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Dear Korean,
I noticed in quite a few cases (at least on TV) that siblings share one syllable of their name. How common is this, and what is its origin? I get the sense that it is not considered as eccentric as giving all your children names which begin with the same letter. I also noticed that close friends and family sometimes will call a person by the syllable which is not shared with the sibling. What could you tell me about that?
Andrew T.
Dear Andrew,
You, sir, know how to jump the line in AAK! -- by asking questions about one of the Korean's favorite topics, Korean names. Korea's naming conventions are elaborate and unique, and the Korean never gets tired of talking about them.
What you identified is a custom called dollimja (돌림자, "circulating letters"). To understand this custom, you have to first understand the clan names of Koreans, which is explained in this post. To summarize quickly: Koreans can generally trace their last name all the way back to the very first person who held their last name. For example, the "Kim" clan can be traced to a single, actual person who lived around the first century. Every reputable lineage society (종친회), at least one for each last name and several for large last names like "Kim", maintains the record of the lineage and the children born into the clan. Based on that record, each Korean can precisely identify, by number, how many generation s/he is from the very first ancestor of her/his last name.
In this context, the function of dollimja is to show another person what generation level you are in. The shared letter is not just shared among siblings -- it is shared among everyone who is at the same generational level. This includes your siblings, your first cousins (because their parents belong to the same generational level as your parents,) your second cousins, etc. By the same token, your father, uncles and the parents of your second cousin would all share a syllable in their names. Also, your children and nephews would all share a syllable in their names.
This tradition has weakened somewhat in modern times, but it is still fairly strong. Formerly dollimja would only cover male heirs -- don't forget the fact that traditional Korea was very sexist -- but now it is fairly commonplace for daughters to take the dollimja as well, when the dollimja is conducive to making girls' names as well. For example, the most famous brother-sister actor-actress pair in Korean history, Choi Jin-Sil and Choi Jin-Yeong, shared the dollimja "Jin" ("truth"). In the Korean's family, all the girls took the dollimja as well.
Dollimja is unique by clan; each clan has a line of dollimja to be used for all of its children. This necessarily means that you share the dollimja with the children of your father's brother, but not with the children of your father's sister (because those children would take the last name of your father's sister's husband.)
More after the jump.
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query more korean name. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query more korean name. Sort by date Show all posts
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Friday, June 28, 2013
Why are Korean Names Two Syllables?
(To read more about Korean names, here is a list of all posts related to Korean names.)
Dear Korean,
I want to know what the deal with the two syllable names. After almost 8 months of teaching and living here in Korea 99.9% of the names I come across are two syllable names. Why the two syllables all the time? And why is it ok to break that rule sometimes?
Jo-Anna
I want to know what the deal with the two syllable names. After almost 8 months of teaching and living here in Korea 99.9% of the names I come across are two syllable names. Why the two syllables all the time? And why is it ok to break that rule sometimes?
Jo-Anna
Jo-Anna is correct that most Korean names are two syllables, like, for example, Jin-yeong [진영]. Why the two syllables?
Actually, this question was partially answered in the previous post that explained dollimja [돌림자]. To recap: generally, Koreans follow a convention in which they use one of the syllables to signify the generational level, and the other syllable is given as the "true" name. Thus, a traditional Korean "given" name ends up being two syllables: one to show your generational level, the other your "true" name.
Dollimja tradition is somewhat weakened today, but the convention for two syllables stayed. For Koreans, it just looks normal for a given name to have two syllables. So even in case of a given name that do not follow the dollimja system, Koreans tend to name their children with two syllables. For example, purely Korean names, by definition, do not follow dollimja, because dollimja requires Chinese characters. Yet even Korean people with purely Korean names tend to have two-syllable first names. (E.g., Ha-neul [하늘] or Na-rae [나래]).
Deviation from this rule can come in two forms: a single-syllable given name, or a given name with 3+ syllables. Single-syllable name is generally still in the dollimja framework. Certain clans (e.g. Yangcheon Heo [양천 허씨]) consciously reject the "generational syllable," and name their children with a single syllable. Certain others name their firstborn son with the generational syllable only (without a "true" name,) to signify that the child is the first of the generation.
On the other hand, given names with 3+ syllables--which are extremely rare--are almost always a result of the parent's attempt to use a purely Korean word. For example, in 1997 there was a notorious kidnap-murder case involving an 8-year-old girl. Although a murder of an 8-year-old is a sensational news under any circumstance, the murdered girl's name was so unusual that it stayed with Korean public's consciousness like the way Jon-Benet Ramsay's name stayed with American public consciousness. The girl's name? Take a deep breath: 박초롱초롱빛나리, a given name with whopping seven syllables.
Interestingly, because the two-syllable convention is so strong, even Koreans with 3+ syllable given names are usually compelled to use a two-syllable nickname. (For example, in a lot of official forms in Korea, there are only two spaces to fill out one's first name.) The murdered 8-year-old was also known as 박나리, taking the last two syllables of her name.
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
Dollimja tradition is somewhat weakened today, but the convention for two syllables stayed. For Koreans, it just looks normal for a given name to have two syllables. So even in case of a given name that do not follow the dollimja system, Koreans tend to name their children with two syllables. For example, purely Korean names, by definition, do not follow dollimja, because dollimja requires Chinese characters. Yet even Korean people with purely Korean names tend to have two-syllable first names. (E.g., Ha-neul [하늘] or Na-rae [나래]).
Deviation from this rule can come in two forms: a single-syllable given name, or a given name with 3+ syllables. Single-syllable name is generally still in the dollimja framework. Certain clans (e.g. Yangcheon Heo [양천 허씨]) consciously reject the "generational syllable," and name their children with a single syllable. Certain others name their firstborn son with the generational syllable only (without a "true" name,) to signify that the child is the first of the generation.
On the other hand, given names with 3+ syllables--which are extremely rare--are almost always a result of the parent's attempt to use a purely Korean word. For example, in 1997 there was a notorious kidnap-murder case involving an 8-year-old girl. Although a murder of an 8-year-old is a sensational news under any circumstance, the murdered girl's name was so unusual that it stayed with Korean public's consciousness like the way Jon-Benet Ramsay's name stayed with American public consciousness. The girl's name? Take a deep breath: 박초롱초롱빛나리, a given name with whopping seven syllables.
Interestingly, because the two-syllable convention is so strong, even Koreans with 3+ syllable given names are usually compelled to use a two-syllable nickname. (For example, in a lot of official forms in Korea, there are only two spaces to fill out one's first name.) The murdered 8-year-old was also known as 박나리, taking the last two syllables of her name.
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
Monday, February 27, 2012
What do Korean Last Names Mean?
Dear Korean,
What do Korean last names mean? I mean, I know most of them come from dynasties—but what does Kim mean? Pak? Cho? And others? I can't believe they exist sui generis!
The Mexican
Here in AAK!, the most important policy is that the Korean will do whatever the hell he wants with this blog. The second most important policy is this: whenever Gustavo Arellano, i.e. the Mexican, i.e. the owner of ¡Ask a Mexican! and the inspiration for this blog, sends a question to this blog, that questions gets answered as soon as possible, no matter how long the line is and no matter what the question is. That is right, the Korean has answered numerous questions about Korean names before, but what does it matter? When the granddaddy of all "Ask" blogs asks your blog a question, you answer. That's it.
So what do Korean last names mean? Let's put it this way: Korean language has a Chinese backbone, as just like English has a Latin backbone. In other words, while there are plenty of Korean words that have a stand-alone meaning in Korean, a lot of Korean words have a meaning that one must refer back to Chinese to understand -- that is, those words are Sino-Korean. Sino-Korean words tend to appear in clusters in a given word group. For example, Korean law tends to be heavily laden with Sino-Korean, just like American lawyers speak of a sui generis action that should be so obvious that it is res ipsa loquitur, for example.
Name is another area in which Sino-Korean tends to dominate. Although pure Korean names are gaining popularity in the last several decades, the overwhelming majority of Korean names are Sino-Korean. In fact, this type of questions hits the Korean's inbox fairly frequently: I have a Korean name; what does my name mean? (In most cases, the questioners are adoptees who are attempting retrace their roots.) And usually, the Korean's answer is: unless you know the what Chinese characters were used for your name, the Korean can't really say what your name means.
Korean last names are 100% Sino-Korean. That is, all Korean last names have an underlying Chinese character. So the meaning of Korean last names are basically the meaning of the Chinese characters underlying those last names.
Having said that, here are the ten most common Korean last names, the underlying Chinese characters, and what they mean:
So there you have it, Mexican. Catch you next time.
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
What do Korean last names mean? I mean, I know most of them come from dynasties—but what does Kim mean? Pak? Cho? And others? I can't believe they exist sui generis!
The Mexican
 |
| The Mexican strikes again! |
Here in AAK!, the most important policy is that the Korean will do whatever the hell he wants with this blog. The second most important policy is this: whenever Gustavo Arellano, i.e. the Mexican, i.e. the owner of ¡Ask a Mexican! and the inspiration for this blog, sends a question to this blog, that questions gets answered as soon as possible, no matter how long the line is and no matter what the question is. That is right, the Korean has answered numerous questions about Korean names before, but what does it matter? When the granddaddy of all "Ask" blogs asks your blog a question, you answer. That's it.
So what do Korean last names mean? Let's put it this way: Korean language has a Chinese backbone, as just like English has a Latin backbone. In other words, while there are plenty of Korean words that have a stand-alone meaning in Korean, a lot of Korean words have a meaning that one must refer back to Chinese to understand -- that is, those words are Sino-Korean. Sino-Korean words tend to appear in clusters in a given word group. For example, Korean law tends to be heavily laden with Sino-Korean, just like American lawyers speak of a sui generis action that should be so obvious that it is res ipsa loquitur, for example.
Name is another area in which Sino-Korean tends to dominate. Although pure Korean names are gaining popularity in the last several decades, the overwhelming majority of Korean names are Sino-Korean. In fact, this type of questions hits the Korean's inbox fairly frequently: I have a Korean name; what does my name mean? (In most cases, the questioners are adoptees who are attempting retrace their roots.) And usually, the Korean's answer is: unless you know the what Chinese characters were used for your name, the Korean can't really say what your name means.
Korean last names are 100% Sino-Korean. That is, all Korean last names have an underlying Chinese character. So the meaning of Korean last names are basically the meaning of the Chinese characters underlying those last names.
Having said that, here are the ten most common Korean last names, the underlying Chinese characters, and what they mean:
- 김 [金] [Kim] - Gold.
- 이 [李] [Lee] - Plum tree.
- 박 [朴] [Park/Pak] - Magnolia tree.
- 최 [崔] [Choi] - Pinnacle.
- 정* [鄭] [Chung/Jung/Jeong] - "Zheng" (name of a Chinese kingdom.)
- 정* [丁] [Chung/Jung/Jeong] - Large nail (as in hammer and nail.)
- 정* [程] [Chung/Jung/Jeong] - To count
- 강 [姜] [Kang] - Ginger.
- 조* [曺] [Cho] - Group, companion.
- 조* [趙] [Cho] - "Zhao" (name of a Chinese kingdom.)
- 윤 [尹] [Yoon] - To rule.
- 한* [韓] [Han] - Korea.
- 한* [漢] [Han] - "Han" (name of a Chinese kingdom.)
- 임* [任] [Im] - To be in charge.
- 임* [林] [Im/Lim] - Forest
So there you have it, Mexican. Catch you next time.
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Uh, No. Arirang Belongs to Korea. Thanks.
[Note: This is a reaction to Roboseyo's post, titled Nobody Owns Arirang.]
I remember the first time when I saw my family's jokbo when I was a child growing up in Korea. Jokbo means "lineage book," and it shows the flow chart of everyone who is related to me starting from the very first Korean person who shared my last name, who was born in 69 B.C.E. It was, and still is, an awe-inspiring sight. My family's jokbo is consisted of more than 30 volumes, broken down by centuries, clans and subclans. The volumes would take up two full rows of a bookcase in my grandfather's run-down house, their uniform spines forming a brick-paved road toward my origin. My grandfather would flip to his favorite pages -- dog-eared for easy reference for his show-and-tell with his grandchildren -- and point to a name. The name could be a famous scholar, general, someone I would have learned about in school history classes. After going through some dozen names like that, he would flip all the way back to the last page of the last volume. And there it was -- my name, son of my father, grandson of my grandfather, 81 generations and more than two thousand years from the fountainhead of my family.
Roboseyo, a blogger I like and respect, recently claimed "nobody owns Arirang". I disagree with his view. I begin this post with the story about my jokbo is because I sense that Roboseyo does not have my sense of connection with the past, as is typical of North Americans. I believe that once people understand the feeling of having a meaningful connection with the past, they will have an easier time understanding why Koreans and the Chinese have such significant interest in laying claim on their history and culture.
(More after the jump)
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
I remember the first time when I saw my family's jokbo when I was a child growing up in Korea. Jokbo means "lineage book," and it shows the flow chart of everyone who is related to me starting from the very first Korean person who shared my last name, who was born in 69 B.C.E. It was, and still is, an awe-inspiring sight. My family's jokbo is consisted of more than 30 volumes, broken down by centuries, clans and subclans. The volumes would take up two full rows of a bookcase in my grandfather's run-down house, their uniform spines forming a brick-paved road toward my origin. My grandfather would flip to his favorite pages -- dog-eared for easy reference for his show-and-tell with his grandchildren -- and point to a name. The name could be a famous scholar, general, someone I would have learned about in school history classes. After going through some dozen names like that, he would flip all the way back to the last page of the last volume. And there it was -- my name, son of my father, grandson of my grandfather, 81 generations and more than two thousand years from the fountainhead of my family.
Roboseyo, a blogger I like and respect, recently claimed "nobody owns Arirang". I disagree with his view. I begin this post with the story about my jokbo is because I sense that Roboseyo does not have my sense of connection with the past, as is typical of North Americans. I believe that once people understand the feeling of having a meaningful connection with the past, they will have an easier time understanding why Koreans and the Chinese have such significant interest in laying claim on their history and culture.
(More after the jump)
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Culturalism, Gladwell, and Airplane Crashes
A few weeks ago, I attended a PGA golf tournament. You might think watching golf is boring, but I beg to differ: professional golf tournaments offer a chance to witness firsthand one of the amazing athletic feats in the world.
If an ordinary weekend golfer made ten great shots in a row, that might be the best day of her golfing life. If I saw two ordinary weekend golfers making ten great shots in a row at the same time, I would start exclaiming out loud after each shot and buy a round of beer for both of them. Now, imagine watching a hundred fifty golfers playing, in a championship golf course that is designed to leave a very small margin of error. Imagine watching virtually every one of them knocking off ten great shots in a row. The good players may hit 20 or 30 great shots in a row; the best ones, 40, 50, 60 great shots. This is why a golf tournament is so exciting: it is a collective display of perfection, shown over and over and over again.
Against the backdrop of such perfection, errors become magnified. The mistakes end up drawing more attention than the shots well hit. If all three golfers in a group hit the perfect drive, such that their balls are a foot away from one another's in the middle of the fairway, the gallery would give a polite applause. But if one of the golfers shanks it into the woods, the gallery would exhale a downcast "ooh," and hurry toward the golf ball among the trees like buzzards toward a rotting carcass.
I am not an exception; watching a tournament, I also fixate on the golfers' mistakes. When I see a golfer hitting a poor shot, I take a moment trying to recreate the swing in my mind, trying to see if I could identify what went wrong. I picture the golfer making his approach to the ball; the stance; the back swing; the alignment of the club head when the back swing reaches the top; the down swing; location of the hip during the down swing; the follow-through. Then I think about the path of the ball flight, and try to identify which part of the swing contributed to the deviation from the intended path.
And then I do something peculiar. I look up which country the golfer is from. And if I happen to remember a poor shot from a different golfer of the same country, I try to see the bigger picture in addition to their respective swings. I start wondering if there is something about that country's culture that affects their golf swings. In the particular golf tournament attended, I saw two Canadian players hitting a poor shot. One golfer hit it short in the 10th hole, dropping the ball into the water. The other, in the narrow 16th hole, badly sliced the drive and ended up in the woods. Quickly, I mustered every scrap of knowledge I had about Canadian culture in my head, and I tried to connect the dots: is there something about Canadian culture that leads to poor golf shots by two different golfers at two different holes?
Just kidding--of course I am kidding. Obviously, I did not think about connecting Canadian culture and poor golf shots, nor do I ever try to connect any national culture with poor golf shots. Nobody in the right mind would do such a thing. We all know that.
But if we all know that, why do so many people do the same thing when it comes to airplane crashes?
* * *
 |
| (source) |
Seen collectively, landing an aircraft is not unlike a golf tournament. It is not an easy task to land a giant, fast-moving tube of metal onto a small, defined target while keeping everyone inside the tube alive. Each landing of a jumbo jet may as well be a small miracle. Yet, like a golf tournament filled with the world's greatest players, air travel is a marvelous display of perfection: airplanes manage to land millions of times every year with very few accidents. (Let us be charitable to the much-maligned airline industry, and define an "accident" as something more significant than a delayed flight or lost luggage.) It is common knowledge that you are much more likely to die in the car that you drive to the airport, than in the airplane that you board at that airport.
Perhaps we focus so much on a plane crash for the same reason that golf watchers focus more on a poor shot than a good one: it is a rare deviation from perfection. Like the golf gallery surrounding an errant ball landed among the trees, we surround and gawk at every minute detail of the latest airplane crash. We run through all kinds of scenarios about what went wrong, and talk about them. We explain, then we over-explain--which is when the culturalist impulse kicks in. Already, venerable news organizations like CNN, the Washington Post and NBC News are wondering aloud: did Korean culture contribute to this extremely rare event?
(More after the jump)
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Best of the Worst 2010 - Part II
Keeping it going with the weird questions! The Korean forgot how many of these there were -- looks like there will be a Part III in a few days, where the worst email of the year will be revealed. Again, these are all real emails that the Korean received, copy/pasted verbatim except for personal information.
More Heartbreaks
re: hi
hi
im sara.im iranian.im 22.i love korea.i like to be friend with a boy from korea.please
sara lopez
Iranian Latina is looking for love.
re: A Korean man’s woman
How do I know if he loves me? I just thought to throw the question out into cyberspace... Don't really expect to be heard or answered. He is Korean American but adopted by Caucasian folks. Some nights I miss him terribly... Interesting blog and appreciate your candor. He said he would meet my dad, but then I think he had cold feet. He has other women... ? I guess I am kind of ok with it... I am Taiwanese American. We are close in age. I have surrendered myself to him.
Diane L.
Funny thing about throwing the question out into cyberspace, Diane -- someone on the other end of the cyberspace is going to be hit with your crap. And then you will show up here.
re: (no subject)
Hi. My name is Michael. I have a question regarding a beautiful Korean masseusse named Mia. I went to an asian massage parlor a few months ago and Mia gave me the best 1 hour massage of my life. At the end she asked if that was it. Well, it wasn't it and it was happy. Although she does not speak english too well, we have pretty much bonded and I have gone there 20 or so times. It is strictly a passionate happy ending and nothing else. My intention is to stop this and possibly ask her to go out on a date with me. However, I have my concerns and she probably has hers. Hers may be why I went in the 1st place. Well, I am coming off a seperation leading to a divorce after 20 yrs of marriage. I am a handsome 42 yr old Italian and Mia is 31. She has been in the US for 3 yrs (strange she doesn't speak better english) and is so warm and shy. She is absolutely different from the other massage therapists. She works 6 days a week, lives in the place she works and goes to Queens NY on her day off. She tells me what she does and we talk about education and the possibility of her buying a computer. She is very grateful for all my help.
Anyway, my concerns are these: 1. Not so much she does what she does. she has intentions of stoppiing and I'm sure the money must be good. weird she works so many hours. In the beginning it was clearly business and she seldom talked. 2. I don't have the nerve to ask her how she started this and am real scared if she says she was a prostitute in Korea. Your advice would be go on Match.com and leave her alone. That is probably the right answer, but, this woman is so sweet. We sometimes talk for a half hour passed our 1 hr session. I do have to stop it and would like your input. Thanks so much, Mike from New Jersey.
Mike, you pay money to have sex with this woman and you are worried that she was a prostitute back in Korea? What difference does it make?
re: Korean Female First Name
Hi,
Great, great blog. I have a question about women's first names. You see, I have a most worrisome and difficult problem. I recently met one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. She's Korean, and I immediately fell in love with her - all the way - I didn't even hear her voice yet. I don't do this often - it's happened twice before in my life - and now a third. There's a problem though(besides being capable of falling in love all the way on site!). She told me her name, but I was so nervous I can't remember it fully. I remember the second part of the first name and the last name(if my new and limited understanding of Korean naming traditions is correct). The first part of her first name is something like 'Tee', 'Ty', 'Tae', or maybe, 'Ta'. I can't remember! When I see her again - I cannot say her name incorrectly! I'd rather lose a finger! I would totally disrespect her. I hope you understand. I've spent hours trying to logically narrow down the list of possible Korean first names that start with a T. Sounding like: Tee, Ty, Ta. It can't be 'Tee' - I mean you drink Tea - right? Her name can't be Tea. I went so far as to go to the Korean owned local store and they kinda helped and kinda made fun of me - 'you drink Tea, haha, what do you mean Tea, hahaha'. So they told me that her name can't be 'Tee' because that would be Chinese(or apparently a beverage). My interent research tells me her name is most likely 'Tae' - like 'TaeKwonDo'. Man, I'm at a loss, and have spent hours now of the past couple days. I did discover that there may not be many Korean names that start with a T, so that kinda helps, but whew! I'm reaching out. I'm gonna go back to the Korean owned store today as soon as I think this out more!
Great articles on Korean naming traditions and prejudice of dark skinned people.
Most gratefully,
m
You know, TaeKwonDo sounds exactly right. It's a very popular girl's name. You should name your daughter that.
More weirdness after the jump.
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
More Heartbreaks
re: hi
hi
im sara.im iranian.im 22.i love korea.i like to be friend with a boy from korea.please
sara lopez
Iranian Latina is looking for love.
re: A Korean man’s woman
How do I know if he loves me? I just thought to throw the question out into cyberspace... Don't really expect to be heard or answered. He is Korean American but adopted by Caucasian folks. Some nights I miss him terribly... Interesting blog and appreciate your candor. He said he would meet my dad, but then I think he had cold feet. He has other women... ? I guess I am kind of ok with it... I am Taiwanese American. We are close in age. I have surrendered myself to him.
Diane L.
Funny thing about throwing the question out into cyberspace, Diane -- someone on the other end of the cyberspace is going to be hit with your crap. And then you will show up here.
re: (no subject)
Hi. My name is Michael. I have a question regarding a beautiful Korean masseusse named Mia. I went to an asian massage parlor a few months ago and Mia gave me the best 1 hour massage of my life. At the end she asked if that was it. Well, it wasn't it and it was happy. Although she does not speak english too well, we have pretty much bonded and I have gone there 20 or so times. It is strictly a passionate happy ending and nothing else. My intention is to stop this and possibly ask her to go out on a date with me. However, I have my concerns and she probably has hers. Hers may be why I went in the 1st place. Well, I am coming off a seperation leading to a divorce after 20 yrs of marriage. I am a handsome 42 yr old Italian and Mia is 31. She has been in the US for 3 yrs (strange she doesn't speak better english) and is so warm and shy. She is absolutely different from the other massage therapists. She works 6 days a week, lives in the place she works and goes to Queens NY on her day off. She tells me what she does and we talk about education and the possibility of her buying a computer. She is very grateful for all my help.
Anyway, my concerns are these: 1. Not so much she does what she does. she has intentions of stoppiing and I'm sure the money must be good. weird she works so many hours. In the beginning it was clearly business and she seldom talked. 2. I don't have the nerve to ask her how she started this and am real scared if she says she was a prostitute in Korea. Your advice would be go on Match.com and leave her alone. That is probably the right answer, but, this woman is so sweet. We sometimes talk for a half hour passed our 1 hr session. I do have to stop it and would like your input. Thanks so much, Mike from New Jersey.
Mike, you pay money to have sex with this woman and you are worried that she was a prostitute back in Korea? What difference does it make?
re: Korean Female First Name
Hi,
Great, great blog. I have a question about women's first names. You see, I have a most worrisome and difficult problem. I recently met one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. She's Korean, and I immediately fell in love with her - all the way - I didn't even hear her voice yet. I don't do this often - it's happened twice before in my life - and now a third. There's a problem though(besides being capable of falling in love all the way on site!). She told me her name, but I was so nervous I can't remember it fully. I remember the second part of the first name and the last name(if my new and limited understanding of Korean naming traditions is correct). The first part of her first name is something like 'Tee', 'Ty', 'Tae', or maybe, 'Ta'. I can't remember! When I see her again - I cannot say her name incorrectly! I'd rather lose a finger! I would totally disrespect her. I hope you understand. I've spent hours trying to logically narrow down the list of possible Korean first names that start with a T. Sounding like: Tee, Ty, Ta. It can't be 'Tee' - I mean you drink Tea - right? Her name can't be Tea. I went so far as to go to the Korean owned local store and they kinda helped and kinda made fun of me - 'you drink Tea, haha, what do you mean Tea, hahaha'. So they told me that her name can't be 'Tee' because that would be Chinese(or apparently a beverage). My interent research tells me her name is most likely 'Tae' - like 'TaeKwonDo'. Man, I'm at a loss, and have spent hours now of the past couple days. I did discover that there may not be many Korean names that start with a T, so that kinda helps, but whew! I'm reaching out. I'm gonna go back to the Korean owned store today as soon as I think this out more!
Great articles on Korean naming traditions and prejudice of dark skinned people.
Most gratefully,
m
You know, TaeKwonDo sounds exactly right. It's a very popular girl's name. You should name your daughter that.
More weirdness after the jump.
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
Monday, February 08, 2010
What is the State of ESL Teachers in Korea?
Dear Korean,
I came across this article today in the Los Angeles Times concerning the Anti-English Spectrum and English language teachers in Korea. Is this simply a homegrown, right-wing nut group, similar to what one can find in the U.S. and other countries, or are ESL teachers in Korea really this problematic?
John C.
Dear John,
Where does the Korean begin? This issue has the potential to blow up in the Korean’s face in any number of ways, since many of AAK! readers are ESL teachers in Korea who are sensitive to this issue. So the Korean must begin with his clear and unequivocal position on what he thinks about Anti-English Spectrum (AES):
The Korean thinks that AES is a nut group. Its leader engages in stalking ESL teachers, and exhorts others to do the same. Having a group like AES is an embarrassment for Korea. It needs to go away.
But the influence of AES needs to be put in perspective. Korean society most certainly does not endorse stalking anyone, and Koreans who care about the situation – including AES members themselves – have roundly criticized this tactic.
Nonetheless, even an unsavory group like AES could serve as an indicator of how things are – and failure to recognize how things are comes at a cost. For example, most liberals derided and dismissed “birthers” who dominated town hall meetings in America and claim that Barack Obama was not an American citizen. Obama is obviously an American citizen, but that is not the important part. Liberals should have realized that many people in America were deeply pissed off at Obama for whatever reason, and that many Americans were willing to latch onto any dumb reason to vent their hate. Instead of sincerely exploring what was angering these people, many liberals blamed their usual parade of horribles – Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, racism, dumb rural Americans, you name it. And the result now is that liberals have frittered away their dominating advantage by losing the Senate seat that was held by the icon of American liberalism for decades.
(Here is the Korean’s unsolicited advice to future politicians and pundits: Never, never, never assume that people are stupid. They are not. There are stupid individuals in the world, but a group of people is never stupid. If you don’t understand why people are doing certain things, you are the one who is stupid – not the people.)
So what can the existence of AES tell us about the state of ESL teachers in Korea? Right now, Koreans are feeling deeply uneasy about their new reality – that there are many in Korea who do not look like them, affecting them in a way that they do not necessarily like. This uneasiness feeds into the tension between Koreans and ESL teachers. This tension right now is still mostly under the surface, because most Koreans are reasonable enough not to express that tension like AES does. However, there is always a chance that the underlying tension could blow up, sparked by a certain event. Therefore, it would be important to understand the factors that feed into the tension, and neutralize them in any manner we can.
The Korean believes that there is no party with clean hands in this situation – (some) Koreans and (some) ESL teachers must share the blame. To that end, the Korean prepared “blame scorecards” – the laundry list of everything wrong that everybody has done (that he can think of.) First up is Korea.
Blame Scorecard: Korea
· Half-baked Policy to Bring in ESL Teachers – This is the action that began the entire cycle. ESL teachers came to Korea as early as early 1980s, but the ESL teacher population exploded in the last 10 years or so. (As recently as 1988, there were barely over 1,000 non-Korean ESL teachers in the entire country.) This happened because as English education became more emphasized in Korea, Korean government loosened up the visa requirements for people who are known as NSETs (= native-speaking English teachers.) As a result, more than 20,000 NSETs entered Korea every year since 2002. For a country that has never experienced mass immigration, this was a very significant number.
But, as governments often do, Korean governments set up regulations that emphasized quantity over quality, which means they did not properly filter out unqualified NSETs – which blew up with the case of Christopher Paul Neil. Neil, an internationally wanted child molester, was arrested in Thailand after having fled from Gwangju, Korea, where he worked as an ESL teacher. When these loopholes were exposed, the government overreacted and swung to the other direction, requiring drug and HIV testing (that it did not require for Korean teachers) that nearly amounted to harassment.
Also, Korean government did not anticipate what should have been reasonably anticipated – that importing such a huge number of people to work in an area that Koreans care so, so much about (i.e. English education) -- would cause a lot of friction. Initially there was no real training that would get the ESL teachers ready for living and doing their job in a culture that can be radically different. Even though there are more trainings offered in recent years, they tend to be done in a manner Korean government is known for – bumbling and haphazard.
The idea to bring NSETs to assist in English education was not a bad idea. But Korean government’s execution of that idea was simply terrible. Problems that could have been avoided through reasonable anticipation were (halfway) mended instead through trial-and-error, pissing off everyone involved in the process.
· Bad Behaviors from Employers of the ESL Teachers – It is no secret that education business in Korea is very lucrative, which means it sometimes attracts unscrupulous characters who really should not be anywhere near education, period. Well, it was no secret to Koreans anyway; not so much for NSETs. Many ESL teachers were blindsided by the fact that their employers would cut corners and rip them off at any chance possible. To this day, the horror stories of ESL teachers getting ripped off by their employers are a dime a dozen on the Internet. (For example, here.) Not paying salaries? Arbitrarily changing schedules? Refusing to provide health insurance (as they are legally required to do)? Generally reneging promises? You name it, it’s there.
Even places that are otherwise reputable, like the public school system, sometimes give into the temptation of screwing over ESL teachers, since ESL teachers have a harder time fighting back compared to Korean teachers.
· Poorly planned use of ESL teachers – Even in cases where Korean schools act with the best of intentions, they often put ESL teachers in a position to fail. Particularly at public schools, ESL teachers are supposed to be co-teachers with a Korean teacher. Often there is poor communication between that Korean teacher and the ESL teacher, leading to confusion and resentment on the part of both sides. Many schools have no orientation process and simply tell the ESL teachers to go to it and teach the children. Considering that most ESL teachers do not have a previous teaching experience, much less experience in teaching English to non-English speaking children, they often fail even with their best efforts, frustrating everyone involved in the process.
· General racism of Korean society – As the Korean said previously, Korea was not (and still is not, although to a lesser degree,) a place where its people are used to dealing with race relations. This often conflicts sharply with ESL teachers who are from countries that are more more accustomed to dealing with race relations. (e.g. United States.) Because of this inexperience, Koreans often do not hesitate to ascribe particular characteristics to a given racial group and judge the entire race – which is exactly what racism is. Once a few bad apple NSETs emerged, the idea that every NSET is a drug-sniffing child molesters began to gain some traction in Korea, which made NSETs in Korea to feel unfairly persecuted. It also does not help that news media in Korea often play on Koreans' xenophobia by writing sensationalistic but factually dubious articles every now and then.
· Jealousy of Korean young men – This factor is not often discussed, but is very significant in understanding the actual people who fuel the tension. Korea has had a chronically high unemployment rate among young adults, which has been recently exacerbated with the global recession. These young adults – particularly men – are right now forming a very pissed-off social group. They have sacrificed much in their lives – grueling schools, going to college, serving their military duty, etc. – for the promise of having a good job. Understandably, not having a job after all the tribulations makes these young men very angry.
NSETs often provide a convenient target for their rage. ESL teachers are generally a group of young people who have no better education than Korean young people, but somehow they get a cushy job that pays well (by Korean standards) simply by virtue of being born into speaking English. On top of that, NSETs never served in the military.
Another thing – do you know what happens when a guy doesn’t have a job? A lot of things, but one of them is that he doesn’t get a date very often. And when you are young, few things matter more than getting a date. So when male ESL teachers flaunt the fact that they date Korean women (more on this below) – well, you can imagine the rest.
These men are most certainly not the majority in Korea, but the ability for these men to sway the public opinion is not to be discounted. They are generally tech-savvy, and all they have is time. According to a study by Naver – Korea’s largest search engine, with a format similar to Yahoo! – less than 1 percent of the people who view a news article leave a comment on the article. Predictably, 76.7 percent of all comments are men, and 61.1 percent of them were under 30. But the astonishing part is this: 3.4 percent of all commenters generated more than 50 percent of the comments. In other words, less than 0.0034 percent of all news viewers generated more than half of all comments. But that is enough to make the government overreact and put in restrictive policy towards ESL teachers, making them feel unwelcome in the process.
But again, the ESL teachers are not free from blame either. More blame game after the jump.
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
I came across this article today in the Los Angeles Times concerning the Anti-English Spectrum and English language teachers in Korea. Is this simply a homegrown, right-wing nut group, similar to what one can find in the U.S. and other countries, or are ESL teachers in Korea really this problematic?
John C.
Dear John,
Where does the Korean begin? This issue has the potential to blow up in the Korean’s face in any number of ways, since many of AAK! readers are ESL teachers in Korea who are sensitive to this issue. So the Korean must begin with his clear and unequivocal position on what he thinks about Anti-English Spectrum (AES):
The Korean thinks that AES is a nut group. Its leader engages in stalking ESL teachers, and exhorts others to do the same. Having a group like AES is an embarrassment for Korea. It needs to go away.
But the influence of AES needs to be put in perspective. Korean society most certainly does not endorse stalking anyone, and Koreans who care about the situation – including AES members themselves – have roundly criticized this tactic.
Nonetheless, even an unsavory group like AES could serve as an indicator of how things are – and failure to recognize how things are comes at a cost. For example, most liberals derided and dismissed “birthers” who dominated town hall meetings in America and claim that Barack Obama was not an American citizen. Obama is obviously an American citizen, but that is not the important part. Liberals should have realized that many people in America were deeply pissed off at Obama for whatever reason, and that many Americans were willing to latch onto any dumb reason to vent their hate. Instead of sincerely exploring what was angering these people, many liberals blamed their usual parade of horribles – Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, racism, dumb rural Americans, you name it. And the result now is that liberals have frittered away their dominating advantage by losing the Senate seat that was held by the icon of American liberalism for decades.
Laughing at them is easy. But figuring out why they do this is the right thing to do. (Source)
(Here is the Korean’s unsolicited advice to future politicians and pundits: Never, never, never assume that people are stupid. They are not. There are stupid individuals in the world, but a group of people is never stupid. If you don’t understand why people are doing certain things, you are the one who is stupid – not the people.)
So what can the existence of AES tell us about the state of ESL teachers in Korea? Right now, Koreans are feeling deeply uneasy about their new reality – that there are many in Korea who do not look like them, affecting them in a way that they do not necessarily like. This uneasiness feeds into the tension between Koreans and ESL teachers. This tension right now is still mostly under the surface, because most Koreans are reasonable enough not to express that tension like AES does. However, there is always a chance that the underlying tension could blow up, sparked by a certain event. Therefore, it would be important to understand the factors that feed into the tension, and neutralize them in any manner we can.
The Korean believes that there is no party with clean hands in this situation – (some) Koreans and (some) ESL teachers must share the blame. To that end, the Korean prepared “blame scorecards” – the laundry list of everything wrong that everybody has done (that he can think of.) First up is Korea.
Blame Scorecard: Korea
· Half-baked Policy to Bring in ESL Teachers – This is the action that began the entire cycle. ESL teachers came to Korea as early as early 1980s, but the ESL teacher population exploded in the last 10 years or so. (As recently as 1988, there were barely over 1,000 non-Korean ESL teachers in the entire country.) This happened because as English education became more emphasized in Korea, Korean government loosened up the visa requirements for people who are known as NSETs (= native-speaking English teachers.) As a result, more than 20,000 NSETs entered Korea every year since 2002. For a country that has never experienced mass immigration, this was a very significant number.
But, as governments often do, Korean governments set up regulations that emphasized quantity over quality, which means they did not properly filter out unqualified NSETs – which blew up with the case of Christopher Paul Neil. Neil, an internationally wanted child molester, was arrested in Thailand after having fled from Gwangju, Korea, where he worked as an ESL teacher. When these loopholes were exposed, the government overreacted and swung to the other direction, requiring drug and HIV testing (that it did not require for Korean teachers) that nearly amounted to harassment.
Also, Korean government did not anticipate what should have been reasonably anticipated – that importing such a huge number of people to work in an area that Koreans care so, so much about (i.e. English education) -- would cause a lot of friction. Initially there was no real training that would get the ESL teachers ready for living and doing their job in a culture that can be radically different. Even though there are more trainings offered in recent years, they tend to be done in a manner Korean government is known for – bumbling and haphazard.
The idea to bring NSETs to assist in English education was not a bad idea. But Korean government’s execution of that idea was simply terrible. Problems that could have been avoided through reasonable anticipation were (halfway) mended instead through trial-and-error, pissing off everyone involved in the process.
· Bad Behaviors from Employers of the ESL Teachers – It is no secret that education business in Korea is very lucrative, which means it sometimes attracts unscrupulous characters who really should not be anywhere near education, period. Well, it was no secret to Koreans anyway; not so much for NSETs. Many ESL teachers were blindsided by the fact that their employers would cut corners and rip them off at any chance possible. To this day, the horror stories of ESL teachers getting ripped off by their employers are a dime a dozen on the Internet. (For example, here.) Not paying salaries? Arbitrarily changing schedules? Refusing to provide health insurance (as they are legally required to do)? Generally reneging promises? You name it, it’s there.
Even places that are otherwise reputable, like the public school system, sometimes give into the temptation of screwing over ESL teachers, since ESL teachers have a harder time fighting back compared to Korean teachers.
· Poorly planned use of ESL teachers – Even in cases where Korean schools act with the best of intentions, they often put ESL teachers in a position to fail. Particularly at public schools, ESL teachers are supposed to be co-teachers with a Korean teacher. Often there is poor communication between that Korean teacher and the ESL teacher, leading to confusion and resentment on the part of both sides. Many schools have no orientation process and simply tell the ESL teachers to go to it and teach the children. Considering that most ESL teachers do not have a previous teaching experience, much less experience in teaching English to non-English speaking children, they often fail even with their best efforts, frustrating everyone involved in the process.
· General racism of Korean society – As the Korean said previously, Korea was not (and still is not, although to a lesser degree,) a place where its people are used to dealing with race relations. This often conflicts sharply with ESL teachers who are from countries that are more more accustomed to dealing with race relations. (e.g. United States.) Because of this inexperience, Koreans often do not hesitate to ascribe particular characteristics to a given racial group and judge the entire race – which is exactly what racism is. Once a few bad apple NSETs emerged, the idea that every NSET is a drug-sniffing child molesters began to gain some traction in Korea, which made NSETs in Korea to feel unfairly persecuted. It also does not help that news media in Korea often play on Koreans' xenophobia by writing sensationalistic but factually dubious articles every now and then.
· Jealousy of Korean young men – This factor is not often discussed, but is very significant in understanding the actual people who fuel the tension. Korea has had a chronically high unemployment rate among young adults, which has been recently exacerbated with the global recession. These young adults – particularly men – are right now forming a very pissed-off social group. They have sacrificed much in their lives – grueling schools, going to college, serving their military duty, etc. – for the promise of having a good job. Understandably, not having a job after all the tribulations makes these young men very angry.
NSETs often provide a convenient target for their rage. ESL teachers are generally a group of young people who have no better education than Korean young people, but somehow they get a cushy job that pays well (by Korean standards) simply by virtue of being born into speaking English. On top of that, NSETs never served in the military.
Another thing – do you know what happens when a guy doesn’t have a job? A lot of things, but one of them is that he doesn’t get a date very often. And when you are young, few things matter more than getting a date. So when male ESL teachers flaunt the fact that they date Korean women (more on this below) – well, you can imagine the rest.
These men are most certainly not the majority in Korea, but the ability for these men to sway the public opinion is not to be discounted. They are generally tech-savvy, and all they have is time. According to a study by Naver – Korea’s largest search engine, with a format similar to Yahoo! – less than 1 percent of the people who view a news article leave a comment on the article. Predictably, 76.7 percent of all comments are men, and 61.1 percent of them were under 30. But the astonishing part is this: 3.4 percent of all commenters generated more than 50 percent of the comments. In other words, less than 0.0034 percent of all news viewers generated more than half of all comments. But that is enough to make the government overreact and put in restrictive policy towards ESL teachers, making them feel unwelcome in the process.
But again, the ESL teachers are not free from blame either. More blame game after the jump.
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Best of the Worst 2014
Come one, come all, to this humble blog's annual holiday tradition: the worst emails of the year 2014! Let's all gather around and wallow in the Interweb's swill of stupidity! Despite seeing the examples of dumb questions from 2008, 2009, 2010 (in Parts I, II, and III), 2011, 2012, and 2013, people simply do not learn.
As usual, these are all real emails that TK really received from real people for the past year. Below, among all the shitty emails that TK has received, he has selected the douche de la douche, the crap de la crap. Other than redacting personal information, not a single thing about the email is changed or modified in any way. TK's comments and thoughts on the emails are highlighted in blue.
* * *
In Soviet Korea, All Foreigners are Subject to DNA Testing for Racial Identification
re: I have a question
Hi The Korean! My name is Emily and I am an ethnically Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiian, Polish, Spanish American that looks really Asian. I also speak fluent English and Japanese. I am proficient in Korean and French. So, if I ever lived in Korea, how would I be treated?
Like a person. Moron.
re: Korean Men and Chinese Women
Hey Korean Person,
I have a question. I am a Chinese woman in my late “tens” (18) and I have never been attracted to Korean guys until recently. Truth is, I actually had a Korean boyfriend before and the experience led me to believe Korean guys frankly, look down on Chinese girls. I read your blog post about what Koreans think of Chinese and as thorough as your post was, I don’t think it answers my questions. It was more of a historical and general viewpoint.
So my question is, what do Korean men think of Chinese women? I know Korean men are men before they are Korean but I am sure most Korean men would never date anyone of African heritage, even if the Kenyan woman happens to have 32D breasts with an amazing smelling vagina. So, Korean men like almost all race have a certain racial preference.
I can pass for either Chinese or Korean in the Winter and Filipino or half Spanish in the Summer so most people can’t really guess my race. I am just afraid that Korean guys might be turned off when they find out I am Chinese. From my experience, I have no problems with Korean Americans but I am talking about Korean Korean men. Koreans born in Korea who had spent the first half of their life in Korea.
Thanks a lot! :)
After many years of bad emails, TK developed a perverse appreciation for bad emails. This type is one of his favorites: an email that starts ok enough, then slowly degenerates into full crazy over several paragraphs.
re: hellow
hi how ru, my name is amira and i have loads of question cuz im
moveing to korea in maybe 2to3 months got my visa already and i want
to know about life in korea would i make friends, would people be nice
to me, would i get a job and most importantly would i get harrased for
being black i really need information but its hard to get some and
also i had been watching kbs for 10 years such a big fan not just
dramas but everything was interesting i knw one friend in tv lol so i
got another question how would i get my oppa just so i can know the
feeling i would be happy if i can marry a korean too but i dont want
to go that far yet. please help me providing some infos i would
appriciate that thanks
"Here is my imaginary oppa. I love him but I don't want to marry him yet. Too much pressure."
More ridiculousness after the jump.
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com. But no stupid questions please. For God's sake, will you please think of the children?
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Korean President Power Ranking
On February 20, President Lee Myeong-bak held his last cabinet meeting, effectively ending his tenure as the president of Korea. (The inauguration for the next president Park Geun-hye is on February 25.) With another president into the pages of Korean history, it seems like a good time to have . . . the presidential power ranking!
Technically, the Republic of Korea has had ten heads of government since its birth in 1948: (1) Syngmn Rhee (1948-1960); (2) Chang Myon (1960-1961); (3) Park Chung-hee (1961-1979); (4) Choi Gyu-ha (1979-1980); (5) Chun Doo-hwan (1980-1987); (6) Roh Tae-woo (1987-1992); (7) Kim Young-sam (1992-1997); (8) Kim Dae-jung (1997-2002); (9) Roh Moo-hyun (2002-2007) and; (10) Lee Myeong-bak (2007-2012). But one can see that Chang Myon and Choi Gyu-ha did not last very long, because they abdicated from their posts when their successors rolled into Seoul with tanks.
(Note: Several commenters pointed out that Yoon Bo-seon, not Chang Myon, was the president after Syngman Rhee. That comment is technically correct, but it is not a fair comparison. Korea's short-lived Second Republic was a proportional representation system, in which the people elected the Prime Minister, the head of government. The National Assembly elected the president, the nominal head of state without much real power. Yoon Bo-seon was the president; Chang Myon was the prime minister. Therefore, apples-to-apples comparison should involve Chang Myon, not Yoon Bo-seon.)
(Note: Several commenters pointed out that Yoon Bo-seon, not Chang Myon, was the president after Syngman Rhee. That comment is technically correct, but it is not a fair comparison. Korea's short-lived Second Republic was a proportional representation system, in which the people elected the Prime Minister, the head of government. The National Assembly elected the president, the nominal head of state without much real power. Yoon Bo-seon was the president; Chang Myon was the prime minister. Therefore, apples-to-apples comparison should involve Chang Myon, not Yoon Bo-seon.)
Thus, a fair ranking would involve eight presidents. How would they stack up? Here is the Korean's ranking, in reverse order.
(More after the jump)
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
Friday, August 05, 2011
How do Koreans refer to America?
Dear Korean,
How would the US have been referred to in everyday conversation? Surely Koreans have their own way of referring to the US other than the phonetics for "US" or "America."
Kapok Crusader
Indeed Koreans do have their own way of referring to the United States. It's 미국 (pronounced "mee-gook".) It is Korean pronunciation for the Chinese characters 美國 - the "beautiful country."
But this is where it gets interesting -- why "beautiful country"? And why Chinese? Does this apply to all countries?
The basic rule of referring to a country's name is the same rule that applies to all foreign words -- 외래어 표기법 (Transliteration Rules for Foreign Words) established by National Institute of Korean Language (국립 국어원.) In fact, the Korean already explained this once, about why Koreans call "Haiti" like "IT":
How would the US have been referred to in everyday conversation? Surely Koreans have their own way of referring to the US other than the phonetics for "US" or "America."
Kapok Crusader
Indeed Koreans do have their own way of referring to the United States. It's 미국 (pronounced "mee-gook".) It is Korean pronunciation for the Chinese characters 美國 - the "beautiful country."
God bless 미국!
(source)
But this is where it gets interesting -- why "beautiful country"? And why Chinese? Does this apply to all countries?
The basic rule of referring to a country's name is the same rule that applies to all foreign words -- 외래어 표기법 (Transliteration Rules for Foreign Words) established by National Institute of Korean Language (국립 국어원.) In fact, the Korean already explained this once, about why Koreans call "Haiti" like "IT":
(By the way, did you notice Dominique Strauss-Kahn in that post? What a year he has had!)What comes into play here is Rule of Foreign Words Transliteration established by the National Institute of the Korean Language (국립국어원). Just like L'Academie francaise, NIKL governs all things related to Korean language, including how words that did not originate from Korea are supposed to be written. The overarching principle of the rule is to transliterate the words as they are pronounced in their language. Specifically, the Rule of Transliteration provides a chart that matches up the International Phonetic Alphabet to Korean characters, with more detailed rules in different languages such as English, Spanish, Japanese, French, etc.
The Korean likes this rule because it shows respect. Although Korean language sometimes has a separate name for a famous city in a foreign country -- for example, Sang-Hae (상해) for Shanghai (상하이) or Dong-Kyeong (동경) for Tokyo (도쿄) -- under this rule, Koreans are supposed to write them as 상하이 and 도쿄, not as 상해 or 동경. (In contrast, English-speakers have no qualms for calling München as "Munich" or Praha as "Prague".) Calling a different country/culture with the name that they gave to themselves shows a lot more respect than calling with the name that we came up for them.
So the default rule for a country name in Korean is to pronounce it as closely as the countrymen would pronounce. Then why 미국? Why not 아메리카 ("America")? That's because Rule 5 of the Transliteration Rules -- "For foreign words that have been already solidified in use, respect the common usage." Rule 5 sometimes feels like an exception that swallows the whole default rule, because the "solidified" foreign words are usually the most commonly used ones. In other words, the exceptions are so prominent that it becomes easy to forget the rule.
At any rate, it is no surprise that the names of the countries that interact the most with Korea fall under Rule 5. Most of these names originate from the 19th century, when Koreans finally realized that the world had more countries that their own, China and Japan. For the newly discovered countries (from Korea's perspective,) Korea borrowed the Chinese transliteration convention -- that is, take the prominent sounds of a name, pick the Chinese characters with good meanings that match the sound, and add the character 國 to signify that it is a country. The Chinese called America 美國 -- pronounced "mei-guo", taking "mei" from "aMErica". (Yes, it is quite arbitrary.) Koreans borrowed the word 美國, and simply pronounced it their own way -- thus, Koreans refer to America as 미국.
Other countries who fall under Rule 5? At this point, China (중국 -- "joong-gook", not "zhong-guo"), Japan (일본 -- "il-bon", not "nippon") and Germany (독일 -- "dok-il", not "deutschland") are pretty much it. (-EDIT 8/6/2011- There are also Australia (호주 -- "ho-ju"), England (영국 -- "yeong-gook") and Thailand (태국 -- "tae-gook"). Clearly the Korean should have given this post another day and thought about it harder.) In older Korean books and among older Koreans, one can catch glimpses of the words like 불란서 (佛蘭西) instead of 프랑스 (France) or 구라파 (歐羅巴) instead of 유럽 (Europe). But those uses are rapidly fading away.
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Ask a Korean! News: Islamophobia Reaches Korea
This cannot end well.
Many, many different angles to explore here, in no particular order.
1. Multiculturalism, as a policy, is not a thoroughly examined policy in Korea yet. Non-Ethnic Korean (let's call them "NEK" for short) Korean citizens, especially in the form of mail-order brides and immigrant laborers, crept up on Korean society until they all of a sudden became a reality for mainstream Koreans. Korean elites were sympathetic enough to set a pro-multiculturalism agenda, such that legislators and mainstream media pushed for tolerance and acceptance. This is the first occasion in which opposition to that agenda is materializing in a meainingful, organized manner.
2. Dong-A Ilbo is a conservative (within the spectrum of Korean politics) newspaper, and it clearly drew the battle line stating that opposition to multiculturalism is "absurd". More liberal newspapers (for example, the Hankyoreh) have been consistently promoting the multiculturalism agenda also. No politician so far has made a career by antagonizing immigrants yet. Cut off from mainstream media and politics, how will the opponents of multiculturalism legitimize their agenda? Which mainstream media and policians will co-opt into this advantage?
3. Two faces of Korea's nationalism are in conflict here -- the more traditional race/culture-based nationalism and the more modern citizenship/polity-based nationalism. Which one will emerge victorious? Or will there be another variant to nationlism to accommodate both? (Perhaps, for example, language-based?)
4. How will the NEK Koreans respond? Probably not much reaction is possible right now, but recall that a significant proportion of children (up to 10 percent) in Korea's rural areas are mixed-race children. Four years ago in the third post ever on AAK! -- so long ago that the Korean was speaking in first person -- the Korean wrote: "Unless Koreans do something to radically change their attitude toward foreignors and interracial people (unlikely), wide-scale race riots a la Los Angeles or Paris in about 20 years is a virtual certainty." Korea has done more than the Korean expected to move toward changing their attitude. But will the progress thus far be enough to avert wide-scale race riots 15 years from now, when these mixed-race children become young adults?
5. How will Germany's recent disavowal of multiculturalism policies affect this discussion? How will America's anti-immigration rhetoric? Remember, "what other advanced countries do" holds a lot of sway in Korean political discourse.
6. The Korean is not positive that even those Koreans who advocate for multiculturalism policies truly mean "multiculturalism" as the word is understood in other parts of the world. When this debate intensifies such that the proponents begin to realize that "multiculturalism", originally envisioned when the term was coined, involves a lot more than they might be comfortable with -- e.g. bastardizing traditional Korean cuisine, maybe -- how will they respond?
7. Kim Yi-Seon is correct that immigrants have little to do with Korea's current problems -- as of now. In the future when more immigrants come, they will contribute to Korea's problems, not because immigration is inherently problematic but because no movement of a large human group is free from at least some negative consequences. Will this change the debate in the future? Could proponents of multiculturalism solidify their grounds enough before the problems inevitably come?
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
광우병… 타블로… 이번엔 ‘이슬람 공포증’ [Dong-A Ilbo]An absurd assertion arguing that Islamic immigrants will bring down Korean society, spreading online, is causing a controversy. Other racially discriminatory assertions, not simply against Islam but also demanding the abandonment of the current multiculturalism policy, are also being boldly made, attracting attention as to the identity and the background of those who submit such writing. Some suggest that certain particular groups, dissatisfied with the multiculturalism policy, are intentionally disseminating Islamophobia to gather like-minded people similar to the "Tablo incident."
[TK note: Tablo is a celebrity rapper of Korea who is a graduate of Stanford University. There have been persistent allegations on the Internet that Tablo faked his degree, which managed to survive even after Stanford registrar produced a true copy of Tablo's diploma. The ringleader of the people who spread this false rumor was arrested for defamation. More background on that story here.]
On the 18th of this month, according to the Ministry of Employment and Labor, there have been 1500 posts on the free discussion board on MOEL homepage titled "Exclude Islamic Nations from Labor Export States" since the 23rd of last month. The posts, submitted after having undergone true name certification, argued that "Europe recently prohibited the importation of labor from Islamic nations such as Bangladesh and Pakistan," and "Korea must likewise forgo the multicultural policies." The submitters of the posts also suggested a mass objection against the current administration's multiculturalist policies, linking to the homepages of MOEL and e-People [TK note: Omnibus government website that receives all grievances against the government.] They are also continuing the attack by publicizing the telephone numbers of the chambers of National Assemblyman Jin Yeong, the Grand National Party member who proposed the Unified Basic Law on Multiculturalism last December. Spokesperson for Assemblyman Jin said, "We get dozens of calls a day asking us to give up on the multiculturalism policies." MOEL deleted all related posts, citing that "Same repeated posts are causing inconvenience to the operation of the board." MOEL is also cautiously considering asking for police investigation if such posts continue to be submitted.
Experts are casting their suspicion on an article titled, "Ruination of Sweden by Islamic Immigrants (the Future of Korea)," which is spreading through online communities and blogs. The article is mostly sensationalistic and hortatory, alleging that Sweden's social problems worsened after permitting Islamic immigrants to enter. Choi Yeong-Gil, professor of Arab Regional Studies of Myongji University, noted: "It appears that people who are dissatisfied with not just a particular religion but the multicultural society itself are duplicating and expanding Europe's Islamophobia." Kim Yi-Seon, director of Safety Center for Multiculturalism and Human Rights of Korea Women's Development Institute, said: "As the economy faces difficulty and the society becomes more chaotic, resistance against multiculturalism is gaining traction," and emphasized: "What is clear is that the current problems of Korean society is not due to multiculturalism."
Many, many different angles to explore here, in no particular order.
1. Multiculturalism, as a policy, is not a thoroughly examined policy in Korea yet. Non-Ethnic Korean (let's call them "NEK" for short) Korean citizens, especially in the form of mail-order brides and immigrant laborers, crept up on Korean society until they all of a sudden became a reality for mainstream Koreans. Korean elites were sympathetic enough to set a pro-multiculturalism agenda, such that legislators and mainstream media pushed for tolerance and acceptance. This is the first occasion in which opposition to that agenda is materializing in a meainingful, organized manner.
2. Dong-A Ilbo is a conservative (within the spectrum of Korean politics) newspaper, and it clearly drew the battle line stating that opposition to multiculturalism is "absurd". More liberal newspapers (for example, the Hankyoreh) have been consistently promoting the multiculturalism agenda also. No politician so far has made a career by antagonizing immigrants yet. Cut off from mainstream media and politics, how will the opponents of multiculturalism legitimize their agenda? Which mainstream media and policians will co-opt into this advantage?
3. Two faces of Korea's nationalism are in conflict here -- the more traditional race/culture-based nationalism and the more modern citizenship/polity-based nationalism. Which one will emerge victorious? Or will there be another variant to nationlism to accommodate both? (Perhaps, for example, language-based?)
4. How will the NEK Koreans respond? Probably not much reaction is possible right now, but recall that a significant proportion of children (up to 10 percent) in Korea's rural areas are mixed-race children. Four years ago in the third post ever on AAK! -- so long ago that the Korean was speaking in first person -- the Korean wrote: "Unless Koreans do something to radically change their attitude toward foreignors and interracial people (unlikely), wide-scale race riots a la Los Angeles or Paris in about 20 years is a virtual certainty." Korea has done more than the Korean expected to move toward changing their attitude. But will the progress thus far be enough to avert wide-scale race riots 15 years from now, when these mixed-race children become young adults?
5. How will Germany's recent disavowal of multiculturalism policies affect this discussion? How will America's anti-immigration rhetoric? Remember, "what other advanced countries do" holds a lot of sway in Korean political discourse.
6. The Korean is not positive that even those Koreans who advocate for multiculturalism policies truly mean "multiculturalism" as the word is understood in other parts of the world. When this debate intensifies such that the proponents begin to realize that "multiculturalism", originally envisioned when the term was coined, involves a lot more than they might be comfortable with -- e.g. bastardizing traditional Korean cuisine, maybe -- how will they respond?
7. Kim Yi-Seon is correct that immigrants have little to do with Korea's current problems -- as of now. In the future when more immigrants come, they will contribute to Korea's problems, not because immigration is inherently problematic but because no movement of a large human group is free from at least some negative consequences. Will this change the debate in the future? Could proponents of multiculturalism solidify their grounds enough before the problems inevitably come?
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Are Vaccinations Safe?
Dear Korean,
My name is Roy, and I am reaching out to you on behalf of the Los Angeles County Dept. of Public Health (LADPH). LADPH just launched a public awareness campaign that urges people to protect themselves and their loved ones from preventable disease through proper vaccination. I work with SAESHE, a marketing agency that handles LA County's Asian American marketing and community outreach.
Los Angeles County is currently experiencing the worst epidemic of whooping cough in 60 years, with more than 870 cases last year alone. Effective of July 1, 2011, a new California school immunization law will require all 7th-12th graders in public and private schools to receive a pertussis booster (Tdap) shot, protecting them from whooping cough.
On behalf of LADPH and Los Angeles County, we are asking The Korean: Are vaccinations safe? Why should we get vaccinated?
Roy Cho
Assistant Account Executive
Dear Roy,
Despite the wishes of the Korean Parents, the Korean is not a doctor. But it does not take a doctor to know that vaccinations have done a tremendous amount of good for humanity. Thanks to vaccination, very serious diseases like polio, diphtheria and tetanus are practically eradicated. Vaccinations are safe, and we should be vaccinated to avoid preventable diseases.
Vaccination should have a more special meaning for Korean Americans, as it is one of the more enduring gifts from America to Korea. A very underrated contribution that America made for Korea is Korea's vast improvement in public health. As a Japanese colony, Korea's public health was miserable. Under the Japanese rule, Koreans had virtually no opportunity to receive medical education and become a doctor. Public health at the time was entirely focused on allowing the Japanese to live safely in Korea. The imperial police was in charge of public health in colonial Korea, and patients were treated as criminals, not people with illnesses. Virtually no attempt was made to treat the patients who were quarantined.
A good example of the brutality of Imperial Japan's "public health" policy is the way it treated Korea's leprosy patients. By the time of independence in 1945, Imperial Japan had built the world's largest leper colony in Korea, holding some 6,000 leprosy patients in an isolated island of Sorok-do. These patients, and their Japanese watchers, did not learn of Japan's defeat in World War II until three days after Japan surrendered. The Japanese in charge of the island heard the news along with some of Korean patients when they visited mainland to receive supply. The Japanese officials then killed 20 Korean patients on the boat to prevent the news from spreading, then returned to the island to embezzle the supplies in the island. The news nonetheless spread among the lepers, and the Japanese officials killed more than 60 patients in the ensuing riot before leaving the island.
The state of public health went from miserable to atrocious following the independence and through Korean War. At its height in the late 1940s, Seoul had 40 new smallpox patients every day; 40 percent of the patients died -- and we are talking about the disease whose vaccine was discovered in 1796. According to the U.S. military reports in 1946, nearly a thousand people died in one small town alone (Seonsan, Gyeongsangbuk-do, a little north of Daegu,) in just one week from at least five different communicable diseases. In 1949, it was estimated that more than 1.4 million Koreans had tuberculosis. In 1951 during the war, the same number was estimated to be 2.8 million.
American presence in Korea since the independence and through Korean War played a huge role in vastly improving such atrocious state of public health. Vaccination played a huge part in this. Of course, the starting point of American military's public health policy in Korea was its concerns about the health of their own soldiers who come in contact with Koreans at the time. During Korean War, one of the first steps to join KATUSA -- Korean soldiers who assisted the U.S. troops -- was to be sent to Japan and be vaccinated for smallpox, typhus, cholera, etc. But it is too cynical a view to think Americans acted out of pure self-interest. Despite being on a lower priority, Korean civilians eventually received regular vaccinations in an organized fashion. Much of humanitarian aid from America also focused on vaccination as well.
(Source: 전우용, 현대인의 탄생 (2011))
My name is Roy, and I am reaching out to you on behalf of the Los Angeles County Dept. of Public Health (LADPH). LADPH just launched a public awareness campaign that urges people to protect themselves and their loved ones from preventable disease through proper vaccination. I work with SAESHE, a marketing agency that handles LA County's Asian American marketing and community outreach.
Los Angeles County is currently experiencing the worst epidemic of whooping cough in 60 years, with more than 870 cases last year alone. Effective of July 1, 2011, a new California school immunization law will require all 7th-12th graders in public and private schools to receive a pertussis booster (Tdap) shot, protecting them from whooping cough.
On behalf of LADPH and Los Angeles County, we are asking The Korean: Are vaccinations safe? Why should we get vaccinated?
Roy Cho
Assistant Account Executive
Dear Roy,
Despite the wishes of the Korean Parents, the Korean is not a doctor. But it does not take a doctor to know that vaccinations have done a tremendous amount of good for humanity. Thanks to vaccination, very serious diseases like polio, diphtheria and tetanus are practically eradicated. Vaccinations are safe, and we should be vaccinated to avoid preventable diseases.
Vaccination should have a more special meaning for Korean Americans, as it is one of the more enduring gifts from America to Korea. A very underrated contribution that America made for Korea is Korea's vast improvement in public health. As a Japanese colony, Korea's public health was miserable. Under the Japanese rule, Koreans had virtually no opportunity to receive medical education and become a doctor. Public health at the time was entirely focused on allowing the Japanese to live safely in Korea. The imperial police was in charge of public health in colonial Korea, and patients were treated as criminals, not people with illnesses. Virtually no attempt was made to treat the patients who were quarantined.
A good example of the brutality of Imperial Japan's "public health" policy is the way it treated Korea's leprosy patients. By the time of independence in 1945, Imperial Japan had built the world's largest leper colony in Korea, holding some 6,000 leprosy patients in an isolated island of Sorok-do. These patients, and their Japanese watchers, did not learn of Japan's defeat in World War II until three days after Japan surrendered. The Japanese in charge of the island heard the news along with some of Korean patients when they visited mainland to receive supply. The Japanese officials then killed 20 Korean patients on the boat to prevent the news from spreading, then returned to the island to embezzle the supplies in the island. The news nonetheless spread among the lepers, and the Japanese officials killed more than 60 patients in the ensuing riot before leaving the island.
The state of public health went from miserable to atrocious following the independence and through Korean War. At its height in the late 1940s, Seoul had 40 new smallpox patients every day; 40 percent of the patients died -- and we are talking about the disease whose vaccine was discovered in 1796. According to the U.S. military reports in 1946, nearly a thousand people died in one small town alone (Seonsan, Gyeongsangbuk-do, a little north of Daegu,) in just one week from at least five different communicable diseases. In 1949, it was estimated that more than 1.4 million Koreans had tuberculosis. In 1951 during the war, the same number was estimated to be 2.8 million.
American presence in Korea since the independence and through Korean War played a huge role in vastly improving such atrocious state of public health. Vaccination played a huge part in this. Of course, the starting point of American military's public health policy in Korea was its concerns about the health of their own soldiers who come in contact with Koreans at the time. During Korean War, one of the first steps to join KATUSA -- Korean soldiers who assisted the U.S. troops -- was to be sent to Japan and be vaccinated for smallpox, typhus, cholera, etc. But it is too cynical a view to think Americans acted out of pure self-interest. Despite being on a lower priority, Korean civilians eventually received regular vaccinations in an organized fashion. Much of humanitarian aid from America also focused on vaccination as well.
(Source: 전우용, 현대인의 탄생 (2011))
Elementary school students in Gaejeong, Jeollabuk-do
line up for BCG vaccination against tuberculosis (circa late 1950s.)
American emphasis on preventive public health is
very much alive in Korea to this day.
(source)
In this day and age, the Korean does not know a reason why anyone would refuse to be vaccinated. But if you are a Korean American who need more reasons than the good folks at VaccinateLA could give, here is one more: thanks to the vaccination practices that America transplanted in Korea, Korea now has one of the lowest death rates in the world -- ironically, much lower than those of the U.S. Vaccination has proven to be a life-saving gift; it would be terrible manners to reject such a gift.
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Ask A Korean! Guest Blogger - Roboseyo: Why Do Expats [Hate Korea] Complain So Much?
It’s an exciting day here at Roboseyo: I have an interesting topic I’d like to discuss, about the relationship between expats and Koreans, and in order to address the topic properly, I contacted a Korean blogger, named, um, The Korean, who runs the excellent site, “Askakorean”. We’ve agreed to do a joint post about this topic, in order to get a variety of voices out there. I’m interested in this topic, and I sincerely hope it starts an interesting discussion on the K-blogosphere: if this topic interests you, consider yourself tagged: let me know what YOU think, too. The Korean and I will each write two articles, so you can have an expat’s view, and a Korean’s view on these two questions:
This week, we'll discuss the question, "Why do expats complain about Korea so much?"
Next week, we'll roll out the question, "Why do many Koreans take criticism of Korea so poorly?"
Here is my contribution on question one; the next post will be the Korean’s view on Question number one.
Then, after a "talk amongst yourselves" break, I will post my thoughts on Question two, followed by the Korean’s view on it.
Without further Ado:
There's an elephant in the room. Three, in fact. On the (English language) K-blogosphere in its entirety. Nobody wants to mention it, because everybody knows what happens once we toss rocks at the hornet's nest. The situation is similar in real life; those elephants sure get around.
The three elephants are the following, and all three are on a hair-trigger:
1. the kimcheerleaders, out to promote Korea's virtues, sometimes well into the realm of fiction, given the opportunity.
2. the expat complainers, quick to whine and gripe about Korea
3. those same kimcheerleaders, now with hurt pride, getting prickly, surly, and sometimes even mean, because of the expat negativity.
From there, it's a back-and-forth, ad hominem grudge match between the kimcheerleaders and the bashers; sometimes the bashers are Korean, sometimes they're expat; ditto for the kimcheerleaders (though the expat kimcheerleader is the rarest of the lot: the AB- blood-type of commenters, if you will), and when the dust settles, nobody’s happy except the trolls who write poisonous things to get attention by upsetting people. They're kissing mirrors to make lipstick prints and congratulating themselves in the third person. And the K-blogosphere is poisoned by negativity. Again.
You better believe those three elephants are reading over my shoulder every post I write, crossing out lines, rephrasing things, smoothing my cynicism into sarcasm, and my sarcasm into gentle irony.
Now, I've already talked at length about the Kimcheerleaders; they're mostly harmless, and a source of a fair bit of comedy, as well as the target of a little satire and sarcasm. They're also easy to appease, if I praise Korea from time to time: toss them a bone, and they'll leave me alone.
The expat complainers are a bit more of a puzzle. Like Bruce Banner flipping the rage switch, and morphing into the Illegible Incredible Hulk, a criticism too harsh will turn certain Kimcheerleaders into big, green, angry K-defenders. Their hurt, defensive, even visceral response to the critics creates an interesting dynamic. It's human nature to complain, but this whining expat/K-defender grudge match is puzzling. I can't say whether this dynamic develops between griping expats and nationals anywhere else, but I digress.
I'm writing this post to look at some of the reasons Expats in Korea seem to complain so much: Metropolitician has had a lot of experience with defensive kimcheerleaders, and recently blog-buddy Brian has also come under fire, getting linked by a Korean netizen who basically wanted a cyber-terror attack on his site, and even went after his job, trying to publish his employer's phone number, so people could phone his boss and try to get him fired. The comments he wrote on why Brian should be cyber-terrorized are dripping with condescension and hate, basically saying, "Let's CORRECT this ignorant foreigner's behaviour" as if they were training a dog not to piss on the carpet. This kind of bullying of people with whom one disagrees reminds me of a certain other group of nationalist boosters who have a very effective way of shutting up those who disagree with them.
So let's look a bit closer at expat complainers, but before I say anything else, I'd like to mention three things:
1. Complaining is human nature. People everywhere complain, about pretty much everything. Let's be honest about that, and recognize that until Laura The Expat Who's Lived Everywhere weighs in with, "Yeah. I've lived in sixteen different expat communities over the last thirty years, and things are way worse here than anywhere else," there's no reason to think things are worse on the K-blogosphere than elsewhere. The reason it's a topic at all is because of the dynamic that develops between gripers and defenders, and because of the perception that things are especially bad, and because people are acting on those perceptions with things like cyber-attacks on bloggers, however, it has not been demonstrated that expats in Korea complain more or less than expats anywhere else.
2. It's the internet, folks. Everybody complains on the internet. Why would you expect the K-blogosphere to be any different than any other corner of the world wide whine? Plus: as usual, in places where people write, instead of talking face to face, things seem worse on the net, and in print, than they are in the face to face conversations I've had: on the whole, the interactions I have with the people around me are overwhelmingly positive; with the online stuff, less so. If most of what you know about Korea comes from comment boards and rant-blogs, I pity you for the dim and distorted picture you must have of both Korea and expats. Get out of the house and visit some heritage sites with some friends, or go to the Korean restaurant in your town.
3. Some people actually do have a bad time in Korea, whether because of disappointed expectations or crooked Hogwan directors or whatever. The question here is not "how is it possible to have a bad time in Korea" but "why do some spread that negativity so far and wide, so aggressively?" let's give people the grace to allow for a reasonable amount of complaining, because we're expats, not saints, and these are blogs and comments and conversations with friends, not press releases or travel advisory warnings from international organizations.
Now that that's out of the way:
I like to divide complainers into the cathartic complainers and the social critics. Let's make that distinction, and then immediately muddy it up by saying sometimes they bleed into one another (for example, when the Metropolitician goes on a rant).
I'm going to try to list these reasons in ascending order, starting with the basest complaints, that deserve the least attention, and moving on up to the critics and criticisms that deserve careful attention and sober reflection:
Class 1: Cathartic Complainers (because you need to get it off your chest sometimes)
Bottom Rung: The Snark Olympians:
(Harsher! Meaner! Ruder!)
For a certain stripe of expat in Korea, it's practically a sport, almost like a secret handshake, to moan about Korea: you can prove the validity of your experience and time spent in Korea by the depth and clarity of your complaint. After two months, Johnny Firstyear moans, "Korean moms are too intense! My boss is totally unprofessional! They put CORN on PIZZA! Cheese is so expensive!" but Annie Expat can prove her cred by going deeper. She drops a few phrases like "Neo-Confucianism" and "credential society," blames Korea's social ills on Park Chung-hee or Japanese colonialism, maybe drops the names Michael Breen and Bruce Cumings. ("I won't even listen to your opinion if you haven't read 'The Aquariums of Pyongyang'") The expat who's been here longer, or knows more, usually holds the floor in these cases; between expats with approximately equal experience in Korea, it becomes a race to say the meanest thing about the country, and I've heard some doozies.
But keep this in mind about the Snark Olympians: they usually don’t stay for long, and moreover, this kind of complaining has very little to do with Korea really, and everything to do with the complainers, and the fact complaining is fun. I've said a few awful things about Korea too, in my day, to get a laugh, or because it was well-phrased, and not really because I meant it. Uproot Joe Firstyear and Annie Expat, and put them in New York City, and they'd be doing the same,
but crapping on the New York Knicks, A-Rod, or Mayor Bloomberg instead. Heck, given the chance, some of this group of whining expats would probably complain about Shangri-la, if that's where they found themselves. "Love-slaves 24, 46 and 71 out of 72 are kind of chubby, and love-slave 32 sweats a lot. . . what kind of sham paradise-on-earth is this?"
The same way a parent shouldn't take it to heart when his angry kid shouts, "I hate you!" snark-fests should be taken for what they are, and tolerated, but ultimately ignored: why waste your time reading it, and even more, why waste energy getting your hackles up? You won't convince them to stop. Complainers like these are the reason a lot of expat lifers don't spend too much time around first year English teachers: the complaining is a drag, and it's kind of boring when you've heard it all before, read James Turnbull's five part essay and Mike Hurt's rant, and written an op-ed piece to Korea Herald's Expat Living about it.
Next Group: The Misdirected Culture-Shockers and Disappointed Orientalists
Next rung up on the ladder are the expats who complain not so much for the sport, but because they don't know any other way to articulate the culture-shock they're experiencing.
This category also goes for people who expected their (often first ever) time overseas to be very different than it is. "What? Bosses here overwork their employees, too? People don't wear hanbok every day? People live in apartment buildings instead of hanok houses? People drink Starbucks instead of Sanghwacha when they meet? Not every girl wears a short-skirted school uniform? This is TOTALLY different than I thought Asia would be after reading Manga, watching 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,' 'Memoirs of a Geisha,' 'The Last Samurai,' and 'M*A*S*H*'!"
Got this:
Instead of this?
Harsh.
Got this:
and this:
and this:
Instead of this:
And this?
I hear ya. Reality's rough.
This is a little closer to honest criticism, but while Snark-Olympians are at least having fun, these two groups might be the bitterest and meanest of the lot: a former coworker poisoned the entire atmosphere in the staff room, as she took her failure to adjust to a different culture out on everyone around her. Eventually, she went home early, but not early enough. Again, a grain of salt should be taken with complaints of this kind: when certain people are thrown into a new situation (especially ones having their first overseas experience), it takes them a little while to figure out that "this is interesting" or "I can learn about this" are better default reactions than "this is bad," when they encounter something unfamiliar, or that new situations are best approached with open minds, rather than preconceptions. It ain't pretty, but hopefully we can cut them a little slack (though, again, it would be better for them if they vented their frustration in appropriate directions, saving it for people who knew them well enough to take their ranting in stride, and let's also ask, if it's online, who is choosing to read their complaints?).
The next level goes especially for people who complain online, or expats who always run Korea down when they're around other expats: The Off-Duty Diplomats
See, most expats realize that we are guests in Korea; because we (other than some Asian-hypenated expats) look different than the rest of the people around, we know we're being watched, in curiousity, or in judgement. In our own neighbourhoods, and around our Korean friends, most of us feel the burden of representing our home countries: we're diplomats, saying the "right" things about how Korean women are beautiful, and Jeju Island gyuul are great, and those mean Japanese textbook writers ought to get their facts straight! Is it any surprise that after a long day of diplomacy, we come home, hop online, or huddle away with other foreigners, and criticize, in the same way most table-waiters come home from a long day of fake-smiling for tips, and act rude and surly to their housemates?
Ranting Englishman makes no bones that his blog is saving his and his wife’s sanity. Sorry you had to be privy to that, but can you really hold it against him? My Mom once told me, when Peter talks about Paul, we learn more about Peter than we do about Paul, and while it's not pleasant to watch or read or hear, remember here that you're reading the literary equivalent of a hotel receptionist spending her day off wearing sweatpants, a baseball cap, and no makeup. For many of us, this is when we aren’t putting our best foot forward. Putting the negativity online, or keeping it between friends in a club somewhere, is better than spewing it at work, where careless words have more consequences.
(Another thing about these first three types of complainers: telling them to stop actually makes them complain MORE, in the same way that telling kids not to do something immediately makes it fun.)
This level and those above are often mixed with this: Alternate View Pointer-Outers
Now, due to various reasons (homogeneous society, intense and intentional cultural programming [especially during the '60s and '70s], a culture of suspicion of those who hold unconventional ideas [leftover from the anti-communist red-scare days], an atmosphere of conformity strong enough that old ladies have been known to correct how I eat my soup) which are mostly beyond the scope of this post, and would require masters' theses to do them each justice, many westerners are surprised at how little diversity of ideas there are in public forums here in Korea; meanwhile, when a group DOES get loud about something, the rest of Korea usually shuts up and lets them rave, rather than shouting alternative viewpoints just as loudly. (If you disagree with this, kindly explain why the pro-FTA, pro-America, pro-LMB conservatives were so quiet during the first month of beef protests). This means some expats take it upon themselves to argue a different point of view, for the sheer sake of having a different point of view.
For example: every time I talk about education in Korea, I run into the EXACT same arguments, as if they were memorized in high school, along with the phrase, "Fine, thank you, and you?"
everybody say it along with me:
1. Korea has few natural resources
2. Korea has many people; people are Korea's best resource.
3. Korea has so much competition, because of overpopulation.
4. Education is the only way to gain a competitive advantage.
5. If you go to SKY* universities, you're set for life
6. Therefore, even though it's stupid and counterproductive and hurting Korea, and hurting students, and everybody knows it, I still must push my middle-school-aged son to study until 1am every day from now until the end of high school, to do well on the test and get into an SKY university.
(*SKY Universities are Korea's top three: Seoul National, Korea, and Yonsei Universities. It's generally accepted that if you graduate from a SKY School, you're pretty much set for life.)
Good god! Somebody needs to toss a monkey-wrench into that tired cycle of thought, and suggest that there must be another way to raise kids into successful adults -- some noisy expats (maybe self-importantly) offer up other options, and are sometimes resented for it, and when we get the rote response, some of us feel like we're butting our heads against a wall, and depending on the expat, that prompts some of us to give up, and some of us to butt harder. Hard butts can rub some people the wrong way.
Next level: Closely related to the off-duty diplomats are The Kimcheerleading Counterbalances
I've blogged before (in my kimcheerleaders post) about the way an unfortunately large number of Koreans seem to approach every conversation with a non-Korean as a promo-op, a chance to promote Korea, rather than as a meeting of minds between two human beings. (remember that I'm speaking in broad generalizations here) -- some of us may feel overwhelmed by the Kimcheerleading.
Imagine Chul-soo. He's proud of his country. When he chats with a foreigner (which happens two or three times a week), he takes two minutes to explain that Kimchi is the world's healthiest food. It's only two minutes in his day, and he loves Korea -- good for him, I say!
But that foreigner might have similar conversations with many Koreans who also take just a few minutes to explain how garlic is healthy and Koreans use every part of the animal. Those few minutes' add up, when a dozen people a week spare a moment to promote Korean culture. It's even worse in the Korean English Language print media, where that dull, downer story about a double-murder-suicide, or a rapist on the loose in Daejeon, often get cut, but articles like this one ALWAYS make it in (HT to Brian in Jeollanam-do), the sports page is covered with a full, half-page "Park Chan-Ho pitches four innings, gets No Decision vs. Padres", ("Tiger Woods Wins Fifteenth Major in a Thrilling Come-From-Behind Finish" goes on the bottom half of the page) and "What's So Great about Korea, Maarten" still grins at us from the English section of every bookstore.
Faced with such a flood of positive Korean promotion, it's almost natural that we Westerners (who, at least among North Americans, have been programmed by movies and stories to go against the grain, and to prefer being right and alone over being wrong with the crowd), might start to push against the flood of Kimcheerleading with a bit of counter-balancing negativity, just so there’s a conversation, instead of just a room full of people nodding their heads in agreement.
Now, add to THIS the fact, because of our language limitations, a lot of us can't access the Korean language media in print or TV. This means that, while there might be a very lively discussion of Korea's social ills in Korean, because the English media editors and producers diligently excise almost all such topics from the pages of the English dailies, we have no idea whether social critics set the agenda in Korean public discourse, or whether Koreans just sit in circles repeating to each other the same things they say to us when they meet us!
If Arirang TV is anything to go on, Koreans spend all their time having conversations like this:
Chul-soo: "Yi Sunshin was probably the greatest naval commander in world history."
Hye-mi: "I've heard that's true. It might be because he grew up eating with chopsticks: studies have shown eating with chopsticks increase your IQ."
Chul-soo: "Ah. that might partially explain why Koreans scored higher than any other country on standardized IQ tests."
Hye-mi: "Indeed. Though I would credit that more to the fact Koreans are extremely diligent students."
Chul-soo: "It's because our young people are raised in such strong families: Confucianism values the family as the lynchpin of a healthy society"
Hye-mi: "That's why we have more jung."
It sounds ridiculous when I write it out like that, but The Korea Herald and Korea Times and Arirang TV (which no foreigner I've met watches) sometimes start to sound that way after a while, and for all we know, the local, Korean language papers might be the same way, from top to bottom! No wonder we feel like we need to balance out the kimcheerleading with a little negativity! (the simple solution here is that we ought to learn more Korean and see for ourselves what fills the pages of Korea's papers, but until then, that's where a lot of us are coming from.)
The Next Level: The (Maybe You Didn't Notice It Was) Affectionately Sarcastic
Some readers and listeners don't notice, can't notice, or intentionally ignore, the fact that some of us comment on this stuff because it amuses us, and we're not trying to be negative at all: some of the strongest reactions to posts of mine have been from readers who didn't quite notice the irony, sarcasm, or bemusement in my tone -- I wasn't trying to run anyone down, I wasn't trying to make anybody look stupid, or imply that the one dummy I met yesterday stands in for all Koreans everywhere -- I was just telling a story. However, a reader or acquaintance who doesn't have a lot of experience in spotting irony or verbal satire, who is looking for a reason to get upset and defensive, will probably find one. People who only read the critical rant, and skim the positive stuff, glancing at the photos, might miss the generally cheerful tone of my blog, and my usual affection for Korea. They might get more upset than they need to, about my mode of expression, in the same way the table-waiter's roommates think he's a rude jerk, because they don't see how well he treats his customers and his mother.
And, finally, the two highest levels:
The Social Critic:
These people HAVE paid their dues; they're not speaking in ignorance, or jumping to conclusions. They've done their due diligence, read up, qualified their statements, and started pointing out areas where Korea is not what it wishes to be. These people play an important role in a healthy society. It may seem they're negative, but as one of my favourite writers, Flannery O'Connor once said, when somebody accused her of only talking about the negative aspects of her society, and why couldn't she just write something nice once in a while, "If I write about a hill that is rotting, it is because I despise rot." (original quote by Wyndham Lewis)
Naming a problem is the first step to solving it, and maybe some of these critics are attempting to be legitimate part of that process -- that is, they're writing because they want to see Korea become a better place. . . in which case, Koreans who are upset about non-Koreans criticizing Korea need to stop and take a careful look at why that upsets them, because the problem does not lie in the complainers or their intentions.
To be fair, sometimes the social critics' intentions are good, but their methods are poor: the sometimes bitter and mean tone of certain critics can be hurtful, and as I've said to some of my friends who complain about Korea with a rude or condescending tone: "when you talk so harshly, even when you're right, you're wrong, and even if you win the argument, you still lose" -- but then,
1. polemical writing gets more blog hits than diplomatic writing
2. polemical writing sticks in peoples' heads for longer than diplomatic writing, which means it ultimately has a higher chance of changing a person's pattern of thinking!
3. polemical writing stirs up emotions, which means it will start more discussions, than diplomatic writing, which might not poke through someone's guard.
Bare fact: A scalpel is a better surgical tool than a pillow, and sometimes, a social problem must be sharply criticized to bring about change; gentle phrases just won't stir up a strong enough reaction.
Finally, at the top of the pile, the last group who complains about Korea: The Constructive Social Critic
The CSCs have also paid their dues. They know Korea, they've been here a long time, and maybe, their outsiders' views give them insight into topics that even Koreans miss. The only difference between them and the category above is that they are solution oriented, rather than problem oriented. Sure, they name the problem, and that's important, but for them, naming the problem is simply a step toward finding a solution, and their complaints end either with a suggestion of their own, or with a feeling of "now that we understand the problem very well, let's get working on a solution!"
Most of the critics I enjoy vacillate between these two categories, depending on their areas of expertise, and emotional state at the time of writing. CSCs write out of knowledge and love for Korea, out of a real desire to see Korea grow and improve, and mature into a world leader. Again, as with the social critic, if Koreans have a problem with a non-Korean producing THIS kind of writing about Korea, then it's really time to take a careful look at why it upsets them for someone with knowledge, insight, and compassion, to clearly articulate their wish for Korea to become a better place. My wish would be that more of the CSC's learn Korean well enough to get their ideas into the Korean media without risk of having a reader misunderstand it, or a translator twist it to their own ends (at the same time as we also need CSCs publishing about Korea in English, the international language).
So, there are a few reasons expats complain. I've probably missed some, and I'm not making excuses for rudeness (though I am suggesting it's best ignored), but that's at least where we're coming from, and as I said before: the stuff that goes online is harsher than what happens in face-to-face situations, so if the K-blogosphere is getting you down, don't use it to get in touch with Korea; get out of the house and climb a mountain, visit a temple, have lunch with a Korean friend, or (if you're outside Korea) go find a Korean restaurant nearby or watch a DVD of Welcome To Dongmakgol. Seriously.
***
"I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies."
Pietro Aretino, quoted in this article, from the BBC to angry Chinese defenders.
Here are a few typical responses that Koreans have to expats' complaints (some of these are borrowed from the Metroplitician's excellent, "Why Be Critical" post, one of the K-blogosphere's must-read posts, and an article without which this post would probably not exist at all. The comments on that post are also very interesting, for numerous reasons.)
1. Why are you airing out our dirty laundry? (One commenter on my blog once wrote about the critics, “It felt like my family’s dirty laundry was being aired to stranger and strangers were now telling me how to fix my family’s problems”) This one can also be phrased as "Why are you prying into Korea's internal issues?"
Answer: Well. . . if Korea is your house, then there are people living in your house that didn't live here before, and some of your family members have moved away and never looked back, and the windows are bigger than ever before, so a lot of people can see in now. South-Asian wives of Korean farmers and international investors and long-term teachers live under this roof now, and Korea's own people are more cosmopolitan and well-travelled than ever before, including many ethnic Koreans who haven't even been to Korea, transnational adoptees, Kyopos with various degrees of affinity for their parents' home -- it ain't Dongmakgeol any more, if it ever was, and the world is too interconnected to believe Korea can still exist in a bubble which doesn't affect other countries. A lot of us have invested a lot of time and energy into Korea; we have careers, families, kids, and connections here: this is our home, and we have a stake in Korea! Why shouldn’t we want our home to become better?
2. Why do you hate Korea?
Answer: I don't. If I did, I would have given up and left, as I am still free to do. The very fact I'm here is proof I like Korea enough to stay, and care about Korea enough to pay attention, and comment on it.
3. "You should learn more about Korea."
Answer:
This is a Korean's way of chunking me into category two of the expat complainer: "If I decide your complaints are borne of ignorance or culture shock, I can dismiss them." It falls apart if I can demonstrate knowledge of Korea (at which point this one often leads to number 4, revealing the true nature of the objection.)
Often, what this one REALLY means is, "I'm trying to find an excuse to ignore what you've said," or even, "It's easier for me to dismiss what you've said than to reexamine my idea of Korea." If I should learn more about Korea, then I'd love for you to explain it to me!
This one wears especially thin for those who HAVE been in Korea a long time, watching and listening carefully, but are still lumped in with Joe Firstyear, so be careful about using this one, because it often reveals more about the speaker's attitude than the complainer's knowledge.
4. You CAN'T understand Korea.
Answer:
Translation: I refuse to listen to you. More at Metropolitician on this one. Sometimes this comes up when "You should learn more about Korea" is rebuffed by a demonstration of extensive Korea-knowledge, at which point, the K-defender is cornered, and starts saying stuff like this. Basically, this comment reveals more about the one who says it than the one who's complaining: what would it take to convince the person who says this that a non-Korean understands Korea? What kind of pedigree would it take, other than having Korean blood (and why does having Korean blood legitimize a complaint: who knows more about Korea? An expat who's lived here for ten years, or a Kyopo who can't speak the language, and has never visited, but has 100% Korean blood)? Where do pure-blood transnational adoptees fit on the spectrum of “allowed to criticize Korea”?
5. "I don't like when a foreigner criticizes Korea"
Answer: Why not? Again, this comment reflects more on the speaker than the complainer. What's so terrible about a foreigner complaining about Korea? The worst thing that can happen is that the foreigner's wrong, or the discussion gets emotional and unproductive; the best thing that can happen is that both sides might learn something.
7. "You should be a more gracious guest while you visit Korea!"
Answer: That might be so. . . but maybe I'm not a guest, and don’t want to be thought of as one; maybe I'm an active participant in Korean society, and wish to have my views respected as such. I've lived here for five years now, watching and asking questions: that's so long away from Canada that I no longer feel qualified to comment on situations back in Canada. If Korea isn't my home, nowhere is.
8. It's just as bad (or worse) in X country!
Yep. And when we're talking about that country, we'll address it. Right now, we're talking about Korea: there are very few things that are unique to only one culture -- but just because Japan, China, Iran, England, or America have the same problem, doesn't mean that Korea shouldn't be trying to fix it here, while those countries work on the problem there. If Joe's a jerk, and James is a jerk too, that doesn't mean Joe's free to remain a jerk; it just means that Joe and James both need to change their attitude.
9. If you don't like it, go home.
Fair enough. K-defenders are entitled to that opinion if they choose. However, I hope they’d think for a moment about how unhelpful that attitude is. If I don't like Korea, and I go home, whatever -- I'm just one guy, and I can put up with a lot, as long as Korea puts food on my table. But what about when an international investor doesn't like something? What if ten-thousand teachers, or ten-thousand migrant workers, or five-hundred loaded, foreign businesspeople looking to invest, don't like something? When does the onus fall on Korea to look inward, rather than on outsiders to get lost? Is telling that investor to take his billions and invest them in Hong Kong instead, going to help Korea become the global leader it wants to be?
And if a K-defender wants Korea to go back to its hermit kingdom days, and pickle in its own juices, he’s free to that view, but that "my way or the highway" has another name in North Korea: juche, and it didn't work out so well for the starving farmers over there. If Korea wants to become a globalized, cosmopolitan hub, and a destination for business leaders and investors, then, "If you don't like it, let's work something out" would be more productive.
10. Why don't you talk about positive things?
This is a fair critique, as is "why don't you say things more nicely/politely," and extremely valid, IF the complainer DOES only talk about negative stuff, and/or use rude, condescending tones. . . but don't use this one after reading a single post; save it until after you've read a bunch of posts, or had a number of conversations, so that you can back up your accusation. I get frustrated hearing this one, when I word damn hard to stay to stay positive and keep my criticisms edifying, and the commenter fires this off after reading a single one of my posts.
11. Go easy on us: we're just a developing nation!
Answer: Put very simply:
Still developing:
Finished developing:
Congratulations! You're part of the club! You're playing with the big kids now!
In terms of infrastructure and wealth, Korea is no longer a developing nation. Top fifteen economy in the world, people from South Asia coming HERE to work and send money home -- in the ways of the won, Korea's made it. It's a major player. Other countries look to Korea's development model to figure out how to raise their standard of living and set up infrastructure. One of the drags that comes with being one of the big boys is being a big target, and people pay more attention, and take more shots at big targets. Griping about facing criticism from the international community that Korea worked so hard to join, is like the little boy who wants to play soccer with his older brother's big friends, and then cries when they knock him down with a sliding tackle. More on that later.
12. You want Korea to become like America.
Answer: If I want to live in a place that's exactly like America, I'll just move there. Given the history of the last 100 years, and the fact North and South Korea are as different as Summer and Winter now, when in 1935 their situation was exactly the same, Korea of all places should recognize that cultures are constantly changing and developing.
The ones that don't end up artifacts and oddities, like the Amish, who are interesting, but basically irrelevant, and don't attract much foreign direct investment. Yeah, it takes some wisdom and discernment to figure out when you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or bringing in what The Joshing Gnome calls "cultural junk DNA", but if Korea can go through the upheavals of the last hundred years and still have a unique culture, isn't it time to lay the "our culture's going to disappear completely" objection to rest?
13. But you're telling this to the wrong crowd! You should learn Korean and say this to Korean; telling it to other expats is preaching to the converted, and not very helpful. The people who really need to hear culture-changing ideas are the ones who can't read English, who are captive to the Korean language media.
Answer: You are absolutely right.
Two final thoughts on Expat complainers that didn't conveniently fit into the above categories:
1. (generalization ahead. . . ) One of my English Teacher friends has a lot of non-English teaching expat friends -- from other parts of the world than England, USA, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, with skin-colours other than white, and notes that loudest and bitterest complaints come from white males from English-speaking, first-world countries. She thinks it's because, for first-world WASP males, coming to Korea is the first time white male priveledge hasn't managed to open every door to them: only most doors.
2. A new way to look at complaining. . .
Reflect on the fact that complaining is an act of hope. Really. When there's no hope that a bad situation will improve, people stop complaining and learn to bear it, or (in the case of first-world expats in Korea) go home. The very act of complaining is an expression of hope, of the conviction that Korea DOES have the potential for change, and for growth.
Criticism is also a sign of respect, a recognition of Korea's climbing status in the world. It is much better to have people criticize Korea and hold it up to international standards (with the implicit affirmation that Korea is now a world leader), than to approach it as a place so backwards and stubborn that engaging with the culture would be useless for anyone but observers and documentarians. Such an attitude would cause less stress to the K-defenders, but do they really want Korea to be treated delicately, like a quaint oddity, rather than like an international heavyweight? (Case in point: look how much international criticism the world's MOST powerful country, the U.S.A., receives from other countries -- the fact that Korea now catches the attention of international critics just proves how much Korea's influence has grown. Would Korea rather be a criticized heavyweight like the USA, or a delicately approached cultural oddity, like Bedouin nomads? Which treatment is more respectful, really? An honest criticism, or a condescending, "Look at these interesting specimens!"
If you think about it, criticism isn't a bad thing at all: it's an opportunity to learn something, to improve something. The person who ignores valid criticism does so at his own peril; I would argue that it's the same for countries (look at how bad USA's international reputation is these days, because of plowing ahead with its plans and ignoring the international community). So yeah, because it's all in English, a lot of the K-blog complaining doesn't read the audience that would benefit most from hearing it, but starting the discussion can only lead to deeper insight, right? So bring it on!
Readers: Korean expats and Koreans: Do YOU think expats complain about Korea too much? If so, why? Should they complain, and how? Why is the relationship between expats and Koreans online so adversarial? What's an appropriate mode and medium for complaint, if not online? What can we do to have constructive criticisms heard? Write about it, blog about it, weigh in; e-mail me your thoughts to roboseyo [at] gmail [dot] com and I'll post them here; tell me where to find them online and I'll link them. Weigh in on my comment board. Let's talk about this honestly and reasonably. It's about time.
(Flannery O'Connor Quote from "Flannery O'Connor's Religion of the Grotesque, by Marshall Bruce Gentry)
This week, we'll discuss the question, "Why do expats complain about Korea so much?"
Next week, we'll roll out the question, "Why do many Koreans take criticism of Korea so poorly?"
Here is my contribution on question one; the next post will be the Korean’s view on Question number one.
Then, after a "talk amongst yourselves" break, I will post my thoughts on Question two, followed by the Korean’s view on it.
Without further Ado:
There's an elephant in the room. Three, in fact. On the (English language) K-blogosphere in its entirety. Nobody wants to mention it, because everybody knows what happens once we toss rocks at the hornet's nest. The situation is similar in real life; those elephants sure get around.The three elephants are the following, and all three are on a hair-trigger:
1. the kimcheerleaders, out to promote Korea's virtues, sometimes well into the realm of fiction, given the opportunity.
2. the expat complainers, quick to whine and gripe about Korea
3. those same kimcheerleaders, now with hurt pride, getting prickly, surly, and sometimes even mean, because of the expat negativity.
From there, it's a back-and-forth, ad hominem grudge match between the kimcheerleaders and the bashers; sometimes the bashers are Korean, sometimes they're expat; ditto for the kimcheerleaders (though the expat kimcheerleader is the rarest of the lot: the AB- blood-type of commenters, if you will), and when the dust settles, nobody’s happy except the trolls who write poisonous things to get attention by upsetting people. They're kissing mirrors to make lipstick prints and congratulating themselves in the third person. And the K-blogosphere is poisoned by negativity. Again.You better believe those three elephants are reading over my shoulder every post I write, crossing out lines, rephrasing things, smoothing my cynicism into sarcasm, and my sarcasm into gentle irony.
Now, I've already talked at length about the Kimcheerleaders; they're mostly harmless, and a source of a fair bit of comedy, as well as the target of a little satire and sarcasm. They're also easy to appease, if I praise Korea from time to time: toss them a bone, and they'll leave me alone.
The expat complainers are a bit more of a puzzle. Like Bruce Banner flipping the rage switch, and morphing into the I'm writing this post to look at some of the reasons Expats in Korea seem to complain so much: Metropolitician has had a lot of experience with defensive kimcheerleaders, and recently blog-buddy Brian has also come under fire, getting linked by a Korean netizen who basically wanted a cyber-terror attack on his site, and even went after his job, trying to publish his employer's phone number, so people could phone his boss and try to get him fired. The comments he wrote on why Brian should be cyber-terrorized are dripping with condescension and hate, basically saying, "Let's CORRECT this ignorant foreigner's behaviour" as if they were training a dog not to piss on the carpet. This kind of bullying of people with whom one disagrees reminds me of a certain other group of nationalist boosters who have a very effective way of shutting up those who disagree with them.
So let's look a bit closer at expat complainers, but before I say anything else, I'd like to mention three things:
1. Complaining is human nature. People everywhere complain, about pretty much everything. Let's be honest about that, and recognize that until Laura The Expat Who's Lived Everywhere weighs in with, "Yeah. I've lived in sixteen different expat communities over the last thirty years, and things are way worse here than anywhere else," there's no reason to think things are worse on the K-blogosphere than elsewhere. The reason it's a topic at all is because of the dynamic that develops between gripers and defenders, and because of the perception that things are especially bad, and because people are acting on those perceptions with things like cyber-attacks on bloggers, however, it has not been demonstrated that expats in Korea complain more or less than expats anywhere else.
2. It's the internet, folks. Everybody complains on the internet. Why would you expect the K-blogosphere to be any different than any other corner of the world wide whine? Plus: as usual, in places where people write, instead of talking face to face, things seem worse on the net, and in print, than they are in the face to face conversations I've had: on the whole, the interactions I have with the people around me are overwhelmingly positive; with the online stuff, less so. If most of what you know about Korea comes from comment boards and rant-blogs, I pity you for the dim and distorted picture you must have of both Korea and expats. Get out of the house and visit some heritage sites with some friends, or go to the Korean restaurant in your town.
Weird netizens are everywhere. Not just here.
3. Some people actually do have a bad time in Korea, whether because of disappointed expectations or crooked Hogwan directors or whatever. The question here is not "how is it possible to have a bad time in Korea" but "why do some spread that negativity so far and wide, so aggressively?" let's give people the grace to allow for a reasonable amount of complaining, because we're expats, not saints, and these are blogs and comments and conversations with friends, not press releases or travel advisory warnings from international organizations.
Now that that's out of the way:
I like to divide complainers into the cathartic complainers and the social critics. Let's make that distinction, and then immediately muddy it up by saying sometimes they bleed into one another (for example, when the Metropolitician goes on a rant).
I'm going to try to list these reasons in ascending order, starting with the basest complaints, that deserve the least attention, and moving on up to the critics and criticisms that deserve careful attention and sober reflection:
Class 1: Cathartic Complainers (because you need to get it off your chest sometimes)
Bottom Rung: The Snark Olympians:
(Harsher! Meaner! Ruder!)
For a certain stripe of expat in Korea, it's practically a sport, almost like a secret handshake, to moan about Korea: you can prove the validity of your experience and time spent in Korea by the depth and clarity of your complaint. After two months, Johnny Firstyear moans, "Korean moms are too intense! My boss is totally unprofessional! They put CORN on PIZZA! Cheese is so expensive!" but Annie Expat can prove her cred by going deeper. She drops a few phrases like "Neo-Confucianism" and "credential society," blames Korea's social ills on Park Chung-hee or Japanese colonialism, maybe drops the names Michael Breen and Bruce Cumings. ("I won't even listen to your opinion if you haven't read 'The Aquariums of Pyongyang'") The expat who's been here longer, or knows more, usually holds the floor in these cases; between expats with approximately equal experience in Korea, it becomes a race to say the meanest thing about the country, and I've heard some doozies.But keep this in mind about the Snark Olympians: they usually don’t stay for long, and moreover, this kind of complaining has very little to do with Korea really, and everything to do with the complainers, and the fact complaining is fun. I've said a few awful things about Korea too, in my day, to get a laugh, or because it was well-phrased, and not really because I meant it. Uproot Joe Firstyear and Annie Expat, and put them in New York City, and they'd be doing the same,
but crapping on the New York Knicks, A-Rod, or Mayor Bloomberg instead. Heck, given the chance, some of this group of whining expats would probably complain about Shangri-la, if that's where they found themselves. "Love-slaves 24, 46 and 71 out of 72 are kind of chubby, and love-slave 32 sweats a lot. . . what kind of sham paradise-on-earth is this?"The same way a parent shouldn't take it to heart when his angry kid shouts, "I hate you!" snark-fests should be taken for what they are, and tolerated, but ultimately ignored: why waste your time reading it, and even more, why waste energy getting your hackles up? You won't convince them to stop. Complainers like these are the reason a lot of expat lifers don't spend too much time around first year English teachers: the complaining is a drag, and it's kind of boring when you've heard it all before, read James Turnbull's five part essay and Mike Hurt's rant, and written an op-ed piece to Korea Herald's Expat Living about it.
Next Group: The Misdirected Culture-Shockers and Disappointed Orientalists
Next rung up on the ladder are the expats who complain not so much for the sport, but because they don't know any other way to articulate the culture-shock they're experiencing.
This category also goes for people who expected their (often first ever) time overseas to be very different than it is. "What? Bosses here overwork their employees, too? People don't wear hanbok every day? People live in apartment buildings instead of hanok houses? People drink Starbucks instead of Sanghwacha when they meet? Not every girl wears a short-skirted school uniform? This is TOTALLY different than I thought Asia would be after reading Manga, watching 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,' 'Memoirs of a Geisha,' 'The Last Samurai,' and 'M*A*S*H*'!"
Got this:
Instead of this?Harsh.
Got this:
and this:
and this:
Instead of this:
And this?
I hear ya. Reality's rough.
This is a little closer to honest criticism, but while Snark-Olympians are at least having fun, these two groups might be the bitterest and meanest of the lot: a former coworker poisoned the entire atmosphere in the staff room, as she took her failure to adjust to a different culture out on everyone around her. Eventually, she went home early, but not early enough. Again, a grain of salt should be taken with complaints of this kind: when certain people are thrown into a new situation (especially ones having their first overseas experience), it takes them a little while to figure out that "this is interesting" or "I can learn about this" are better default reactions than "this is bad," when they encounter something unfamiliar, or that new situations are best approached with open minds, rather than preconceptions. It ain't pretty, but hopefully we can cut them a little slack (though, again, it would be better for them if they vented their frustration in appropriate directions, saving it for people who knew them well enough to take their ranting in stride, and let's also ask, if it's online, who is choosing to read their complaints?).
The next level goes especially for people who complain online, or expats who always run Korea down when they're around other expats: The Off-Duty Diplomats
See, most expats realize that we are guests in Korea; because we (other than some Asian-hypenated expats) look different than the rest of the people around, we know we're being watched, in curiousity, or in judgement. In our own neighbourhoods, and around our Korean friends, most of us feel the burden of representing our home countries: we're diplomats, saying the "right" things about how Korean women are beautiful, and Jeju Island gyuul are great, and those mean Japanese textbook writers ought to get their facts straight! Is it any surprise that after a long day of diplomacy, we come home, hop online, or huddle away with other foreigners, and criticize, in the same way most table-waiters come home from a long day of fake-smiling for tips, and act rude and surly to their housemates?
Ranting Englishman makes no bones that his blog is saving his and his wife’s sanity. Sorry you had to be privy to that, but can you really hold it against him? My Mom once told me, when Peter talks about Paul, we learn more about Peter than we do about Paul, and while it's not pleasant to watch or read or hear, remember here that you're reading the literary equivalent of a hotel receptionist spending her day off wearing sweatpants, a baseball cap, and no makeup. For many of us, this is when we aren’t putting our best foot forward. Putting the negativity online, or keeping it between friends in a club somewhere, is better than spewing it at work, where careless words have more consequences.
(Another thing about these first three types of complainers: telling them to stop actually makes them complain MORE, in the same way that telling kids not to do something immediately makes it fun.)
This level and those above are often mixed with this: Alternate View Pointer-Outers
Now, due to various reasons (homogeneous society, intense and intentional cultural programming [especially during the '60s and '70s], a culture of suspicion of those who hold unconventional ideas [leftover from the anti-communist red-scare days], an atmosphere of conformity strong enough that old ladies have been known to correct how I eat my soup) which are mostly beyond the scope of this post, and would require masters' theses to do them each justice, many westerners are surprised at how little diversity of ideas there are in public forums here in Korea; meanwhile, when a group DOES get loud about something, the rest of Korea usually shuts up and lets them rave, rather than shouting alternative viewpoints just as loudly. (If you disagree with this, kindly explain why the pro-FTA, pro-America, pro-LMB conservatives were so quiet during the first month of beef protests). This means some expats take it upon themselves to argue a different point of view, for the sheer sake of having a different point of view.For example: every time I talk about education in Korea, I run into the EXACT same arguments, as if they were memorized in high school, along with the phrase, "Fine, thank you, and you?"
everybody say it along with me:1. Korea has few natural resources
2. Korea has many people; people are Korea's best resource.
3. Korea has so much competition, because of overpopulation.
4. Education is the only way to gain a competitive advantage.
5. If you go to SKY* universities, you're set for life
6. Therefore, even though it's stupid and counterproductive and hurting Korea, and hurting students, and everybody knows it, I still must push my middle-school-aged son to study until 1am every day from now until the end of high school, to do well on the test and get into an SKY university.(*SKY Universities are Korea's top three: Seoul National, Korea, and Yonsei Universities. It's generally accepted that if you graduate from a SKY School, you're pretty much set for life.)
Good god! Somebody needs to toss a monkey-wrench into that tired cycle of thought, and suggest that there must be another way to raise kids into successful adults -- some noisy expats (maybe self-importantly) offer up other options, and are sometimes resented for it, and when we get the rote response, some of us feel like we're butting our heads against a wall, and depending on the expat, that prompts some of us to give up, and some of us to butt harder. Hard butts can rub some people the wrong way.
Next level: Closely related to the off-duty diplomats are The Kimcheerleading Counterbalances
I've blogged before (in my kimcheerleaders post) about the way an unfortunately large number of Koreans seem to approach every conversation with a non-Korean as a promo-op, a chance to promote Korea, rather than as a meeting of minds between two human beings. (remember that I'm speaking in broad generalizations here) -- some of us may feel overwhelmed by the Kimcheerleading.
Imagine Chul-soo. He's proud of his country. When he chats with a foreigner (which happens two or three times a week), he takes two minutes to explain that Kimchi is the world's healthiest food. It's only two minutes in his day, and he loves Korea -- good for him, I say!
But that foreigner might have similar conversations with many Koreans who also take just a few minutes to explain how garlic is healthy and Koreans use every part of the animal. Those few minutes' add up, when a dozen people a week spare a moment to promote Korean culture. It's even worse in the Korean English Language print media, where that dull, downer story about a double-murder-suicide, or a rapist on the loose in Daejeon, often get cut, but articles like this one ALWAYS make it in (HT to Brian in Jeollanam-do), the sports page is covered with a full, half-page "Park Chan-Ho pitches four innings, gets No Decision vs. Padres", ("Tiger Woods Wins Fifteenth Major in a Thrilling Come-From-Behind Finish" goes on the bottom half of the page) and "What's So Great about Korea, Maarten" still grins at us from the English section of every bookstore.
Faced with such a flood of positive Korean promotion, it's almost natural that we Westerners (who, at least among North Americans, have been programmed by movies and stories to go against the grain, and to prefer being right and alone over being wrong with the crowd), might start to push against the flood of Kimcheerleading with a bit of counter-balancing negativity, just so there’s a conversation, instead of just a room full of people nodding their heads in agreement.
Now, add to THIS the fact, because of our language limitations, a lot of us can't access the Korean language media in print or TV. This means that, while there might be a very lively discussion of Korea's social ills in Korean, because the English media editors and producers diligently excise almost all such topics from the pages of the English dailies, we have no idea whether social critics set the agenda in Korean public discourse, or whether Koreans just sit in circles repeating to each other the same things they say to us when they meet us!
If Arirang TV is anything to go on, Koreans spend all their time having conversations like this:
Chul-soo: "Yi Sunshin was probably the greatest naval commander in world history."
Hye-mi: "I've heard that's true. It might be because he grew up eating with chopsticks: studies have shown eating with chopsticks increase your IQ."
Chul-soo: "Ah. that might partially explain why Koreans scored higher than any other country on standardized IQ tests."
Hye-mi: "Indeed. Though I would credit that more to the fact Koreans are extremely diligent students."
Chul-soo: "It's because our young people are raised in such strong families: Confucianism values the family as the lynchpin of a healthy society"
Hye-mi: "That's why we have more jung."
It sounds ridiculous when I write it out like that, but The Korea Herald and Korea Times and Arirang TV (which no foreigner I've met watches) sometimes start to sound that way after a while, and for all we know, the local, Korean language papers might be the same way, from top to bottom! No wonder we feel like we need to balance out the kimcheerleading with a little negativity! (the simple solution here is that we ought to learn more Korean and see for ourselves what fills the pages of Korea's papers, but until then, that's where a lot of us are coming from.)
The Next Level: The (Maybe You Didn't Notice It Was) Affectionately Sarcastic
Some readers and listeners don't notice, can't notice, or intentionally ignore, the fact that some of us comment on this stuff because it amuses us, and we're not trying to be negative at all: some of the strongest reactions to posts of mine have been from readers who didn't quite notice the irony, sarcasm, or bemusement in my tone -- I wasn't trying to run anyone down, I wasn't trying to make anybody look stupid, or imply that the one dummy I met yesterday stands in for all Koreans everywhere -- I was just telling a story. However, a reader or acquaintance who doesn't have a lot of experience in spotting irony or verbal satire, who is looking for a reason to get upset and defensive, will probably find one. People who only read the critical rant, and skim the positive stuff, glancing at the photos, might miss the generally cheerful tone of my blog, and my usual affection for Korea. They might get more upset than they need to, about my mode of expression, in the same way the table-waiter's roommates think he's a rude jerk, because they don't see how well he treats his customers and his mother.And, finally, the two highest levels:
The Social Critic:
These people HAVE paid their dues; they're not speaking in ignorance, or jumping to conclusions. They've done their due diligence, read up, qualified their statements, and started pointing out areas where Korea is not what it wishes to be. These people play an important role in a healthy society. It may seem they're negative, but as one of my favourite writers, Flannery O'Connor once said, when somebody accused her of only talking about the negative aspects of her society, and why couldn't she just write something nice once in a while, "If I write about a hill that is rotting, it is because I despise rot." (original quote by Wyndham Lewis)Naming a problem is the first step to solving it, and maybe some of these critics are attempting to be legitimate part of that process -- that is, they're writing because they want to see Korea become a better place. . . in which case, Koreans who are upset about non-Koreans criticizing Korea need to stop and take a careful look at why that upsets them, because the problem does not lie in the complainers or their intentions.
To be fair, sometimes the social critics' intentions are good, but their methods are poor: the sometimes bitter and mean tone of certain critics can be hurtful, and as I've said to some of my friends who complain about Korea with a rude or condescending tone: "when you talk so harshly, even when you're right, you're wrong, and even if you win the argument, you still lose" -- but then,
1. polemical writing gets more blog hits than diplomatic writing2. polemical writing sticks in peoples' heads for longer than diplomatic writing, which means it ultimately has a higher chance of changing a person's pattern of thinking!
3. polemical writing stirs up emotions, which means it will start more discussions, than diplomatic writing, which might not poke through someone's guard.
Bare fact: A scalpel is a better surgical tool than a pillow, and sometimes, a social problem must be sharply criticized to bring about change; gentle phrases just won't stir up a strong enough reaction.
Finally, at the top of the pile, the last group who complains about Korea: The Constructive Social Critic
The CSCs have also paid their dues. They know Korea, they've been here a long time, and maybe, their outsiders' views give them insight into topics that even Koreans miss. The only difference between them and the category above is that they are solution oriented, rather than problem oriented. Sure, they name the problem, and that's important, but for them, naming the problem is simply a step toward finding a solution, and their complaints end either with a suggestion of their own, or with a feeling of "now that we understand the problem very well, let's get working on a solution!"
Most of the critics I enjoy vacillate between these two categories, depending on their areas of expertise, and emotional state at the time of writing. CSCs write out of knowledge and love for Korea, out of a real desire to see Korea grow and improve, and mature into a world leader. Again, as with the social critic, if Koreans have a problem with a non-Korean producing THIS kind of writing about Korea, then it's really time to take a careful look at why it upsets them for someone with knowledge, insight, and compassion, to clearly articulate their wish for Korea to become a better place. My wish would be that more of the CSC's learn Korean well enough to get their ideas into the Korean media without risk of having a reader misunderstand it, or a translator twist it to their own ends (at the same time as we also need CSCs publishing about Korea in English, the international language).
So, there are a few reasons expats complain. I've probably missed some, and I'm not making excuses for rudeness (though I am suggesting it's best ignored), but that's at least where we're coming from, and as I said before: the stuff that goes online is harsher than what happens in face-to-face situations, so if the K-blogosphere is getting you down, don't use it to get in touch with Korea; get out of the house and climb a mountain, visit a temple, have lunch with a Korean friend, or (if you're outside Korea) go find a Korean restaurant nearby or watch a DVD of Welcome To Dongmakgol. Seriously.
***
"I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies."
Pietro Aretino, quoted in this article, from the BBC to angry Chinese defenders.
Here are a few typical responses that Koreans have to expats' complaints (some of these are borrowed from the Metroplitician's excellent, "Why Be Critical" post, one of the K-blogosphere's must-read posts, and an article without which this post would probably not exist at all. The comments on that post are also very interesting, for numerous reasons.)
1. Why are you airing out our dirty laundry? (One commenter on my blog once wrote about the critics, “It felt like my family’s dirty laundry was being aired to stranger and strangers were now telling me how to fix my family’s problems”) This one can also be phrased as "Why are you prying into Korea's internal issues?"
Answer: Well. . . if Korea is your house, then there are people living in your house that didn't live here before, and some of your family members have moved away and never looked back, and the windows are bigger than ever before, so a lot of people can see in now. South-Asian wives of Korean farmers and international investors and long-term teachers live under this roof now, and Korea's own people are more cosmopolitan and well-travelled than ever before, including many ethnic Koreans who haven't even been to Korea, transnational adoptees, Kyopos with various degrees of affinity for their parents' home -- it ain't Dongmakgeol any more, if it ever was, and the world is too interconnected to believe Korea can still exist in a bubble which doesn't affect other countries. A lot of us have invested a lot of time and energy into Korea; we have careers, families, kids, and connections here: this is our home, and we have a stake in Korea! Why shouldn’t we want our home to become better?
2. Why do you hate Korea?
Answer: I don't. If I did, I would have given up and left, as I am still free to do. The very fact I'm here is proof I like Korea enough to stay, and care about Korea enough to pay attention, and comment on it.
3. "You should learn more about Korea."
Answer:
This is a Korean's way of chunking me into category two of the expat complainer: "If I decide your complaints are borne of ignorance or culture shock, I can dismiss them." It falls apart if I can demonstrate knowledge of Korea (at which point this one often leads to number 4, revealing the true nature of the objection.)Often, what this one REALLY means is, "I'm trying to find an excuse to ignore what you've said," or even, "It's easier for me to dismiss what you've said than to reexamine my idea of Korea." If I should learn more about Korea, then I'd love for you to explain it to me!
This one wears especially thin for those who HAVE been in Korea a long time, watching and listening carefully, but are still lumped in with Joe Firstyear, so be careful about using this one, because it often reveals more about the speaker's attitude than the complainer's knowledge.
4. You CAN'T understand Korea.
Answer:
Translation: I refuse to listen to you. More at Metropolitician on this one. Sometimes this comes up when "You should learn more about Korea" is rebuffed by a demonstration of extensive Korea-knowledge, at which point, the K-defender is cornered, and starts saying stuff like this. Basically, this comment reveals more about the one who says it than the one who's complaining: what would it take to convince the person who says this that a non-Korean understands Korea? What kind of pedigree would it take, other than having Korean blood (and why does having Korean blood legitimize a complaint: who knows more about Korea? An expat who's lived here for ten years, or a Kyopo who can't speak the language, and has never visited, but has 100% Korean blood)? Where do pure-blood transnational adoptees fit on the spectrum of “allowed to criticize Korea”?5. "I don't like when a foreigner criticizes Korea"
Answer: Why not? Again, this comment reflects more on the speaker than the complainer. What's so terrible about a foreigner complaining about Korea? The worst thing that can happen is that the foreigner's wrong, or the discussion gets emotional and unproductive; the best thing that can happen is that both sides might learn something.
7. "You should be a more gracious guest while you visit Korea!"
Answer: That might be so. . . but maybe I'm not a guest, and don’t want to be thought of as one; maybe I'm an active participant in Korean society, and wish to have my views respected as such. I've lived here for five years now, watching and asking questions: that's so long away from Canada that I no longer feel qualified to comment on situations back in Canada. If Korea isn't my home, nowhere is.
8. It's just as bad (or worse) in X country!
Yep. And when we're talking about that country, we'll address it. Right now, we're talking about Korea: there are very few things that are unique to only one culture -- but just because Japan, China, Iran, England, or America have the same problem, doesn't mean that Korea shouldn't be trying to fix it here, while those countries work on the problem there. If Joe's a jerk, and James is a jerk too, that doesn't mean Joe's free to remain a jerk; it just means that Joe and James both need to change their attitude.
9. If you don't like it, go home.
Fair enough. K-defenders are entitled to that opinion if they choose. However, I hope they’d think for a moment about how unhelpful that attitude is. If I don't like Korea, and I go home, whatever -- I'm just one guy, and I can put up with a lot, as long as Korea puts food on my table. But what about when an international investor doesn't like something? What if ten-thousand teachers, or ten-thousand migrant workers, or five-hundred loaded, foreign businesspeople looking to invest, don't like something? When does the onus fall on Korea to look inward, rather than on outsiders to get lost? Is telling that investor to take his billions and invest them in Hong Kong instead, going to help Korea become the global leader it wants to be?
And if a K-defender wants Korea to go back to its hermit kingdom days, and pickle in its own juices, he’s free to that view, but that "my way or the highway" has another name in North Korea: juche, and it didn't work out so well for the starving farmers over there. If Korea wants to become a globalized, cosmopolitan hub, and a destination for business leaders and investors, then, "If you don't like it, let's work something out" would be more productive.
10. Why don't you talk about positive things?
This is a fair critique, as is "why don't you say things more nicely/politely," and extremely valid, IF the complainer DOES only talk about negative stuff, and/or use rude, condescending tones. . . but don't use this one after reading a single post; save it until after you've read a bunch of posts, or had a number of conversations, so that you can back up your accusation. I get frustrated hearing this one, when I word damn hard to stay to stay positive and keep my criticisms edifying, and the commenter fires this off after reading a single one of my posts.
11. Go easy on us: we're just a developing nation!
Answer: Put very simply:
Still developing:
Finished developing:
Congratulations! You're part of the club! You're playing with the big kids now!In terms of infrastructure and wealth, Korea is no longer a developing nation. Top fifteen economy in the world, people from South Asia coming HERE to work and send money home -- in the ways of the won, Korea's made it. It's a major player. Other countries look to Korea's development model to figure out how to raise their standard of living and set up infrastructure. One of the drags that comes with being one of the big boys is being a big target, and people pay more attention, and take more shots at big targets. Griping about facing criticism from the international community that Korea worked so hard to join, is like the little boy who wants to play soccer with his older brother's big friends, and then cries when they knock him down with a sliding tackle. More on that later.
12. You want Korea to become like America.
Answer: If I want to live in a place that's exactly like America, I'll just move there. Given the history of the last 100 years, and the fact North and South Korea are as different as Summer and Winter now, when in 1935 their situation was exactly the same, Korea of all places should recognize that cultures are constantly changing and developing.
The ones that don't end up artifacts and oddities, like the Amish, who are interesting, but basically irrelevant, and don't attract much foreign direct investment. Yeah, it takes some wisdom and discernment to figure out when you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or bringing in what The Joshing Gnome calls "cultural junk DNA", but if Korea can go through the upheavals of the last hundred years and still have a unique culture, isn't it time to lay the "our culture's going to disappear completely" objection to rest?13. But you're telling this to the wrong crowd! You should learn Korean and say this to Korean; telling it to other expats is preaching to the converted, and not very helpful. The people who really need to hear culture-changing ideas are the ones who can't read English, who are captive to the Korean language media.
Answer: You are absolutely right.
Two final thoughts on Expat complainers that didn't conveniently fit into the above categories:
1. (generalization ahead. . . ) One of my English Teacher friends has a lot of non-English teaching expat friends -- from other parts of the world than England, USA, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, with skin-colours other than white, and notes that loudest and bitterest complaints come from white males from English-speaking, first-world countries. She thinks it's because, for first-world WASP males, coming to Korea is the first time white male priveledge hasn't managed to open every door to them: only most doors.
2. A new way to look at complaining. . .
Reflect on the fact that complaining is an act of hope. Really. When there's no hope that a bad situation will improve, people stop complaining and learn to bear it, or (in the case of first-world expats in Korea) go home. The very act of complaining is an expression of hope, of the conviction that Korea DOES have the potential for change, and for growth.
Criticism is also a sign of respect, a recognition of Korea's climbing status in the world. It is much better to have people criticize Korea and hold it up to international standards (with the implicit affirmation that Korea is now a world leader), than to approach it as a place so backwards and stubborn that engaging with the culture would be useless for anyone but observers and documentarians. Such an attitude would cause less stress to the K-defenders, but do they really want Korea to be treated delicately, like a quaint oddity, rather than like an international heavyweight? (Case in point: look how much international criticism the world's MOST powerful country, the U.S.A., receives from other countries -- the fact that Korea now catches the attention of international critics just proves how much Korea's influence has grown. Would Korea rather be a criticized heavyweight like the USA, or a delicately approached cultural oddity, like Bedouin nomads? Which treatment is more respectful, really? An honest criticism, or a condescending, "Look at these interesting specimens!"
If you think about it, criticism isn't a bad thing at all: it's an opportunity to learn something, to improve something. The person who ignores valid criticism does so at his own peril; I would argue that it's the same for countries (look at how bad USA's international reputation is these days, because of plowing ahead with its plans and ignoring the international community). So yeah, because it's all in English, a lot of the K-blog complaining doesn't read the audience that would benefit most from hearing it, but starting the discussion can only lead to deeper insight, right? So bring it on!
Readers: Korean expats and Koreans: Do YOU think expats complain about Korea too much? If so, why? Should they complain, and how? Why is the relationship between expats and Koreans online so adversarial? What's an appropriate mode and medium for complaint, if not online? What can we do to have constructive criticisms heard? Write about it, blog about it, weigh in; e-mail me your thoughts to roboseyo [at] gmail [dot] com and I'll post them here; tell me where to find them online and I'll link them. Weigh in on my comment board. Let's talk about this honestly and reasonably. It's about time.
(Flannery O'Connor Quote from "Flannery O'Connor's Religion of the Grotesque, by Marshall Bruce Gentry)
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