t.c.

The Korean only wishes he could firebomb the college that gave you a Ph. D.

re: rape in Korea

Hi, why do so many young, unmarried women in Korea get pregnant? I understand why the babies are sent all over the world – because of Koreans strong cultural emphasis on blood relations. But are these young women being raped? What is the history of rape laws in Korea? Thanks for any information you can give me. Linda

Sometimes, stupidity is so staggering that there simply is nothing else to say in response.

re: marrying young Korean girls

I am a thirty year old American white who has lived in Korean for three years and can speak Korean, not perfectfully, but I want to marry a Korean girl and raise a family in Korea. My question is, is it possible for a thirty year old American guy to marry a twenty to early twenties year old Korean girl, or does the age difference and the fact that many girls these days are marrying later make this impossible? What if the guy had an excellent income and could buy a nice apartment? How likely would he be able to find a "good” girl that could commit to a husband and family? What if he could pay for her education, so that she could start a career if she wanted? Yes, I know that I am old fashioned and traditional. That is one reason I left America.

This is the Korean's favorite kind of bad email -- an email that begins pretty normally, then slowly degenerating into creepiness.

re: My wifes parents

my s.korean girl and I both have mental illness and we made a baby and her parents wont relax and im mix with im confused but im light colored and my childs mom and I are both americans I dnt speak any other laguage and we kill for eachother wats her parents prob

Laugh? Cry? Both? My goodness.

And now, for the worst email(s) of the year...

re: men

why do korean guys hold grudges against the girl they supposed to have loved..will not text me ..i did nothing wrong he saw some texts on my cell phone and thought that i was cheating on him.. i never cheated on him if any i cared about him alot ..now its been 10 months and he will not talk to me..i think about him alot and i worry because i do not want anyone do anything to him..what should i do'''i fell in love with him.and i;m not seeing anyone i still care...some advice would help...thanks debbie

re: I have this cute guy.I love him tp much right now he is not. Speaking to me.I k.ow me not deleating those texts made it look but l was not cheating with any p

I know what I did was. Wrong. I was not trying to b a player.I never cheated on him.I fell in love with him.he's the lucky onr
I tried to tell him.I miss him so much.if I can have one night with him I b happy.I told him I was ready but in all reality I was scared.but if I can have that one chance he woil
Know.just to say I love you baby.I really do I would tell the world that I love you.

- Debbie S.

If you recall, this is the same Debbie S., the "worst emailer of the year" of 2010. Obviously, she was not content with the second-best title of the "worst emailer" -- she decided to gun for the worst email of the year! Like a clockwork, Debbie S. has been sending an email of this kind every three months or so. In a weak field this year, persistence is victorious.

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

Kim Jong-Il's Death - Under-Appreciated Points to Watch

2011-12-28T20:30:00.003-05:00

Having watched the news analysis and commentaries for the last week and a half following Kim Jong-Il's death, here are a few points that, in the Korean's estimation, a lot of people under-appreciate or simply get wrong.

1. Change is coming.

Many observers said, essentially, that nothing will change; North Korea has survived this far, and there is no reason to believe that anything will change. This is a casual observation that is completely ignorant of the historical context. North Korea after the March of Struggles -- the massive starvation in the 1990s -- is a place fundamentally altered from pre-1990s North Korea under Kim Il-Sung. And it will be those post-1990s changes that will finally do the North Korean regime in.

2. The tears of North Koreans are not real.

South Korean experts on North Korea rarely bothered with the question, "are those tears real?" But somehow, that question apparently fascinated non-Korean experts of North Korea, who attempted to offer various theories about why North Koreans were crying at the death of Kim Jong-Il.

For the Korean, this question served as a nice litmus test for figuring out which North Korean expert knows what she is talking about, and which North Korean expert is a hack. Here is the simple answer for the question -- the tears are not real, and North Koreans are crying because, for the most part, they are coerced. The reports from the inside of North Korea unanimously say that practically no one was saddened by Kim Jong-Il's death. Every defector who has watched the proceedings said that the fakeness of the mourning was transparently visible.

Recall back to the fact that North Korea is more porous than ever. North Koreans no longer hold any illusion about their leadership. Yet the idea that North Koreans are brainwashed is so fashionable that real stories of periodic uprisings in North Korea are completely buried. Anyone who claims that North Koreans are brainwashed enough to shed tears for a tyrant who killed millions through state-created mass famine and gulags simply has no idea what he is talking about.

(More after the jump)

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

3. China is not as important as you think.

The importance of China in North Korean affairs is overrated. It is, of course, correct that China is critically important for North Korean survival. But it is nonetheless incorrect to say that China holds the key to North Korean survival. That is just like saying that oxygen holds the key for human survival. Is oxygen critically important for human survival? Of course it is -- without oxygen, all humans will die in a matter of minutes. But is there any reason to expect that something dramatic will happen to the world's oxygen supply? Of course not.

The same with China. It would be nice if we could do something to deprive North Korea of China's support since, like a human without oxygen, North Korea could collapse in a matter of days without the Chinese support. But there is no reason to expect that China would cease their current level of support of North Korea. We are better off treating China's support of North Korea as a constant.

(Aside: The caveat of "current level" of support is an important one. There may come a point where China would decline to support North Korea because the cost of supporting North Korea became prohibitively expensive.)

Like humans can die of causes other than oxygen deprivation, North Korea can die of causes other than China deprivation. And China cannot prevent North Korea's internal turmoil any more than oxygen can prevent a person from getting shot. Because the tie between China and North Korea has been so emphasized, the degree to which North Korea is suspicious of China has been vastly under-appreciated. Such under-appreciation is a species of a common mistake made with respect to North Korea -- failure to see North Korea from its own, internal perspective.

Because of the terrible memories from the Imperial Japanese rule from early 20th century to the end of World War II, both North Korea and South Korea are deeply nationalistic. They are almost automatically suspicious of an undue foreign influence. However, North Korea went several huge steps beyond South Korea when it comes to utilizing that nationalism for legitimizing its regime. North Korean regime tied the nationalism with the personality cult of Kim Il-Sung, and justified Kim Il-Sung's rule by constantly emphasizing his role of delivering North Korean people out of the terrible colonization by Imperial Japan, and protecting North Korean people from the potential colonization by Imperial America. The governing philosophy of North Korea -- juche, or "self-reliance" -- is an outgrowth of this nationalistic ideology.

Does this sound like a country that would submit itself to China's meddling of its internal affairs? Because China is in a position to actually interfere with North Korea's internal affairs, North Korean regime is more suspicious of China than any other country in the world -- more than South Korea, more than America. Kim Jong-Il was reportedly fond of saying that a single Russian or Chinese spy in the regime was more dangerous than ten American spies. North Korea relies on China out of necessity, not out of fondness. North Korea will follow China's directives only as much as it has to, and not an inch more. And most importantly, if North Korea's fall is led by ordinary North Koreans, those ordinary North Koreans would overwhelmingly prefer South Korea to take over rather than China.

4. South Korea is the most important country when it comes to North Korea.

The point above leads to this natural conclusion. Strangely absent from the English-language discussion about North Korea was: what is South Korea planning to do? This is, again, a mistake. South Korea is the most important country in handling North Korea because it scores the highest in the equation of "influence over North Korea," multiplied by "willingness to leverage that influence." For better or worse, South Korea is the only country among the interested parties -- including U.S., China, Japan and Russia -- that significantly changed the course of its North Korea policy in the last 50 years, which signifies a degree of flexibility that other countries do not possess. South Korea is the only country that can focus on the whole of North Korea, rather than piecemeal aspects of it. (For the most part, U.S. is only concerned about North Korea's nuclear capabilities; China, possibility of North Korea's collapse and a swarm of North Korean refugees; Japan, North Korea's missiles and abductions.) South Korea is the only country that can focus its attention to North Korea at a national level, rather than at the level of a single governmental agency or less. If North Korea can change through external efforts at all (which is itself not a sure proposition,) such external efforts will come from South Korea.

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

Kim Jong-Il's Death -- More Articles from Joo Seong-Ha

2011-12-27T22:50:00.015-05:00

Here is a summary of a few more articles by Mr. Joo Seong-Ha, published since yesterday's post.

Ten Real Concerns by Ordinary North Koreans
[권력승계 시기-방식엔 관심없는 北주민들… 그들이 진짜 신경쓰는 10가지] (Dec. 26, 2011)

Joo notes that ordinary North Koreans could not care less about when and how Kim Jong-Un succeeded the throne, because they know that their lives will not change. Joo then notes ten points about which North Koreans truly care.

1. What do you call Kim Jong-Un? Kim Il-Sung was called "Chairman" [수령님], and Kim Jong-Il was called "General" [장군님]. Kim Jong-Un is still being called "Comprade" [동지], but that will almost certainly change going forward.

2. What do you call Kim Jong-Un's sayings? Kim Il-Sung's sayings are called "lessons" [교시]. Kim Jong-Il's sayings are called "remarks" [말씀]. Both "lessons" and "remarks" have to be quoted extensively when North Koreans speak in public. There is no directive as to what Kim Jong-Un's sayings will be called.

3. When will the badge with Kim Jong-Un's face come out?

4. Will there be another round of forced labor? After Kim Il-Sung passed, North Korea built thousands of "Towers of Eternal Life" [영생탑] to commemorate Kim Il-Sung by extorting people's money and labor. There may be another round of this, because the officials would hardly miss a chance to extort money in the process.

5. Will there be a special ration on January 8, known to be Kim Jong-Un's birthday?

6. How will Kim Jong-Il's statues be placed? Currently, statues of Kim Il-Sung are placed at the center of every city. Would Kim Jong-Il's statue be placed next to those statues? Will they face the Kim Il-Sung statues, or will they stand side-by-side?

7. Will there be a "revolution study lab" for Kim Jong-Un also? At every school, corporation and factor in North Korea, three rooms are dedicated as "revolution study lab", each chronicling the achievements of Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jeong-Sook [Kim Il-Sung's wife] and Kim Jong-Il. It will cost a lot of money to construct an additional room for Kim Jong-Un. Even if those rooms are prepared, there is not much to add for Kim Jong-Un because of his youth.

8. When will the first Kim Jong-Un book come out? There are thousands of books that proclaim the greatness of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il, but there is yet no such book about Kim Jong-Un.

9. Will the "Ten Principles" change? The "Ten Principles for Solidifying the Unitary Ideological System," a statement of governing principles in North Korea, begins with the words "The Great Chairman Comprade Kim Il-Sung." As North Koreans who aspire to be in any important position have to memorize the ten principles word-for-word, the potential change in wording (to include Kim Jong-Il) would be important.

10. Will there be a new song? Every meeting in North Korea began with singing the songs for Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. There is not yet a song for Kim Jong-Un, and it is an open question whether three songs would be required to sung in every meeting also.

Joo also notes that there may be new money with Kim Jong-Il's face printed on it.

The "Apples" of Pyongyang are Trembling
[달러 맛에 흠뻑 취해 호화생활… 평양의 ‘애플족’이 떨고있다] (Dec. 27, 2011)

Joo notes that the children of the high-ranking North Korean officials are called "apples" -- red on the outside, white on the inside -- because despite outwardly being the most dedicated communists, they are in fact the most capitalistic members of North Korea. They are in the position to handle a lot of money through extortion and bribes, and they enjoy luxurious life filled with imported goods. Because they have the most to lose, they fear the collapse of North Korean regime more than anyone else. Since the hold of power is fickle in North Korea, they always have an escape route ready.

The Secret of Pyongyang's Million Mourners
[오늘 김정일 영결식… 평양 ‘통곡의 100만 물결’ 비밀은] (Dec. 28, 2011)

In anticipation of Kim Jong-Il's public funeral, Joo recounts his memory of Kim Il-Sung's funeral. He remembers that the hearse passed him by very quickly. Although he was surrounded by fellow Kim Il-Sung University students, he noticed that few of his fellow students cried. But he believes that for those who cried, the tears were genuine. Joo doubts that the same level of grieving will happen with Kim Jong-Il, and is certain that there will be no tears left for Kim Jong-Un.

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

Kim Jong-Il's Death - Summary of Articles by Mr. Joo Seong-Ha

2011-12-26T14:39:00.000-05:00

Here is one more introduction for those who have not been acquainted with Mr. Joo Seong-Ha. Mr. Joo is a former North Korean elite, who attended Kim Il-Sung University and was a professor at the same university. He defected from North Korea in 1996, was captured in China and survived a North Korean gulag. He defected again in 1997, and this time he successfully reached South Korea. Now, he is a journalist for one of the most prestigious newspapers in South Korea. He also writes for his own blog, North Korea Real Talk, which is easily the most visited blog regarding North Korea in all of the Internet. The Korean periodically translated some of Mr. Joo's best articles. You can check out the entire archive of translated articles by Mr. Joo here.

As you might imagine, Mr. Joo has been a busy man since Kim Jong-Il died. Because Mr. Joo write a number of articles and posts since Kim Jong-Il's death, the Korean cannot translate all of them fully. Instead, the Korean will provide a summary of everything Mr. Joo has written so far, both for his newspaper and his blog.

Kim Jong-Il's Death: Whither Korean Peninsula?
[김정일 사망, 한반도 어디로 가나?] (Dec. 19, 2011)

In the first piece he wrote after the news broke, Mr. Joo briefly noted that the first telltale sign will be the volume of defection. He also noted that there would not be much movement during the official funeral period, and the critical time will be around February or March 2012.

(More after the jump.)

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

Dark Road Ahead for Post-Kim Jong-Il Era
[포스트 김정일 시대, 앞길은 절망적이다] (Dec. 19, 2011)

Mr. Joo actually wrote this article before Kim Jong-Il died, but he put the article up on the blog because the topic was relevant. In this article, Mr. Joo noted that North Korean regime so far has relied on five pillars: (1) propaganda and deification; (2) closely knit organization; (3) reign of terror and guilt by association; (4) shutting off and distorting outside information; (5) special favors given to the loyal elite.

However, the massive famine in the early 1990s corroded four of the five pillars, such that the only pillar that is still intact is the reign of terror. Therefore, recently the reign of terror in North Korea has reached a new height. But because the presence of South Korea serves as a constant reminder for North Koreans as to what could have been, the desire to escape would only increase. Especially after Kim Jong-Il dies, Joo argued, North Korea would not be for long.

How North Koreans View Kim Jong-Un
[김정은 보는 북한 주민 심정 비유한다면] (Dec. 20, 2011)

This article is an absolute gem that only Mr. Joo is capable of writing. Upon watching the footages of North Korean people's initial reaction to Kim Jong-Il's death, Joo was shocked by how peaceful Pyongyang looked. This was in marked contrast to Kim Il-Sung's death. When the news of the elder Kim's death broke, ordinary North Koreans dropped to the ground and wailed. Much of the mourning was voluntary. But this time, even in a footage that North Korea must have carefully screened before its release, Mr. Joo only detected one or two people who appeared to be genuinely sad.

How Will the Bankrupt House Survive?
[거덜난 살림 물려주고 어떻게 버티라고] (Dec. 21, 2011)

Mr. Joo notes that the prevailing feeling by North Koreans about Kim Jong-Un is that of resignation. Although people complain of Kim Jong-Un's youth and lack of experience, there is no sign of an organized resistance. But one item of note is that hatred of Kim Jong-Un is spreading within the elite, as Kim Jong-Un has been ruthlessly purging the leadership class.

Mr. Joo points out that the current situation is different from Kim Jong-Il's succession, because, at the time, North Korean economy was still functional, and people supported Kim Il-Sung. As discussed in the previous article, Mr. Joo believes that Kim Jong-Un's only way by which he could manage the current situation is to engage in a reign of terror.

Kim Jong-Un's First Three Days Receives an F
[사흘간 지켜본 김정은 성적표는 '낙제'] (Dec. 22, 2011)

Mr. Joo notes that Kim Jong-Il's funeral would be the first test for Kim Jong-Un, because the funeral is an excellent opportunity for Kim Jong-Un to consolidate his status. When Kim Il-Sung died, Kim Jong-Il engaged in a number of creative policies that consolidated his power. For example, Kim Jong-Il was involved in every last detail of Kim Il-Sung's funeral, abolished the office of the Chairman (such that Kim Il-Sung would be the eternal chairman,) and generally pronounced that he was a filial son who was fit to inherit his father's legacy and rule the country. In contrast, Kim Jong-Un has been simply following the exact procedure that his father implemented when his grandfather died.

The Best Article about Kim Jong-Un's Future
[김정은의 미래를 점친 최고의 명칼럼] (Dec. 23, 2011)

This article is written by Sohn Gwang-Ju, head of the Center for Daily NK Reunification Strategies. Mr. Joo introduced this article by saying that it was the best one among everything he read about Kim Jong-Un in the last few days, and he generally agreed with the article.

In the article, Sohn begins by stating that it is pointless to speculate about whether Kim Jong-Un can succeed smoothly, because the succession is already a done deal. Sohn also points out that China would have a less influence than most people think, because North Korea consistently resisted China's interference in the political arena.

Sohn says Kim Jong-Un only has two choices -- destroy the market that is already in place, or open up the country. But Kim Jong-Un in fact cannot make either choice. Destroying the market would essentially require killing everybody in North Korea. If North Korea is opened up, there is no reason why North Korean people would follow Kim Jong-Un. Sohn then prescribes that South Korea's strategy must be "engagement" and "enlargement," in the areas of information, market, politics and military, in that order. Sohn concludes by castigating the current South Korean administration for getting caught flat footed at the news of Kim Jong-Il's death.

When Will We Hear Kim Jong-Un's Voice?
[김정은 목소리는 언제쯤 들을 수 있을까?] (Dec. 24, 2011)

Mr. Joo writes that Kim Jong-Un's ruling style will likely be similar to his father's ruling style. Just like his father, Kim Jong-Un strengthened his hold over the Security Bureau instead of the military or the Labor Party. Also, Kim Jong-Un's advisors have no experience in having any other kind of ruling style.

Like his father, Kim Jong-Un would likely minimize his exposure to the public. This is in contrast to Kim Il-Sung, who enjoyed being in public.

Will the "Market Generation" Eat Away at Kim Jong-Un Regime?
['장마당 세대' 김정은 체제 갉아먹을까] (Dec. 26, 2011)

Mr. Joo notes that the "Market Generation" -- i.e. North Koreans who were born in 1994, when Kim Il-Sung died -- would enter North Korean society next year, either by getting drafted into the military or advancing to colleges. Mr. Joo writes that North Korea officially recognizes four generations of revolution. The first generation was anti-Japanese fighters who fought alongside Kim Il-Sung; the second was the people who experienced Korean War and the post-war reconstruction; the third was the people who were involved in the Three Communes Movement in the 1970s, and the fourth was the people who underwent the March of Struggles in the 1990s.

The fifth generation does not have an official recognition, but they may be termed as the Market Generation, because the parents of this generation entirely relied on the market to raise them, as they grew up during the mass starvation that was the March of Struggles.

The Market Generation is characterized by a significant depletion of numbers and malnutrition. Compared to the 1980s, North Korea's fertility rate dropped by more than 30 percent. Because of the drop, North Korean military is essentially losing one battalion (= 50,000 soldiers) every year. Also, because of malnutrition, a significant number of these young people are being exempted from conscription. Although North Korean regime has been attempting to address this issue by, for example, drafting more women into the military, it appears inevitable that the military control over North Korea would be weakened simply because there are not enough soldiers.

This generation is also marked by being materialistic, selfish and scornful of organized life. This generation received absolutely nothing from the regime. In fact, schools have been turned into a vehicle for squeezing money out of people. Because of that, over 40 percent of North Korean children do not attend school. Instead, as soon as they are in their teens, they work in the market and earn their own money. Because they are not socialized through school, they do not respect their teachers or any other authority figure. They attempt to get out of serving their military duties by bribing their superiors.

The Market Generation is also wildly enthusiastic about South Korean pop culture. South Korean pop music and dance have spread to every rural corner of North Korea, thanks to the Market Generation. They openly complain that no one in their family is smart enough to defect to South Korea. Having the Market Generation make up the most of North Korean military, therefore, would put further pressure on Kim Jong-Un's regime.

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

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T18:55:00.000-05:00

Dear Korean,

Hope you and your wife have been doing well. I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your three-parter with answers to the students from Jangheung High School. I may actually adapt some parts of it for my students. I particularly appreciate your vulnerability in the section about loneliness.

Occasionally I go through a few situations in which I question my decision to move to Seoul. Last week I experienced such a situation. I'll spare you the details except to say that it soured me on Koreans and, for the first time since 2007, I gave some serious consideration to moving back home. Maybe that's why the Jangheung post had such emotional resonance for me.

Anyway, it's not over until it's over. :)

Finals are almost done, and I'll be spending the vacation working on Korean study and continuing education stuff. Then a trip home in February. Your blog's been a big encouragement to me. Have a great Christmas.

Marc H.

The nature of this blog means that great many readers of this blog are non-Korean expats living in Korea. Sometimes, the Korean can be impatient with them, and castigates some of them if he thinks that they are being particularly stupid. But this does not mean that the Korean is blind to the fundamental challenge being faced by expats in Korea: depending on the day, Korea can be a very unwelcoming place for non-Koreans.

Now, that does not excuse the rants in some expat blogs/message boards that are absolutely nothing more than racist tripe. Neither does that justify the gross distortions of facts about Korea, in an attempt to paint the entire country and people in a negative light. However, without excusing and justifying, the Korean can extend his understanding as to where much of that bile is coming from. For non-Koreans, there will be moments in which their lives in Korea are genuinely shitty, simply because they are not Koreans. And as much time as the Korean spends trying to elucidate the incorrect understanding about Korea, he recognizes that in many cases, a wholesale criticism against Korea is completely fair.

Even when Korea is not being unwelcoming, Korea can be just too different. A large part of our day-to-day lives is not about some great fundamental truths about the universe. It is about a series of habits whose accumulation we have not been even aware of. So, for example, if you are accustomed to a Western-style personal space, you might find it grating to have someone stand next to you a little too close on your everyday commute. Is it a big deal? No. But again, much of life is about small deals. It is the accumulation of those small deals that eventually influence the overall impression of a place.

For some, Christmas is a time where all the negativity about Korea can bubble up. It is another one of those times in which Korea is just too different. Instead of a warm, family-oriented affair, Christmas in Korea is at best a neutered holiday meaningful only to Christians, and at worst a crassly commercialized second Valentine's Day. Of course Koreans have their own warm, family-oriented holidays, but they don't mean that much to non-Korean expats. Instead, facing the assault on senses, it is understandable to feel cold, lonely, and sour about the goddamn place.

Christmas tree at City Hall Square, Seoul
(source)

So here is the Korean's Christmas message for all you expats out there: stay warm, and get together with friends. Remember that in any place of the world, life as a minority and an immigrant has a potential to be shitty from time to time -- especially if the place does not have a tradition of immigration like Korea. You can read this blog to get a better understanding about why Korea is the way it is, but ultimately, your feelings are yours. Even for a nice person like Marc -- a long time reader whose thoughtfulness is always appreciated -- life in Korea will have shitty moments. Whether or not those moments accumulate to a point where you might consider leaving Korea would be up to you. But in the meantime, stay warm and be with other people. Don't let the annoyance and bile percolate, but be in the spirit of the seasons.

Merry Christmas.

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

Kim Jong-Il's Death - The Korean's Thoughts

2011-12-23T02:35:00.001-05:00

If you remember where you were when you heard a piece of news, that's a big news. The Korean was reading a newspaper in his living room back in Korea, when he learned from the front page that Kim Il-Sung died. He was on a conference call at work in New York when someone on the call broke the news that Michael Jackson died. And this time, the Korean was walking up the stairs at a hotel near San Luis Obispo, California, when the Korean Wife read her text messages and said, "Hey, Kim Jong-Il died."

The Korean has not been near a computer for quite some time, but he did voraciously read all the news, from within Korea and without. (4G phone = awesome.) Given the significance of the news, the Korean will devote the next several posts over the next several days on North Korea. Specifically, the posts will discuss the Korean's own thoughts, Mr. Joo Seong-Ha's thoughts, things about North Korea that most commentators are missing right now, and any other North Korean question that the Korean has received in the last few days.

* * *

When the Arab Spring happened, many North Korean observers were eager to extend the analogy to North Korea. In most cases, the analogies failed. North Korea is more isolated, more benighted and more tightly controlled than any of the Arab countries. Even the most repressive Arab dictatorship that fell -- that is, Libya under Qaddafi -- may well be a liberal democracy compared to North Korea.

However, there is one crucial lesson from the Arab Spring that does apply to North Korea. The lesson is this: an apparently stable dictatorship may fall suddenly, unpredictably and uncontrollably. Previous to the Arab Spring, there appeared to be no hope for democracy in Arab nations. For decades, despite constant oppression that appeared intolerable for outside observers, Arab nations persisted in dictatorship. Very smart people -- for example, influential Harvard professor Samuel Huntington -- believed that Islamic cultural traditions prevented Arab nations from having a democracy. And they looked like geniuses, until they did not.

The same applies to North Korea. Freedom's lack of progress in North Korea has frustrated many observers into falsely believing that North Koreans are too brainwashed and the Kim Dynasty too strong. Not so. Looking back, there were many signs that the Arab Spring was imminent -- we just did not know what to look for. Similarly, there are many signs that the fall of North Korea is not far away. You just have to know what to look for. And with Kim Jong-Il's death, there are even more signs that North Korea is not for much longer.

What are those signs? Here are five examples:

North Korea is trying out a collective rule for the first time in history. Throughout its existence, North Korea has always been led by a single ruler. Now, for the first time in its history, North Korea is being ruled by a committee. A rule by committee always contains within it a seed for an internal struggle. The seed is especially likely to germinate if a crucial actor within it -- that is, Kim Jong-Un -- is too inexperienced to maneuver adroitly.
Deification of Kim Jong-Un is not working. Ever since Kim Jong-Un surfaced into public awareness, the reports from North Korea have been unanimous: North Korean people do not respect him. Kim Jong-Un was born out of wedlock, by Kim Jong-Il's mistress who was a Korean-Japanese dancer. Kim Jong-Un is only 28 years old. North Koreans quietly deride the attempts at Kim Jong-Un's deification. In fact, failure of charismatic leadership in North Korea began with Kim Jong-Il, who made up for his lack of charisma with political oppression far more brutal than Kim Il-Sung's. At the third generation, the charismatic capital of the Kim family dynasty is now completely empty. Even at the elite level, the relationship between Kim Jong-Un and the elites is transactional rather than personal or ideological.
Vast majority of North Koreans does not depend on the regime for their livelihood. Since the 1990s, North Korea has ceased to be a communist economy with collective production and distribution. Instead, as far as economy is concerned, North Korea is deeply capitalistic. People's livelihood depends on the market, not on the rations handed by the Labor Party. Kim Jong-Il regime correctly saw this, and attempted to reverse this trend by closing the markets and engaging in a currency reform. The currency reform was an unmitigated disaster, and the markets reopened in just three months. At this point, North Korea can never return to being a communist economy. And greater the market forces are, the weaker the forces of the regime.
North Korea is more porous than ever. It is, of course, true that North Korea is severely isolated. But the isolation must not be overstated. Because of the factor (3) above, North Korea now has a group of people at the top of the economic ladder who actually enjoy a semi-decent living standards. There are more than 800,000 cell phones operating in North Korea now, and that is before we begin counting the Chinese phones in North Korea that can be used to call South Korea directly. Young people in Pyongyang openly flaunt their iPads. South Korean pop culture, which has captured the imagination of the world, has also hit North Korea. The pirated DVD sets of the latest Korean dramas are widely available in North Korea. Further, there are more North Korean defectors than ever living in South Korea -- 20,000 of them, representing practically every major city in North Korea. Because border patrols can be easily bribed, these defectors regularly communicate with the families back in North Korea via telephone or letters. All this means that ordinary North Koreans have absolutely no illusions about the failure of their own country to provide for them.
North Korean economy is weaker than ever. The price of rice in North Korea nearly doubled in the last two years, although there is no indication that the living standards in North Korea improved twofold as well. Although rice is harvested in autumn, the price has not fallen in the recent months. Last time this happened in the 1990s, North Korea went through a mass starvation in which a million people starved to death. North Koreans remember this, and likely will not wait to starve this time.

All of these examples point to the fundamental existential dilemma for North Korea -- if the regime lets the status quo continue, the rot of capitalistic corruptibility will reach all the way to the top of the regime and mass starvation may happen again. The regime already saw that it could not revert to the command-and-control economy. But opening up North Korea would lead to the collapse and destruction of the regime. Kim Jong-Un has no way out of this trap. North Korea will collapse; it is just a matter of when and how.

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

Still Traveling, Sorry

2011-12-21T02:42:00.000-05:00

Sorry folks, the Korean is back in California with his family and still traveling around Santa Barbara wine country. He will be back with his reaction re: Kim Jong-Il's death and other topics in a couple of days.

Kim Jong-Il is dead

2011-12-18T23:44:00.000-05:00

the korean is traveling and cannot say much right now except he will be celebrating tonight. have your say in the meantime .

1000th Wednesday Protest, and Lies about Comfort Women by Imperial Japan Apologists

2011-12-15T22:41:00.007-05:00

As the Korean discussed previously, there was the 1000th Wednesday Protest in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul this past Wednesday. At the protest, there was an unveiling of a statue, commemorating the Comfort Women.

The statue is a statue of a girl sitting down. There is an empty chair next to the girl,
so that visitors may sit next to her and look toward the Japanese Embassy. There is
also a plaque, in Korean, English and Japanese, that describe the significance of the statue
(source)

True to form, the Japanese Embassy protested the statue, stating that the statue was "extremely regrettable," and asked it to be removed. Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs replied: "Rather than insisting on the removal of the statue, the Japanese government should seriously ask itself why these victims have held their weekly rallies for 20 years, never missing a week, and whether it really cannot find a way to restore the honor these woman so earnestly want.”

On this occasion, the Korean will address some of the lies and half-truths that Japan apologists propagate, commonly found in prominent sites like Japan Probe and picked up by careless observers like the BBC. In particular, this post will focus on the apologies and reparations aspect, rather than the facts about Comfort Women themselves.

[Addendum, 12/16/2011: There are additional arguments commonly made by Japan apologists other than the ones listed below, but those arguments are so intellectually worthless that they do not merit a lengthy discussion. Such arguments include: outright denial of established facts ("There is no evidence that Japanese government coerced these women"); tu quoque ("Korea committed atrocities in Vietnam"); false moral equivalence ("Allied forces also committed atrocities during World War II"); distraction with tenuously related items ("Prostitutes in Korea are treated badly also."). If you want to argue against this piece, please stay away from those types of arguments. It is one thing to be morally depraved by arguing for Japan's position; it is quite another to be morally depraved and stupid.]

1. Japan already apologized for Comfort Women.

This statement is only technically true, in a sense that the Japanese government mouthed the words of apology. For example, in 1993, in Kono Statement, Japanese government acknowledged that Imperial Japanese military was directly and indirectly involved in recruiting Comfort Women through coercion and trickery. There are several other cases in which Japanese Prime Ministers issued an apology regarding Comfort Women.

However, the point of an apology is to show a genuine change of heart and contrition. An apology is not a license for one to turn around and spit in the face of the person to whom the apology was just issued. An apology is not a credit in the moral bank account, so that one can later make a withdrawal and commit more immoral deeds. Simply mouthing the words and going through the motions are clearly inadequate for anyone with a functional moral compass. In that sense, there are several of reasons to consider the Japanese apologies to be inadequate:

a. Each apology was carefully worded to avoid any legal liability

If you did something bad, you should be ready to accept all consequences, moral and legal. You have to say the right thing and do the right thing also. If you say the right things but fail to do the right things, the words are meaningless and hollow. That is how each one of Japan's apologies on Comfort Women has been structured. Reading carefully, most of the apologies usually say: "We are sorry this bad thing happened to you," without discussing that it was the Imperial Japan that caused that bad thing. Each one of Japan's apologies regarding Comfort Women was designed for Japan to evade legal responsibility while attempting to absolve its moral responsibility. But morality does not work that way. Even a child would know this.

b. Subsequent Japanese administrations sought to whitewash the Comfort Women issue

Japan's apologies -- particularly those made in the 1990s, which had greater specificity about its direct responsibility -- was not a result of a nationwide reflection and contrition by Japan. It was issued by an unusually liberal Japanese government, which had a tenuous hold on power. When the conservative block of the Liberal Democratic Party came back in power, the Japanese government quickly displayed the insincerity of its stance on the Comfort Women issue.

In 2007, a group of 120 LDP members sought to water down Kono Statement. Nakayama Nariaki, the leader of that group, said: "Some say it is useful to compare the brothels to college cafeterias run by private companies, who recruit their own staff, procure foodstuffs and set prices."

Also in 2007, LDP Prime Minister Abe Shinzo (a grandson of a man suspected to be a class-A war criminal, Kishi Nobusuke,) denied that the Imperial Japanese military recruited Comfort Women. Abe only backed off after a stern warning from the U.S. ambassador. Another former Prime Minister, Nakasone Yasuhiro, also denied that the Comfort Women were forcibly recruited. Further, former education minister Nariaki Nakayama declared he was proud that the LDP had succeeded in getting references to "wartime sex slaves" struck from most authorized history texts for junior high schools. Nakayama further said: "It could be said that the occupation was something they could have pride in, given their existence soothed distraught feelings of men in the battlefield and provided a certain respite and order."

(Take a break here, let that last statement sink in for a bit, and appreciate the level of depravity required to make that statement.)

Again, back to the overriding point: an apology is meaningless when it is mere words mouthed as a formality. Because the subsequent leaders of the Japanese government were ready to go back on its stance on Comfort Women just as soon as the administration changed, there are real reasons to doubt the sincerity of Japan's contrition over Comfort Women.

(More after the jump.)

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

2. Japan offered reparation for Comfort Women in 1995, but Comfort Women are refusing to accept it.

Two years after Kono Statement, Japanese government established "Asia Women's Fund" to provide compensation for Comfort Women. However, AWF was funded by private donations rather than governmental funding, again in an attempt to shield the Japanese government from legal liability.

Like Kono Statement and other apologies by the Japanese government, the offer from AWF was morally deficient. Accordingly, most Comfort Women refused the payment.

3. Japan already paid reparation for Comfort Women in 1965, but Korean government diverted the funds.

In 1965, Korea and Japan entered into Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea, under which Korean government relinquished individual claims of reparation in exchange of a lump sum payment of $800 million in grants and soft loans. Korean government used the money to fund infrastructure projects, such as a highway between Seoul and Busan. Based on this treaty, Japan apologists argue that the fault lies with Korean government for compensating the Comfort Women. This argument is incorrect, both morally and legally, for the following reasons:

a. Japan knowingly dealt with a dictator who clearly did not represent the interest of Korean people

Park Chung-Hee was the president who entered into the Basic Treaty with Japan, which makes the legitimacy of the Basic Treaty doubtful in a number of ways. First, Park Chung-Hee was not a democratically elected leader, but a dictator who came to power through a military coup d'etat. Although Park went through the formality of elections, those elections were clearly and heavily rigged. Second, previous to Korea's independence, Park was an officer of the Imperial Japanese military. (Gee, I wonder what he felt about Imperial Japan's war?) Third, when the news of the Basic Treaty broke, there was so much protest against the treaty that the Park dictatorship had to declare a martial law to suppress the opposition. Under the martial law, all schools were closed, citizens were banned from holding meetings, arrests were made without warrants and the government pre-screened newspapers.

Every one of these facts were known to the Japanese government, but the Japanese government dealt with the Park Chung-Hee dictatorship anyway and entered into a treaty that was clearly inadequate to address the injuries suffered at the hands of Japanese Imperialism. (More on this below.)

b. The reparation amount paid by Japan was grossly inadequate

The amount of $800 million was calculated by paying $200 per survivors of the Japanese conscription and $2000 per those who were injured. In 2011 dollars, that's less than $1,500 and $15,000 per person. A dead dog is worth more than $1,500 in either Japanese or Korean legal system. By the way, Germany pays Holocaust survivors a lifetime pension.

c. Korean government, in fact, paid out the reparation paid by Japan

It is ridiculous to argue that the fault lies with Korean government, given that the Japanese government could not have possibly expected that the money would go to the hands of the people who suffered under its rule by negotiating a dictator who came to power illegitimately.

But be that as it may, Korean government did pay out the reparation money and then some. In 1975, a decade after the Basic Treaty, Park Chung-Hee dictatorship paid out KRW 300,000 (= around $300) to those eligible for reparation. (At this time, however, Comfort Women were not paid reparation because their existence was not widely known.) After Korea democratized, Korean government paid out KRW 20 million (= around $20,000) to those eligible for reparation in 2006. The amount of reparation, by the way, is much more than what Japan paid as reparation (which, again, was around $1,500 in 2011 dollars.) Former Comfort Women also receive a separate pension from Korean government, far above and beyond anything that Japan has ever provided.

d. Basic Treaty did not eliminate Comfort Women's claims

Even if we brush aside the monstrously amoral aspect to Japan's position and only concerned ourselves with its legality, Japan's position is on thin ice.

First, internal Japanese documents around the time of the negotiations of the Basic Treaty show that Japan did not intend to extinguish individual claims by entering into the Basic Treaty. Referring to the provision that allegedly waived Korean individuals' right of claim, an internal memorandum from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs states:

"By Art. 2 [of the Basic Treaty], parties agree that they will not exercise the right of diplomatic protection, which is a unique right belonging to the state under the international law; it is not the case that individual’s property [which includes claims] was used to satisfy the obligations of the state."

Second, even if the Basic Treaty did attempt to eliminate Comfort Women's claim for reparation, well-established principles of international law say that such attempt is invalid. Article 8 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law." Article 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights likewise states: "Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes . . . [t]o ensure that any person whose rights or freedoms as herein recognized are violated shall have an effective remedy." Because Japan's reparation has been grossly inadequate under the Basic Treaty, Comfort Women were denied of an "effective remedy" guaranteed by established principles of international law.

Another established principle of international law is even more directly on point. Sub-Commission resolution 1999/16 from UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, titled “Systematic rape, sexual slavery and slavery-like practices”, states at Paragraph 13:

The Sub-Commission . . . [n]otes that the rights and obligations of States and individuals with respect to the violations referred to in the present resolution cannot, as a matter of international law, be extinguished by peace treaty, peace agreement, amnesty or by any other means.

Therefore, even speaking legally, Japanese government cannot argue that the Basic Treaty absolves them from all liabilities to the Comfort Women.

4. There is nothing Japan can do to satisfy Koreans about Imperial Japan's legacy.

This is simply not true. There are only 63 surviving Comfort Women left. Logistically, it is not difficult at all for the Japanese Prime Minister to pay each one of them a visit, hand-deliver a sincere letter of apology, and vow to provide them with a lifetime pension, identify and punish any surviving Japanese who was responsible, fund a museum and a scholarship dedicated to chronicling the ordeals that they went through, and ensure that Japan's history textbooks accurately depict what happened. The cost of doing this for Japan is minimal. The only thing holding back Japan is the lack of political will. Once these things are done, there is no possible way in which any Korean can protest about the way Japan treats former Comfort Women.

(For a broad action plan with which Japan could finally deal with its colonial legacy once and for all, please refer to this post.)

The Korean would emphasize that this is not "punishing the child for the sins of the parents," as Japan apologists mistakenly argue. No one -- not even the most nationalistic Korean -- is saying that the current generation of Japanese people should be punished as if they themselves committed this horrendous crime. All Koreans want is for (1) Japanese government to unequivocally admit what its country did in the past; (2) former Comfort Women to be adequately compensated in their short remaining lives, and; (3) Japanese people to fully understand the crimes of its predecessors. None of the above is a punishment. Rather, it is a normal course of action that any decent human would take. In fact, it is the least Japan can do. The battle here is not Japan versus Korea -- it is Japan versus justice, Japan versus human decency.

That Japan is obstinately refusing to take this course is deeply troubling, because I love Japan. The greatest influences of my life include Japanese movies and cartoons. I love visiting Japan. I love Japanese food. The Japanese people I know are wonderful, kind, artistic, gritty and civic-minded people, worthy of deep admiration. But the longer this takes, I cannot draw myself away from this appalling conclusion: Japan, as a whole, does not think it did anything wrong to these women. I desperately want to believe that the Japanese people are not amoral monsters, who would rather play the cynical waiting game until all of the former Comfort Women die away. But each time the Wednesday protesters are turned away, each time the Japanese Embassy protests a statue commemorating the Comfort women, my faith in human decency, common among all people of all places and times, gets chipped away little by little.

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

Happiness, Success and Michael Jordan

2011-12-14T21:52:00.001-05:00

This (slight old) New York Times article captured much of what the Korean has been thinking about lately:

As the investigation of happiness proceeded, Dr. Seligman began seeing certain limitations of the concept. Why did couples go on having children even though the data clearly showed that parents are less happy than childless couples? Why did billionaires desperately seek more money even when there was nothing they wanted to do with it?

And why did some people keep joylessly playing bridge? Dr. Seligman, an avid player himself, kept noticing them at tournaments. They never smiled, not even when they won. They didn’t play to make money or make friends. . . . “They wanted to win for its own sake, even if it brought no positive emotion,” says Dr. Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. “They were like hedge fund managers who just want to accumulate money and toys for their own sake. Watching them play, seeing them cheat, it kept hitting me that accomplishment is a human desiderata in itself.” . . .

In his 2008 book, “Gross National Happiness,” Dr. Brooks argues that what’s crucial to well-being is not how cheerful you feel, not how much money you make, but rather the meaning you find in life and your sense of “earned success” — the belief that you have created value in your life or others’ lives.

A New Gauge to See What’s Beyond Happiness [New York Times] (emphases added)

Dr. Seligman's insight contributes greatly to the way we must think about success, happiness and -- yes it's this topic again -- Tiger Parenting. For a major strain of objections against Tiger Parenting is that it creates unhappy people. The relentless pursuit of self-enhancement will make children unhappy, because hard work is, well, hard. Children would be certainly happier if they did no hard work and did not eat their vegetables.

This objection is mistaken, and Dr. Seligman precisely identifies the mistake: "happiness" is not equal to "positive emotions." Happiness is not the same as feeling or appearing chipper all the time. In fact, happy people may carry on their lives with negative emotions. Happy people may appear to be joyless and grim, like the bridge players described in the article.

In fact, because the Korean is a massive basketball fan, the image of a grim bridge players single-mindedly pursuing victory brought forth images of the basketball's greatest player ever -- Michael Jordan.

More after the jump.

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

Everyone knows Michael Jordan -- the greatest basketball player ever, a cultural icon that made basketball, Chicago Bulls and the wagging tongue a global phenomenon. But everyone but the most hardcore students of NBA history is oblivious to the defining feature of Michael Jordan's life: that Michael Jordan is a psychotic asshole who prized winning in all situations and at all costs. People generally consider Kobe Bryant to be an arrogant, self-absorbed asshole, but trust me -- if Jordan lived in Kobe's era in which every little thing was exposed and repeated ad nauseum on the Internet, the negative public opinion about Jordan would have completely dwarfed Kobe's. Consider:

Jordan regularly punched out his own teammates if he thought they were not pulling their weight. The most well-known example were Will Purdue and Steve Kerr, whom Jordan punched in the face.
When Scottie Pippen challenged Jordan in practice, Jordan kept scoring on Pippen, at will, until Pippen pleaded Jordan to stop.
Jordan would throw deliberately difficult passes to Bulls center Bill Cartwright, to prove a point that Cartwright was not good enough for him.
When Jerry Krause, the general manager of Chicago Bulls, spoke glowingly of the talent of Phoenix Suns player Dan Majerle, Jordan torched Majerle in the 1993 Finals and screamed "Fuck you, Majerle!" at the end of the game.
Jordan would beat his teammates in poker on team flights so badly that the coaches told rookies to stay away from Jordan's games.
He bribed airport baggage guys to put out his suitcase first, then bet with his teammates that his bag would be the first one out of the conveyer belt.
Jordan was such a ridiculous asshole that a sports writer named Sam Smith wrote a book called The Jordan Rules, describing how much of an asshole Jordan was. The stories in the book were so over the top that many doubted the book's veracity, but later accounts largely corroborate all the stories in the book.

Let's step back and think about all this. Can you imagine Michael Jordan being "happy", if we were to think that "happiness" is no more than "positive emotions"? There is no way. As far as we can glean from his actions in public, Jordan mind must have been filled with negative emotions for most of the time. He considered every little thing a personal insult, even the things that no normal person would ever consider an insult. Did Majerle do anything to Jordan? Of course not. But Jordan's general manager thought Majerle was good, so Majerle had to be destroyed. That's how Jordan's pathological mind worked.

This is not an image that we commonly associate with someone who is happy with his job. When we imagine someone who is happy with what he is doing, we usually picture a type of idiot savant, happily grinning at every stage of his work. But that was not Michael Jordan. Having taken something as an insult, Jordan would use that thing as a figurative razor blade to make small cuts on his ego, building up the sense of unfair injury that enabled him to mercilessly destroy his opponents. For most of the time when he played basketball, Jordan was angry -- like a raging bull in a bullfight shortly before facing the matador, bleeding profusely from all the small stabs made by the picadors. Does that sound like Michael Jordan carried a lot of positive emotions when he played basketball?

Yet if his public actions were any indication, Michael Jordan was happy as a basketball player. He is the grim and joyless bridge player in Dr. Seligman's study, writ larger than anyone else. For the most part, Jordan seethed in anger that made sense only to him. Such state of mind cannot possibly be considered "positive emotion." Instead, we might consider those people who are relentlessly obsessed with success to be soulless machines who are dead inside. (Which is a charge regularly leveled against Tiger Cubs!) But Jordan achieved what he wanted, his happiness was plainly visible. His joy was the opposite of mechanical and soulless -- it was visceral and real. Just watch.

Michael Jordan is a clear example of how happiness is not the same as positive emotions. But because too many American parents have mistaken happiness with positive emotions, we have a generation of American youth who resort to therapy for a gaping hole in their hearts:

. . . what was so upsetting, she continued, was that she felt she had nothing to be unhappy about. She reported that she had “awesome” parents, two fabulous siblings, supportive friends, an excellent education, a cool job, good health, and a nice apartment. She had no family history of depression or anxiety. So why did she have trouble sleeping at night? Why was she so indecisive, afraid of making a mistake, unable to trust her instincts and stick to her choices? Why did she feel “less amazing” than her parents had always told her she was? Why did she feel “like there’s this hole inside” her? Why did she describe herself as feeling “adrift”?

How to Land Your Kid in Therapy [The Atlantic]

This is precisely what Tiger Parenting guards against. Critics of Tiger Parenting consider Tiger Parenting's relentless pursuit of success and achievement to be deadening. Not so -- it is the lack of achievement that is deadening. It is the lack of "earned success" (as Dr. Seligman put it) that kills the soul, because the lack of earned success means your life is devoid of meaning. If all we ever needed was positive emotion, we could simply hook ourselves onto a machine that is designed to eternally drip morphine into our bloodstream. But because we need true happiness -- which is more like a deep, adult satisfaction rather than a light, childlike joy -- we need more than simply floating in a warm bath of positive emotions.

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

Ask a Korean! Wiki: Korean Schools Around Dallas?

2011-12-13T22:00:00.000-05:00

Dear Korean,

We are hoping to enroll our daughter in Korean classes when she is old enough and take classes ourselves. We are planning to move to the Dallas area in 2012. I have been able to find plenty of Korean markets, restaurants and businesses, but I can't seem to find Saturday or Sunday Korean language classes for children and adults in the area. Do you know where I should look?

Barbara K.

The Korean has never stepped foot in the great state of Texas, unfortunately. Readers, any ideas?

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

Ask a Korean! News: 1000th Wednesday Protest, and a Comfort Woman's Story

2011-12-12T22:35:00.003-05:00

First, a little bit of background. As many of the readers know, although the Japanese government recognized its responsibility for Imperial Japan's hand in forcibly recruiting Comfort Women, the Japanese government has not yet made any compensation out of government funds.

Some of the surviving Comfort Women in Korea -- there are only 63 of them, who are in their 80s and 90s -- protest in front of the Japanese embassy for the inadequacy of Japan's response every Wednesday. The "Wednesday Protest" to be held on this Wednesday, December 14, 2011 will be the 1000th one, after nearly 20 years of weekly gatherings since January 1992.

Dong-A Ilbo featured a story told by Ms. Kim Bok-Dong, who was recruited as a Comfort Woman at age 14. She is now 87 years old, and is the longest participant of the Wednesday Protests. The translation is below.

* * *

"Mom, how old am I this year?"

She said it has been eight years. I was 14 when I was taken, so I was 22. All my friends were married and left the town.

As I was being dragged around by the Japanese military and tortured, I completely forgot how many years have passed. One day, there was a commotion about liberation. I was in Bangkok, Thailand at the time, my last stop as a Comfort Woman. I took a boat with other women. We had almost nothing to eat on the boat, and it took us several months for me to come back home [which was Yangsan, Gyeongsangnam-do.] It must have been around October when I got home -- the rice field was golden and people were harvesting.

I got home, and my mother was cooking in the kitchen. She was shocked, because I turned so dark. For so long, I was raped by hundreds and thousands again and again -- how could a 14-year-old child be right? My mother was in shock also because instead of crying my eyes out, the first thing I asked was: how old was I? I didn't really forget -- I blocked out the time when I had to deal with the Japanese soldiers.

(More after the jump)

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When I was 14, someone from the local government office was in town, saying there was not enough people to make the soldiers' uniform. He told me, "you should go too." I said, "How could I? I never learned to sew." Then he said, "you can learn there. Don't worry, they will send you back by the time you got old enough to get married." I said, "I might go if I go with my mom, but I don't want to go." Then he scared me: "It's what the Japanese government wants to do. If you don't go, your family will be in trouble." I was scared, so I went along.

So I was dragged all over Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand and went through hell. At first, I had hope that I would get back home they promised that they would send me back when I'm older. So I barely hung on, counting days, but they would only take me to different countries. It's not like I could speak with them. I would tell them, "please send me home. I think I'm going to die," but the damn Japanese only laughed. Nobody listened to me, so I was practically a mute. After molesting a young child like that, I thought they would say, "sorry, you can go home now" -- but no one did. Two years passed.

Afterward, I lived without counting days. I gave up trying to figure out what day was today, what year was today. I think the pain would have broken me if I was counting the days. You have no idea when the pain would end, so you just hang on one day at a time. When the sun rises, I would think: "I'm awake." When the sun sets, "I'm still alive. It would be great if I died after I fall asleep." And then I would wake up the next morning again. The pain was unspeakable. I couldn't even imagine that it would take so long.

Ms. Kim Bok-Dong (second from the left) attends a memorial of Ms. Noh Su-Bok,
a former Comfort Women. The memorial was held at the 998th Wednesday Protest,
held in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul.

I hear the 1000th Wednesday Protest is coming up. I am 87 years old. All my protest buddies died off, and now there are barely 60 some odd people. I was 68 when I first joined the protest. I was a young grandmother at that time -- I could at least stand up straight. Other grandmothers had a lot of energy too, saying "we should fight." I heard that in that January cold, women's groups were getting together to protest every week to help the old Comfort Women grandmothers. I couldn't sit still, so I was took the train up from Busan, where I was living. They already had seven protests or so. I really thought, "Alright, I'm doing this. They wouldn't just sit around if a grandmother comes out like this."

I thought I had a strong resolution, but I just burst into tears in front of the Japanese embassy. I was trembling all over. All I could do was yell. I knew I had to protest, item by item, but all I could do was scream. For the crime of being a Comfort Woman, I lived in hiding outside of my hometown for 40 years, running a tiny restaurant. I have no child who calls me mother. All I could do was yell -- just come out and look at me, look at this old grandmother, after you made me unable to live like any other woman, unable to wear a wedding garb. I had no other way. I thought these bastards would come out and say, "we're sorry grandmother, we are sorry."

But the police came and put the grandmothers' on a bus. We were crying and yelling, but they just carried us out and put us down at the City Hall square. So what? We would come back. I took the train back to Busan. I even thought in the train back, "I should see this one through. If I keep showing up, wouldn't they at least say they were sorry?" I had hope. It's not about the money. If they are human, they had to apologize.

I came up for every protest. At the 50th protest, we went to the Blue House instead. We yelled at the front gate, "Mr. President, please come out, we need to get this resolved." The police took us again to the City Hall square. At first, I really thought it would be resolved soon, as long as I kept it up. I yelled at the protest, rain or snow. Yell, taken away and let go at the City Hall and go back to Busan -- and the time passed like that.

At first, we kept count. I figured around the 100th time they would hear us out -- but no. The Japanese embassy has twenty-some odd windows. When we go, they put the curtain down and block out all the windows. They don't even peek. No matter how much we chant -- "apologies and reparations" -- they put this thief-catching cameras on the gate and hide, just looking at what those grandmothers are doing. Now I am too old to yell, so I just look at the embassy, trying to see if they at least opened up the curtain a little. I can't even stand up straight anymore, but no one would listen. It doesn't matter how much we plead and protest.

Since then, I didn't count the numbers. I couldn't live like that. Now, I just let the week pass. I would realize it's Wednesday, then I attend the protest. I get home, and think another Wednesday passed. I hang on, one week at a time.

As I was dragged around for eight years, I began drinking at age 16. I would drink whiskey and gaoliangjiou when I had to deal with the Japanese, because I could not stand being clear headed. I would smoke after dealing with a Japanese soldier, because there was no other way to take care of the anger and sorrow in my young heart. Now, after each protest I sit in my room and chain-smoke. Every Wednesday, because they won't even draw their curtains no matter how much this grandmother yells.

After I came back, my mother said I should get married, since I was 22. She thought I was at a uniform factory. I had to tell her the truth. She could only say: "How would I meet my ancestors after I die? What would I say after turning my child this way?" She said that every day, then died only six years later. The doctor said her heart was full of anger.

There is a big commotion around this 1000th protest. I am just frustrated. My cataract surgery went wrong, so I can't see out of my left eye and the image is distorted out of my right eye too. I wonder if I could see at least those embassy bastards coming out and saying, "grandmother, please don't be angry any more. We're sorry," while I can still see. I couldn't even imagine that it would take so long. Being dragged around, not being able to say anything and not being able to receive any apology -- it's the same as before. I feel so helpless. I wonder if my mother felt this helpless also.

I miss my mom all of a sudden. This can't go over the 1000th time. We can't wait much longer. I am too old now.

‘할매, 이제 화 푸소 미안했소’ 죽기전 이 말 들어야 할낀데… [Dong-A Ilbo]

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

Questions from Jangheung High School! (Part 3)

2011-12-09T20:40:00.000-05:00

Continuing from yesterday's post, here is the third and last question from the high school students at Jangheung High School in Jeollanam-do.

Question from Gwon-ji (권지): What was the worst situation when you moved to USA? [미국으로 갔을 때 가장 최악의 상황은?]

Probably the worst situation was my first year and a half at my new high school. As I wrote previously, my family moved to an area that is very heavily Korean American. According to the 2010 census, my town is more than 60% Asian American, probably the highest ratio in the continental U.S. The same was the case in my high school. In fact, because my town has such concentrated Korean American population, many famous Korean American celebrities like Yoo Seung-Joon and Han Ye-Seul attended my high school.

아마 고등학교 전학가서 1년반정도가 최악의 상황이었던 걸로 기억합니다. 이전 포스트에서 얘기한대로, 저희 가족은 재미교포가 대단히 많은 동네로 이민을 가게되었습니다. 미국의 2010년 인구조사에 따르면 저희 시(市)는 아시안계가 60%가 넘는데, 이건 하와이 뺀 미국에서는 아마 제일 높은 수준일겁니다. 제가 다닌 고등학교도 마찬가지였죠. 교포가 워낙 많다보니 유승준이나 한예슬같은 교포 출신 연예인들이 제 고등학교 출신들입니다.

I previously wrote about how I learned English, and it was a long and difficult journey. But that was not the most difficult part of moving to America. As difficult as it was to learn English, I had absolute confidence that I would be able to get it done by doing exactly the same thing I have been doing all my life -- memorizing. (By the way, I know that a lot of people around you say you can't learn English just by memorizing. Don't listen to them. As I explained in the post about how I learned English in America, language learning is entirely about memorization and repetition.)

이전 포스트에서 제가 어떻게 영어 공부를 했는가는 벌써 설명을 했지만, 길고 고달픈 여정이었습니다. 하지만 영어공부가 제일 어려운 경험은 아니었습니다. 영어공부가 물론 어렵긴 했지만, 그래도 해왔던 그대로만 공부하면 (즉, 계속 암기하면) 영어 실력이 늘거라는 확신이 있었으니까요. (여담으로, 주변에 암기 위주로 공부하면 영어 실력이 안 는다고 말하는 사람들이 많을 겁니다. 믿지 마세요. 이전 포스트에 설명한데로, 제 영어 실력은 백 퍼센트 반복과 암기만으로 이뤄졌습니다.)

The most difficult part for me was dealing with being lonely. In Korea, all of your classmates stay in the same classroom all day, which means you end up automatically making friends from your class. In my American high school, I was on my own. Also, I lived in the same neighborhood in Korea all my life and had the same group of friends all my life. The worst part was that, because I wanted to learn English as quickly as possible, I strictly avoided all other Korean students. But for a while, my English was not good enough to make friends among non-Korean speaking classmates. For about a year and a half, I had absolutely zero friends at school. I ate alone during lunch, and went to the school library to read books.

제일 난처했던 부분은 외로움을 견디는 것이었습니다. 한국에서는 반 친구들이 다 같은 교실에 하루 종일 앉아있으니까, 자동적으로 반에서 친구가 생기죠. 하지만 미국 고등학교에서는 완전히 혼자 알아서 해야됩니다. 또 저는 한국에서 평생 한 동네에서만 살아서, 초, 중, 고등학교 친구들이 다 똑같았습니다. 제일 최악의 상황은 영어를 최대한 빨리 배우기 위해서 다른 한국 학생들을 철저히 피해다녔다는 겁니다. 하지만 한동안은 한국말 못하는 친구를 사귈만큼 영어를 잘하는 것도 아니었지요. 그래서 한 1년반정도는 정말 학교에 친구가 단 한 명도 없었습니다. 점심도 조용히 혼자서 먹고, 학교 도서관가서 책을 읽곤 했죠.

This ended by senior year of high school, when I finally had enough skills to speak comfortably in English. My final year at my high school was relatively normal, as I had enough friends and did enough extracurricular activities to keep myself busy. But overall, the first year and a half of my new high school was not a good memory.

제가 고3쯤 되어서야 영어 실력이 어느 정도 늘면서 이 상황은 해소가 되었습니다. 그때쯤에는 친구들도 어느정도 생기고 특별활동도 하고 해서, 고3 생활은 비교적 정상적으로 보냈습니다. 그래도 돌아보면, 이민 생활의 첫 한해 반은 그다지 좋은 기억은 아니었습니다.

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

Ask a Korean! News: Seoul Public Schools to Phase out Foreign English Teachers

2011-12-07T23:20:00.002-05:00

Here is a piece of news particularly relevant to a lot of the readers of this blog. Seoul's public school system (Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, or SMOE) is set to gradually phase out native-speaking English teachers by 2014, citing the preference of the students and parents for a Korean teacher teaching English. SMOE currently employs 1,245 native-speaking English teachers (NSETs). By next year, 707 positions will be eliminated.

Lest there should be any misunderstanding -- this does not mean that there will be no place for non-Koreans to teach English in Seoul. They simply won't be able to work at a public school in Seoul. Each educational district makes its own decision on this topic, and whether the rest of the country will follow suit remains to be seen.

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

Ask a Korean! News: Korea's Impending Population Crisis

2011-12-07T22:45:00.001-05:00

The latest report by Statistics Korea on Korea’s rapid greying is hair-raising, hopefully even for those who do not take Korea’s low fertility problem seriously. Today, approximately 70% of Korea’s population is in the working age (between 15 and 64.) Stated differently, 100 Koreans in working age are supporting around 37 children and the elderly. But by 2060, less than 50% of Korea’s population is projected to be in working age. In other words, by 2060, 100 Koreans in working age are supporting 101 children and the elderly. The total population will decrease to 43 million.

(The graphic from Yonhap News starkly shows the consequence of greying Korea.)

Even more frightening is the fact that this estimate is not based on the assumption that the current fertility rate of 1.23 will continue, but based on the assumption that the fertility rate will rise all the way until 2045. If it were assumed that the fertility rate will fall to 1.01 and the inbound immigration does not increase, by 2060 Korea will only have 34.5 million people, around 33% drop from 50 million people that it currently has.

Even assuming increased inbound immigration and significant increase in fertility rate, Korea’s choice appears to be between gradual, manageable population decrease or rapid, catastrophic population decrease. Even under the most optimistic scenario, in which fertility rate increases to 1.78 per couple and inbound immigration dramatically increases, Korea would still have a decreasing size of population by 2060.

(Cross-posted on the Marmot's Hole.)

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

Questions from Jangheung High School! (Part 2)

2011-12-07T22:39:00.000-05:00

Continuing from yesterday's post, here is the second question from the high school students at Jangheung High School in Jeollanam-do.

Question from Han-jin (한진): What is different between Korean high school and USA high school education? [한국 고등학교와 미국 고등학교 사이 교육의 차이점에 대해 어떻게 생각하십니까?]

The Korean must first note that the question in English and the question in Korean are slightly different, since the question in Korean asks: "what do you think about the difference between Korean high school and USA high school education?" The Korean will go by the English version of the question. Because the Korean is planning to write a huge series on Korea's education, he will limit himself to short and broad-brush observations, in bullet point forms. (I know, I know -- I have been promising this series for a very long time. But researching and writing takes a lot of time, and I only have so much time in a day.)

At the top level, Korean high school students and American high school students both work very hard. There is a common misconception in Korea that in America, high school students freely roam the world. As far as upper level of American high school students are concerned, that is simply not true. Top American high school students think about attending college just as much as Korean high school students, and they also attend a great deal of private academies.

공부 잘하는 미국 고등학생은 공부 잘하는 한국 고등학생만큼 열심히 합니다. 미국에서 고등학생들은 그냥 세상을 배회하며 논다는 식의 오해가 한국에 많은데요, 공부 잘하는 학생들 레벨에서는 그건 정말 아닙니다. 공부 잘하는 미국 고등학생들은 한국 고등학생들만큼이나 입시 스트레스도 받고, 학원도 무지 많이 다닙니다.

But among average students, there is a big difference. Simply put, they do not try very hard at school. They may think they are trying hard, but they certainly do not try as hard as average Korean high school students try.

하지만 보통 고등학생 사이에서는 큰 차이가 나는데요, 쉽게 말해서 보통 미국 고등학생들은 그다지 열심히 공부를 하지 않습니다. 자기 딴에는 열심히 한다고 생각하지만, 보통 한국 고등학생 공부하는 것에 비하면 아무것도 아니죠.
In Korea, the grade for the semester is entirely determined by two exams: mid term and final exams. In the U.S., each and every homework assignment counts toward the final grade. Mid terms and final exams exist in American high schools, but in many cases homework assignments collectively can count up to 50% of the final grade more. The Korean thinks this is a good idea.

한국 고등학교에서는 중간고사, 기말고사 시험 두 개로 학기 성적이 나오지만, 미국 고등학교에서는 숙제 하나하나가 최종 성적에 반영됩니다. 미국 고등학교에도 중간고사 기말고사는 존재하지만, 숙제 점수를 다하면 학기 최종 성적의 반 혹은 그 이상으로 반영될 수도 있습니다. 좋은 제도라고 생각합니다.
In a Korean high school, students stay in a single classroom and teachers come, for the most part. In an American high school, teachers stay in a single classroom and the students move. Because of that, "classmates" mean a lot less than it does in Korea.

한국 고등학교에서는 대개 학생들은 교실에 머물고 선생님들이 교실로 오시지만, 미국 고등학교에서는 대개 선생님들이 교실에 계시고 학생들이 옵니다. 그래서 "반 친구"라는 말은 미국에서는 그다지 의미가 없습니다.
American high schools have a lot more electives than Korean high schools, and American high school students end up taking fewer subjects than Korean high school students. Korean high school students take around 13-15 subjects in a semester. But American high school students only take around 6-7 subjects in a semester because American high school students select only a few classes to take all semester long. (To be sure, some classes like English and Math are mandatory.) This means that, for American high school students, each period is the same subject every day of the week for the whole semester. In contrast, Korean high school students have a different schedule every day of the week, in order to accommodate all of the subjects.

미국 고등학교는 한국 고등학교보다 선택 과목이 훨씬 많고, 미국 고등학생들은 한국 고등학생들보다 과목들을 더 적게 듣습니다. 한국 고등학생들은 한 학기에 대개 13-15개의 과목을 듣는 반면에, 미국 고등학생들은 한 학기에 6-7개의 과목만을 듣습니다. 이는 미국 고등학생들은 선택과목 몇 개만 골라서 그것만 들을 수 있기 때문입니다. (물론 영어나 수학같은 과목은 필수 과목입니다.) 그렇기 때문에 미국 고등학생들은 일주일 내내 매일 시간표가 똑같습니다. 반면에 한국 고등학생들은 많은 과목들을 다 들어야하기 때문에, 시간표가 매일 바뀌죠.
Also, what might be considered an extracurricular activity in Korean high school is actually a class in American high school. The Korean was in the school newspaper team both in his Korean high school and in his American high school. In Korea, the newspaper club met after school; in America, it was a class in the third period.

또 한국에서는 특별활동일 것들이 미국 고등학교에서는 정규 수업인 경우가 많습니다. 저같은 경우에는 한국 그리고 미국에서 둘다 신문부에 있었는데요, 한국에서 신문부는 방과 후에 따로 만났지만 미국에서 신문부는 3교시에 듣는 정규 수업이었죠.

There are many more differences, but we will stop here for now.

차이점들은 이것말고도 훨씬 많지만, 이정도에서 그만하겠습니다.

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

Questions from Jangheung High School! (Part 1)

2011-12-06T22:09:00.002-05:00

Dear Korean,

I teach English in Korea and I give my students writing assignments each week. This past week I gave them a short one: think of a question to ask The Korean. Each student wrote a question and the students themselves narrowed the finalists to the three below. If it's not too much trouble, could you please answer one and if possible all of the questions below, in both English and in Korean?

Matthew V. from Jangheung High School, Jeollanam-do

The Korean was genuinely flattered to receive these questions. There are three questions, all from Class Je-Am [제암반], which is in the second grade of Jangheung High School (= 11th grade in America.)

There are three questions total, and the Korean will answer each one of them in three separate posts over three days. So, here is the first question:

Question from Yoon-hee (윤희): What’s the biggest difference between Korea and USA in terms of their system when he or she is going to file a suit? [미국과 한국의 소송을 제기하는 시스템에서 가장 큰 차이점은 무엇인가요?]

The answer in English and Korean, after the jump.

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

The Korean is not a Korean lawyer, so he may be wrong in the details of Korea's litigation system. But from what he knows, the biggest difference is the way in which each party presents the facts.

제가 한국변호사가 아니어서 한국 소송법에 대한 자세한 부분은 정확하지 않을 수도 있습니다. 하지만 제가 알고있는 한도 내에서만 말씀드리자면, 가장 큰 차이점은 각 당사자들이 사실관계를 제공하는 방법이라고 볼 수 있습니다.

Let's step back and take a look at generally how a lawsuit progresses. Let us suppose we have Party A and Party B. Let us further suppose that A thinks B borrowed money from her, but did not repay. So Party A sues Party B

일단 한발짝 물러서서, 소송이란게 일반적으로 어떻게 진행되는 것인가부터 살펴보도록 하겠습니다. 당사자 A와 당사자 B가 있고, A는 B가 자기에게서 돈을 빌린 후 갚지 않았다고 생각한다고 가정해봅시다. 이런 경우에 A는 B에게 소송을 걸겠죠.

In both Korea and U.S., this is generally how the lawsuit would progress:

A files a complaint against B, claiming that B owes A money.
Then B would file an answer, either admitting or denying what A claimed.
If the two parties continue to disagree, A and B would present their facts to the court, in the form of documents, witness testimonies, etc.
A trial occurs before the judge, and the judge rules whether or not B owes A money.

There are many, many differences in all four steps above, but from a practical perspective, Step 3 has the biggest difference between American and Korean legal system.

미국과 한국에서 둘다, 전반적으로 소송은 이렇게 진행됩니다:

A는 B에 대해 소장을 제출하여, B가 A에게 돈을 갚아야한다고 주장합니다
B는 답변서를 제출해서, A의 주장을 인정하거나 거부합니다.
두 당사자가 계속 동의하지 않을 경우, A와 B는 법원에 그들의 사실관계를 제출하는데, 사실관계를 제출하는 방법에는 문서, 증인의 증언 등이 있습니다.
판사 앞에서 재판을 하여 판사가 정말 B가 A에게 돈을 갚아야하는가에 대한 판결을 내립니다.

이 위에 4단계 하나하나에 차이점은 무진장 많습니다만, 실질적으로 봤을 때는 3단계가 한국과 미국의 법체계에서 가장 큰 차이를 내포한다고 할 수 있습니다.

In Korea, A would first submit all the documents that support her claim to the judge. Then B would also submit all the documents that support her claim to the judge. The judge would review the documents, and order the parties to produce more documents if she does not think there is enough information. In contrast, in the U.S., A would send a document request to B, asking that B submit to A pretty much all relevant documents. B does the same and send a document request to A. If one of the parties refuse to produce a relevant document, the other party can go to the judge to compel the party to produce the document. At the end of the process, each party compiles a set of documents that is most favorable to her claim, and goes into trial.

한국에서라면, A는 일단 자기의 주장을 뒷받침하는 모든 문서를 판사에게 제출합니다. 그다음 B도 역시 자기 주장을 뒷받침하는 모든 문서를 판사에게 제출합니다. 그다음 판사는 제출받은 문서들을 검토한 뒤에, 정보가 불충분하다 싶으면 당사자들에게 문서를 더 제출하라고 명령을 내립니다. 반면에 미국에서는, A는 B에게 문서소환장이란 것을 보내서, B가 가지고 있는 문서 중 사건에 관련된 모든 문서를 A에게 제출하라고 요청합니다. B도 A에게 똑같이 하구요. 둘 중 누군가가 관련 문서 제출을 거부한다면, 상대편은 판사에게 가서 문서 제출 명령을 받아올 수 있습니다. 이 과정이 끝난 후에, 각 당사자들은 자신에게 가장 유리한 문서들을 모아서, 재판에 들어갑니다.

You might ask -- why is this such a big difference? It is a big difference because of what it means in practical terms. A lawsuit is not cheap. Lawyers are usually paid by the hour and are very expensive. (Top of the line American lawyers charge around $1,200 an hour.) Winning the lawsuit is by no means certain -- if it were certain, the issue would be resolved before it ever gets to a lawsuit. So in a lot of cases, lawsuit becomes a war of attrition, where the party that can afford to spend more on the lawyers wins, regardless of the ultimate right or wrong.

이게 뭐 그리 대단한 차이에요? 라고 물으실 수도 있겠습니다. 이게 큰 차이인 이유는 실질적으로 어마어마한 차이가 나기 때문입니다. 소송을 진행하는데는 비용이 많이 듭니다. 변호사들은 대개 시간당 수당을 받고, 또 그 시간당 수당이 엄청나게 비쌉니다. (미국 최고 변호사들은 시간당 1,200불, 즉 시간당 거의 150만원씩 받습니다.) 또 소송을 건다고 확실히 이길 수 있는 것도 아닙니다. 확실히 이길거였으면 소송들어가기 전에 대개 끝나죠. 그렇기 때문에 많은 경우에서 소송이란, 누가 진정 옳고 그른가에 관련없이, 누가 과연 변호사에게 돈을 더 쓸 수 있는가라는 형태의 소모전이 되고맙니다.

Here is where the big difference happens. In Korea, lawyers only have to review and collect their own client's documents, sort out the most favorable documents, and submit them to the judge. Once all the documents are collected into a record, every document in the record is guaranteed to be highly relevant. But in America, lawyers have to review and collect both the documents of their own client's and the documents of the opposing party that are given to them. Also, because it is the opposing lawyer and not the judge who requests the documents, each party is required to submit every document to the other side as long as the document even marginally relevant. So guess which system takes up more lawyer time?

그러니까 여기서 큰 차이가 나게됩니다. 한국에서는 변호사는 자기 의뢰인의 문서만 검토하고, 가장 유리한 문서들을 추려서 판사에게 제출하면 됩니다. 일단 문서들이 다 모여서 사건 기록을 형성하면, 그 기록에 들어간 모든 문서들은 자동적으로 그 사건에 대한 개연성이 높다고 볼 수 있습니다. 하지만 미국에서 변호사는 자기 의뢰인의 문서뿐만 아니라, 상대편의 문서까지 추려서 모아야합니다. 그리고 미국에선 판사가 아니라 상대편 변호사가 문서를 요청하기 때문에, 조금이라도 개연성이 있다 싶은 문서들은 죄다 상대편에 제출을 해야됩니다. 이 두 절차 중 어느 절차가 변호사 시간을 더 잡아먹을까요?

Because lawsuits in America takes so long at the fact-gathering stage, lawsuits in America overall takes much longer and costs a lot more than lawsuits in Korea. Even the biggest lawsuits in Korea, involving huge corporations battling it out, generally take no more than two or three years to finish the trial and appeal. In contrast, the biggest lawsuits in America can take up to ten years to finish the trial, and a few more years to finish the appeal. Just think about how expensive a lawsuit would be in America -- a lawyer who charges $1,200 an hour, working for more than ten years!

미국의 소송은 이 사실관계 수집 단계에서 너무나 시간이 오래 걸리기 때문에, 미국에서 소송 거는 것은 한국에서 소송거는 것보다 훨씬 더 오래 걸리고 비용도 훨씬 더 많이 듭니다. 엄청난 대기업들 사이에서 일어나는 최대 규모 소송같으면 한국에서는 재판하고 항소까지 하는데 2-3년이면 끝납니다. 미국에서 그런 소송은 재판만 끝내는데도 10년 가까이 걸릴 수도 있고, 항소까지 하려면 거기다 몇 년 더하면 됩니다. 시간당 150만원씩 받는 변호사를 10년 넘게 일시키면 그 소송이 얼마나 비용이 많이 들지 생각해보세요.

The high cost of litigation in America distorts the legal system. For example, because it seemed unfair that people could not afford to bring a lawsuit unless they were very wealthy, a "contingency fee" system was introduced in America, whereby an attorney does not get paid by his clients but takes a cut of the winning. This sounded like a good idea at first, but quickly led to an unintended consequences.

미국의 이 엄청난 소송 비용은 미국 법 체계를 왜곡하는 결과를 초래합니다. 예를 들자면, 어마어마한 부자가 아니고서야 소송을 걸 수가 없다는 게 불공평해보였기 때문에, "성공사례"라는 시스템이 도입되었는데, 즉 변호사가 자기 의뢰인에게 수임료를 받는게 아니라 소송에서 승리하면 그 일부분을 가져가는 시스템입니다. 이게 도입될 때는 괜찮은 생각같았지만, 곧 예기치 못한 결과로 이어졌습니다.

Think about this -- only plaintiffs can win any money they did not have before. Defendants cannot win any more than what they already have. This means that contingency fee lawyers are always on the plaintiff's side. With the help from a contingency fee lawyer, it costs nothing for a plaintiff to sue someone; on the other hand, it still costs defendants just as much to defend the lawsuit. The end result is that the defendants end up paying off the plaintiffs no matter how frivolous the claim, because that ends up being cheaper than paying the lawyers.

생각해보세요 -- 전에 없던 돈을 소송을 통해서 받아내는 사람은 원고 뿐입니다. 피고는 소송에서 이겨도 본전이죠. 그렇기때문에 성공사례비를 받는 변호사들은 언제나 원고 측에만 있게됩니다. 자 그럼, 성공사례비를 받는 변호사를 쓰면 원고가 소송을 거는데에는 비용이 하나도 들지 않습니다. 반면 피고가 소송을 막아내는데에는 매한가지로 아까 전에 설명한 것같이 어마어마한 비용이 들어갑니다. 그러면 결과적으로 소송이 걸렸다하면, 아무리 말도 안되는 사건이라도 피고는 대개 원고에게 돈을 주고 합의를 하는 방향으로 가게됩니다. 원고한테 돈 쓰는게 그 소송 막느라 쓰는 변호사 비용보다 적게 들어가니까요.

This of course happens in Korea to some degree, but in America being a contingency fee lawyer and bringing every little trivial claim is actually a huge industry. This is just one example, and a high cost of litigation affects pretty much every corner of American legal system. That is why establishing the factual scenario is the biggest difference between American litigation and Korean litigation.

물론 한국에서도 이런 경우가 없는 건 아니지만, 미국에서는 성공사례비 받으면서 오만 자잘한 소송을 거는게 거대 산업화가 되어있는 상태입니다. 그리고 이건 단 하나의 사례일 뿐이고, 미국 소송의 고비용은 법 체계 구석구석까지 영향을 미칩니다. 이게 바로 사실관계 정립이 한미 양국 소송 절차 중 가장 중요한 차이점인 이유입니다.

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

Recent Spate of Crimes by USFK

2011-12-05T21:58:00.000-05:00

Dear Korean,

I was wondering what The Korean thought about the the tensions filled relationship between the U.S. troops stationed in Seoul and the local community in Itaewon. What do you think is the cause of the strain? I know recently there were two very high profile arrests and a conviction of a US Soldier on a heinous rape charge. I know if the situation was reversed one crime would be too many in my opinion.

Marcie L.

The Korean actually wrote about the relation between USFK and Korean people in a previous post. The Korean finds that the situation, as well as what the Korean thinks about the situation, remain largely the same as the time when that post was written. For those who are too lazy to read the old post, the gist of the Korean's take is -- USFK is slow to understand that the changing nature of Korean nationalism in the younger generation, which increasingly sees America as a competitor instead of an ally. Given the strategic importance of Korea, USFK would do well to understand the sea change around them and adjust accordingly. After all, American soldiers pride themselves to be professionals. They should not commit crimes and not also risk jail time for themselves, but also jeopardize the health of the alliance. As an American, it mortifies the Korean to read stories of American soldiers committing petty and serious crimes abroad.

A few items to update the situation:

- The details of the heinous rape case that Marcie L. mentioned are available here. Rough English translation is available here. Basically, the soldier bound, tortured and raped a teenage Korean woman for four hours. The soldier was sentenced to 10 years in prison in Korean court. Because of this crime, other petty crimes committed by USFK personnel -- like a scuffle with a cab driver over the fare -- are coming into renewed focus in Korean media.

- As is usual in this type of situation, Koreans are calling for another round of amending Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which defines the relations of USFK personnel and Korea. In particular, Koreans are unhappy with the clause that governs the situations in which USFK personnel commits a crime outside of his base. Under the current agreement, USFK must give a "favorable consideration" in producing a soldier accused of certain serious crimes (murder, rape, etc.) to Korean law enforcement. However, another clause specifies that, once the accused soldier is produced, she must be indicted within 24 hours of the production, unless she was arrested at the scene of the crime. As a practical matter, this clause makes a prosecution of a GI criminal difficult because it essentially gives exactly 24 hours to Korean law enforcement to investigate the alleged crime. (For example, it took 12 days to investigate and indict the rapist in the case above.) Korean government and USFK formed a joint committee to discuss the potential changes.

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

Ask a Korean! News: "The Blinking Red Light on North Korea"

2011-12-03T14:29:00.000-05:00

Mr. Joo Seong-Ha has noticed that something serious may be afoot with North Korea. Perhaps an economics major can give some supplemental explanation in the comments. Below is the translation.

* * *

This post is somewhat different from other posts on North Korea Real Talk, in that it presents a tricky question. Although I endeavored to make it as understandable as possible, this post may be difficult to understand for some.

Currently, the rice price in North Korea is around 3500-3800 won per kilo. This is double the price from just a few months ago. Just before the currency reform in November 2009, the rice price was in the low 2000s. But even after the currency was reformed by 100-to-1 exchange rate between the old money and the new money, the price did not fall to 1/100th -- instead, right now the price is 50% higher than it was two years ago. This makes a tricky calculation for the inflation rate. Does this count as an inflation of 15000% in two years? This number alone is a sufficient demonstration of the abject failure that was North Korea's currency reform.

Although it depends on the region, currently in North Korea, $1 U.S. dollar exchanges to around 3800-4000 North Korean won. In other words, a kilo of rice in North Korea is a little more than 90 cents, or 6 Chinese yuan. The price of corn also nearly doubled, to over 2000 won -- i.e. around 50 cents or 3 yuan.

The problem is that the rice price in North Korea is higher than the rice price in China. Extremely high quality rice in China can be as expensive as 10 yuan per kilo, but the rice that most people eat is around 4 yuan per kilo. The price can get as low as 2 yuan per kilo, for low quality rice. The rice that costs around 3600 won (= 6 yuan) in North Korea is around the same quality as the 4 yuan-per-kilo rice available in China.

The price of rice in North Korea is not cheap even compared to South Korea's rice price. Unless it comes from an expensive brand, the price of rice in South Korea is under $2 per kilo. In other words, North Korean rice price is around half of South Korean rice price. Considering the huge disparity between the incomes of North and South Korea, the fact that North Koreans buy rice at this price is astonishing.

I take rice as an example because it is an effective shortcut for estimating the price of all other products in North Korean market. When the price of rice rises, so does the price of everything else; when the price of rice falls, so does the price of everything else. When I was in North Korea, $1 could buy 4 kilograms of rice. Now, $1 only buys a kilo of rice. How does one explain this? It is certainly not the case that North Koreans became 4 times wealthier since I came to South Korea.

How do North Koreans purchase rice whose cost quadrupled? Of course, only the wealthy North Koreans eat rice; for many people, the staple is corn. But that was the same as before. And even the corn in North Korea is as nearly expensive as the rice in China.

China's Engel Coefficient is around 30-40%. Of course, the Chinese have little difficulty procuring any kind of food, including meat and fat. I would estimate the maximum Engel Coefficient of North Korea at around 60 to 70%, considering that even North Koreans have to spend a certain portion of its income on things other than food, such as firewood and clothing.

So let's compare an average Chinese household and an average North Korean household, in terms of the money spent on the staple food. Let us estimate that a Chinese household spends about a quarter of its food expenditures on purchasing rice. Since China's Engel Coefficient is around 40%, the Chinese household would spend around 10% of its total income purchasing rice. If we suppose a North Korean family, whose Engel Coefficient is 60%, lives mostly on corn, I would estimate that it would spend about half of its food expenditures on purchasing corn -- in other words, it would spend 30% of its total income purchasing corn. (Although non-staple food in North Korea is not as abundant as it is in China, buying even a small amount of the most basic items like pepper and cooking oil costs as much as the staple food.)

In short, a Chinese household spends 10% of its total income on the staple food; a North Korean household, 30%. And if we further consider the fact that North Korean corn costs approximately three quarters of Chinese rice, North Korea's 30% in "staple Engel Coefficient" is equivalent to China's 7.5% in "staple Engel Coefficient." Of course, this is entirely a hypothesis, generally derived from my experience of living in North Korea. But the ratio of 7.5 to 30 means a North Korean family lives at around 25% level of a Chinese family. Last year, China's GDP per capita on PPP basis was $7500. So this means the same number for North Korea is estimated to be around $1900.

North Korea purchases from China not only food, but also nearly all household items. Of course, the price of those items are more expensive in North Korea than in China -- otherwise, the Chinese won't sell them. In contrast, whatever items that North Korea sells in China would not likely receive the Chinese market price. In other words, North Korea is selling low and buying high.

How in the world do the people handle the prices that rose four times in the last decade, at least in terms of face value? One may be able to explain that the price of everything quadrupled, but in that case, it appears to me that North Korea's per capita GDP denominated in U.S. dollars should also rise. But at the same time, it does not make sense to me how the per capita GDP could simply rise like that simply because the prices rose, without any further effort.

In short, something incomprehensible is happening in North Korea. Even considering the fact that the North Korean people are dealing with severe hardship, it is incomprehensible to me that they are enduring the prices that are higher than China's.

North Korea's PPP-based per capita GDP of $1900 is also incomprehensible to me. $1900 is around the level of Tajikistan, and half the level of the Philippines. I have never been to Tajikistan, but I understand that it does not have starvation or a huge population of itinerant child beggars. Then is my estimate of $1900 too high?

When I came to China after having lived in North Korea, the economic disparity that I observed and felt was certainly far greater than four times. So far, I have been estimating that North Korea's per capita GDP (not on PPP-basis) to be around $400. Have I been incorrect?

Right now, China is growing rapidly, and its living standards have improved at a record pace. But North Korean economy is continuing to decline. The only meaningful economic activity in North Korea is at the marketplaces. Does this mean that North Korea's increase of household wealth through the marketplace is happening faster than China's increase of household wealth through its economic development? All the while the North Korean regime has been trying to suppress the marketplaces? The thought then makes me wonder how much better North Koreans could live if the regime simply allowed the marketplaces to operate normally.

This is not limited to food. There are reports that there are more than a million cell phones in North Korea, each costing several hundred dollars. This reflects a broad range of wealthy people in north Korea. Of course, North Korea recently has been rapidly stratifying, such that the wealth gap is beyond imagination. But be that as it may, shouldn't the overall society have a certain level of income in order to handle the prices that are more expensive than China's? If not, I would think that there should be mass starvation already -- but North Korea has not come to that, yet.

Does this really mean that North Korean families have the wherewithal to deal with this kind of prices? I wonder if the families are able to manage with their savings for now, but will fall to the prices in the long run. It worries me that the sudden steep rise of the price of rice may portend mass starvation deaths in the near future. In the spring of 1995, in Pyongyang, I saw the rice price going from 50 won per kilo to 200 won per kilo in just two or three months. And then two or three months later, mass starvation deaths began to occur everywhere in North Korea, and the regime declared the March of Struggle. But it is the fall right now, when rice just finished getting harvested -- and the price is already rising. I would rest a little easier if someone could explain to me that this is not a repeat of 1995.

Although it is not clear, my intuition is that there is a blinking red light on the dashboard of North Korea. South Korean administration and North Korean experts need to keep a more-careful-than-usual watch on North Korea.

북한이라는 계기판에 빨간불이 켜지고 있다 [North Korea Real Talk]

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

Cleaning the Classroom

2011-12-02T22:23:00.000-05:00

Dear Korean,

I'm sure you've heard about this by now? How Newt wants to pay poor students to clean their own schools? I see that liberals and teachers unions are 'horrified' by the idea. Interesting thing is, as someone who went through elementary school in S Korea in the 1980's, I actually love the idea of having kids clean their own school campuses. Even though Newt is being demonized for this, I think it's a great idea. In fact, I say forget paying just the poorer students to help clean up. Make ALL kids help clean up (without PAY) like I used to in S Korea, the nation with 1st (or was it 2nd) K-12 education system. I see so much benefit out of this:

Kids will get to study in dust free, cleaner classrooms. I've seen classrooms of inner city schools and bathrooms (imo Super Fund sites) and they've been getting WORSE and WORSE due to budget cuts. One or 2 janitors for an entire school where they can barely empty out the trash bins, let alone sweep out dust from the floor.
Kids will actually KNOW why education matters. Guess what you will do if don't study? Do you want to clean out bathrooms or study and do something else? It was VERY REAL for me and also a big motivator for trying to study. I speak from experience as I used to help my parents who were janitors.

Maybe you don't agree? But what's your thought on this?

Paul

The Korean is a fairly reliable Democratic voter, and he will be so until Republicans change their disgraceful stance on immigrants. But the Korean still considers himself a fair-minded person, and he does find some Republican proposals resonant. Problem is that in most cases, those proposals do not go far enough.

For example, Republicans want to deny citizenship to illegal immigrants, because illegal immigrants harm America. Fair enough -- the Korean is above all a nationalist, and he does not wish harm on America. There is no question that at least some illegal immigrants harm America. But by that logic, shouldn't we deny citizenship to American citizens who harm America also? The Korean's preferred immigration policy is to make everyone in America take citizenship tests every two years, and those who fail will be treated like the way illegal immigrants are treated now. But will Republicans go for a logical extension of their own policy like this? Of course not.

At any rate, like Paul, the Korean also likes Gingrich's idea -- as long as it is taken to its logical end point rather than cut off arbitrarily like Gingrich did. Why just poor children? And why pay them? In Korea, all school children (except first and second graders) are required to clean their own classroom and a designated area in a school, every day, throughout the school year. The Korean is not talking about tidying up the surroundings -- Korean students actually grab the mops and brooms (which are kept in a box in the backside of their classrooms) and clean. Schools usually have no more than one custodian, whose job is mainly to change light bulbs, replace broken windows, etc. One year, the Korean was assigned to a class which was assigned to clean the boy's bathroom, and it was not a pleasant affair.

(Aside: It must be noted that this system is possible because of the way Korean classes are set up. For the most part, Korean students are assigned to a single classroom shared with the same classmates for the entire year. The teachers for different subjects come to the class. This is in contrast to most American high schools, for example, in which the teachers stay in a certain classroom while the students move to take different subjects.)

Having the students clean their own school does have benefits, and the Korean is certain that those benefits will be even greater for the current generation of American students who have become soft in their prosperity. In addition to what Paul said, cleaning one's classroom builds camaraderie among classmates and a sense of responsibility and ownership for the school. It's a good idea. But the chances of this ever happening in America? The Korean will file this next to his preferred immigration policy and the Godfather offer that Japan should make.

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

AAK! PSA: Free Screening of "63 Years On"

2011-12-02T17:58:00.000-05:00

The documentary film “63 Years On” will be shown at a free screening at Jogyesa Temple Theatre on Sunday, December 4th 2011. this is an opportunity for both the Korean and International communities to further engage with the ‘Comfort women’ issue and to support the continuing fight for justice. A brief Question & Answer session will take place after the film, an opportunity for those who wish to share their thoughts on the film and ask any questions to members of the House of Sharing’s International Outreach Team.

In this film, award-winning Korean director Kim Dong Won presents the harrowing experiences of 5 international survivors of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery during World War II. The very personal telling of their experiences is supported by excellent research and archival footage to create a powerfully honest, determined, and often heartbreaking documentary. While this gripping film may evoke great sadness and anger, the bravery displayed will truly inspire all who see it.

The House of Sharing’s International Outreach Team works to raise awareness of the issue of Japanese military sexual slavery during World War II and to support the survivors, called Halmoni, in their on-going struggle for historical reconciliation and justice. The team is composed of both foreign and local volunteers who lead English tours to the House of Sharing and the onsite Museum of Sexual Slavery by the Japanese Military. The House of Sharing’s International Outreach Team also works to highlight continuing crimes against humanity, including the form of sexual violence during war and international sexual trafficking, that women and children across the world continue to experience on a daily basis.

This screening provides a window to an episode of Asian and International history which has been willfully ignored by so many for more than 63 years. You are invited to join the House of Sharing and show your support to the survivors who continue the fight for justice.

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

Ask a Korean! News: "Journalism" in North Korea (Part III)

2011-12-01T22:37:00.001-05:00

[Series Index]

This is a continuation of Mr. Joo Seong-Ha's discussion about "journalism" in North Korea. Below is the translated article.

* * *

Just going by our common sense, North Korean newspapers are strictly a propaganda mechanism for the labor party, a boring newspaper filled with stories deifying the Kim Il-Sung family. Not only are the stories critical of the regime completely forbidden, but also are the stories about accidents, crimes, disasters or polls. It would difficult to find a newspaper that has a more inflexible and archaic editorial policy. Most articles are about the same 10 years ago as they are now. Therefore, one could easily come to a guess that North Korean people would totally avoid reading the newspaper.

But the reality is quite different -- North Korean people are truly diligent in reading the newspaper. Of course, it is not as if any North Korean can read the newspapers just because they want to read them. Because the newspapers are also rationed by the regime, one cannot read the newspaper unless one is at a certain social level.

Newspapers are popular in North Korea because there are few other channels by which people can learn the world affairs. Although there is a central television station, televisions are difficult to watch because areas outside of Pyongyang only receive a few hours of electricity a day. Also, the news on TV is only about 30 minutes long, again mostly devoted to what Kim Jong-Il has been doing. Further, there really is nothing much to read other than the newspaper. There are only a few magazines, whose copies are so few in number that regular people hardly have even seen one. Except for the books about the Kim family, there is hardly any North Korean literature either. Because of that, seeing any printed material in North Korea is itself a joy. Reading is one of the few joys in North Korea, given that there is practically no television, no Internet, no books, no places to drink and hang out, no karaoke (unlike South Korea) and no culture of leisure.

The first three pages of Rodong Shinmun is boring, as they are devoted to news about Kim Jong-Il. But the last three pages -- domestic news on page 4, South Korean news on page 5 and international news on page 6 -- carry a different story every day. Personally, when I was living in North Korea, I felt alive whenever I read the newspaper.

North Korean people read pages 5 and 6 very, very closely. Of course, South Korea-related news are strictly focused on: propaganda about reunification; denunciations of the South Korean government, capitalists and American imperialists, and; the superiority of the socialist system by highlighting the dark areas of South Korean society. The international news likewise focuses on: expose on the irrationality of the rotten capitalist societies; solidification of anti-American alliance, and; the rise of North Korea's international stature, etc.

However, North Korean people already know that much. So as they read those articles, they use their imagination to picture the outside world. Take, for example, the war in Iraq. When the war broke out, North Korean newspapers would report: "Iraqi army is bravely battling against America's imperial army, downing two fighter jets and five missiles." With this report, North Korean people would think: "Ah, there is a war in Iraq. There would have been a lot of fighter jets, and they only got two. They have no chance -- America would win pretty soon." And in fact, the reports on the exploits of the Iraqi military would decrease over time, and then completely disappear from Rodong Shinmun. Then the people would think: "Iraq is losing the war." Some time later, upon seeing the reports that say "Iraqi patriots are bombing the American military base in Baghdad," North Korean people would think: "So Iraq is now under American rule."

The same goes for news about South Korea. Rodong Shinmun frequently carries a critical article that say, for example: "The South Korean puppet government sentenced one year in prison based on a fraudulent National Security Act to a patriotic young man who posted an article praising Dear Leader on the Internet." Then North Korean people would think: "Just one year -- what a great country. We would be shot immediately if we praised the South Korean president."

In an actual case, a South Korean college student Im Soo-Gyeong visited Pyongyang in 1989, and was sentenced to five years in prison in South Korea. Every day, North Korean newspapers denounced the "barbaric acts of South Korean fascist thieves who sentenced five years to a patriotic young woman." But instead, North Korean people thought: "If one of us went to Seoul and came back, not only ourselves but also every one of our relatives would be killed -- we are the true fascists."

In this manner, North Korean people rarely accept the regime's propaganda at face value, but instead picture the outside world with their imagination. And the result of their imagination is in fact much closer to the truth compared to what is written on the Rodong Shinmun. Even the boring Rodong Shinmun can be pretty entertaining if one reads it as if solving a riddle. Because North Korean people constantly approach the newspaper this way, they have a highly developed sense of reading between the lines and appreciating the hidden meanings.

North Korea's propaganda bureaus are largely aware of this also. It may have overdone in its criticism of South Korean dictatorship such that it created a blowback, but such mistakes are rare today, perhaps because of experience. This year, North Korean newspapers has been silent on the "Jasmine Revolution" of North African and the Middle East. Previously, they would have written a propaganda like: "The people rose up to drive out the puppet regime of the American imperialists and achieved independence." But this time, it has been strangely quiet. I believe that North Korean newspapers learned the fact that keeping quiet is the best strategy, because they know that the people will read it differently no matter how they write it.

If the newspapers do not report a story at all, it would be difficult for North Koreans to understand what is happening in the outside world. But just as soon as the newspapers try to spin the facts in their favor and report, North Koreans appreciate the situation right away based on their excellent imagination.

President Abraham Lincoln said: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time." It is as if he was watching North Korea.

뛰는 ‘북한 신문’위에 나는 ‘북한 주민’있다 [North Korea Real Talk]

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

We Are Not Our Stereotypes

2011-11-30T23:13:00.000-05:00

This article by Vivia Chen touches upon what the Korean has been trying to say about Asian Americans and the way we handle stereotypes against us.

But how do most tiger cubs fare? Not so well, according to the panelists, which included Javade Chaudhri, GC of Sempra Energy; Wilson Chu, partner at K&L Gates; Don Liu, GC of Xerox Corporation; Linda Lu, associate GC of Allstate Inc.; Larry Tu, GC of Dell; and me. . . . Are APAs too deferential to authority and too quiet about blowing their own horn? The audience said yes.

Personally, I found this discussion pleasantly ironic because I didn't get the impression that this was a shy, timid crowd. Quite the opposite--both the panel members and the audience were highly articulate and forceful. I'd go a step further and say those qualities hold true for just about everyone I met at the convention.

Which brings me back to my original point: This was not a dweeby crowd. Ten or twenty years ago, more APA lawyers might have fit that bill, but I think there's been a sea change.

So are APA lawyers still saddled with a nerdy, not-ready-for-prime-time image? Is this the way law firms and corporations perceive Asian Americans, or the way we perceive ourselves? Whose stereotype is it?

Asian American Lawyers: Still Too Nerdy to Get to the Top? [The Careerist]

The Korean shares the same observation with Chen, at a larger scale. The Korean simply does not see a disproportionate number of Asian Americans being timid, robotic, uncreative, or any of the other usual stereotypes associated with Asian Americans. If anything, he is seeing an over-representation of bold, adventurous, creative and leadership-oriented Asian Americans in the younger generation, who will surely reach the top echelons of American society in a decade or so.

The Korean briefly touched upon this topic in this post, but it bears repeating: Asian Americans are internalizing the negative stereotypes about us. Even when an Asian American ends up being successful, like the panelists or the audience in the discussion described in Chen's article, such Asian American considers him/herself to be an exception rather than the rule.

That's the thing about stereotypes -- it is self-perpetuating as long as there is one example of it. Few people ever engage in an honest-to-goodness counting of just how many of the Asian Americans around them fit the stereotypes. But sure enough, a lot of people know at least one Asian American who fits the stereotype. Because of the confirmation bias, a few examples are all we need for the stereotype to live on. This much, we all know.

But what is particularly disconcerting about Asian Americans is that we internalize the negative stereotypes against us like few other social groups do. Few women would readily agree with the stereotype that they are bad at math and sciences, or the stereotype they lack leadership skills. Few African Americans would readily agree with the stereotype that they are lazier and more crime-prone. But these high-ranking Asian American attorneys -- partners, general counsels who are leaders of their fields -- publicly espouse the stereotype, even though they themselves are the living counterexamples of the stereotype. To the Korean, this makes no sense.

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

Today, TK Learned:

2011-11-29T22:42:00.000-05:00

... Mount Vernon gets ridiculously crowded on Thanksgiving.

There are four types of criticism against American higher education. All of them are flawed. [Los Angeles Review of Books]
Should law school pay students to quit? The Korean says yes. [Slate]
Effort is important, but talent still matters. [New York Times]
Seoul as a model of urbanized growth. Very insightful. [National Geographic]
What a Chinese scholar thinks about Korea's unification. [The Interpreter]
Big international stories that did not receive enough attention this year. [Foreign Policy]

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

50 Most Influential K-Pop Artists: 23. Shin Seung-Hoon

2011-11-28T22:13:00.000-05:00

[Series Index]

23. Shin Seung-Hoon [신승훈]

Years of Activity: 1990-present

Discography:
You, Reflected in a Smile [미소 속에 비친 그대] (1990)

Shin Seung Hun Vol. 2 (1992)

Shin Seung Hun Vol. 3 (1993)

For a Long Time Afterwards [그 후로 오랫동안] (1994)

Shin Seung Hun Vol. 5 (1996)

Feeling (1998)

Desire to Fly High (2000)

The Shin Seung Hun (2002)

Ninth Reply (2004)

The Romanticist (2009)

Representative Song: Invisible Love [보이지 않는 사랑] from Shin Seung Hun Vol. 2.

보이지 않는 사랑
Invisible Love

사랑해선 안 될게 너무 많아
There are too many things I must not love
그래서 더욱 슬퍼지는 것같아
Perhaps that is why it is even sadder
그중에서 가장 슬픈 건
The saddest among all is
날 사랑하지 않는 그대
you who do not love me
내 곁에 있어달라는 말 하지 않았지
I never said be by my side
하지만 떠날 필요 없잖아
But you did not need to leave
보이지 않게 사랑할 거야
I will love you invisibly
너무 슬퍼 눈물 보이지만
Though I may show tears because of overwhelming sorrow

어제는 사랑을 오늘은 이별을
Yesterday, love; today, parting
미소짓는 얼굴로 울고 있었지
Crying with a smiling face
하지만 나 이렇게 슬프게 우는 건
But I cry so sadly like this
내일이면 찾아올 그리움 때문일꺼야
Because of the longing that will come tomorrow

Translation note: It's not like the lyrics in Korean was the most sophisticated one in the world, but in English they sound terribly childish. Suggestions are welcome, as always.

In 15 words or less: The king of ballad.

Maybe he should be ranked higher because... His dominance over his genre was nearly unparalleled, particularly back in the 1990s when ballad was the mainstream music.

Maybe he should be ranked lower because... Did he have any musical imprint in Korean pop music history?

Why is this artist important?
It is difficult to overstate how huge "ballad" was back in Korean of 1990s. At this point in time, many people believe that air-headed, bubble-gum "k-pop", represented Girls' Generation, Super Junior and the like, constitutes the entirety of Korean pop music. That notion is clearly a mistake, but it is an understandable mistake given that the presence of "k-pop" (in the smaller sense of the word) is so dominant over the airwaves. If the same people were exposed to Korean pop music in the 1990s, they would have thought that the morose and saccharine "ballads" were the only Korean pop music available.

Shin was the eye of the storm of the era. His public presence was rivaled by only a select few on this list. The 17 million copies of his album sold speak for themselves. Although Shin never truly attempted anything artistically daring, he deserves a spot here as a true exemplar of K-pop's zeitgeist.

Interesting trivia: Shin holds a second degree black belt in kung fu.

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

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T10:21:00.001-05:00

Many celebrations of this most American of all American holidays, the holiday of immigrants. The Korean is thankful for an easy year at work, successful 5th anniversary of AAK! and the Korean Brother's engagement to a wonderful woman. Here is what the Korean wrote for last year's Thanksgiving, and the sentiment remains the same this year.

* * *

Thanksgiving is the Korean's favorite holiday, and it is a crying shame that it is slowly turning into a mere bump in the road on the way to Christmas shopping. Thanksgiving is the Korean's favorite holiday because it is one of the most American of holidays -- the holiday for immigrants. The day in which Americans, old and new, share a table to fill their body with a hearty bird native to American land.

On the Thanksgiving Day of 1997 -- some 380 years after the Pilgrims -- the Korean Family arrived at the port of Los Angeles International Airport, full of anticipation for the Land of Opportunity. The Korean Family was greeted by natives, the distant family friends who have lived in the U.S. for decades as Korean Americans. And like a beautiful fugue, the pattern repeated once again; the natives helped the immigrants to get settled in, and begin their lives in the new world.

Thus, Thanksgiving Day is doubly special for the Korean Family. We never miss celebrating it. We always get together as a family and reflect on how we have begun -- and succeeded! -- our decade-plus immigrant life in America. We are thankful for all the great things in our lives, but most of all, we are thankful to be in America. Like the Pilgrims who were grateful for their new lives and new opportunities, the Korean Family is grateful, each and every year, for our own new lives and opportunities.

AAK! will be on a break until next week.

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

A Conversation

2011-11-22T21:12:00.001-05:00

(Driving through Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan.)

The Korean Cousin: "This is the way up to the lab I work in."

The Korean: "It's a big hill."

TKC: "I walk up this hill every morning, at 6 a.m."

TK: "You have always been so diligent, hyeong."

TKC: "That's what our family does, working harder than everyone. Your family moved to Seoul early, but I'm a hick, you know. There are all these people who are smarter than me and went to better schools. So this is what I have been doing for the ten years I've been working here. I get to the lab two hours before everyone else does. I open the curtains, clean the office, then I have a quiet time for myself. What do you think I do with that time?"

TK: "... you would probably study something."

TKC: "I study English."

TK: "That's amazing, hyeong."

TKC: "No it's not, because I'm not getting better. For ten years I've been spending those precious two hours a day of my life studying English, and I'm not getting better. I memorize everything I see, I listen to all these English listening materials, I practice speaking, and I'm not getting better. My test scores are the same, and I don't feel like I'm better at listening or speaking in English.

It's such a waste of time. It's not easy getting up that early. It takes all my dedication and discipline. Those two hours are precious to me. If I spent those two hours a day studying the engineering stuff that I wanted to study, I would be so much happier. I would be a much better engineer too. But I can't do that. People who buy our ships only speak English."

TK: "... you just gotta keep at it, like you always do ..."

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

2011-11-22T11:53:00.001-05:00

Korea-U.S. FTA just got ratified in Korea's National Assembly, in a predictably dramatic fashion. (Tear gas! That's new.) The Korean wrote about it on the Marmot's Hole.

Duties on Items Mailed to Korea?

2011-11-21T22:33:00.000-05:00

Dear Korean,

My daughter is in Korea teaching English at a school in Gwangju. Her mother and I gave her a new iPod as a parting gift, but when she got Korea she found it didn’t work. She mailed it back to us so we could take it back to the Apple store. Where we bought it. They confirmed that it was defective and replaced it, and we would like to mail the replacement to our daughter, but we have read that she may have to pay a lot in duty and other taxes if we do. Can you suggest how I might be able to get some definitive information about that potential problem and about what, if anything, we can do about it?

Jonathan G.

For the answer to this question, there is no better place to ask than Korea Customs Service. Basically, the rule is that an item around KRW 150,000 won (a little less than $150) that is imported for a personal use is duty-free. But even if an item is under KRW 150,000 won, it may be subject to a custom duty if the customs office believe it is not for personal use. The Korean would imagine that a refurbished iPod would probably pass.

All international packages are first examined for their description written on the shipping label, then they pass through an x-ray machine. Should the customs office decide that the item is subject to a custom duty based on the examination, the recipient pays the tax when she picks up the package at the local post office. The tax rate is different for different items, but they generally range between 20 to 35%.

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

Today, TK Learned:

2011-11-18T21:41:00.000-05:00

... that good times don't last, he still works for a big law firm, and there will be weeks where he will spend 18 hours at the office every day for a week and beyond.

For all you poetry lovers, be sure to check out this new blog that provides translated Korean poems. [Korean Poetry in Translation]
Excellent summary on the history of Korea's economic development, and Korea's challenges for the future. [The Economist]
LG made "iPad" 10 years ago. Next step: patent lawsuit! [LinuxDevices]
President Lee Myung-Bak's autobiography is getting hammered in Amazon.com reviews written by Korean people who hate him. [Amazon.com]
Making unfettered gun rights constitutional means felons can restore their gun rights easily. [New York Times]
Engineering students study the most. Business students study the least. [New York Times]
If Scotland declared independence, will it be automatically in the EU? [Eutopia Law]
Being a fisher is way, way more dangerous than being a police. [Think Progress]
Napster and online music apparently did not affect the quality of music. [Digitopoly]

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

Glass Ceiling and Bamboo Ceiling

2011-11-17T23:13:00.003-05:00

Here is a bit about gender gap in legal business:

Both female partners and female associates lag behind their male counterparts in pay, and the difference largely shows up in the respective bonuses paid to each. Finally, "[t]he majority of large firms have, at most, two women members on their highest governing committee. A substantial number have either no women (11 percent of firms) or only one woman (35 percent of firms) on their highest governing committee."

We know that nearly half of law students are women, so we must question why women are not faring nearly as well in private practice as are their male counterparts.

The Gap [PrawfsBlawg]

A lot of women in law schools, but only a few women in top position. That looks awfully like what is happening to Asian Americans. As Wesley Yang noted in his New York Magazine article:

According to a recent study, Asian-Americans represent roughly 5 percent of the population but only 0.3 percent of corporate officers, less than 1 percent of corporate board members, and around 2 percent of college presidents. There are nine Asian-American CEOs in the Fortune 500. In specific fields where Asian-Americans are heavily represented, there is a similar asymmetry. A third of all software engineers in Silicon Valley are Asian, and yet they make up only 6 percent of board members and about 10 percent of corporate officers of the Bay Area’s 25 largest companies. At the National Institutes of Health, where 21.5 percent of tenure-track scientists are Asians, only 4.7 percent of the lab or branch directors are, according to a study conducted in 2005.

But there is a difference between women and Asian Americans, and the difference is in the way people go about trying to figure out why women/Asian Americans are lacking in the top position. Few people dare to speak about how it's the women's fault that they are underrepresented at the top. Many people may think to themselves that women are dumb, emotional and unfit as leaders, but few dare speak out their minds because the social consequence will be swift and harsh. (Recall what happened to Lawrence Summers.) On the other hand, people feel quite free to discuss how it is really Asian Americans' fault -- because Asian Americans are uncritical and uncreative robots -- that Asian Americans are underrepresented at the top. Why?

-EDIT 11/18/2011- After reading the comments, a few more thoughts:

- As several commenters pointed out, it is absolutely true that not only sexists harbor their thoughts about the supposed unfitness of women as leaders, but they also often share their thoughts in casual conversations. The Korean never intended to deny that. But the point still holds that people are ready to blame Asian Americans than women for their respective underrepresentation in the top of their fields. The point also holds that the social consequences of blaming the victim differ on who is blamed. President of Harvard had to resign for blaming women for being underrepresented at the top. Wesley Yang gets a cover story of the New York Magazine by blaming Asian Americans for being underrepresented at the top. The Korean still does not fully understand why the treatments are disparate.

- Another difference in this context: the willingness of the women and Asian Americans to accede to the arguments that blame them. It appeared that, in response to Lawrence Summers' remark, women were unanimously indignant. Surely no women stood up to extol Summers for bravely exposing something that had to be said. In contrast, a number of Asian Americans stood up and cheered for Wesley Yang's article that blamed Asian culture for the underrepresentation of Asian Americans at the top. (You can read some of the reactions in the comment section of that article.) Again, why?

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

Ask a Korean! Wiki: Books about Korean Art?

2011-11-16T21:05:00.000-05:00

Dear Korean,

I am a 27 year old student of the arts; and a graphic designer by profession. Recently I started learning Korean, and also about Korean culture. I was wondering if you had some books to suggest or resources for me to look into about Korean art, and art history. I am also very interested in learning traditional calligraphy.

Cassandra H.

The Korean receives a lot of questions asking for book recommendations, and he always has the same problem: The Korean rarely reads any book about Korea in English. For him, it's just not necessary. Hopefully the readers can help here -- do you know any books in English about Korean art or art history?

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

Can You Go to College in Korea? (Take the Exam!)

2011-11-11T00:04:00.001-05:00

This past Thursday was the most important day for 690,000 Korean high school seniors -- it was the day of the dreaded College Scholastic Aptitude Test. It is not an exaggeration to say that much of Korean students' lives were dedicated to that one day. Korean society does everything it can to assist the students' test taking. Buses and subways run more frequently, and airplanes are prohibited from taking off or landing during listening comprehension portion of the exam.

CSAT takes up a major portion of college admission, although each college is free to set its own standard of how much CSAT score will be reflected. Colleges generally choose to reflect anywhere between 20% to 100%. To the extent CSAT does not count as 100% of the admission requirements, schools look at: high school GPA; high school attendance; community service; a separate essay exam; interview; audition/tryouts, etc. (Interview and audition/tryouts are usually for students looking to major in athletics or arts.)

CSAT's format changes slightly every year. But basically, CSAT is made up of seven sections: Korean, Math, English, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Occupational Sciences and Second Foreign Language. Students are not supposed to take all seven sections. The way in which test-takers choose the sections to take is slightly complicated, and this is how:

- CSAT is made up of five periods, going from 8:40 a.m. to 6:05 p.m.

- All students take Korean, Math and English in the first three periods. Math is divided into Math A and Math B, and students choose one or the other. Math B is a little easier, but most science/engineering colleges require Math A. There is a one hour lunch period between the second and third periods.

- Fourth period is for "Sciences" sections. Social Sciences section has 11 subjects (e.g., modern Korean history, world geography, economics, etc.) Natural Sciences section has 8 subjects (e.g. physics, chemistry, etc.) Occupational Sciences section has 17 subjects (e.g. accounting, fisheries and maritime, programming, etc.) Students are required to choose one of the sections, depending on the majors for which they plan to apply. Generally, humanities majors choose Social Sciences, science and engineering majors choose Natural Sciences, and those applying for a technical degree at a 2-year college choose Occupational Sciences. Within the section, the student choose up to three subjects to take. (Last year, it was four.) Generally, colleges require the scores from at least two subjects.

- Fifth period is for the Second Foreign Language section. Second Foreign Language section has eight subjects. Students are not required to take the Second Foreign Language section. But if they choose to take it, they may select one subject in the section. Certain majors (e.g. Chinese literature) require Second Foreign Language in a specific language, and certain colleges allow students to substitute a Second Foreign Language subject with one of the subjects in Social Sciences section.

With that said, here is something that (as far as the Korean knows) has never been done before: you, an English speaker, can try your hand at taking CSAT in your language. Will you be able to go to college in Korea?

More after the jump.

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

This is what the Korean did. The Korean took the CSAT exam from 2010, and created a miniature version consisting of Korean, Math B, English, two subjects from Social Sciences and two subjects from Natural Sciences, and translated the questions into English (and vice versa as to the English section.) Basically, this is approximately a 1/7 scale model of the 2010 CSAT.

A few words about the way the Korean chose to scale down CSAT. The Korean took care to make it relatively easy within the scale of the questions presented. Please note that the Korean chose to Math B, not Math A which is more difficult. For Natural Sciences section, the Korean chose Physics I and Chemistry I, which are easier compared to Physics II and Chemistry II. (Other subjects in Natural Sciences are Biology I and II, and Earth Science I and II.) For Social Sciences section, the Korean chose World History and Economics because he believed that those two subjects would "travel well" for those who never attended a Korean school, relatively speaking. (Other subjects in Social Sciences are: Ethics, Korean History, Korean Geography, World Geography, Economic Geography, Modern Korean History, Law and Society, Politics, Society and Culture.)

Every question is accompanied with the original question, except in English because that would make it too easy. (Because of the translation, "Korean" essentially became a test about English comprehension, and "English" essentially became a test in Korean comprehension.) The Korean chose the questions as randomly as he could.

If you choose to take the model CSAT as closely as Korean students would take it, this is how you should approach it. (This set assumes that you are applying for a four-year college, hence the lack of Occupational Science section.) First, decide whether you would like to major in something in the humanities, or something in science/engineering. If you are going to be a humanities major, take Korean, Math B, English, World History and Economics. If you are going to be a science/engineering major, take Korean, Math B, English, Physics I and Chemistry I. The entire thing should take just 40 minutes, as long as you are honest with the time allotted in the exam.

Please note that for Korean and English, there is a listening comprehension section. If at all possible, have someone else read the prompts for you. Please also note that the last question in Math B is not a multiple choice. No calculator is allowed.

Now, here's the fun part. To get into a mid-tier college in Korea (equivalent to, say, Virginia Tech, Baylor or Duquesne,) students generally have to score 90 percent or higher in CSAT. Note that this is not 90th percentile -- it's about earning 90 percent of all available scores in the exam. In the abbreviated CSAT below, there are 28 questions. In other words, you have to get approximately 25 questions right in order to get into a mid-tier college in Korea. (The Korean says "approximately" because each questions are weighted differently, between 1 to 4 points. Scaling down the weight of the questions was just too much work.) Students who make it to Seoul National University, the most prestigious university in Korea, generally score around 97 percent.

So here is the challenge: Can you get into a mid-tier college in Korea? Please report your score in the bottom section, preferably broken down by subject. The answer key is at the last page of the exam. Given that Anglophonic people do not learn Korean like Koreans learn English (which knocks out 6 of 28 questions,) the Korean would be very impressed if you can get more than half right in the given time. (But 50% will not get you to any college in Korea.)

Good luck!

CSAT -2010

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

Today, TK Learned:

2011-11-09T22:30:00.001-05:00

... that David Letterman show starts at 11:30 p.m., not 10:30 p.m.

America produces fewer computer science majors compared to 25 years ago. How is that even possible? [Marginal Revolution]
This is how -- science majors quit in droves because science is too hard. Pretty damning indictment of just how stupid and soft American students have become. [New York Times]
Scary lesson from this graph is that China might be even more corrupt than people think. [The Economist]
Korea's credit rating remains solid. [Bloomberg]
American generals think the war in Afghanistan is not going that well. [Foreign Policy]
Supreme Court sometimes does tell the lawyer to just give up. [SCOTUS Blog]

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

Louis CK, and Why America is the Least Racist Country in the World

2011-11-08T22:02:00.010-05:00

First of all, here is Louis CK on anti-Mexican sentiment in Arizona. (If you want to skip other parts, go straight to 7:40 mark.)

Although the entire episode is amusing, the punchline from the racist lady is what interested the Korean: "It's not that I don't like Mexicans, it's just that there are so many of them."

It is the Korean's steadfast belief that America is the least racist country in the world. As the Korean explained in the previous post, this is not to say America does not have racism, nor is it to say that America's racism is inoffensive. In fact, it is fair to say that America is the most race-conscious country in the world. In virtually any social context, the racial aspect of a given circumstance is never very far away in the minds of Americans. Why? It is not possible for any American to be unaware of racial aspects of her society because America has so many racial minorities.

The punchline from Louis CK is a perfect example of that. The racist woman in Arizona who gave Louis CK a ride would probably not display any overtly racist attitude toward, say, Indonesians. Why would she? Indonesians are not numerous enough in America to threaten her lifestyle with Indonesian language instruction being available along with English instruction at the parking lot she visits. But you can be sure that the woman will be just as racist toward Indonesians if America had as many Indonesians as it does Mexicans. The reason why the lady hates Mexicans (despite her protestations) is precisely because there are so many Mexicans in America, and Mexicans, through their numbers, threaten to displace her dominant place in the society.

As the Korean wrote in the previous post, it is meaningless to discuss whether a certain society is racist when the said society is devoid of a massive number of visible racial minorities. Such country may not appear racist, but that is not because the denizens of that country lack the seed of racist hatred in their minds. Unless faced with a situation in which their dominant social station is threatened by racial minorities, the seeds of racism do not germinate. America is the least racist country in the world precisely because America has so many racial minorities, precisely because Americans face the most temptation to be racist. Although the situation is far, FAR from perfect, it is to America's credit that most Americans resist the urge, denounce racism and bring about quick social death to their fellow Americans who even hint toward racism.

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

Suicide in Korea Series: III. Sociology of Suicide in Korea

2011-11-07T21:36:00.002-05:00

[Series Index]

Korea's high suicide rates are widely known, and there have been plenty of attempts to explain why Korea has such high suicide rates. The proffered reasons range from the unwillingness to discuss mental health, Korea's cultural trait of "han", celebrity suicide affecting the general public, etc. There may be even a genetic explanation -- a study showed that Asian Americans have relatively less "long genes" that produce serotonin, which regulates mood. But although these reasons may be correct and practically helpful, they fail to understand the fundamental cause of the prevalence of suicide in Korea today.

Why are these reasons inadequate? Because they do not explain the dramatic increase in suicide beginning in the late 1990s. As we discussed in the previous part, Korea actually had a very low rate of suicide as recently as mid-1980s. Currently, the average suicide rate in the OECD is 11.1 per 100,000 people. In 1986, Korea's suicide rate was only 6.6 per 100,000. Even in 1995, Korea's suicide rate was 10.8 per 100,000. Given this data, it does not make sense to blame, for example, Korea's lack of mental health awareness for Korea's incredibly high suicide rate in the recent years. (31 per 100,000 people in 2009.) Korean people had even less awareness in mental health back in 1986, when the suicide rate was less than one quarter of the present day's. It makes even less sense to blame genetics, as Korean people's genetics could not have changed in just less than 30 years. Whatever the answer is to Korea's suicide problem, it lies with what happened with Korea in the last few decades.

(More after the jump)

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

What happened in Korea in the last few decades? Recall what the Korean wrote previously -- the keystone knowledge that is required to understand virtually every aspect of modern Korea is that Korea went from one of the poorest in the world (like sub-Saharan Africa where finding something to eat was a daily struggle) to one of the richest in the world (like mid-tier European country with some of the world's most cutting edge corporations) in just 60 years. Korea's process of modernization had no precedent in human history in terms of its magnitude and speed. This means that every social change that followed, say, a Western European country developing at a "normal" speed, happened to Korea in that compressed time period.

This does not mean that social trends in Korea are inexplicable. It may be true that Korea's unprecedented speed of modernization means that Korea's social trends develop very fast and quickly spirals out of control -- hence, the alarming increase in suicides in the last few decades, particularly since 1997. But the truth of common humanity dictates that social trends in Korea will undergo similar social trends as those of other countries that underwent modernization. And what we know about the sociology of suicides confirms this point. This graph* says it all:

(Click to enlarge)

One of the most basic theses about suicide is that there are more suicides in rich countries. As we will discuss further below, industrialization and growing wealth are positively correlated with increasing suicides. And we can see that Korea is essentially following this broad trend from 1997 to 2009. As we pointed out just now, the pace of change for Korea is faster than what might be expected -- the line between Korea of 1995/1997 and Korea of 2009 is steeper than the regression line. But it is clear that what Korea is experiencing in nothing new. Other countries experienced what Korea experienced as well. Then, in order to understand Korea's suicide problem, we must first understand what happened with other countries that modernized.

Sociology of Suicide

Luckily for our purpose, the sociology of suicide began almost with the birth of sociology itself. Emile Durkheim, considered "Father of Sociology," presented his seminal study on suicides in the late 1890s. Thanks to Durkheim and the sociologists who followed him, we have a reasonably clear picture of sociological data regarding suicide going back to more than a century.

Although over a century old, Durkheim's initial insight about the social causes of suicide is still valid for the most part. Durkheim believed that essentially, suicide is a disease of modernity. Durkheim formulated his thoughts by observing France of the late 19th century, which -- along with the rest of Europe -- was witnessing both a spectacular economic growth and an astonishing rise in suicide rate. (In earlier 1840s, France's suicide rate was around 10 suicides per 100,000 people. By mid-1890s, the same rate was around 24 suicides per 100,000 people.) And regardless of the significant diversity among various European states, suicide rate rose in almost all European countries. Moreover, again across most European countries, suicide rate rose more dramatically in the cities while remaining stable in rural areas.

What is it about economic development that leads to suicide? Durkheim noted these factors: individualism, spirit of free inquiry, diversified economy, freedom of choice and greater wealth. At a first glance, these reasons make sense -- suicide is a highly individual act, and is often a result of a rational calculation. And Durkheim's insight has been proven to be broadly correct. In late-developing countries such as India and China, suicide rate rose like a clockwork, particularly in cities where the economic development was the most vibrant. In case of India, the suicide rate rose from 6.8 to 9.9 per 100,000 between 1985 and 1995. The highest suicide rates appeared Bangalore (30.3), Indore (30.1), Nagpur (22.1), and other cities with the most dynamic industrial revolution. In 2000, Indian people with high school degrees committed suicide at a rate more than twice of illiterate Indians. (19.8 versus 8.4 per 100,000)

A lot of Durkheim's more specific insights proved to be correct as well. Durkheim believed that the deterioration of the traditional family contributed to suicide. Sure enough, there is a clear negative correlation between the number of children and the rate of suicide. Likewise, there is a fairly clear positive correlation between the rate of divorce and the rate of suicide.

But Durkheim was not entirely correct. As it turns out, Durkheim made his observation at the peak of the rise of suicides in Europe. In the early 20th century, suicide rate across Europe stabilized and subsequently decreased. To be sure, the suicide rate did not fall as low as it was in the early 19th century. But even as Western Europe enjoyed another spectacular economic growth in what is commonly referred to as Trente Glorieuses (30 glorious years) between 1949 and 1978, suicide rate remained stable -- partially negating Durkheim's idea that greater wealth will cause greater suicide.

Sociologists explained this reversal with the idea that, essentially, people became used to living as individuals in an industrialized economy. In this sense, one can understand suicide as caused not by wealth and individualism alone, but by the friction generated in the course of moving from a traditional, agrarian lifestyle to a modern, industrial lifestyle. After a period of chaos, people eventually develop a series of new relationships with their families, coworkers and strangers (among which, importantly, are psychotherapists,) which again protect them from suicide like the way traditional relationships protected them.

However, it is important to note that this "new individualism" does not protect everyone in a "mature" industrialized society. In particular, suicides in a wealthy industrialized nation disproportionately occurs among the poor, which is seemingly contradictory to Durkheim's idea that wealth leads to suicide. Sociologists explained by coming up with the concept called "disqualifying poverty." Poverty in a wealthy country is unlike poverty in a poor country. A poor person in a wealthy country is "disqualified" from enjoying the fruits of the society's wealth. A poor person not only lacks the money to access the goods and services that make people happy in a wealthy society (again, psychotherapy being one example of such services,) but is also socially disqualified from having a relationship with many different people.

Even outside of social class, the effect of "disqualifying poverty" affects different social groups differently. For example, the general trend around the industrialized world has been that older people are much more likely to commit suicide than young people. Although the trend is still true overall, the extent to which suicides in older ages exceeded suicides in younger ages has been greatly reduced over time. For example, here is a suicide rate by age in the Netherlands, from 1950 to 2000:

(Click to enlarge)

"Disqualifying poverty" can explain this trend as well. Modern industrial society began to gradually add on welfare programs, which tend to favor the elderly. Older people are also generally wealthier, which again allows them to access all the blessings of a wealth society. In contrast, youth unemployment -- something that bedevils most industrialized countries -- might be a cause for the slight increase in suicides in younger ages.

Suicidogenic Factors in the Context of Korean History

One of the most remarkable things about sociology of suicides is how easily one can find every single one of the major suicidogenic (i.e. suicide-causing) conditions identified in the sociology of suicides in modern Korea. Korea's economic development alone explains a great deal. In 1962, per capita GDP of Korea was $87; in 2010, a little more than $20,000. The magnitude of the increase in such a short period of time is unprecedented in human history. And there are ample indications to show that late-developing countries suffer an increase of suicide rate far more dramatic than Durkheim has ever seen in late 19th century. At the fastest rise, France's male suicide rate increased by 78% over 40 years between 1871 and 1911. But in Russia, a late developing country, the male suicide rate increased by 227% in the 40 years between 1925 and 1965. (For the sake of comparison, Korea's suicide rate increased by 370% in the 23 years between 1986 and 2009.)

Other Durkheimian suicidogenic factors can be easily found in Korea. Durkheim predicted that more education would lead to more suicide. In Korea, only 22% of the population was literate in 1945; now, 82% of all Korean high school students move onto a 4-year university, the highest rate in the world. Fertility rate is negatively correlated with suicide rate, and sure enough, Korea's fertility rate decreased from 4.53 children per couple in 1970 to 1.2 children per couple today. On a similar note, divorce rate in Korea increased fivefold between 1970 and 2000, such that Korea's divorce rate is now one of the highest in the developed world. It is no surprise, therefore, than Korea's development between 1970 to today would result in an increase at an even greater speed.

In fact, from a sociological standpoint, what is remarkable about the suicide trends in Korea is not the fact that it is increasing so rapidly now -- it is the fact that Korea's suicide rate was very low until late 1980s. In fact, between the 1960s and the 1980s, there are indications that Korea's rate of suicide decreased as quickly as it increased between 1997 and present. Reliable data about suicide rate in Korea prior to 1980s is difficult to come by, because the country's desperate poverty did not allow for a systematic collection of statistics. But according to one study that estimated the rate based on suicides reported on newspapers, suicide rate in Korea was as high as 28.6 per 100,000 in 1963. In other words, while Korea's per capita GDP increased by around 6000% (!) between mid-1960s to mid-1980s, Korea's suicide rate decreased by more than 75%. Korea in the 1980s would have made Durkheim's head spin sideways.

How could this have happened? First of all, it must be said that Korea's starting point (i.e. suicide rate in the 1960s) was abnormally high, because Korea was still suffering from the mother of all social disruptions -- Korean War. But that alone does not explain how Korea managed to get the suicide rate down to as low as 6.6 per 100,000 in 1986 -- lower than France's suicide rate in 1845, which was before France's suicide rate took off to a degree that alarmed Durkheim.

Although the Korean could not identify a reputable study on this point, his personal theory is that the East Asian development model -- first employed by Japan, then by Korea, and currently by China -- was responsible for bringing about an incredible economic growth without the dramatic increase in suicides that followed the economic developments in Europe. As the Korean wrote previously, South Korea of the 1970s and 80s was, ironically, a better "workers' paradise" than any communist country ever was. Anyone who wanted a job could get one, as unemployment hovered around 2% (!) for around three decades. At its zenith in mid-1990s, it may have been proper to refer to Korea as a "corporate republic." As Korea's large corporations constantly complained of being unable to find enough skilled workers. they provided what might be called a "full service" employment for their employees -- the employees were given free housing; their children attended the company-provided schools and receive tuition subsidies for colleges; few people were ever fired and everyone's salary rose with seniority until the retirement age; after retirement, there was pension and medical care from the company.

As we discussed earlier, it is not the wealth itself that causes increased suicide, but the process of change from a traditional to an industrial society that causes increased suicide. Korea's (relatively) unique economic development as a corporate republic allowed for an economic rise with as little stressful disruption as possible. From a social life perspective, working at a typical Korean corporation was not all that different from working as a farmer in a traditional village. As the entire village worked together on rice paddies, the entire company worked together on a project. As the village collectively provided what might be called "social services" today (e.g. childcare, healthcare, etc.) modern Korean corporation provided the same. Most importantly, few people were fired, and few people ever moved from one company to another.

As a result, Korea's suicide trend essentially went through a trajectory opposite of Europe's. In Europe, suicide rate increased rapidly in the beginning of industrialization, and then decreased and stabilized in Trente Glorieuses even as wealth increased dramatically. In Korea, wealth increased dramatically first while suicide rate decreased. Then in 1997, Korea would run into an inflection point. The inflection point, of course, is the East Asian Financial Crisis of 1997.

(Aside: The Korean is absolutely convinced that, like they do with Korea itself, Western scholars significantly underrate just how important an event East Asian Financial Crisis was -- particularly given that politically, economically and socially, East Asian Financial Crisis presaged what would happen in Europe and America to a remarkable degree.)

As the Korean explained previously, East Asian Financial Crisis and IMF's bailout of Korea in 1997 meant that Korea's days as a corporate republic was over. In all fairness, it must be said that even before the calamitous events of 1997, Korea's corporate republic was already showing signs of strains -- it was entirely possible that Korea would have ceased to remain as a corporate republic even absent East Asian Financial Crisis. But East Asian Financial Crisis meant not simply that Korea's economic model ended, but that it ended like a speeding car running into a brick wall. The biggest companies disappeared overnight, and millions of people were left to fend for themselves. The labor market no longer protected the workers. Social services provided by the government were woefully inadequate, as those services were previously provided by large corporations, which either ceased to exist or could no longer afford those programs.

In the introduction of this series, the Korean explained that Korea's high suicide rate has much to do with the fact that Korea, as a society, condones an incredible level of ruthlessness and cruelty to those who lose out in the social competition. But it was not always thus -- until 1997, Korea had a place even for those who lost out in the capitalistic competition. After 1997, not anymore. Of course, Korea recovered from the East Asian Financial Crisis relatively quickly, and is now at an economic catbird seat even as America and Europe are living the experience of what it went through back in 1997. But the Korea that emerged out of the East Asian Financial Crisis was not the same as the Korea of pre-1997. As IMF demanded Korea make severe austerity and neo-liberal economic reform, post-1997 Korea's capitalism began to look awful lot like that of late 19th century France -- an economic free-for-all when only the strongest survived and the weak were cast aside. It is no surprise, therefore, the Durkheimian suicidogenic factors descended upon Korea with a vengeance.

It has been only 14 years since the onset of East Asian Financial Crisis, so perhaps it is not fair to expect Korea's suicide rate to decrease soon. The suicide rate will not decline in the short term, because Korean society has not yet developed the usual backstops that nullified Durkheimian suicidogenic factors in other industrialized countries. The "new individualism" -- which took approximately a century for Western Europe to develop, by the way -- has not yet taken root in Korea. As many have correctly pointed out, psychotherapy in Korea is not widely utilized. The "disqualifying poverty" also became widespread in Korea after East Asian Financial Crisis. Such poverty has not decreased even as Korea successfully hauled itself out of the abyss, because of the income polarization meant that the wealth created from Korea's recovery was not evenly distributed across the society. The old people in Korea are not protected like old people in Western Europe, because Korea's old people are not protected from disqualifying poverty through government mandated social welfare programs. The fact that Korea is now discussing the establishment of a meaningful social welfare system -- next year's presidential election will almost certainly revolve around which party can be a better architect of social welfare -- gives one a sense of how much longer Korea will have to deal with its elevated suicide rate.

In the next part of the series, we will take a closer, ground-level look at how the epidemic of suicide began and spread in Korea since 1997.

* Unless otherwise specified or linked to, all data and graphs in this post come from: Christian Baudelot & Roger Establet, Suicide: The Hidden Side of Modernity (2008)

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

Burial or Cremation?

2011-11-04T22:00:00.001-04:00

Dear Korean,

Would there be any shame associated with cremating a loved one rather than burying him/her?

White Schoolteacher

Traditionally, Korean people preferred to bury their dead. Traditional funeral in Korea is a big affair, requiring many people dressed up in hemp clothes carrying a lavishly decorated casket, to the family burial ground where the entire family is to be buried. Below is a re-creation of a traditional Korean funeral. The Korean Grandfather's funeral looked like this, because he is from a traditional family.

But all that changed significantly in the last 20 years or so. As traditional family structure weakened, the younger generation decided that it was easier to tend a crypt than a burial plot with grass and a tombstone. Also, the government encouraged cremation and in some cases even provided a subsidy for cremation, as it was concerned about the family burial plots taking up too much land. The result is a dramatic increase in cremation -- from 17.8% of all burials in 1991 to 67.5% in 2010. In particular, overwhelming majority of city folks preferred cremation, compared to rural residents.

So at this point, it's safe to say that there is no shame associated with cremation.

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

Whither KORUS FTA?

2011-11-03T21:10:00.000-04:00

If you are curious about what's going on with Korea's side of ratifying the free trade agreement with the United States, the Korean gave an analysis of the political stakes on the Marmot's Hole. Short version: regardless of the sound and fury, the Korean is confident that the FTA will pass in Korea by the year's end.

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

AAK! PSA: Classic Korean Movie Screening in D.C. This Friday

2011-11-02T22:13:00.000-04:00

Here is a nice free screening of Madame Freedom in Washington D.C., this Friday.

Date: Friday, November 4, 2011, 7 p.m.

Venue: Meyer Auditorium of Freer Gallery, in the Smithsonian complex.

One of the defining films of the “golden era” of Korean cinema in the 1950s, Madame Freedom was a template for Korean films in the 1960s and influenced them well into this century. This melodrama about marital infidelity was the first large-scale commercial box office success after the Korean War, and it tapped into contemporary tension between modernity and tradition.

In celebration of the reopening of the Freer’s Korea gallery, Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, creates a new score for this classic film combining a string duo and turntables, edited live using his innovative iPad/iPhone mixing software. (Dir.: Han Hyung-mo, Korea, 1956, 125 min., Korean with English subtitles)

Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, is a composer, artist, and writer whose work bridges hip hop, multimedia art, and avant-garde music. His work as a media artist has appeared in the Whitney Biennial as well as at Kunsthalle, Vienna, and the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, among many other museums and galleries. Rebirth of a Nation, his live rescore of D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, was commissioned in 2004 by the Lincoln Center Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Weiner Festwochen, and the Festival d'Automne a Paris. It has been performed in venues around the world.

For more information, please visit the website of the Freer Gallery.

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

2011-11-02T08:25:00.000-04:00

If you like Korean music but are sick of the same old idol group fare, get yourself straight to Indieful ROK. And while you are there, you can read the most recent viewer report on 나는 가수다, which now features the Korean's impressions of the show.

Today, TK Learned:

2011-11-01T22:22:00.001-04:00

... that the only thing more excruciating than translating a book is editing the translated manuscript of the book.

One way to defeat surveillance might be providing constant details about where you are to the FBI, all the time. [New York Times]
Ever wonder why Afghans are not grateful that Americans saved them from Taliban tyranny? This might be a reason why. [CNN]
"An Egyptian man was severely beaten after an Iraqi gang tried to kidnap and force him to film pornographic videos because of his astonishing resemblance to former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein." [Ahram Online]
Sugar does not cause hyperactivity in children. [Incidental Economist]
Asian American students are the most frequently bullied. [AFP]
Contrast this sentence ... "Only three in 10 U.S. schoolchildren make the grade in reading, the U.S. Education Department said today. Four in 10 passed muster in math." [Business Week]
... with this one: "middle class families in Asian countries spend up to 50% of their income on education for their children – over and above what the state provides, living in smaller homes and driving smaller cars than their US counterparts to provide maximum education for their off-spring." [The Economist]

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

Ask a Korean! News: "Journalism" in North Korea (Part II)

2011-10-31T22:19:00.001-04:00

[Series Index]

This is a continuation of Mr. Joo Seong-Ha's discussion about "journalism" in North Korea. Below is the translated article.

* * *

The previous post explained the types of North Korean newspapers and the lives of North Korean reporters. This post will discuss how Rodong Shinmun is organized and edited.

Rodong Shinmun has six pages per issue, which is the only North Korean newspapers to do so. Other papers have four pages. Since newspapers are folded and opened, usually they increase or decrease by four pages. A regular South Korean newspaper nowadays usually have 32 pages, sometimes going to 28 pages or 36 pages depending on the amount of advertisements it has to carry. But the six pages of Rodong Shinmun is essentially three sheets of newspaper-sized paper. So the two sheets of paper are connected, but the last sheet of paper comes out as an insert. North Korean people also refer to the first four pages as "main paper," and the fifth and sixth pages as "insert."

Newspapers around the world carry the most important news of the day on the front page. But the front page of a North Korean newspaper carries stories about the current status or deification of Kim Jong-Il, making it the least readable page. North Koreans simply glance over the front page, and turn it over. Day after day, the contents of that page rarely change. In the 1990s when I was living in North Korea, the front page usually carried a story of Kim Jong-Il visiting a military base. Even a collection of years' worth of newspapers rarely sees any change in the pictures and the stories on the front page.

The front page usually carries a picture of an expressionless Kim Jong-Il, standing with soldiers stiff with tension. In the second page, there are pictures of Kim Jong-Il smiling while examining the different parts of the base guided by high ranking officers, pictures of soldiers putting on a performance before Kim Jong-Il, pictures of Kim Jong-Il visiting the mess hall, appearing to be satisfied while holding a cucumber or herbs. Of course, North Korean people are fully aware of the common knowledge that the vegetables at the mess hall are not available all the time -- they are collected at the battalion level to make Kim Jong-Il happy, and the officers take them back after Kim Jong-Il leaves.

North Koreans have been seeing this same picture for over a decade.

Kim Jong-Il's visit, reported on Rodong Shinmun

The stories on the front page usually discuss that on so-and-so day, Kim Jong-Il gave an on-site instruction for such-and-such base of the People's Army, accompanied by so-and-so, giving an address about such-and-such that inspired the troops, etc. -- and the stories are the same all the time. Even the course of Kim Jong-Il's visit is the same: first, pay respect at Kim Il-Sung's memorial, then climb up the fortress, then visit the mess hall and then watch an "impromptu" performance at the hospital beds, then concluded with gifts of binoculars and automatic guns and a group picture. I saw this every year for five years before I defected.

Therefore, North Korean people rarely care about the front and second pages. Even the third page covers the stories of the mercy and virtue from the party and the leader, and the loyal subjects who did certain things to repay the mercy, etc. -- all stories about which North Koreans do not care. The most popular pages for North Koreans are the fifth page covering South Korea, and the sixth page covering international affairs. On this topic, I will elaborate further in the next post.

The text on Rodong Shinmun is written horizontally, and Chinese characters or English alphabets are rarely used. The paper is 40.5 cm horizontally, 54.5 cm vertically. Compared to a South Korean paper, it is longer horizontally by 1 cm. It has eight columns, which make it appear a little cramped compared to South Korean newspapers which usually use seven columns. It uses eight point Myeongjo font, which is very small. But when it refers to either the names or quotes of Kim Il-Sung or Kim Jong-Il, a different font is used to make them more noticeable. This stylistic rule is common to all newspapers and magazines of North Korea.

North Korean newspapers, including Rodong Shinmun, have no section for advertisement in an attempt to repudiate commercialism. Because of that, all six pages are completely filled with news articles. Considering the smallness of the font and the fact that the entire page is filled with articles, Rodong Shinmun would be about the same as a 12-page South Korean newspaper in terms of the amount of stories. However, the local Pyongyang Shinmun occasionally carries a notice that a certain store is selling a certain product. Of course, if you asked a North Korean reporter, he would absolutely deny that the story is an advertisement, and insist that it is an informational service for the people.

It does not appear that a North Korean newspaper will carry an ad any time soon, as Kim Jong-Il himself severely dislikes advertisements. In a meeting with the heads of South Korean media held in August 2000, Kim Jong-Il said: "I really like KBS TV because it has no commercial. I only watch KBS [among South Korean TV stations.] I also like NHK [Japanese TV station] because it doesn't have any ads, it has good coverage on international affairs, and its programs are gentleman-like and conservative. But I am not even sure if the Chinese CCTV and Russian TV are officially run, because they are such a mess. There should be a TV station that presents the national voice, without the ads ... I respect NHK and BBC."

Because of Kim Jong-Il's preference, anyone who dared to put on an advertisement would immediately face a burial. And of course, no one would even try without wanting to wager his life. Considering that, Rodong Shinmun might be the most expensive paper in the world on which to advertise.

As an aside, in the same meeting with South Korean media chiefs, Kim Jong-Il drew attention by praising the North Korean media: "North Korean media may not be as quick as South Korean ones, but they do not fall behind South Korean ones when it comes to accuracy. We are far more accurate." I don't know if he truly believes that North Korean newspapers are accurate -- but it will be strange if he truly believes that. Kim Jong-Il also said he reads all North Korea-related news in South Korean newspapers, and even said that he is enjoying a serial novel being carried on Seoul Shinmun.

This post was heavy on Kim Jong-Il, but I had no choice -- North Korean media is so strictly based on Kim Jong-Il's orders that without referring to Kim Jong-Il, there is no way to explain North Korean media. Once we glean the media philosophy of Kim Jong-Il, we can easily resolve the curiosity about why North Korean media behaves a certain way. Then how would North Korean people receive the North Korean newspapers so thoroughly observant of Kim Jong-Il's preference? That is the story for the next post.

김정일이 재미있게 보는 남한신문은? [North Korea Real Talk]

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

2011-10-30T23:10:00.002-04:00

The Korean gave a podcast interview for Korea Economic Institute. You can listen to it here.

Today, TK Learned:

2011-10-28T22:03:00.001-04:00

... that it is beginning to get awfully cold.

Korea stands ready for a potential currency crisis. [Financial Times]
Japan is doing a lot better than you think. [Naked Capitalism]
But China might be doing worse than you think. [China Law Blog]
Read this if you are even thinking about getting into law: “I thought about being a lawyer. You know, Dad, I really love you. But basically you help big companies that did it get off the hook.” [Above the Law]
You will be surprised to find which cities are the fastest growing cities in the world. [Foreign Policy]
Here is late Prof. Derrick Bell's interest convergence theory in action: the OWS protesters are mostly white, formerly middle class folks who never really cared about inequality until they themselves began receiving the short end of it. The poorest 10% (which is overwhelmingly comprised of minorities) will benefit from whatever OWS gets, but only to the extent the 89% is satisfied. [New York Times]

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

Grand Bargain with North Korea Will Not Look Like This

2011-10-27T22:04:00.001-04:00

The good folks at Bulletin of Atomic Scientists alerted the Korean to this article, Time for a Grand Bargain in North East Asia, by Professor Walter C. Clemens. This is a timely piece, as the talks between U.S. and North Korea held earlier in Geneva ended again with a whimper. Prof. Clemens, expert in diplomatic negotiation tactics with former communist countries, believes that there is a bargaining room for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. The outline for his proposed grand bargain contains these points:

● Diplomatic relations should be established between the United States and Democratic People's Republic of Korea and between the Republic of Korea and the North.

● A peace treaty ending the Korean War should be signed by Washington (for the UN), Seoul, Pyongyang, and Beijing.

● Area countries should reaffirm that all of Korea is a nuclear-free zone; the International Atomic Energy Agency should verify dismantlement of nuclear weapons; and all parties should renew their commitments to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

● The United States should agree to supply fuel oil and electric power facilities to the North equal to those pledged in the 1994 Agreed Framework. All parties should agree to build a pipeline that brings Siberian oil and gas to both Koreas on terms advantageous to each country -- an idea approved by the North's Kim Jong-il and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last summer.

● North Korea should permit direct foreign investment and business operations and reaffirm the property rights of all enterprises the South establishes in the North.

● All parties (including Japan and Russia) should agree to share their resources and know-how with the North and to facilitate its participation in international trade and banking organizations.

● The North and South should agree to reduce all branches of their armed forces by 50 percent in stages from 2011 to 2015.

● The UN and the US and its partners should end all sanctions against the North.

● Both Koreas should agree to a demilitarized zone in the waters near their border, in which neither bases nor maneuvers are permitted. The South would retain the five islands it was awarded in 1953, but fishermen from the North and South could operate in the West Sea up to the waters under Chinese jurisdiction.

The Korean is loath to criticize someone who clearly has better expertise than he. Prof. Clemens has been studying negotiating with communist countries since the 1950s. He has an impressive number of publications, including a book that deals with negotiation tactics with North Korea. In contrast, the Korean is just a guy who reads a lot of news. So please take the Korean's position for what it's worth: I think this proposed grand bargain is delusional, and based on a fundamentally incorrect understanding of North Korea.

(More after the jump.)

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

Any discussion about negotiating with North Korea must begin with this fundamental understanding. For any bargain in which North Korea is involved, North Korea wants only three things: (1) regime survival, (2) regime survival, and (3) regime survival. For North Korea, maintaining the Kim Dynasty dictatorship is the absolute, paramount value. The value of everything else is measured simply as a function of how much it contributes to the survival of the regime.

Anyone discussing North Korea must fully understand the extent to which the priority of regime survival dwarfs any other concerns. North Korea is not irrational -- far from it. But her rationality is entirely dedicated toward ensuring that Kim Jong-Il (and now Kim Jong-Un) stays in power, just like he has been for the last few decades. In this sense, North Korea is not even a normal communist dictatorship, much less a normal country. Serious concerns that may bother a "normal" communist dictatorship -- say, a decade-long famine that caused more than 600,000 people to die from hunger -- mean nothing to the North Korean regime. The regime is absolutely uninterested in joining the world economy, if joining the world economy leads to the collapse of the regime (which is the most likely result.)

Another point that requires a fundamental understanding is that nuclear weapon is one of North Korea's last remaining cards. The cards that North Korea holds are (1) the nuclear weapon, and (2) military provocation at the level just enough to not cause an all-out war. All-out war, at this point, is out of the question for North Korea, as the combined military of South Korea and United States will quickly annihilate North Korea in case of a war. (South Korea will certainly suffer a great deal of damage, which is why South Korea will never invade North Korea first. But if the war comes to South Korea, it will be completely ready to annihilate North Korea, and South Korea's damage will be nothing like the damage it took in Korean War at any rate.) In other words, asking North Korea to give up nuclear weapon is essentially asking it to give up everything she has. If Kim Jong-Il ever forgot the significance of this demand, the pictures of the last dictator who gave up his nuclear program, lying dead in a meat locker, would have surely reminded him of it.

These fundamental understandings about North Korea are the reason why I think Prof. Clemens' proposed "grand bargain" is delusional. Essentially, Prof. Clemens is asking North Korea to give up her nuclear program for:

Diplomatic relations with United States and peace treaty
End of sanctions and participation in the world economy
Fishing in the Yellow Sea

This list of inducements is scoff-worthy for a dictator who is being asked to give up the last card he has. When it comes to ensuring regime survival, peace treaty is not even worth a pitcher of excrement. How can a peace treaty, which only theoretically prevents U.S. and South Korea from taking military action toward North Korea, possibly be superior to a nuclear deterrence? Ending sanctions means even less. North Korea has been living with sanctions for decades, and the regime sincerely does not care about the plight of the North Korean people who are hurt by the sanction. Finally, the Yellow Sea point is so trivial that it does not merit a discussion.

The primary misunderstanding at work in Prof. Clemens' proposal is the same one that has bedeviled many a North Korean analyst -- even those who are unimpeachably smart, competent and respectable. The misunderstanding is that North Korean regime is interested in being a normal government that is interested in national development. The regime has amply demonstrated in the last few decades the fallacy of that idea. But the attraction of normalcy is so strong that, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, North Korean analysts believe that North Korea will disarm itself in exchange for, say, economic development, which will more than likely disrupt the regime's grip on the country.

Denuclearizing North Korea requires offering something that neither U.S. nor South Korea (rightly) can possibly offer -- survival of Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un's regime for the foreseeable future in its murderous, oppressive glory. This is not an easy puzzle to solve, and I do not have a better alternative to offer at this moment. (My sense is that reunification will happen before there will be a denuclearization. I will elaborate on this in a later post.) But it is important to at least understand what we are dealing with. Prof. Clemens' "grand bargain" indicates, alarmingly, that even a respectable American thinker does not really understand what North Korea wants.

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

50 Most Influential K-Pop Artists: 24. Lee Seung-Hwan

2011-10-26T21:44:00.001-04:00

[Series Index]

24. Lee Seung-Hwan [이승환]

Years of Activity: 1989-present

Discography:
B.C. 603 (1989)
Always (1991)
My Story (1993)
Human (1995)
Cycle (1997)
The War in Life (1999)
Egg (2001)
Karma (2004)
Hwantastic (2006)
Dreamizer (2010)

Representative Song: For a Thousand Days [천일동안], from Human

천일동안
For a Thousand Days

천일동안 난 우리의 사랑이 영원할거라 믿어왔었던거죠
For a thousand days, I believed that our love will be eternal
어리석게도 그런줄로만 알고 있었죠
Foolishly, that's how I thought
헤어지자는 말은 참을 수 있었지만
I could endure your goodbye, but
당신의 행복을 빌어줄 내 모습이
I, who will wish for your happiness,
낯설어 보이진 않을런지
Might appear strange to you

그 천일동안 알고 있었나요
For those thousand days, did you know
많이 웃고 또 많이 울던 당신을 항상
That you, who laughed a lot and cried a lot, were always
지켜주던 감사해하던 너무 사랑했던 나를
Protected, appreciated and loved too much by me
보고 싶겠죠
You will be missed
천일이 훨씬 지난 후에라도 역시 그럴테죠
And it will be that way long after a thousand days
난 괜찮아요
I will be fine
당신이 내 곁에 있어줬잖아요
Because you were by my side

그 천일동안 알고 있었나요
For those thousand days, did you know
많이 웃고 또 많이 울던 당신을 항상
That you, who laughed a lot and cried a lot, were always
지켜주던 감사해하던 너무 사랑했던 나를
Protected, appreciated and loved too much by me
보고 싶겠죠
You will be missed
천일이 훨씬 지난 후에라도 역시 그럴테죠
And it will be that way long after a thousand days
잊지마요 우리사랑 아름다운 이름들을
Please don't forget our love, those beautiful names

그 천일동안 힘들었었나요
For those thousand days, was it hard for you
혹시 내가 당신을 아프게 했었나요
Did I perchance cause you pain
용서해요 그랬다면 마지막 일거니까요
Forgive me, if I did that, that will be the last time
난 자유롭죠 그 날 이후로
I am free since that day
다만 그냥 당신이 궁금할 뿐이죠
I only am curious about you
다음 세상에서라도 우리 다시는 만나지마요
Even in the next world, may we never meet.

Translation note: The Korean is having a hard time finding an elegant English equivalent for 헤어지다 and 이별. Any suggestion?

In 15 words or less: One of the twin peaks of Korean ballads of the 1990s.

Maybe he should be ranked higher because... In the 1990s, "ballad" was as big as boy/girl bands are today. Lee was at the top of that trend.

Maybe he should be ranked lower because... The ballad era faded away, and Lee did not leave any lasting imprints.

Why is this artist important?
This series previously mentioned the prevalence of "ballad" -- sappy soft rocks with a clear rise-climax-denouement structure a la My Heart Will Go On -- in Korea of the late 1980s-early 1990s. However, for a K-pop fan who has not lived in Korea in that time period, the dominance of ballad was difficult to capture. You think it's bad now with boy/girl group blaring dance music that all sound the same? Replace that dance music with Celine Dion-esque soft rock, and that was Korean pop music scene of late 1980s-early 1990s. (The only thing that held ballad back from total annihilation of all other music is the burgeoning trend of generic dance music -- which would become the mainstream in the 2000s.)

It must be said that ballad was, for the most part, just as dumb as the dance numbers that dominated the next decade. The entire selling point was the saccharine, tear-jerking lyrics delivered in a predictably dramatic tune. If Korean drama could take a musical form, it would be ballad. (It is, therefore, not a surprise that ballad is heavily featured in the soundtracks of Korean dramas!) And much like the boy/girl band music of today, much of the ballad from the 1980s/90s is completely forgettable.

But not Lee Seung-Hwan. Along with another artist to be ranked on this later, Lee formed the two greatest peaks of ballad artists. As a gifted singer/songwriter, his lyrics are understated, but the songs are delivered with utmost sincerity. He was also renowned for his explosive live performances. Although he could not completely get away from the "ballad singer" label applied to him by virtue of his massive success in that genre, Lee continuously explored and experimented with new and different types of music. As a fitting representative for one of the most significant musical trend in Korean pop music, Lee Seung-Hwan deserves his spot here.

Interesting trivia: Lee Seung-Hwan is one of the few Korean pop artists who have their own record label.

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

Today, TK Learned:

2011-10-25T22:48:00.000-04:00

... that yawning could dislocate your jaw. Almost happened twice today.

IBM Korea is making an effort to hire LGBT candidates. [The Economist]
According to World Bank, Korea is 8th easiest place to do business in the world. [World Bank: Doing Business]
African American sellers on eBay get 20% less for the same product. [Chris Blattman]
Japanese is not an imprecise language at all, and other observations about translating Murakami. [The Atlantic]
Camera maker Olympus is involved in some suspicious payments, and Japanese corporate governance is awful. [The Economist]
People who speak languages without a future tense tend to save more. Would be interested to know if Korean is considered a language with or without a future tense. (It's kind of both.) [PRI's The World]
Small business will not save the economy. Just ask Italy and Greece. [Think Progress]

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

Can Non-Koreans be Korean Actors?

2011-10-25T21:20:00.001-04:00

Dear Korean,

I have been doing some acting and modeling in Brazil, China, Thailand, etc. for some time now. I love acting and I'm planning in going to Korea to get a degree on acting there. How is the acting bussiness for Westerners in Korea? I know that Koreans are a little bit racist towards skin colour and some other things, so I think this could be a barrier for entering the business.

The Working Actor

Dear Working Actor,

Although it is true that Koreans can be racist, that is hardly a barrier for a non-Korean to get into acting. In fact, Korea's racism often helps a non-Korean find an acting/modeling job, provided that the said non-Korean is (or appears to be) white. Especially when it comes to modeling/acting for advertisements, the field is wide open for attractive non-Koreans.

Of course, whether or not this trend is
a good thing is a completely separate discussion.
(source)

If you can somehow get yourself to speak Korean fluently, you will have absolutely no problem finding gigs as an actor. After all, Korean dramas and movies occasionally feature non-Koreans, and decent-looking non-Koreans who can speak Korean fluently are hard to find. When the Korean was younger, there were exactly four non-Korean actors who ever showed up on TV -- two women and two men, playing every single role that required a white person in a Korean drama.

(If you are curious, the two men were Robert Holley and Charm Lee [born as Bernhard Quandt], and the two women were Ida Daussy and .... blanking on the other woman's name. She was older than Daussy. Does anyone remember?)

Of course, it is highly unlikely that a non-Korean will be a top star in Korean acting scene. In all likelihood, a non-Korean actor will be typecast into a minor role. It might be enough to make a living, but stardom is improbable. But there is at least one case where a non-Korean character was cast as a lead for a big-budget Korean drama. Tamra, the Island depicts a story of a British sailor who gets shipwrecked in Jeju island in the 17th century. The role of "William" the sailor was played by Pierre Deporte (also known as Hwang Chan-Bin), a French actor who cannot look more different from Koreans:

If you really need help, Deporte is the guy on the right.
(source)

Deporte's selling point, again, was his fluent Korean, acquired through his Korean stepmother. Although the show was unfortunately cancelled in the middle of the season, it had enough niche support for a DVD edition that contained additional episodes. So there is at least one precedent for a non-Korean actor to be a legitimate star in a Korean drama. Given that it took Asian Americans more than a century of living in America before there was a TV show about us (and a cringe-worthy one at that,) the Korean would say Korea is actually making a decent progress.

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