50 Most Influential K-pop Artists: 13. Nah Hun-Ah

[Series Index]

13. Nah Hun-ah [나훈아]

Years of Activity: 1966-present (last album in 2006)

Discography:
(Because Nah Hun-ah's discography so extensive and not organized by albums, but by prominent individual songs, the discography is not presented here.)

Representative Song:  Hometown Station [고향역] from 1972.

고향역
Hometown Station

코스모스 피어있는 정든 고향역
My dear hometown station where cosmos flowers bloom
이뿐이 곱뿐이 모두 나와 반겨주겠지
 All the pretty girls will come out to welcome me
달려라 고향열차 설레는 가슴 안고
Run, the homeward train, clutching the expectant heart
눈감아도 떠오르는 그리운 나의 고향역
I see it even when my eyes are closed, my hometown station that I long for

코스모스 반겨주는 정든 고향역
My dear hometown station where cosmos flowers greet me
다정히 손잡고 고개 마루 넘어서 갈 때
When we tenderly hold hands and walk over the hill
흰머리 날리면서 달려온 어머님을
My mother who came running, with her white hair in the wind
얼싸안고 바라보았네 멀어진 나의 고향역
I embraced her and gazed, my hometown station far away

Translation notes:  If you can somehow translate 이뿐이 곱뿐이 in a satisfactory manner, you are a better translated than the Korean.

In 15 words or less:  Founder of modern trot music.

Maybe he should be ranked higher because...  FIFTY years of top-of-the-line popularity. Only one K-pop artist can conceivably match this level of high performance and consistency.

Maybe he should be ranked lower because...  Did not compose his own music.

Why is this artist important?

Trot, as a genre, does not get a fair shake in the narrative surrounding Korean pop music. The screaming fanboys and fangirls shun the music for being old-fashioned. The too-serious purveyors of Korean rock and hip hop look down on it for being banal. Often, trot singers are treated more like a clown than an artist--entertainers without a consciously directed purpose. A typical discography for trot singers is an unnavigable mess, because they release an incredible number of songs (that are far too similar to one another) without organizing them into thematic albums. It does not help that the genre is an artifact of the terrible era of Imperial Japan's colonization of Korea, during which Korea was forced to take in Western culture--including Western-style music--through the filter called Japan.

But this attitude is mistaken, because trot is extremely important in the history of K-pop. Indeed, it is the first genre of music that may be properly called "popular music" in Korea--that is, the first K-pop. Having been introduced in the early 1920s, it is the longest surviving genre of pop music in Korea. With its history now approaching a century, trot is the genre that is the mostly fully localized to Korean aesthetics. Trot may have begun as a foreign genre (and which K-pop genre did not?), but today, it is the most Korean K-pop.

Nah Hun-ah is important because he was primarily responsible for the final stage of trot's localization to Korea. As hard as it is to imagine, trot as a genre began as music for the urban elite, appealing to the small group of city-bound bourgeoisie that formed during the Japanese occupation. Gradually, especially after the end of the occupation, trot began to spread into the rest of Korea, more closely reflecting the national aesthetics. Trot's lyrics, once urbane and sophisticated, slowly became more rustic and pastoral. Although it originated from elsewhere, over time, trot came to evoke hometown and old times in the minds of Korean people.

During his prime in the 1970s, Nah Hun-ah was often referred to his rival Nam Jin [남진], another trot superstar who did have a slight edge in popularity compared to Nah. But a generation later, there is no contest between the two artists as to who left a lasting impact in Korean pop culture: Nah Hun-ah remains relevant in Korean pop culture today, while Nam Jin has faded into history. As it turns out, Nam Jin and Nah Hun-ah were moving toward opposite trends within trot music. Nam Jin was the last wave of trot singers who treated the genre as if it was for the urban elites, and Nah Hun-ah was the flag-bearer of the new direction of trot music. 

Hometown Station is the pinnacle of such re-orientation. The song is about hometown, where the unassuming cosmos flowers and the old mother greet the singer. The song is the logical ending place for a genre that has become Korea's own, and Nah Hun-ah was one of the artists who brought the genre home.

Interesting trivia:  Nah Hun-ah is also a participant in one of the greatest Korean pop culture scandals of all time. In 1976, it was revealed that Nah was dating Kim Ji-mi, the most popular actress of the time. In addition to the fact that Nah and Kim were respectively the top superstars of their fields, Kim was seven years older than Nah, and both were married when they began dating. Nah and Kim eventually married, but divorced after seven years. Nah would later marry a singer who was 14 years younger than he was. After 23 years of marriage, Nah's third wife recently filed for divorce.

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

Live Chat - 7/19/2013

Note: Apologies to those who could not make it into the chat room. The Korean will try and find an alternative next time--CoverItLive is not working out for the blog any more.

Live Chat Tonight at 8 p.m. EDT

We haven't done this in a while, so let's chat live! Please visit the blog at 8 p.m. tonight, Eastern Daylight Time, and the Korean will be here to shoot the breeze for an hour or two.

Note: the folks at Cover It Live! made it such that once the chat ends, the chat transcript is no longer accessible after 100 clicks to view, unless the Korean paid them. Considering the ridiculous amount of money that the Korean makes from the blog (= in the negative, since he pays for the domain name), he is not inclined to pay anyone just yet. Of course, there is one easy way of reading the transcript: join the chat!

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Visit the blog in just a couple of hours!

My Thoughts on Gladwell's Response

Before we begin this post, a note about the related posts.

- This is my initial post about culturalism, plane crashes, and Malcolm Gladwell's assessment of Korean culture and plane crashes.

- This is my follow-up post, reacting to the initial round of responses by various commenters, issuing a correction and discussing some leftover thoughts.

- This is the post in which Malcolm Gladwell responded to my initial post.

Please read these three posts before you read this one; otherwise, this post will not make sense.

*             *             *

Mr. Gladwell was kind enough to send me a response, which I posted in this space as I received it. Below, I present my thoughts on Gladwell's response.

1.  "The Most Puzzling Part of the Article"

Gladwell wrote about the most puzzling part of my post was to him:

I will point out, once again, that this particular question was at the heart of the report filed by the investigation team at the NTSB. It is the heart of Robert Helmreich’s analysis of the crash. In fact, every single pilot I spoke to about that crash (and I spoke to many) brought up this same point. Why didn’t the others speak up?

So why does your critique argue? That the other pilots did speak up!  To quote:

“The first officer spoke up directly, clearly, and unmistakably: "Captain, Guam condition is no good." It is difficult to imagine how a person could be more direct about the poor weather condition.”

I am confused by this reaction. If Gladwell's point is that nobody in the cockpit of KAL Flight 801 spoke up about the dangers of the landing approach, he is taking a long walk back from his own writing in Outliers. If Gladwell's entire point in Outliers is that nobody spoke up, for example, the portion from Outlier below is unnecessary and irrelevant:

"Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot," he says.

The weather radar has helped us a lot? A second hint from the flight deck. What the engineer means is just what the first officer meant. This isn't a night where you can rely on just your eyes to land the plane. Look at what the weather radar is telling us: there's trouble ahead.

If Gladwell's entire point in Outliers is that nobody spoke up, why did Gladwell discuss what the flight engineer said, and what the flight engineer really meant? 

Because the point in Outliers was not that nobody spoke up; the point was that although the co-pilots did speak up, but they spoke up in a manner that was too indirect to be effective, because they were constrained by Korean culture. It is within this context where I said "[t]he first officer spoke up directly, clearly, and unmistakably" about the weather conditions.

I can agree that the co-pilots did not speak up forcefully enough; after all, their plane did crash. My point was that the co-pilots did speak up, albeit ineffectively. Importantly, that was Gladwell's initial point in Outliers as well. Our disagreement is more granular: in Outliers, Gladwell said that the co-pilots spoke up, but too indirectly; my point is that the co-pilots spoke up, and directly. In his response to my post, Gladwell is saying he was trying to figure out why nobody spoke up. These two positions espoused by Gladwell, before and after my criticism, are not consistent.

2.  Korean Air's Safety Record

Gladwell wrote in his response:

[I]t was not me who concluded that Korean Air had a problem. It was the international aviation community. . . .  Most important, Korean Air thought it had a problem. Once again, the article is in the strange position of arguing that Korean Air was wrong about what was wrong about Korean Air. (By the way, I’m a little puzzled as to why an incident where a Korean Air flight wandered into Russian airspace—at the height of the Cold War—doesn’t belong in a discussion of pilot competence.)

This reaction is also confusing to me, because I definitely did not argue that KAL's safety record was satisfactory. In fact, in the original post, I made it quite explicit that Korean Air's safety record was less than ideal, when I wrote:

Even without Gladwell's deck-stacking, it is true that Korean Air had a spotty safety record. Like Korea itself, the airline grew extremely fast between the 1970s and 1990s. Because of its very fast growth, even subpar pilots got a job, and training became spotty.

Here, again, Gladwell raises a supposed disagreement that I never had with him. I expressly stated that Korean Air's safety record was poor. The disagreement is over the cause of the poor safety record, and more precisely, the cause of Flight 801's crash. Why did Flight 801 crash in Guam? In Outliers, Gladwell said it was because of Korean culture. I am skeptical about that explanation, because of the way in which Gladwell proved it up. That's our core disagreement, not whether KAL had a spotless safety record.

3.  Too Many Remaining Questions

After I posted Gladwell's response yesterday, I received several queries over emails, comment section and Twitter asking the same question: is that all of Gladwell's response? Are you sure the response is not cut off somehow? No--I posted Mr. Gladwell's response exactly the way I received it, without any edit or change.

But I can see why people thought that way. There are just too many remaining questions that Gladwell simply did not address, even if simply I accepted all of Gladwell's counterpoints. To wit:

(a) Why did Gladwell fail to interview a Korean pilot?


Gladwell notes that I was incorrect about Korea's military hierarchy. For the record, I do not believe I was incorrect in my original post. Recall that virtually all Korean males serve in the military. What I wrote in my post is based on the military experience of numerous Korean men with whom I have conversed. Generally speaking, it is true that a bit more respect is accorded to a lower-ranking soldier who is older than the higher-ranking soldier, compared to a lower-ranking soldier who is younger than the higher-ranking soldier. It is also true, generally speaking, that military pedigree matters in the level of respect a soldier is accorded.

However, I will readily admit that none of the men I spoke with served in the Air Force, and none of them served as an officer on a career track. So when a commenter who said he served as a naval officer pointed out particular features of Korean military officers who serve as a pilot, I readily accepted his authority and posted a correction. I posted the correction because while my general knowledge may not have been incorrect, it was misleading. I wish I had the chance to speak with an actual Korean pilot who previously served as an Air Force officer, but as someone who blogs for hobby in his spare time, I just did not have the resource to find and interview such a person.

You know who did have the resource to do so? Malcolm Gladwell. He is a world-famous writer; he can speak with virtually anyone in the world. It is not as if Gladwell had to interview Vladimir Putin about Russia's nuclear launch code. He simply had to speak with a few Korean pilots to test his theory. But this apparently did not happen.

Gladwell says in his response that he spoke with many pilots about the KAL Flight 801. I do not doubt that he did. But that only makes Gladwell's failure to speak with a Korean pilot even more glaring. Why did Gladwell fail to interview even a single Korean pilot, when he was writing about Korean pilots? Why did Gladwell speak with so many pilots, except a Korean one?

(b) Why did Gladwell fail to note that three KAL flights crashed because of military/terrorist attack?

Gladwell questioned why I would not include the two KAL flights that were shot down in the category of pilot error. I would not, because I think there is a difference between a pilot error that puts an airplane in the wrong airspace and a pilot error that puts an airplane into the side of a mountain. But even if I concede the point, several questions remain. For example:

- Why did Gladwell describe the shoot-down of only one of the KAL flights in Outliers? Remember, there were two KAL flights that were shot down by Russian jets: Flight 902 and Flight 007. Gladwell notes that Flight 902 was shot down, but simply states that the Flight 007 just crashed. Why? If Gladwell thought the KAL flights that were shot down should be ascribed to pilot error, why would he skip over Flight 007, which would have bolstered his argument?

- It seems like everyone agrees that Flight 858's crash, which occurred because North Korean terrorists planted a bomb, should not be ascribed to a pilot error. That would be silly; it would be like ascribing the 9/11 terrorist attacks to pilot error. But why did Gladwell include this in KAL's safety record? And why did Gladwell did not discuss the cause of this crash at all?

(c) Why did Gladwell fail to note that the pilots were speaking in English?

Why did Gladwell fail to note that the pilots of the Flight 801 were speaking mostly in English? Gladwell explains in his response: "Language does not drive culture. It reflects it. A Korean or a Colombian or a Saudi Arabian who speaks English does not, at that moment, become a different person: they still carry with them the assumptions of their own culture."

First of all, the claim that "language does not drive culture" is up for debate, to say the least. But even if we completely accepted that premise for Gladwell's sake, isn't the fact that the pilots were speaking mostly in English still relevant? Doesn't that fact at least deserve a footnote and an explanation as to why Korean culture is still in operation, regardless of the language spoken? Isn't it misleading for Gladwell to focus so much about the features of Korean language, and fail to note that the pilots were speaking mostly in English?

(d) Why did Gladwell quote the transcript selectively?

Why did Gladwell quote the transcript that appear in pp. 185-187 of the NTSB report in a selective manner? The original transcript has 11 lines of conversation. The transcript that Gladwell presented has three. In the eight lines that Gladwell omitted, (1) the first officer raises the weather condition to the captain in a direct manner ("Captain, Guam condition is no good"), and; (2) the captain himself makes an observation about the poor weather ("Uh, it rains a lot"). Both of these lines are relevant to the assessment as to whether the pilots of Flight 801 properly assessed the danger resulting from the poor weather conditions. Yet these lines are missing in Gladwell's presentation of the transcript. Why?

(e) How was Gladwell able to interpret the co-pilots' inner monologue?

Gladwell presents a remarkably specific interpretation of what Flight 801's co-pilots intended to say, when they said seemingly meaningless phrases such as "Don't you think it rains more?" or "Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot." According to Gladwell, when Flight 801's first officer said "Don't you think it rains more?", it really meant: "Captain. You have committed us to visual approach, with no backup plan, and the weather outside is terrible. You think we will break out of the clouds in time to see the runway. But what if we don't? It's pitch-black outside and pouring rain and the glide scope is down." Similarly, when the flight engineer said "Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot", he really meant: "This isn't a night where you can rely on just your eyes to land the plane. Look at what the weather radar is telling us: there's trouble ahead"--according to Gladwell.

(Quick note from reader Michael A. who emailed me: apparently, the correct term for the malfunctioning equipment on Flight 801 is "glide slope," not "glide scope" as Gladwell wrote in Outliers.)



By Gladwell's own explanation, Korean language is highly context-specific, and "[i]t is up to the listener to make sense of what is being said." (Emphasis in original.) In this instance, Gladwell is the "listener" of what the co-pilots were saying. And there is still no indication that Gladwell can speak Korean or is somehow intimately familiar with Korean culture. Then how is Gladwell able to give such lengthy and specific interpretation about what these Korean co-pilots intended to say? How do we really know if these co-pilots were actually saying what Gladwell represented, or if they were simply engaged in an idle chatter? (And again, why didn't Gladwell just show the transcript to a Korean pilot and ask, which would have obviated this entire issue?)

*             *             *

In my email exchange with Mr. Gladwell, he expressed displeasure at my charge that he committed journalistic malpractice. I am sure no journalist is happy to hear that charge leveled against him. But even after giving the maximum possible amount of reasonable doubt, there are just too many remaining questions about Malcolm Gladwell's methodology, as he analyzed the connection between Korean culture and the Flight 801 crash. Until those questions are resolved, I am standing by what I wrote.

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

Malcolm Gladwell's Reponse to the Culturalism Post

Malcolm Gladwell kindly sent a response to my post regarding his theory, and culturalism. Here is the entire response, presented as it was sent to me.

I will write a brief follow-up post addressing Mr. Gladwell points below. I would like to extend my gratitude to Mr. Gladwell for taking the time to read my post.

*              *              *

I read your post about the plane crash chapter of my book Outliers with some interest. First of all, let me say that I found your discussion of culturalism to be very good. In Outliers, I tried to make it clear that the reason it is important to understand the cultural roots of human behavior and performance is that culturally based characteristics are malleable: they can be changed and improved and adapted by learning from other practices and traditions. Too often, though, this point is lost. Cultural explanations are sometimes wielded with the same blunt force as genetic explanations—and that is a huge mistake. A number of those who rushed to judgment on the causes of the Asiana crash made this mistake. You are right to correct it. (And thank you for the kind words about my golf writing!).

That said, I part with you on a number of your conclusions about my work.

First, the “ethnic theory of plane crashes” is not my theory. It is not something that I cooked up in my apartment. The aviation community became concerned with the consequences of pilot deference in the 1980’s, and very shortly thereafter the question was raised—by a number of psychologists and human factors experts—about whether culture contributed to this tendency. The literature on this question is voluminous. I would refer you, for example, to any number of papers by Robert Helmreich—who was one of the most prominent human factors researchers in the world. The most important of the groups who believed that culture contributed to Korean Air’s troubles, of course, was Korean Air itself. They were the ones who brought in the team from Delta to re-train their pilots. Is the point of the article that Korean Air was wrong about what was wrong with Korean Air?

Second, the article claims that I stacked the deck against Korean Air and tried to pretend that “Korean Air was more accident prone than other airlines.” But it was not me who concluded that Korean Air had a problem. It was the international aviation community. In the late 1990’s, both Delta Air Lines and Air France ended their flying partnership with the carrier. The FAA downgraded Korean Air’s safety rating, and the Canadian government informed the airline that it was considering revoking the carrier’s permission to fly through Canadian airspace. The list of Korean Air crashes that the articles claims I “padded” was taken from an analysis of Korean Air’s safety record by the National Transportation Safety Board. Most important, Korean Air thought it had a problem. Once again, the article is in the strange position of arguing that Korean Air was wrong about what was wrong about Korean Air. (By the way, I’m a little puzzled as to why an incident where a Korean Air flight wandered into Russian airspace—at the height of the Cold War—doesn’t belong in a discussion of pilot competence.)

Third, the article says that the fact that the flight engineer was older than the captain means that the claims I made about cockpit hierarchy are wrong. To quote: “If you think that a Korean person in a professional setting would show any disrespect to a person who is 14 years older just because he slightly outranks the other, you know absolutely nothing about Korean culture.” It is important, however, to understand that both aviation culture and military culture (since many of the Korean Air pilots were ex-Air Force) would counteract this. I see, in the comments, that you have already conceded this point. So let’s move on.

Fourth, the article makes much of the fact that the pilots in the KAL cockpit were, largely, speaking English. If they were speaking English, the point seems to be, then the power distance embedded in the Korean language wouldn’t apply. But this is nonsense. Language does not drive culture. It reflects it. A Korean or a Colombian or a Saudi Arabian who speaks English does not, at that moment, become a different person: they still carry with them the assumptions of their own culture. I dwelt on the linguistic characteristics of the Korean language simply to point out how deeply embedded cultural ideas about power distance are.

The article claims: “Gladwell explains that the new COO of Korean Air, David Greenberg (a former Delta Air Lines executive,) solved all the difficulties caused by the ambiguous Korean language by requiring the pilots to speak only in English.” But that is not what I said. I said that Greenberg began his pilot retraining by making English-language skills a priority. At this point in the chapter I had made it abundantly clear that proper pilot communication involves a whole series of inter-personal, analytical and organizational skills. Greenberg’s point was simply that the range of low-hierarchy skills and practices that he was trying to teach would be easier to grasp in an entirely new language.

Now to the most puzzling part of the article: the re-interpretation of the Guam flight transcript. The central issue, as the chapter makes plain, was that the Captain committed to a visual approach to the Guam airport. That was the easiest and least taxing of options available to him, and he chose it (we think) because he was tired. But it was inappropriate for the circumstances because the weather was bad. The big question is why the other people in the cockpit didn’t bring this error to the attention of the captain. I will point out, once again, that this particular question was at the heart of the report filed by the investigation team at the NTSB. It is the heart of Robert Helmreich’s analysis of the crash. In fact, every single pilot I spoke to about that crash (and I spoke to many) brought up this same point. Why didn’t the others speak up?

So why does your critique argue? That the other pilots did speak up! To quote:

“The first officer spoke up directly, clearly, and unmistakably: "Captain, Guam condition is no good." It is difficult to imagine how a person could be more direct about the poor weather condition.”

Now let us put aside, for a moment, the fact that this interpretation differs from that of every single other considered opinion of the crash, including the trained experts who investigated its cause. Let’s just think about that interaction. The captain knows the weather is bad. He’s said so himself. He thinks it won’t matter. He’s wrong. He needs to switch to an entirely different landing procedure, and he needs to do it quickly. There are four separate steps in that logical sequence: the conditions outside, his error, the need for an alternate strategy, and the need to adopt that strategy quickly. The first officer mentioned only the first. That is not speaking up directly, clearly or unmistakably. It is the opposite.

Culturalism and Plane Crashes: Reactions and Leftover Thoughts

The Korean had thought the post about the Asiana crash and culturalism would get some readership, but hoo-wee. At over 24,000 pageviews today as of this writing, it is the most visitors that this blog has hosted on a single day. (The previous record was around 16,000, when the New York Times introduced this blog.) Although the Korean had said over and over again that this blog is strictly a hobby and he could care less about the number of readers, he is not so obtuse to make nothing of the time that so many people spent reading what he wrote. So everyone who read the post: thank you. Everyone who shared and commented on the post: thank you one more time.

The Korean attempted to make the previous post about culturalism and plane crash for focused and general reader-friendly, which meant that the post was lacking in many of the stylistic points and the inside jokes (including the Korean's constant reference to himself as a third person) which usually appear in this blog, as well as a lot of stray thoughts and asides. But no more of those shackles in this follow-up post! Here, the Korean will discuss his thoughts to the readers' reaction to the post, and also share some leftover thoughts.

(1) The Main Point of the Post.  The Korean found that a lot of people misunderstood the main point of the post. The main point is not to argue that culture plays absolutely no role in plane crashes. Some commenters went so far as to claim that my point was culture does not affect behaviors at all--which is completely nuts. The Korean writes a blog that talks about Korean culture! Of course culture affects behaviors!

The main point is that we may encounter problems when we start thinking about culture as an explanation. To quote Abraham Maslow fully: "To a man who only has a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail." In this context, the Korean is not advocating that we stop using the hammer; he is merely advocating that we stop swinging that hammer at everything we see. If we are going to use culture as an explanation for anything, at a minimum, we have to know a great deal about the culture itself and be hyper-aware in which the culture interacts with a given situation. Otherwise, all the harms that the Korean described about culturalism result: obfuscation of truth, other-ization of people, and elimination of individual agency.

It is true that the Korean is rather skeptical about the "cultural" explanation of plane crashes. He is particularly so because the fountainhead of this cultural explanation of plane crashes, Malcolm Gladwell, did such a poor job in proving up his thesis. Also, because he knows that the desire to explain everything with culture flows from the same source as racism, the Korean is skeptical of people who insist that culture must absolutely be a factor, and are always in a hunt for some type of cultural answer. This is even more so because--let's be honest--there have been plenty of racist comments about the Asiana crash.

But being skeptical is not the same as being dismissive. The Korean's sense is that even if culture played a role in airplane crashes, it would be so miniscule that it should only interest the professionals of the airline industry searching for one more bit toward perfection, instead of serving as a significant contributing cause to any plane crash. But he remains open to reviewing all available evidence before making a final conclusion.

(2) Golf.  Frankly, the Korean did not anticipate this. Many of the comments complained about how golf was not like flying a plane. Because golf is an individual sport, the argument went, it is not like a multi-person action like flying a plane. So the golf comparison was off-base.

This comment misses the point. The point was not to say that golf has the same level of cultural causation as flying a plane does. The point of using golf as an example was to illustrate how people never connect two far-flung data points (= poor shots) in golf just because of the golfer's nationality, but somehow people do the same with plane crashes that are also far-flung data points.

Any way you shake it, the comment does not make sense. Is the comment complaining that golf has no cultural causation, but flying a plane does? But culturalist explanations for golf are plenty. For example, many people ascribed Korean culture as a factor as to why there are so many dominant LPGA players who are either Korean or Korean-American. According to those folks, something about Korean culture might be in play when it comes to excellent female golfers. But does it mean that when Se-ri Pak missed a putt in the 13th hole of the Women's British Open in 1997, she missed it for the same reason that caused Inbee Park shanks a drive in the second hole of the 2013 Women's U.S. Open? Most people would say no. (By the way, that was a hypothetical. Don't go searching for what happened at Women's British Open in 1997.)

Or, is the comment complaining that, if a team sport was used as a comparison, a culturalist explanation would be more accurate? But there are so many examples of a culturalist explanation being embarrassingly wrong. Just one of them: in the 1950s, Jewish people excelled in basketball. Soon, a culturalist explanation developed--the Jews are good at basketball because Jewish culture encourages swiftness and cunning. Of course, we now know that such explanation is ridiculous. (Or alternatively, we moved onto a different culturalist explanation involving African Americans.) So, if so many of the culturalist theories about team sports are wrong, what makes the culturalist theories about plane crashes so correct?

(3) KAL Flights into Russia.  This one, the Korean did expect some resistance. Many comments said KAL flights venturing into Russia during the late 1970s and 80s were also a pilot error, and it was fair for Malcolm Gladwell to count them as he was tallying up Korean Air's accidents.

The Korean disagrees. He will take the point is a navigation error is a serious pilot error. But the usual consequence of poor navigation into the wrong airspace is not that a military jet will appear and shoot your plane down. There is an obvious difference between wandering into the wrong air space and ramming into a mountain: the former, in most cases, does not lead to a plane crash and deaths.

But if you must insist otherwise, that's fine. This is a small point in the overall assessment of Gladwell's argument, so it is strange to see so many commenters get so hung up on it. In the Korean's mind, the greater problem was that Gladwell never disclosed the fact that two of the crashes that he counted were results of military or paramilitary attacks. At the very least, Gladwell could have let the readers decide if it was fair for him to count the three crashes as a part of KAL's safety record.

(4) More about Gladwell.  One strand of thought that the Korean did not discuss about Malcolm Gladwell: the Korean cannot help but struck by the violent imperialism that is implied by Gladwell's argument. Technically, Gladwell's point is not that Koreans are forever chained to the destiny of crashing planes. His point is that Koreans can escape that destiny, as long as they stop speaking Korean.

This may not be a fair criticism, because Gladwell does not say that this should be applied to Korean people generally. After all, the chapter about the Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes discusses only Korean pilots, not Koreans as a whole. But it seems like a fair observation that Gladwell is presenting his theory with an implication that it has a broader application than airline pilots.

At this point, we are fairly deep into the realm of speculation, so the Korean will spare his words. He will only note that the idea of changing or replacing the native language to absorb a superior culture is nothing new. It has been around since the 19th century, when the Europeans and Americans began conquering the world with a sincere belief that they are better suited to run the various parts of the world than those who were already occupying those parts--which is why the Korean finds this implication unnerving.

(5) A Telling Incident.  Today, Oakland's KTVU station reported that Asiana Flight 214's pilot names were: "Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk, Bang Ding Ow." These are obviously fake names that smack of racism. And it is striking that KTVU, based in one of the most Asian-heavy regions in the United States, let that one be aired on television. Several people at KTVU must have looked at these names, and okay'ed their release via broadcast. How could this happen?

KTVU's excuse:  the National Transportation Safety Board verified those pilot names. And the NTSB did! Apparently, a summer intern at the NTSB confirmed these names to the KTVU.

Now, my culturalist friends: what is it about American culture that contributed a local station with heavily Asian population to blindly buy the obviously false representation from the NTSB? Is there an inherent deference to authority in American culture that contributed to this gaffe? Let's hear it.

(6) Correction.  Commenter Chris Kahn left very helpful comment, which is worth reproducing in full:

I'm a Korean too - I actually commissioned as an OCS (like the pilot of Korean Air 801) officer, and served as a naval officer on a ship and later as a UDT/SEAL in the Korean navy. I agree with your basic thesis that Gladwell is inexcusably sloppy and that culturalism is over-emphasized in covering the recent crash.

However, I do think that language was a contributing factor to the KA 801 crash - though such problems are not necessarily limited to Korean culture as the Challenger and Discovery tragedies, and the development of Crew Resource Management by NASA show.

First of all, I disagree with your description of the hierarchy of Korean military officers. In every day interactions, "seniority of commissioning date" is the overwhelming factor in deciding how to interact other officers, with actual age coming in as a modifying factor. Commissioning source (Academy or non-academy) heavily affects an officer's career trajectory and chances for promotion, but does not factor into the language hierarchy. Rank also does not affect the language hierarchy, which causes much cognitive dissonance and discomfort should a higher ranking junior officer work in close quarters with a lower ranking senior officer.

The senior pilot was commissioned in '75 and left the Air Force as a major in '87 while the first officer was Air Force Academy class of 26 which would mean he was commissioned in '78 and left the military as a Lt. Col. Hence, the pilot is unambiguously superior to the first officer. This is supported by the language in the transcript where the senior pilot uses the lowest form of speech (반말) to the first officer. From my personal experience, I have never seen any junior Academy officer fail to defer to a senior (in commissioning date) OCS or ROTC officer.

Second, the flight engineer is clearly much older and senior to both the pilot and the first officer. But there is another factor in play here - engineering is a secondary rating to flying and in the Korean military at least, there is a strong sense that you don't interfere with another officer's turf. Each specialty is highly silo-ed. For example, on the first ship I was on, the Chief engineering officer (Cheng) was senior to the Executive Officer (XO). Hence, at no point did our XO fail to acknowledge the Cheng's seniority, but in return the Cheng was conscientious about not overstepping the bounds of his specialty and interfering with the management of the ship.

So there were clear linguistic barriers to open communication within the cockpit of the KA 801. The first officer was junior to the pilot, and the flight engineer was used to keeping his hands off the realm of pilots.

Second, my own experience running exercises as a SEAL has shown that conventional Korean language hinders cooperation in time sensitive situations. For Close Quarters Combat exercises, where team members must work with each other within a room to clear it of "bad guys" safely, and where the situation and command structures are fluid, my unit has mandated that everyone speaks to each other in the lowest form of speech (반말) regardless of rank or age. Not only does this reduce the time necessary to communicate (since sentence endings are shorter), but it makes the junior members of a team much more likely to speak up when they see a corner that hasn't been "held" yet or a potentially dangerous situation.

Deference to authority is not a unique problem to Koreans (again, see NASA and Crew Resource Management), but I would argue that the Korean language structurally exacerbates the problem.

[Link to comment]

In the original post, the Korean pointed out that KAL Flight 801's captain would not be disrespectful to the first officer and the flight engineer because of their age and military pedigree. This comment provides more color, and raises the possibility that the first officer and the flight engineer would be deferential to the captain regardless.

The Korean is hesitant to take just one person's word for it, but he is willing to acknowledge a superior source of information. So here is the official correction: the Korean's point about the relative social ranks of the captain, the first officer and the flight engineer of the KAL Flight 801 may not be accurate.

(6) Further reading.  The Korean hopes that he intrigued you about culturalism. He has previously written several posts about culturalism, and you can search for the word in the blog if you are interested in reading further. If he were to pick just one for recommended further reading, he would pick this one: Another Person's Room. Remember, there are always socks in a room. (You will get it after you read that post.)

Thank you, again, for reading and commenting.

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

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)

This post is about the Asiana Airline's crash-landing in the San Francisco Airport last Saturday. It is also about culturalism. The term "culturalism" is my coinage, which I introduced the concept several years ago in this blog. Culturalism is the unwarranted impulse to explain people's behavior with a "cultural difference", whether real or imagined. Because the culturalist impulse always attempts to explain more with culture than warranted, the "cultural difference" used in a cultural explanation is more often imagined than real. To paraphrase Abraham Maslow, to a man with a culturalist impulse, every problem looks like a cultural problem.

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.

Korea vs Japan, the Military Showdown

Dear Korean,

I was arguing with my friend about who had more military strength, Korea or Japan. My friend argued that Japan had a large navy and strong air force and volunteers for their ground forces. I know that Korea must have a larger land force than Japan since it drafts people, but are they trained well? How are they equipped? Also, what are some notable ships or airplanes that are in Korea's navy and air force?

John

This is an interesting question, but the Korean also knows that this post is bound to attract a certain breed of idiots commonly found on the Internet. So here is a warning before we get started:

This post is a disinterested analysis of the comparative military strengths of Korea and Japan.

It has nothing to do with the current or past relations between Korea and Japan.

Any comment on that topic is irrelevant to this post, and accordingly will be summarily deleted.

So, back to our interesting question. How do the military of Korea and Japan compare with each other? And what would happen in case of a war?

Although actual events would be difficult to predict, the Internet appears to be particularly good at generating meaningless war games that people take far too seriously. From what the Korean gathered, it seems like a war between Korea and Japan will be the proverbial battle between a whale and a wolf--an engagement in which each military's respective strengths do not match up.

Questioner John gets it basically correct: Korea has the stronger ground forces, while Japan has the edge in the navy and the air force. This is a natural result of the defense challenges that each country faces. South Korea's biggest military threat is North Korea, which may (theoretically) simply cross the Armistice Line with ground forces. Therefore, South Korea must beef up its ground forces to meet that challenge. Meanwhile, all of Japan's potential military threats are across the water, because Japan is made up of islands. Japan's defense game plan is to repel the enemy before it ever reaches the main islands, with her air force and navy. 

On the ground, Korea's advantage of overwhelming. Korea has more than double the number of ground troops compared to Japan (540,000 to 240,000), largely because Korea has military draft. Korea has more than three times as many tanks and armored vehicles as Japan does.

In contrast, Japan's naval strength--which was enough to start a world war at one point--far surpasses Korea's. Japan's navy has more three times the tonnage of Korea's, and has nearly double the number of naval aircraft. In addition, Japan has ten Aegis cruisers to Korea's three. The story is similar as to air force: Japan has 50% more jets than Korea. Although Korea's main fighter jet, the F-15K, is slightly newer and better equipped than Japan's F-15J, the difference is not large enough to erase the significant difference in the numbers. (Japan has four times the number of F-15 than Korea.) Japan's air force also has air-to-air refueling capabilities, which significantly extends the range of its jets--an advantage that Korea's air force lacks. Finally, Japan's air force has 13 AWACs and its own GPS satellite; Korea has one of the former, and none of the latter.

One game-changing possibility is that Korea has cruise missiles with a range of 1500 kilometers, while Japan does not. (The reason for this discrepancy? That is how much the United States allowed for each country.) This means that Korea can theoretically strike Tokyo with cruise missiles. But as of now, Korea does not have enough cruise missiles to make a significant dent on Japan's military or economy. Further, Japan can always convert one of its rockets, designed to launch a satellite, into an ICBM.

Given the nature of modern warfare, and given Korea's geographical situation, Japan will probably win in a head-to-head war if it attacked Korea. Although Korea does have the advantage on the ground, Japan's superior air force and navy can successfully embargo Korea's sea route, cutting off Korea from key resources. (Recall that Korea imports 100% of its petroleum.) Yet Korea's superior number of ground troops probably means that Japan will have a heck of time actually conquering Korea. The reverse scenario, in which Korea attacks Japan, is hard to fathom from military perspective--because Korea lacks the naval and aerial capability to take its ground advantage to Japan.

More likely, if Korea and Japan were approaching a war, the United States will tell both Korea and Japan to calm the fuck down. Or China will side with either Japan or Korea and project enough strength to stop any armed conflict from happening. Any way you slice it, an actual war between Japan and Korea is highly unlikely, which makes all of the above just fun and games.

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

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

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.

Your One-Stop Guide to Korean Dialects

Dear Korean,

Could you give us a primer on the dialects of South Korea's provinces/areas?

Cactus McHarris 

Certainly! Korea is known as a very homogeneous country, and to some degree it is true. It has been a single country for thousands of years, and it is mostly comprised of a single ethnicity. Yet in other respects, Korea has a great deal of regional variations across the peninsula--and regional dialects are a great window into those variations.

Before we get started: if you cannot read Korean characters, it would make sense to review this post, which provides an overview of how to read Korean alphabet.

First, we should get a sense of how regions are divided in Korea. By "regions," the Korean means a sub-area within the country that is recognized to have similar dialects, cuisines and culture. (E.g. the American South, Japan's kansai.) Let's take a look at this map.

(source)

This map shows Korea's administrative districts, which roughly correlates with Korea's cultural regions. Broadly speaking, there are six regions in Korea:  Seoul/Gyeonggi, Gangwon, Chuncheong, Yeongnam, Honam and Jeju. Seoul is the city in the center of Korean Peninsula, in blue; Gyeonggi is the province that surrounds it, colored in olive. Gangwon is the large province to the east of Gyeonggi, colored in tan.

Chungcheong region is in the immediate south of Gyeonggi, and encompasses the two provinces (i.e. Chungcheongbuk-do and Chungcheongnam-do) colored in orange and red. Moving further south, Honam refers to the two provinces of Jeollabuk-do and Jeollanam-do, colored in light and dark purple. Yeongnam refers to the two provinces to the east to Honam, i.e. Gyeongsangbuk-do and Gyeongsangnam-do (colored in light green and yellow.) Finally, Jeju is the large island south of Honam, colored in blue.

Each region of Korea displays a great deal of variation in food, temperament, manners, politics and language, in the form of dialects. We will take a look at the dialects of each region in turn, after the jump. Please be mindful that this is a broad overview, rather than the most precise description. Warning -- unless you have basic knowledge of Korean, much of the rest of the post will be gibberish.

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

Ten Most Influential Korean Movies

Dear Korean,

What are the ten most influential Korean movies?

Sam J.

This highly worthy question has been languishing for years in the Korean's inbox for one simple reason: the Korean is not a big movie person. Sure, he likes movies, and Korean movies. But he cannot write about Korean movies in a way that he could write about, say, Korean pop music.

When in doubt, call in the experts. Pierce Conran, with his blog Modern Korean Cinema, has been providing an excellent resource for devotees of Korean movies abroad, with movie reviews, box office figures and discussions about contemporary issues in Korean movies. And he graciously agreed to enlighten the readers with his top 10 list.

So without further ado, here is Mr. Conran's top 10 most influential Korean movies, after the jump.

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

Can Non-Asian Foreigner Succeed in the K-pop Scene?

Dear Korean,

How ready do you think Korea is for a foreigner in the K-pop scene? My definition of a foreigner in Korean market would be someone who isn't Korean and does not look visibly Asian.

Maria J.

The Korean would point out the vaguely racist quality of this question first. "Foreigner," from the perspective of Koreans, has its own definition: anyone who is not Korean. The Korean has no idea why Maria J. had to twist that word and narrow its coverage to someone who "does not look visibly Asian." But be that as it may...

This type of question has been coming in fairly frequently, apparently because a new girl group called The Gloss has a white French girl named Olivia as a member. So is Korea ready for a non-Asian foreigner in its music scene?

Try this for a size:  the number one band of K-pop in 2012 has three members, all of whom young men. Two of this band's members are Korean, but one is not. One of them is a white man from America, named Brad Moore. Mr. Moore has been quite visible in all of the band's activities (including music videos and show programs,) and his whiteness or non-Koreanness has never been a subject of discussion in Korean people's appreciation of the band.

The band's name? Busker Busker.

The Korean is not joking when Busker Busker was the number one K-pop band of 2012. They deserve the moniker based on any serious metric. Busker Busker sold the most number of albums in 2012 in Korea, and their songs were the most downloaded. (They sold significantly more songs online than PSY in 2012 Korea, even with PSY's Gangnam Style.) The band also placed six different songs in the top 10 of Gaon Chart (the most authoritative chart for K-pop) through 2012, and five songs in the top 10 of Billboard's K-pop chart. Busker Busker also took home three Korean Music Awards for 2013, including Best Pop Album and Best Pop Song. In the cafes of Seoul last year, it was practically impossible to avoid Busker Busker's songs, like 벚꽃 엔딩 ["Cherry Blossom Ending", the video above] or 여수 밤바다 ["Yeosu Night Sea"]. And this wildly successful band had a highly visible white member, who is the drummer for the band.

Does this mean that the next non-Asian foreigner will be inevitably successful, or be able to completely avoid Korea's racism? Of course not. But Busker Busker's success is still a significant data point. The number one band of K-pop in 2012 had a member who was a non-Asian foreigner, and Korean pop music scene hardly made a fuss about it. That should have answered the question before it even made its way to the Korean's inbox.

It is fair to wonder if non-Asian foreigners can succeed in the K-pop scene. But it is strange to see that, in discussing this topic, no one among the supposed devotees of Korean pop music brings up the fact that K-pop's number one band has a white member, and it has been that way for a whole year. Maybe they would have noticed if they stopped distracting themselves with shitty music.

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

Looking for Korean Language Tutor in Washington D.C.

Dear Korean,

I am learning Korean and my formal classes at the Korean Cultural Center begin later this year. In the meantime, I would like to immerse myself in dialogue outside a class/ study environment and in the casual setting of the summer social scene.

I am outgoing & meet lots of young-adult Korean-Americans but they do not speak Korean. Am I correct to assume that newly arrived Korean-speaking young adults are very scarce. So, finding a tutor at a university may be too formal but that's the best option I can think of, what do you think?

American Learning Korean

There is an even better option: put out an APB through this blog! If you are interested in becoming a Korean language buddy with ALK, reach out to her at aaraliesels@gmail.com. (The email is posted here with the questioner's permission.)

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

Good Korean Beer is Just Around the Bend

The Korean just returned from another trip to Korea, and he is ready to make a bold prediction:  good beer from Korea is just around the bend.

If the Korean were asked to pick the most significant change in Korea in the past five years, he has an easy winner:  coffee. In the last five years, Korea's coffee went from the range of terrible-to-average, to the range of average-to-pretty-darn-good. To be sure, coffee in Korea is still on the expensive side, easily topping KRW 5,000 for a cup of good drip coffee. But five years ago, good coffee was simply unavailable in Korea, regardless of the price. Starbucks was the only option for a decent cup of coffee, and for many, Starbucks stretches the definition of "a decent cup of coffee."

Not so today. Coffee in Korea, and especially in Seoul, compares favorably to any large American city associated with good coffee. The Korean would dare say that coffee in Seoul is head and shoulders better than coffee in Washington D.C., where he lives. The coffee quality improved outside of Seoul as well. The Korean was able to get a solid cup of espresso near his grandmother's small town, where, just 20 years ago, the Korean Grandmother lived in a house without indoor plumbing. This progress was so remarkable that the Korean came up with a hypothesis connecting liberal education and the progress of coffee.

Korea's beer is ready to make a similar leap. If Korea's coffee was terrible-to-average five years ago, Korea's beer was abominable-to-tolerable just a year ago. The state of beer in Korea was so awful that the Economist took note:  "brewing remains just about the only useful activity at which North Korea beats the South."

But that is about to change. As the Economist noted, a large part of the problem was the governmental regulations that enabled the duopoly of Hite-Jinro and OB in Korean beer market. Together, the two companies hold more than 96% of Korea's market share for beer. However, responding to the Economist article, Korea's National Assembly will soon pass a series of legislation that will slash down those regulations so that microbrewers in Korea will face lower taxes to import the ingredients for beer and distribute the final product. Currently, a brewer must have a minimal capacity to produce 120,000 litres of beer in order to apply for a wholesale license. The new law will halve the minimum required capacity. Also, brewers currently face 72% tax; for microbrewers only, the tax will be lowered to 30%.

Korean people's taste for beer is ready for the change as well. Five years ago, even the imported bottled beer selection was limited to Budweiser, Miller and Heineken, save a few hip bars. Now, regular grocery stores in Korea carry Warsteiner and Hoegaarden. In trendy parts of Seoul, it is not difficult to find a selection of craft beer that would make the hipster bars of Lower East Side green with envy. The logical next step is good local brews, and there are several Korean microbrewers ready for the challenge, such as 7brau and Kapa Brewery. The infrastructure of establishing more microbreweries and distributing different kinds of beer--such as wholesale of brewing equipments--is also taking root as we speak.

So, the prediction: in five years, the beer scene in Korea will be nothing like the one we see today. It will have a diverse selection of interesting beers, brewed in Korea. The revolution is well on its way; when it is completed, you will hardly remember that Korea once was a beer wasteland.

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

Ask a Korean! Wiki: Time Expressions in Korean

Dear Korean,

Anyway I'm after some metaphors involving the concept of 'time' in the language. So far I've gathered:

시간에 쫓기다: 'to be chased by time'
때를 놓치다: 'to miss an opportunity'

The idea behind the sentences is that Korean views time as something to capture or be chased by, likened to an animal in a prey-predator relationship. Can you think of any other examples along the same vein?

Cana X

This is a rather interesting question. Rather than confining the answer to whatever he could think of on his own, the Korean decided to open this question up for a little bit of crowd-sourcing. Korean-speaking readers: what other time-related expressions in Korean refer to time as if it were an animal?

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

Tiger Mothers: Still Superior

Recently, there was an interesting study that revisited the efficacy of Tiger Parenting. Su Yeong Kim, associate professor at University of Texas, sought to quantify and measure whether Tiger Parenting was indeed effective. This is how Kim defined Tiger Parenting:

For Kim’s study, parents and children answered questions during the children’s adolescence about their parenting styles. The vast majority of parents were foreign-born in Hong Kong or southern China, with relatively low educational attainment and a median income of between $30,001 and $45,000 in each of the study’s three phases, spaced out equally over eight years. Three-quarters of their kids were American-born. The study controlled for socioeconomic status and other potentially confounding factors. 

. . . 

Adolescents and parents rated the parents on several qualities, for example, “act loving, affectionate, and caring,” “listen carefully,” and “act supportive and understanding.” Warmth, reasoning, monitoring, and democratic parenting were considered positive attributes, while hostility, psychological control, shaming, and punitive measures were considered negative. These characterizations would be combined through a statistical method known as latent profile analysis to determine Kim’s four parenting profiles: Those scoring highest on the positive dimensions were labeled “supportive;” those scoring low on both dimensions were deemed “easygoing;” “harsh” parents were high on negative attributes and low on positive ones, and “tiger” parents scored high on both positive and negative dimensions.

Poor Little Tiger Cub [Slate] (emphasis added)

The result? "[T]iger moms produced kids who felt more alienated from their parents and experienced higher instances of depressive symptoms. They also had lower GPAs, despite feeling more academic pressure."

As the Korean was reading the article, he could practically hear the cheers and see the tears of joy of the many, many haters of the Tiger Parenting idea. When the Korean wrote the post Tiger Mothers are Superior, the reaction was swift and angry as hell, especially from Asian American. Many significant Asian American bloggers and writers spilled much digital ink claiming that Tiger Parenting was in fact inferior, and and was responsible for all the bad things that happened in their lives. Wesley Yang found notoriety through his New Yorker article, talking about how he heroically defied the yoke of Asian culture upon himself and told younger Asian Americans to do the same. Kim Wong Keltner, in her book Tiger Babies Strike Back, kvetched about how she grew up having "no idea how to connect with other people." So, what does the Korean think about this development? Is he ready to change his mind about the benefits of Tiger Parenting?

Hardly. Tiger Mothers are still superior. And here is why.

(More after the jump.)

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

Ask a Korean! News: Japan Didn't Really Change

The Korean is having a very busy stretch, but he cannot let this one slide:

Osaka Mayor and Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party) coleader Toru Hashimoto refused Wednesday to back down from his comments about the necessity of the “comfort woman” system during the war or the desirability of legal brothels in Okinawa for U.S. military personnel.

. . .

On his advice to American officials in Okinawa earlier this month that U.S. military personnel should make more use of sex establishments as a way of controlling their sexual urges, Hashimoto said he did not tell the U.S. that it should use such facilities, or to build such facilities, noting it was only a suggestion.

Hashimoto sticks to guns on sex slaves [Japan Times]

When the Korean wrote the long series on Korea-Japan relations to explain why Koreans are still angry with the Japanese, a lot of people responded:  "Today's Japan is a very different place from the Imperial Japan during World War II. So Koreans should just get over it."

Is it now? Today's Japan has a mayor of a major city, who is considered a potential future Prime Minister, telling the world that sex slaves are necessary in times of war and the U.S. forces in his own country should visit brothels more often. Today's Japan has a Prime Minister who is a grandson of a Class A war criminal. But rather than having a heightened consciousness about his country's past crimes, he sits in an airplane with the number 731--clear invocation of Unit 731, which conducted live human experimentation during World War II--grinning and giving a thumbs-up. 

The fact that these two leaders think Japan did nothing wrong during World War II was hardly a secret. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo announced to the world that he would withdraw Japan's apology to former Comfort Women, and denied that Imperial Japan forcibly recruited the Comfort Women to serve as sex slaves. Yet the Japanese people overwhelmingly elected Abe, as well as the candidates for the far-right Japan Restoration Party, to which Mayor Hashimoto belongs.

By the way, the former Comfort Women are still holding their weekly protest in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. They have been protesting every week, without fail, for more than 20 years. Commemorating the 1000th Wednesday Protest, this is what the Korean wrote:

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

With these two latest scandals, the Korean's faith in the decency of the Japanese people took a very large hit. Did Japan really change? You tell me.

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

AAK! PSA: Fundraiser for Deceased Korean Expat

Dear Korean,

I know this isnt usually your standard fare, but recently our friend Kevin Andresen from the UK has passed away in Korea, an article about which is here. As you can imagine, it is super expensive to send his remains home, so we have started a fundraising website (http://www.gofundme.com/2vigbc) to help us and his mother.

Liam

If you are inclined, please visit the site and donate to help.

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

Why So Many Korean Missionaries?

Dear Korean,

Christianity in Korea is a complex subject, but I have a simple question: why are there so many Korean missionaries?

Mati

Short answer:  it was born that way.

But let's back up a bit first. It is absolutely true that there are a great number of Korean Christian missionaries. Korea sends more missionaries abroad than any other country except for the United States. According to Korea World Missions Association, an umbrella organization for Korea's Protestant missionaries, more than 23,000 Korean missionaries are proselytizing abroad as of January 2012. The top five destinations are China, United States, Japan, the Philippines and India.

So why so many Christian missionaries from Korea? One obvious reason is that Christianity is a significant presence in Korea. According to the official governmental survey in 2005, nearly 30 percent of Koreans were Christians. Among them, approximately 12 percent were Catholics, and 18 percent were Protestants. (For reference: 46.5 percent of Koreans do not have any religion. After Christianity, Buddhism is the biggest religion, as nearly 23 percent of Koreans are Buddhists.)

But more importantly, Christian churches of Korea are enthusiastic about sending missions because missions were the vehicle through which Korea's Christianity began. One must remember that Christianity in Korea has a history of nearly two centuries. Catholicism arrived at Korea in the early 1800s, and the first Korean priest (St. Andrew Kim Taegon, who is also the patron saint of Korea) was ordained in 1845. Protestantism arrived at Korea a bit later, but it was just as successful. The Pyongyang Revival of 1907 was attended by so many people, whose faith was so intense, that Pyongyang came to be known as the "Jerusalem of the East."

Two centuries is a long time, but not quite long enough for people to forget the origin of their faith. Nearly all major congregations in Korea can trace its origin to a missionary who came to Korea in the early 19th century. In addition, for decades after Korean War, Korea saw a constant stream of American missionaries who came to provide humanitarian aid in the war-torn country, and assist the development of Korean churches. 

Thus, missionary work is deeply embedded in Korean churches. It was how they were born, and how they were raised. It is only natural, then, that these congregations would consider serving missions to be one of the most important duties as Christians.

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

Still Think Asian Pop Stars Can't Go Mainstream?

Dear Korean,

I am an avid reader of Korean pop news. I know this might be old, but popular Kpop stars such as BoA and Se7en are planning to enter the US mainstream market. Some people have deep doubts about their ability to make it. I, being a skeptic and cynic, too have my doubts. But a part of me wonder, if cross-cultural singers such as Ricky Martin can go mainstream, why can't us Asians? What do you think the problem is? Is it the cultural difference that block Kpop artists way to the Grammy's or is it racism? A friend of mine mentions how Kpop music is "behind" in mainstream America because the idea of pop idol stars', boy band's, girl band's era are over. And BoA and Se7en carries the "dead pop" act that is widespread in Korea that is essentially "old-fashioned" in America. But how the hell do you explain the ugly and painful phenomenon that is the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus?

Slightly Confused Non-Crazy Fangirl

This email is from February 23, 2009. Yes, the line of unanswered question is actually that long. More than 1,400 questions, accumulated over four years, about which the Korean thought worthwhile to write a post. By the way, this question is not even the oldest question in the queue--that honor belongs to a question sent to the Korean on September 26, 2008.

Now, about the question itself. If you are wondering, no, the Korean is not planning to answer this question. This guy made the question moot:

(Come on, play it one more time, for old time's sake. 1.5 billion people did it already.)

In the early stages of K-pop, so many critics argued that K-pop could only be a limited attraction within Asia. Others mistakenly took a crabbed view of K-pop, reducing it to upbeat dance music performed by pretty young things--which became another reason why K-pop could never succeed in America. They made all the same points that the questioner raised--that K-pop was too staged, too behind, too Korean, too Asian.

Oh, how they were wrong. We now have a K-pop star, not particularly beautiful, singing entirely in Korean, who became a record-breaking worldwide sensation. Sports stadiums would play his music during breaks in the game. College marching bands would play his song during halftime, and the cheerleaders would dance his dance. For Halloween, American people would dress up not just as him, but as the entire cast in his music video. South Park episodes would feature his looks. Saturday Night Live would make a skit out of his song. He would seamlessly blend in with American icons like Madonna and MC Hammer. He would perform at the White House Christmas party, then in the center stage of the Times Square on the new year's eve.

Amazing how things change in just a few years, right? But just you wait, because K-pop's best days are still ahead.

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