Scribblings of the Metropolitician View RSS

You Ready for Academic Blogging? 8 Aug 2015 3:23 AM (9 years ago)

I know I haven't been blogging here very much lately, as I haven't paid my server fees and was denied access to do anything here for quite long time while I got some money into my American account. The thing is that TypePad didn't accept PayPal for quite a long time and since I don't keep up with such things, I'm not sure when that of the service but apparently they did. The Last time I have this problem around this time last year, it had to do with the fact that they didn't accept PayPal and I hardly actually put physical cash into my Bank of America account anymore. So I just waited until I had some reason to put actual cash into my American account to get the virtual boot taking off my blog. If I could go back in a time machine, I wouldn't be doing my blog on TypePad. But I'm grandfathered into this dumb service since I first started blogging back in, I believe, 2003, when it was a very different Inter web world. If I could do it all over again, I'd be on WordPress.com or something else, but not a custom WordPress install, Since the technical skills required to keep one's word press blog up and running without getting hacked or taken over by worm, what happens to my Feetmanseoul.com blog, is easily enough to make this hobby no longer fun.

But I've gotten a lot of benefit from having a blog and this particular one has gotten much Google love, Which is why I keep this one paid up with great reluctance about once a year. But this isn't to say I can't continue blogging on other platforms which come into existence in the meantime.

Since I'm happy to report–to those of you who aren't following me or friends with me on Facebook and already know this–that since I've finished my PhD, I can take my writing and research interests into purely academic directions. In the years since becoming a doctor of philosophy I've moved on to a tenure-track position in Pusan and am under pressure to publish or perish nowadays. My first two year contract at my new university requires that I basically publish one Academic article per semester in an international Journal, upon pain of not being rehired. Now, this is something I'm fully prepared to do and have been wranglin an academic paper together, but realize that if I ever want to be accepted in American academia, I'm going to need a book published at a top-tier academic press. Now, since I'm in South Korea and have been an avid and active photographer/documenter of society, I have been trying to turn this my apparent liability -- having spent the last 10 years pursuing photography and fashion and trying to use that to make commentaries on Korean society, which would seemingly be an esoteric pursuit, but academia is all about esoteric pursuits --so I've been hawking myself as a visual sociologist who is using Visual data to make sense of Korean society in a cultural studies context.  I think I have an advantage here: back in 2002, who gave two craps about South Korea outside of the context of developmental studies or economics? Even though I find Korean history interesting on a personal level, the world has going on turning quite fine without caring about South Korean history. But nowadays, there are enough folks in the academic and publishing worlds who care about Korea's new cultural "Han River Miracle."

So I've finished my PhD dissertation and am in an academic position to put together an academic text that can breakdown Korean culture for the undergraduate minority of the masses taking classes in Asian studies or Asian area studies. And I think there is definitely a desire for this book that will break down Korea for professors teaching undergraduate courses that might come to cover Korean culture but who don't feel versed enough in Korean culture to really critically break things down for a motivated undergraduate who might be wanting to do a paper on "problematic gender representations in K pop" or something like that. And this is just this sort of thing that existing books on Korea can't really help an undergraduate with, since most of them tend to be in disciplines that put out Great history, economics, or a political science, and occasionally even anthropology books on Korea, but there aren't that many written from the cultural studies perspective that what arm an undergraduate with the critical, theoretical skills required to tackle their work in class, and every Asian American studies professor isn't going to be able to help such an undergraduate interested in tackling such a topic. In any case, I am planning to turn my dissertation into a more palatable Academic work that I've entitled Deconstructing Korea: A Cultural Studies Approach. And I harist some of the book proposal I'm preparing into a classy looking website I've prepared on the Squarespace platform, which integrates my social media Banks or photography with the ability to do Academic blogging, All with the goal of building a community of people, small as it might be, around a desire to critically deconstruct and take apart Korean culture. So I've finally turned my desire to blog and get feedback on my thinking into the purely academic direction that would have been useful to help me get my doctoral dissertation finished well before 2014. But that's water under the bridge. It's 2015 and I have my doctorate in hand and the ability to turn a 300 page, finished, yet esoteric manuscript into an actual book people might want to read. And when that comes out, I invite all of you dear readers to put some cash in my pocket and buy my book. Until then, however, I invite you to continue the ongoing conversation we've had on this blog on the new deconstructing Korea, which smartly integrates my photography on social media and the blogging.

Don't spend your time gawking -- come joinand continue the conversation on DeconstructingKorea.com!

Hmm -- I think my links may not be working right -- you may have to go in manually: www.DeconstructingKorea.com -- see you there!

Koreans as Citizen-Consumers 5 Apr 2015 5:42 AM (10 years ago)

Young Koreans are no longer merely fitting into public spaces according to social roles dictated by age or student status, but by a feeling of entitlement to occupy spaces according to their needs as enabled by an equality-as-consumer. It's not a pure egalitarian ideal as equality-as-citizens. That's where the new obsession with fashion comes in for Korea. Equality-as-consumers, expression-of-identity as consumers, combined with sartorial desire.

This is also the case with younger women who are dressing according to the way they like and also smoking in public, since nowadays one could scarcely imagine an older man scolding and chastising a young lady for smoking, whereas only about 20 years ago, one could have scarcely imagined a young woman of any disposition smoking openly and freely in public on an open street in an uncovered area.

I feel the same holds true for kissing in public and other such displays of obvious and unfettered affection in places where anyone might see. This, along with the fact that there are many specific narratives and representations of people doing just such things, to the point that it has become socialized as okay, especially in the way it fits into the narratives of one's own life as a couple as that might match the narrative of the romantic comedy or that of two people having enough affection for one another to flout popular convention.

In that sense, kissing becomes a public, declatory act, similar to that of wearing matching items of clothing in public, which was popular in Korean culture for newlyweds only, and was a signifier of being such, also around 20 years ago.

Indeed, The way that Koreans as citizen-subjects conducted themselves in public spaces around the time UB40 was popular is indeed completely different from the way that Koreans as consumer-subjects do so today. .

 

Posted with Blogsy

Things Done Changed 28 Mar 2015 3:16 AM (10 years ago)

 

 

Great catch at Seoul Fashion Week. Those earrings! Diet Coke can purse?! SFW got some characters...and character, now. Ain't like when I started shooting street at SFW back in 2008. Things done changed.

That Japanese girl. Nearly blew my sensor out with them colors. BAM! Shirt, I'm told, says, "kakoii" for "cool" in the fashionable, visual sense. Korean "멋있어." Loved her hair!!!!

And these socks !?

Fabu!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Lost in Translation 17 Jan 2015 5:45 AM (10 years ago)

 

Three Things.

1. Loaded translations. Too much tipping the translations to say what these videomakers want these women to say. And they sound like they were done by some Korean-American high school intern. So, does "야하다" mean "sexy" or "slutty"? Of course, it depends on context, but it didn't seem to match with their contexts in the interviews. Old school, and literally, 야하다 means something closer to "gaudy" or "risqué" or "gauche" -- or possibly, you could argue "sexy" or "sexual." I've noticed that Korean American young people tend to translate that as "slutty." The word has shifted meaning, sort of how "incredible" once meant something that was not to be believed, or "awesome" once meant something that inspires awe. 야하다 (yahada) once could be (and often was) applied to an overly bright color or style that sticks out too much -- "gaudy" -- as one ajumma might ask her friend, "is this scarf too yahae?" She did not mean in a sexual way, or if her scarf was "slutty." Just a translation point, but yes, they did mean "too much" in a sexual way, but I think "slutty" involves too much of a value judgement I don't think all the women were necessarily making. A couple were, but yeah. In terms of commenting on whether the styles were comparatively too sexually suggestive, I think the women were saying "Yes, they were." Too risqué. Not "slutty."

2. "아무 생각이 없어요?" is not "Is there nothing in your head?" because that just sounds rude in English. It tips the hand a bit to show what the intervier thinks of the women being interviewed. A better translation here would be more literal: "Nothing comes to mind?" Lotta crap like that here. Poor translation work, their slip of bias was showing.

3. Translating rap lyrics at ALL into Korean predisposes a certain response. Most Koreans are fine with not really knowing what is said in American rap (or for that matter, their own), and it's interesting that the Korean subtitles in the vid tended to be somewhat literal, even as a lot more liberty was taken with the translations into English. I once tried to translate a Salt N Pepa song (the rap interlude from "Shoop") for a Korean friend. Here's the problem:

What the song says:

S and the P wanna kick with me, cool (uh-huh)

But I'm wicked, G, (yeah) hit skins but never quickly (that's right)

I hit the skins for the hell of it, just for the yell I get

Mmm mmm mmm, for the smell of it (smell it)

They want my bod, here's the hot rod (hot rod)

Twelve inches to a yard (damn) and have ya soundin' like a retard (yeah)

Big 'Twan Love-Her, six-two, wanna hit you

What I tried to say in Korean, contextually and culturally translated:

Salt n Pepa want to hang out with me

I'm cool/the best, I get lots of girls

I know how to have fun with girls well, to the point they yell

Just to have fun.

The girls all want my hot body,

the rest untranslatable without serious cross-cultural barriers destroying the message (what is essentially a lighthearted bit of male bragadocio).

What the Korean ear hears through overly literal translation:

S and P want to hang out with me

I'm a bad person, I have sex with many girls

I fuck girls so hard they scream in pain

Just for the smell of their vaginas.

They want my body and my hot penis

which is over 25 cm long and fuck you until you scream like a mentally disabled person having an episode.

My nickname mean lovin' all women, and I want to punch you.

That's basically what literally translated rap sounds like to a Korean ear not familiar with the linguistic and cultural contexts of its creation -- to a bunch of twenty-something, conservative office workers like the women in the video.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Errybody a Nigga Now 27 Sep 2014 4:45 PM (10 years ago)

This is an obvious example of how much black popular culture has influenced even the Korean language. He isn't just aping english is an over pronounced way, but black slang and even perceived mamnerisms. "Nah I mean?" Kinda shocking is how many times he says "fuck" in a major telecom's official commercial. It isn't blackface, but it's racist as hell. I mean, who is he ostensibly supposed to be aping besides a "cool" black man? He's insulting the very racialized object he is appropriating for its cool cache. Of course, Koreans would deny its racism because he's not in blackface dancing around in Animal print robes with a bone in his nose. The racial coding here is the same, though. Except it's fascinating how the apparent pronunciation of black slang english translates into new, funny, deliberate mispronunciation of standard Korean. The mispronunciation of Korean sounds like Koreans think black people talk in english. All while enabling the use of slang Korean such as "jonna" that would never have been acceptable in a Korean commercial before.

Posted with Blogsy

On Crying Presidents 4 Jun 2014 5:11 PM (10 years ago)

While the structures-that-be were woefully unprepared for the ferry disaster and in fact were responsible for the existence of the factors that led to it in the first place, I don't think the president is directly responsible, and her part, for the micro-level incident that was the result of many macro-level factors. The main difference here between this incident and something like the hurricane Katrina disaster in the US lies in the fact that the federal government in the latter case had ample warning and simply chose to not prepare for the very eventuality that experts were busy warning them about. And then the rescue effort itself, I don't think anyone believes that the United States did not have the power or capability of rescuing certain victims, but was simply uninterested in doing so. What I would blame the United States for is a willful disregard for black lives, while I think the South Korean president was simply in the middle of institutional structures that were woefully unprepared for the disaster that came into their laps and is, at most, guilty of being at the head of a structure that was incapable of anything more then incompetent bungling. Again, it's obvious that Park is catching a lot of heat because people are politically dissatisfied with her. And the ferry incident only adds fuel to that dissatisfaction. But I don't think she is, in any moral or ethical sense of the word, directly "responsible."

In this sense, I see her crying as a bit more sincere than the crocodile tears shed by then former Korean president, Roh Tae Woo, in 1996. I think Park is doing the Korean thing and stepping up to the plate and offering herself as the symbolically responsible and culpable leader, since people want someone to blame. But that's all she can do since as a president and a Park, she won't resign. Her family doesn't have a history of giving up power easily, as we all know. It's a very old-school Confucian thing. The crying is expected. Noh Tae Woo was a lying snake. He could have cared less about the morality of his deeds. Yet crying as an act of penitence was expected in his role and circumstances. Same for Park now. And not the same for Hillary Clinton back in the 2008 elections, which is when and why I lost all respect for her. Hilary isn't the type of person to break down and cry, so I saw this as a calculated political ploy to gain votes when her numbers were looking dangerously bad. Both Clintons were known for crocodile tears, which as an American, I find merely insincere and completely out of character for them.

Fake.

I think in the traditional Confucian context, it's not so much the sincerity of the act, but merely that the act is expected given the position and circumstances.

 

Posted with Blogsy

"Field Theory" as Pedagogical Tool for Teaching about Racism in the Korean Context 20 Feb 2014 9:52 PM (11 years ago)

This blog post is both a response to and enhancement of ideas put forth by John Levi Martin in his article “What is Field Theory?" published in 2003 in the American Journal of Sociology. First of all, the problem: whenever people talk about racism, in any context, the first 2 things that are problematic are:

1. Most people don't have a clear working definition of what "racism" is and are only working with the colloquial and everyday definition of the word, which is loaded with negative meaning and pregnant with accusatory energy.

2. Most of the time when people talk about it, they're not talking about a clear model of how it works and how racism exists, permeates, and propagates within society.

This is where sociological theory comes in handy. When teaching about social phenomena, it is helpful to have concrete theoretical tools and conceptual items to grasp onto in order to meaningfully discuss and debate over slippery and sensitive topics laced and positively shot through with political cultural booby-traps and bombs that can destroy the entire discussion.

In the same way that one doesn't conduct delicate surgery with butter knives and safety scissors, one should approach the sensitive topic of race, gender, and other discriminations with care, since these discussions often cause individuals' shields to go up and mere intellectual discussions to devolve into savage rhetorical warfare.

I'll start here with "field theory." Since the definition given in the academic article I am bouncing off of is a bit technical and dry, I'll start out by simply saying that it is an extended metaphor taken from the physical sciences for use in social science, simply put. And it has great utility as an explanatory metaphor, especially when explaining a far ranging and diffuse social phenomenon.

Often, people seem to treat the phenomenon of racism as something discreet and definable, even graspable by tactile means. However, the problem here is defining something that is inherently difficult to see, which is the defining characteristic of most social phenomenae -- you can't see the ism itself, but only its effects. Sure, sexism and racism, like gravity, all exist; but you can't see them. Like Isaac Newton in the apocryphal story connected to his name, he didn't “see” gravity, as indeed no one can or ever has, but could clearly see its effects in the apples falling from the tree. If one goes up into a tower and drops an apple, a rock, and a feather at the same time, we know that they're going to be pulled down, as all mass is inside a gravitational field. Einstein complexified this difficult question by stating that gravity is not a force transferred by some medium or particle or what have you. And that was the essential problem. What is the medium of transference of energy within a field? Is there some movement of a magical ether or something else mysterious that we can't see? No, says Einstein. Gravity is the warping of space-time around any object possessed of mass. And that leads us to the major aspects of field theory that will define the theory for us and explain it.

Within a field, there are 5 rules or conditions to think about objects that fall within its influence. The field, in both the physical sciences and social sciences senses:

1. Causes "changes in the state of some elements but involves no appeal to changes in states of other elements."

2. “Changes in state involving interaction between the field and the existing states of the elements" and

3. "The elements have particular attributes that make them susceptible to the field effect.”

4. “The field without the elements is only a potential for the creation of force."

5. The field itself is not directly measurable; its existence can only be proved by its effects.”

In the end, according to Martin, “Field theory, then, has several generic characteristics no matter what the domain of application."

So, moving from the ideas of gravitational or electromagnetic fields in physical science, let's argue that racism or an ideology of white superiority is a field permeating throughout a given society to the extent that laws, social norms, and institutions allow and defines its boundaries. Let's say “racism” for example, is defined by "an ideology of or belief in the innate superiority of one socially-defined racial group over another, usually argued and understood in cultural, social, or genetic terms."

The specific way certain groups are characterized within this belief system tend to differ, especially as they are compared to a central group in power, say for example, whites in the US. Most racial stereotypes are shot through and mixed with gender and class stereotypes as well, and most of those four persons in outside groups tend to have their stereotypes defined by how they reflect against the white, male central power group. And these preset notions or stereotypes have a specific history. So, if one wants to look at the idea of the hyper masculine, hypersexual black male, this is usually presented in juxtaposition to the rational, logical white male who is possessed of education, morality, and self-control. In its original formulation, white female sexuality was pure and in need of being kept unsullied. Black females were libidinous, loose, and sexually promiscuous -- safe and morally allowing of sexual use by white men. In the American case, the origin of a lot of these stereotypes was in plantation power politics. But that's beside the point now.

The rational, civilized, and self-controlled white male becomes the center of an outwardly radiating pinwheel of power and representation. Latina and Asian women, are differently "raced" are both represented as exotic, and either lascivious or demure, sexually aggressive or passive, in respective order. By the same token, Latino and black men are sexual either culturally or physically sexual threats. All the social historical ideas about race, their associated stereotypes, and all of these and myriad other social norms, institutions, and everyday practices are part of this "field."

This field is impalpable and impossible to see directly. This is one reason racism is so hard to usefully define in words or by demonstration. There's nothing concrete to point at, just as there is no physical mechanism for the working of gravity but for the observations of the field's effects. The problem with the Newtonian view of racism is that the existence of the force field is apparent in its effects, but naysayers often want people to point to the mechanism of the phenomenon itself, which is difficult. And the Einsteinian theory of of gravity  says that there is no mechanism, there is no medium. It is a warp in the fabric of something we can't see (space-time), which acts on certain particles could attributes. If you're a proton, gravitational fields affect you because you have mass. Not so  for photons or tachyons. But I'm not a physicist and I don't want to get into this particular point too deeply, since I think people are going to start picking apart this argument with the idea of “relativistic mass.”

Let's make this grade school simple. Imagine there is a huge and powerful magnet at one end of the room. Let's say this is a super powerful electromagnet pulling at immense levels of strength. Now, you decide to walk naked across the room through the field carrying a large, fist sized glass marble each hand. A friend picks up to iron balls and does the same. Clearly, the friend with the iron balls is going to have a lot more trouble making it across the room without struggling. Now, think back to the  five characteristics of the field above. A superpowerful electromagnetic field in a room isn't a force in itself, but only the potential for the exertion or creation of force. And only iron has a characteristic that will make it susceptible to the field effect. The magnetic field passes through the glass ball without any measurable effect. For all intents and purposes, the field isn't there. And there is no way to measure the power of the field directly, save for measuring its effect on iron particles. Now, depending on whom you ask, the field is or isn't there. Their views on the emic reality of the state of the room are going to be totally different, completely dependent on who is carrying iron and who is carrying glass.

I think the point of the field theory metaphor should be clear by now. When asking about the existence or subjective levels of perniciousness of something like racism, it's easy to see the futility of the exercise. Even in the physical sciences, the only way to measure the effect of a field is to measure the strength of the field's effect on the object that it can affect. And this is what social scientists have been doing for quite a long time. And as the idea of “racism” has been negatively stigmatized and figuratively chased off into the woods, it has been given a moral valence such that even asserting the existence of the phenomenon can be seen as inherently negative. Racism has become “that which cannot be named," a fact that get intertwined with the additional fact that racism is indeed impossible to see or even point to directly. But it can be measured, and its existence is easy to assert. And the effect of the field differs according to the particles passing through it and their intrinsic properties. Speaking in social terms, black skin mixed with masculinity and all its related historical stereotypes has its own special reality within the field of racism. Therefore, a young black male walking the streets of New York City is actually experiencing a completely different reality-- in the inherent sense -- then a young white woman walking the same streets. And there are many overlapping fields -- race, gender, sexuality, etc. Mybe they combine into somthing like electronic+magnetic=electromagnetic since we know they are directly and inextricably related. How about "genderacesex?

“Racism” in Korea? Let's say that ideologies of racial superiority exist in Korea, and they don't necessarily all calm from the social friction that results from historical points of contact and conflict with other races. Korean notions of race come from all sorts of places. They come from notions of skin color having to do with class privilege and class stratification from the agrarian past. Sure, of course. That's why older women here in Korea still carry parasols in the summer while younger women often struggle to maintain their perfect tans -- their different notions of class privilege. The former comes from the days when the ability to maintain pale, untanned skin was linked to a lead class status, while the latter is nowadays a function of one's abilities to go outside in the industrialized world, or take vacation to sunny spots that require expensive plane tickets and leisure time. Add to this the influence of racist western sociological theory that came 1st through Chinese scholars and translation into Korean, and then through Japanese ones, who had also begun to increasingly warped social theory to privilege their own, Eastern and Asian notions of cultural, ethnic, and even racial superiority to other groups in the world. Thanks, Social Darwinism, because you certainly left a huge stamp in Asia. The entire beginning of South Korean notions of development happened within the conceptual cradle of a racist social Darwinism that argued for the inherent to. Already an inferiority of other racial groups, which was linked to notions of national power. The thing about some of these early social boundaries to notions of race, ethnic city, and nation is that you don't actually need contact with another racial group to form notions of superiority. This is one reason that the somewhat ignorant assertion one hears a lot in Korea that “Koreans can't really be blamed for racists notions because Korea has had a very short period of contact with other races" is actually a pretty uninformed opinion, because one doesn't need actual current conflict in contact with other races to develop negative notions about them.

And that's all pre-1950s stuff. By the time you get to notions of race and power swirling up from around the time that Koreans started having heavy contact with American service people in South Korea during and after the Korean War, the ways that these very concrete power relations get juxtaposed atop the top pre-existing negative notions of dark-- or what Koreans call “black"--skin make it really hard to tease out specifically where things came from. But careers, as always, were apt pupils and quickly figured out the hierarchy of relations amongst mostly black and white servicemen with whom some people came in contact. It was pretty easy to pick up on the social norm of the American military during the latter 1950's and 1960s, despite having been recently desegregated. And that's the key point: recently, at that time, desegregated. An integrated army had become official policy, but social norms and individual ideas lagged behind, needless to say. On the ground, the socio-historical legacy on power relations was apparent: almost down to a man, officers were white, enlisted men were black. Koreans learn things quickly. Even prostitutes became effectively socially segregated. You were either a prostitute for whites or blacks. People knew that American soldiers had no truck with prostitutes who slept with the other side--well, it was usually whites not tolerating prostitutes who slept on the “dark side.” Add to that little pleasant introduction to American social apartheid the ongoing exposure to American media stereotypes in television, music and film, and it becomes pretty easy to see how all this gets mixed up into the Korean “field” of racism. And in this field too, blacks don't fare very well. Add to this fact that within Korean national ideology, notions of egalitarianism and constitutional claims to certain inherent rights really don't feature very prominently into everyday thinking, and you get black folks here experiencing a different reality, a different Korea, when doing something like preparing a resume to enter into a hagwon teaching kids the ABCs. Or riding the subway. Or going to a dance club. Remember that it is the “particular properties of the elements that make them susceptible to the field effect." This is why, on the subject of racism in Korea against blacks, people are talking past one another. We haven't at all defined what “racism” really means in Korea and most people don't have a very strong sense of what racism means in this country's context, and generally only have their own socio-historical experiences with racism in their own countries to draw from. And since most of these experiences with racism tend to revolve around a social conflict or accommodation model, it becomes easy to say, “come on, how can racism exist here? There haven't even really been foreigners here for all that long.”

Sure, if you're going to take a conflict/accommodation model of racism as the standard. But Korean society obviously has very strong and preset notions of race, from very specific experiences of contact -- not direct, but cultural and intellectual -- with other cultures. SUre, some was parsed in through contact and mediation through other countries' ideologies (China and Japan), but they ended up in Korea as a base to build from nevertheless.

And this defines the "field" of Korean racism. And it is most acute and obvious as blacks pass through it here. WHere the "irony" comes from is the fact that black popular culture has become mainstream here, and the Korean filed doesn't know how to deal with black professionally and fairly. When it comes to dance clubs or the street, being black doesn't tend to pose any major detriment to life here; but when a black man applies for jobs, whoa. Put even more simply, if racism is a field permeating Korean society, then blacks are the iron balls and whites the glass ones passing through the room.

"Hoes Gotta Eat, Too" 13 Feb 2014 10:05 PM (11 years ago)

I take a very practical approach to photographic ethics. 

Especially when taking pictures of sensitive things in  Korean culture. 

How did this come up, you ask? Well, in a Facebook group called "Korea Blogs" someone started a debate about this blog post that I jumped in on and made this point when it seemed about to get all grandiose about photographic ethics. I first referenced my own previous post on the matter before going on to say the following:

Ethics, schmethics. I don't publish my red light pics bcs I think they are too clear. I've got some amazing ones of Yongsan from around 2007 with clear faces, etc. MUCH better than these let-me-sneak-a-shot-from-100-meters-away crap, but I don't publish them because the faces are CRYSTAL clear and I don't want to hurt the girls. Faces, having photographic gonads, people... "ethics" is just a matter of deciding to hurt people. And yhose pics aren't even clear enough to do that. So, while kvetching over theoretical concerns about "ethics" is fine and fun, this blog post isn't really a problem. People need to calm down.

Then I proceeded to upload two pics I had never puboished before because of how good they were, as both clear red light district shots and as records of the old Yongsan that was razed over to make Raemian apartments to go up soon. The key action in the pics is in the faces, which I have to take out. Hence, I won't publish them, because without the faces, they have no meaning -- but I don't want to hurt these girls. To me, it's the ultimate respect. Because, as a great man once said, "Hoes gotta eat, too."

Now, some people might kvetch and carry on about showing faces in pics at all -- but as in most things Korean, it's a judgement call, not the law, that's the real thing defining the issue here. Lately, I've stopped cropping out facesabove the mouth, which was my old way of doing things, because people aren't doing anything embarassing out in public, usually. And if they do, I do think about faces.

A fun, very Korean moment. Harmless, in and of itself.

No Faces, practically.

Sometimes you just gotta wait a bit for the right moment.

 Hat tip to Hollywood Shuffle.

Much Ado about Chicken? 4 Feb 2014 8:56 AM (11 years ago)

There are some strange, racist things afoot in the country K.

And the funny thing is that out of the many racist images coming out of certain institutions these days, much ado is being made about some colorful names for chicken in a tiny restaurant in Itaewon. given the very real and obvious racism that is easy to locate and identify in Korean society, it's funny to me that certain people are ready to grab the torches and pitchforks to go lynch  a guy who named one of his fried chicken dishes in his small restaurant after a popular slang term that's been on the tongues of cool kids for quite a long time now.

 Let's get right into it: "흑형."

 it's a slang term that certain cool kids use these days, and used in a somewhat positive way, to denote a "black big brother" (heuk-hyeong). The hyeong part comes from the Korean word for "older brother" to a man (oppa is the older brother to a woman) and the heuk is the Korean pronunciation of the Chinese character for "black"(黑) -- Sino-Korean works soooorta like Latin word roots do in English, so since baek(白) means "white",  inone could make up baek-hyeong ("white big brother") if one wanted to and if that made any pop culture sense.  the word basically denotes a bigger, buffed out bruthaman --  and if you Google the term in Korean, you'll get a pretty good sense of what the Koreans are thinking about, as well as the media images they're basing this from. in the positive sense, if there is one, America's much-loved heuk-hyeong is, well, Terry Crews. Clearly.

A big black man with big, black guns...

 Unlike Koreans, Americans are PC enough to be very careful about making up cute little words for media images or stereotypes involving race. well, the biggest difference is the fact that Koreans like to make up cute little words for all kinds of things, from concepts as memes (Korea is actually the first place to coin a word for the “selfie",  since the word "selca" (self+camera) was coined over a decade ago -- America loses again, sorry). there's 1 million of these cute little words floating around the language that came in from either English or Japanese and are often combined with Sino Korean words to make up quite an interesting and colorful shorthand slang. Heuk-hyeong is  one of these words, which comes from a small minority of Korean kids who are quite familiar with and friendly to black American culture. Well, black American culture as they see on television and in movies, for the most part. and to give these kids credit, their familiar with the fact that African-Americans call one another "bro" and "brah" for "brother", so it's just a Korean way of trying to link up with that ebonical fact. and the idea of a big scary black man with huge muscles and a mean grill being friendly is something kind of new in American culture as well, frankly speaking, something which the amazing Terry crews capitalizes on  with his carefully constructed image that mixes brawn with an extremely friendly  demeanor and amazing comic wit.

 Now, what the Koreans have done is to basically take the linguistic magic and efficiency of Korean and give this kind of extreme African masculinity a specific name. 

 And that's pretty much where the word comes from. This, despite the fact that there is another Korean pronunciation of a Chinese character for hyeong, but it's a homonym -- the hyeong (炯) for "a shining light" and I'm told could be understood as a pun. Stick with me: one heuk-hyeong could mean "black big brother" while another could mean "black shining light." Or more naturally translated, to mean "the shining light of blackness." I think the latter definition is nice -- and is what the owner of the chicken house suggested was the "real" meaning, but I think that's a stretch and not on the minds of most youth using the word. Anyway, all that simply needed to be said.

Etymology explanation over.

 Now that we've got that out of the way, I want to move on to the apparent “problem” at hand, or lack thereof. I see this little tempest in a teapot issue as partially a result of unfortunate timing, given the fact that there have been several recent examples of the Korean media fumbling over itself with pretty questionable  images of and references to black people.There have been a surprising number of examples in the last few months, and more if you look at the last couple of years. What makes the issue extra touchy is the fact that it is the Korean populace that has become increasingly allergic to them, and it is often ignorant media outlets doing the offending. And a pattern has emerged: Media outlets offends, Korean readers criticize, and said media outlets wiggle out of culpabilty, citing either sheer ignorance ("we didn't know better") or innocence in intent ("no offense was intended, so sorry if you took it that way"), with the public's patience getting shorter with either excuse. Nowadays, however, there are a lot more real examples for netizens to get up in arms about, but which the Korean media doesn't pick up on if it really wanted to run a story on "racist Korea" -- bars in Itaewon that hang up signs that say "no foreigners" or real, outright racism (such as the racist baiting and representations that is the main currency used by MBC in its "documentaries" on the follies of "dangerous" or "degenerate" foreigners. But the Korean media is loathe to paiint itself as the chief source of this problem. So they try to do the typical Korean media thing, which is to stir up a tempest in a teapot "scandal"-style story just like the one on Korean "big black brother" chicken. It's the same old problem, squared. Ther's racism in Korea, and most of it is contained in the media, in terms of extreme bias in news reporting, or just straight crazy shit showing up in the entertainment sector. The recent re-run-ins with blackface these days is a prime example. But it's easy to pick on some random restaraunteur while doing a sub-par middle school newspaper job of journalism. Enter the Heuk-hyeong chicken "incident."

The story: Possibly "crazy" Korean dude makes a "racist" chicken dish that allegedly denigrates black people.

The facts (unchecked and unreported by Yonhap, which wasnt even professional enough to go down to the place and properly ask any questions):

1. The guy is an old school, down-to-earth, black culture junkie who used to frequent hip hop joints before they were popular in Korea (he's about my age)

2. He named the chicken dish about 1.5 years ago and was more shocked than anyone involved to hear his dish (and he) was "racist."

3. He also has an omellette dish that is pitch black, since he just wants to makes his food look "different and unique", so he cooks it with a good spritz of squid ink. It is indeed weird looking.He had the same idea with the chicken, which is just....black, hence the name, which came from the somewhat admiring new slang word. It's far from offensive, he said, isn't meant to be. Test of theorem? He said he's had many black customers, some of whom speak Korean or understand the name, and they had no problem with it.

4. He has no problem with black people, nor black culture, which he says he's very into, in a positive way. He just wishes any of the people writing negative things about him or his intentions would simply talk to him directly. Apparently, Yonhap called, simply confirmed the name of the store and if he was the owner, then simply hung up without asking any questions. Good job you did breaking this story, guys. Another notch for Korean professionalism in journalism!

5. Apparently, I was the very first (as of just about 5 days ago) person to actually go down there and inquire about the story directly. And that's sad, given all the bloggers and journalists writing about it.

6. On the real, his place is tiny: 4 tables with about 4 seats each. He's not the frickin' bad guy, infecting the minds and souls of Korean everywhere.

My take:

1. Before I was dragged into this debate, I wanted to go check it out. I thought that would be the decent (and professional) thing to do -- just frickin' talk to the guy and find out for myself.

2. Errybody all talking about the man and his chicken, but ain't even ate the chicken, which is gooood. And a bit different, in just the way he intended it to be.

3. It's a nice little place, with quirky, funny, and nostagic decor that reflects this guy's personality.

Verdict: Go down there, meet the guy, eat his chicken. If you don' like him or the chicken, then you've got something to say. But I personally think the guy just got caught up in Yonhap's attempt to make an issue out of nothing, when they could have been interviewing REAL racists in Itaewon, like the assholes who run the 24 London club and don't let foreigners in. Go try to get in, then see how ya feel. 

(I lifted this pic from the Facebook page "Action against MBC Korea and their racist, biased "reporting"")

Full Disclosure: Dude wouldn't let me pay for his chicken after our sit-down. I ordered it, and he wanted it to be on the house, he was so happy that someone actually came down and talked with him. Y'all should do the same, but don't expect free chicken -- but tell him I sent you so I can get more... I think the dude's cool, but just got caught up in some BS...