Korea and race

Brook was kind enough to send me this article from the NYT. Here are my thoughts:

The portrayal of race relations in Korea seems fairly accurate from what I know. The article is certainly correct in its characterization of the prevalent attitude towards whites being a mix of envy and loathing. However, that characterization leaves out a major component, which is bewilderment and fascination. I often feel like I am on display while in Korea, with children pointing and shouting to each other that there is a foreigner, while their parents--far from stopping this innocent but nonetheless rude behavior--stare right along with them. One of my former co-workers was actually yelled at in a subway for speaking in English. Ironically, she was on her way home from Korean class. We are also living status symbols: we are shown off as trophies ("look, I have foreigner friends") and studying with a native speaker is a requisite part of looking like you know English on a resume.

People with darker colored skins are treated in a truly negative way, unlike with whites whose treatment is mixed. I think that this is one area where the article missed an important component. It says that in Korea '...the words "skin color" and "peach" are synonymous..." This is simply not the case. Eliot sent me a great blog called Ask a Korean that intelligently addressed the issue of race in this post (I reccomend the whole thing: the Korean is far more eloquent and informed than I am). In it the Korean points out that skin color varies greatly in Korea and has traditionally corresponded to socioeconomic status. People who work in the fields are very tan while people who have government positions can remain smooth and white skinned.

The bias about the skin color spectrum was reinforced by meeting white Westerners who had greater technology than Korea at the time, and mostly interacting only with people with darker skin from Southeast Asia or the subcontinent who are usually poor uneducated refugees, immigrant laborers, or mail-order brides rather than the successful people who stay in their native countries. Also, Korea has had far less contact with black people than they have had with whites, so they are making judgments on the basis of a small sample--again, not from the best and brightest of black people--along with their perceptions of other people's opinions, especially Western movies and other media, where they are often portrayed in a mildly racist way. Part of Koreans emulating (white) Americans is adopting the mild racism that still persists in our society. Also, many Koreans hear from their relatives about crime committed by black people in the poor neighborhoods where recent immigrants often live. Since they don't know any black people themselves, the relatives in Korea will only know about this worst element and not about the wide spectrum of black people.

Another thing to keep in mind: Korea has spent approximately 10% of its long existence not fighting off foreign invasion. Outsiders are treated hostilely and with distrust because they have historically been part of an effort to subjugate the Korean people. In fact The Korean hypothesizes that this is a major factor in Korea's homogeneity; people who are different are the ones who aren't as nationalistic and not as close to the country, i.e. they are the people who the populace should kill first in the event of a foreign invasion that may have local sympathizers.

I had my chemical engineer students read the article for class and tried to get reactions out of them. This was an instance of another Korean trait which is far more prevalent than racial insensitivity, which is Koreans' avoidance of causing offense. Koreans will generally go to amusing lengths to avoid saying anything that someone else will disagree with since it could result in one or more of the parties losing face. Such topics are simple avoided. I theorize that this is one reason that the older men who--as the article said--are the worst offenders of racism in the country do not change their ways. No one pressures them to change because no one wants to offend these older men especially since they have higher status by virtue of their age and sex. Also, racism and racial insensitivity are not topics for polite discussion, and there is only polite discussion in Korea except maybe between the closest of friends who are exactly the same age.

The one woman in my Hanwha class agreed with the article that racial tension is greater in situations involving a foreign man and a Korean woman. She thinks that part of this is from English teachers who come over without any qualification besides a diploma and a pulse and without any screening to see if they are assholes (I may be paraphrasing a bit here). She says a lot of Korean women who date English teachers feel lead on by them and don't realize that they guy is just out to get laid. My reaction was that, while I agreed that this certainly happens, even perfectly nice guys might accidentally be a part of this problem due to the huge difference in ideas concerning dating between Western and Korean cultures. In Korea, dating means looking for a spouse, and if you have sex that means you are probably going to get married. English teachers, however, probably assume that it is obvious that the relationship, while sincere, is short term since they will only be in the country for a year.

The lone vocal Hanwha student also thought that the New York Times article was a bit negative towards Korea, especially with how it ends. I completely agree with her. Ending the article with a quote from a lunatic fringe racist protester makes him look like a representative of Korean thought. I would be appalled if the teabagger protesters were portrayed as representing America, or if the 9/11 truther idiots of the left were for that matter, so I think it was rather unprofessional of the NYT to end on that note. A much better ending would have been a simple addition of a sentence stating that it is unclear whether the reactionary forces represented by the the protester or the progressive ideas of those pushing for legislation to protect minorities will prevail.

Korea and mortality

I don't know what it's like over in North America, but here people are completely freaking out about H1N1 (a.k.a. swine flu). The students at my school have their temperatures taken several times a day, and if they have even the slightest fever they are immediately sent home. Apparently this wasn't enough to give any advance notice when one of my students, Erica, actually contracted H1N1. I saw her in class the day before she was confirmed to have the virus, and she looked fine. She was sent home for two weeks, and her classmates (and their siblings and the class' main teacher) were not allowed to attend for a week. The parents of the school's other children flipped out. Many pulled their kids out of my school for a week to a month. Some have yet to come back and may not ever do so. Meanwhile, Erica is back and doing well. She says that H1N1 felt basically like a cold. Her mom gave us a 'sorry my kid got swine flu' cake (cakes being the appropriate gift for any occasion here). I don't mind kids being pulled out of classes (it actually makes the wilder classes far more manageable). However, I do mind that half the festivals in Korea have been canceled due to swine flu paranoia. This coming weekend I wanted to go to an international martial arts festival, which I chose over the Seoul fireworks festival and a traditional dance festival, but all three have been canceled. The weekend after that is Chuseok, sometimes called Korean Thanksgiving, and I had a five day plan that involved going to a lantern festival and a mask festival--both of which looked awesome and both of which are canceled, so I'm back at square one for planning for that five day weekend. I can't leave the country because Will is the only foreign teacher who got permission to do so and he will be forced to stay home from work for a week afterwards as quarantine, even though he is going to Japan, which has the same rate of infection as Korea.

I find the whole thing ridiculous. H1N1 isn't nearly as dangerous as, say, being on or near a street in Korea since a significant portion of Koreans have a complete lack of regard for the rules of the road. Yesterday my class all ran to the window when they heard an ambulance siren. A delivery man on a motorcycle had apparently (as witnessed by New Lindsay at street level) been hit by a car (both parties having been speeding, and presumably at least one was running a red light) and his helmet-less head dented the car. It looked like his neck was broken. At any rate, he wasn't moving, he was in a neck brace, and people were running around the street screaming. This is the second time this summer that I've looked out the window and seen a motor cycle delivery guy lying on the road in that intersection (which isn't all that dangerous or busy from an infrastructure point of view). The last time the guy was lying bloody in the street, but at least he was moving of his own volition. His bike was about thirty meters down the road [side note: motorcycles are here known as 'autobikes' or 'autobi'. Also, mechanical pencils are called 'sharps' and cell phones are 'hand phones,' pronounced 'han-deu po-ne'. I'm fascinated by the use of English words for things that have different names in English]. Anyway, that's my rant about how festivals shouldn't be canceled for H1N1 any more than they should be canceled for Koreans ignoring traffic laws.

Best headline ever

Snipers sent to protect fairy penguins from mystery predator

Bugs

Like the 'random article' button on Wikipedia, the 'Top Stories' and 'See Also' links on the BBC news website can be dangerously interesting. Tonight I learned about recent scientific studies of insects. Locusts, ants, and bees, oh my. The bee ball phenomenon was particularly fascinating (be sure to watch the video).

The point at which politics, twitter, and comic books meet

Given recent events, I have reevaluated twitter. I earlier rejected it as annoying, shallow, and stupid. I maintain that this is true in most cases. However, currently in Iran it is the only way to communicate with the outside world. The government has blocked most sites, from email servers to facebook, but the way twitter is routed it is difficult to trace and block without shutting down the whole internet (they have in fact slowed it down considerably to prevent people from uploading videos or pictures). It reminds me of a scene from my favorite graphic novel, Transmetropolitan (actually, maybe it's tied with The Watchmen, but that's beside the point), where the protagonist discusses the fact that creative use of technology is out pacing the attempts to regulate or control it.

Thus, while I still don't see why anyone would want anything to do with twitter in ordinary life, it has become an important part of resistance to oppressive regimes (Obama's state department even requested that twitter not take the site down for maintenance as scheduled so that Iranians could continue to send out information.) As Andrew Sullivan has been saying for the last few days, the revolution will be twittered.

Iran

If you haven't been following the Iranian (quite possibly stolen) election you should (I recommend Andrew Sullivan, Talking Points Memo, and Juan Cole). It's fascinating.

If nothing else, this is one of the most amazing photos I've seen taken in the last few years:(hat tip Sullivan)

Reason #317 Portland is Awesome: Earl Blumenauer

Conservative (and for reasons unknown highly respected) columnist George Will, who pens opinions from a magical land free from research or fact checking, took the time to slander our good city of Portland in Newsweek. Representative Earl Blumenauer is having none of it. (Thanks to Matt Yglesias for the best analysis and refutation of Will's article.)

Two things I love

Portland and Frugality

My Renn Fayre in Seoul

Sadly I missed the actual Renn Fayre due to being in the wrong hemisphere, but I had something of an approximation at the Hi Seoul festival for my three day weekend. (By the way, Stacia's photos made me miss the hell out of you all.) Ok, there's no real substitute for Renn Fayre, but this was way closer than one would expect.

Buddha's birthday was on Saturday, so we had Friday, though apparently all the festivities for the holiday took place the Sunday before Buddha's birthday. Who knew? On Friday, John, Will, and I took the slow train to Suwon, a smallish city South of Seoul. We didn't have seats, so we had to stand in the food car, which also had video game stations, karaoke rooms, and drunk middle-aged men, and hence that car of the high speed train was the epitome of Korea. We weren't as hobocore as this guy:

We were in Suwon primarily to see the fortress wall that surrounds the center of the city. The city recognized that the wall is one of its major draws, judging by even the fences being shaped like the wall.

We walked from the train station to the wall along a ridge with good views of the city:

The wall itself had periodic outposts and 'secret gates', which were quite visible. Also, it was awesome.

People were actually allowed to ring this rather old bell, which felt like it shook us to the core.

 

Within the walls there was an old palace in the valley between well protected hills.

The outposts had nice view of the wall running through the city:

I was a fan of the ominous black and red flags (Will and John are in the foreground).

The main gate looked pretty defensible:

The wall 's prettiest area was where it passed over a stream:

We were there too late to participate in the dangerously-close-to-the-road-and-major-tourist -attractions archery, but we were in time to see this dog:

Suwon's historical museum had reconstructions of the tools used to build the walls:

There is a great bike path along the river through the center of town, though there are sections where only the penitent cyclist can pass, apparently:

In the shadow of the end of the extant wall there was a cluster of people selling vegetables, fruits, spices, etc. Such clusters are pretty much everywhere in Korea.

The main shopping and night life district seemed to be clustered around the old South gate.

Across the street there was a shop so small that the retailer barely fit inside. In America we would never think of using that tiny triangle of a space as a shop...

I'd love to live inside a fortress, and there are lots of towers overlooking parks that would be wonderful for hanging out, so if I come back to Korea I'll probably look for a job there. Also, Suwon is infinitely more centralized and alive than Daejeon. Daejeon always feels like a Sunday, whereas Suwon was vibrantly pulsing the whole time we were there (3-7pm). It's far enough away from Seoul to avoid most of the pollution, but it is still on the metro system, despite being 48km away.

We took the subway to Itaewon, the foreigner district in Seoul. After some searching we ate real tacos. It can be hard to find remotely authentic Mexican food in Korea. After a late dinner we forwent a ten minute subway ride in favor of a several hour walk to where we would be sleeping, which is what happens when people let me be in charge of travel plans (the cheapest way to Insadong is to walk). We went by way of Namsan (Nam mountain), home to N. Seoul tower and great views of the city. The buildings reflected off the Han river in a way that doubled them, making the river look like a chasm between masses of buildings in a Blade Runner-esque city.

At the base of the tower there were some nicely lit suspended sculptures:

Also millipedes (centipedes?). Maybe I shouldn't be so cavalier about sleeping outside...

In Insadong (our destination) we saw this stream with lanterns.

We stayed in a gimjjilbong (sauna) for about $6 for use of the various pools, saunas, and sleeping rooms. However, sleep was hard to come by in a room full of old men, one of whom snored to the point where no one else could sleep at all. It started out sounding like Chewbacca and then sounded more strained and almost panicked, like a dog having an asthma attack.

In the morning I wandered around the streets in the drizzle a bit, mostly looking at the Cheonggye Steam, which was decorated for the festival:

I met up with Lindsay and her mom and brother to see a prison museum. It had the original cells built by the Japanese during occupation, and also a series of displays with highly detailed and realistic life sized figures being tortured. The torture displays included waterboarding. Funny how everyone on the receiving end knows that it's torture...

It was raining when we left so I spent some time in the museums by one of the imperial palaces (there are six and I went to all of them. Get ready for way too many pictures[as if this post hadn't already hit that point]). The palaces all had special events for the Hi Seoul festival (just a celebration of the city), whose theme this year was palaces. More on that later. Koreans certainly know how to place their palaces so that they have epic backdrops:

I went to try to see the Prime Minister's residence, and though it isn't actually visible from public spaces, I had a nice dinner of mandu (dumplings) and a delightful snack from a street vendor of cinnamon and melted butter inside a disk of fried dough. I also saw this art piece that amused me:

And this questionable method of tearing down a building:

At this point I started to see busloads of riot police on every corner, just like the last time I was in Seoul. President Lee Myungbok has not made himself popular, and protests are frequent. I went to the Insadong stream for the parade for the Hi Seoul festival, and for a while I thought that the police might be a part of the parade since they seemed to be shooting for a one to one ratio with the civilians. I think that they are the closest thing I will see to legionaries; I saw one higher ranked officer pounding the shields of his subordinates to pump them up in a scene that looked straight out of Gladiator. The stream was still pretty but now crowded with police.
(Notice everyone's favorite insurance giant in the background)

The parade was surreal (apologies for my lack of photography skills. I clearly did not hold the camera still enough for the long exposure of low light shots, but you should get an idea of at least the colors and crowds). Well, the parade itself was only moderately interesting, with people in traditional costumes dancing and playing drums, and various cosplay folks (I think) on parade, but the interesting thing was the chaos. The parade itself went down the main street of the route, while protesters marched along a couple unused lanes of the street, sometimes going with the parade and at other times going against it. Periodically the riot police would move in formation to drive the protesters back. In the middle stood clusters of foreigners taking pictures and film, and thankfully all three groups of marching Koreans moved around us and they passed and interfered with each other's formations. Clearly we foreigners had trouble with the observer/participant boundary:
One of the protester's main complaints is that the government is starting to control the media, so I was amused to see this building along the parade route:

I later noticed this picture on the side of a police bus of how the police are trying to be portrayed, which was a bit dissonant with what I was watching.

I kept expecting things to get very violent given that the protesters were calling the president a dictator and the police were basically provoking them.

The police finally did arrest a couple hundred protesters once they started to interfere with the concert at the plaza where the parade ended. The concert was canceled and the plaza was blocked off. This strikes me as a poor method to counter the idea that the government is fascist: simply ignoring the protesters makes them seem less legitimate, especially since they were nonviolent.
As the plaza was being emptied I struck up a conversation with a trio of middle aged people (a South African, and American, and a Korean) who turned out to be Seventh Day Adventists, one of them a missionary. I had a surprisingly civil conversation with them concerning my atheism/nihilism over ice cream. Their beliefs were radically different: one thought that there was no anthropomorphic god or any heaven and hell, while another thought that she had personally seen angels and Jesus on her shoulder and demons cast out of her (the demons were put in when Scientologists brainwashed her. It was quite the story). I'm not sure why I kept talking with them when it was clear that they weren't susceptible to rational argument (they all didn't believe in evolution), but I didn't get at all angry or frustrated and I wasn't too rude, so that counts as progress for me, religious-tolerance-wise. When we finished speaking the plaza was pretty much empty, so I went back to the stream. I was thoroughly enjoying the lanterns and lights. I unfocused my eyes and treated it like Saturday night of Renn Fayre, which kept me (manically/madly) smiling for quite some time.

Below you can see a sign in the background for Magic: The Gathering (the card game), but when I looked at it through the lanterns and feeling the way I did at the time, the night did feel magical. (What the hell happened to the cynical Landon who would never think, much less say, something like that? Well, without objective truth, why can't there be magic? And I'm happier being less cynical and more open to spontaneous joy.) I decided to walk the length of the Cheonggye stream from where it started at the parade's start (it's now an artificial stream, though it was once natural, I think) to the Han river, 11.3 km away. After a few blocks the festival decorations ended, but there were plenty of permanently lit bridges and other semi-permanent art projects:(If you look closely you can see a crane standing on a pillar that once held a highway, silhouetted in the light of a building.)I reached the Han after a few hours walking.

And then of course I walked back. I took a quick nap behind some bushes on the stream's walkway before heading back to the starting point. The plaza at the font of the stream felt very different now that it was abandoned, though the emptiness gave a chance to investigate things more closely:

I spent a couple hours soaking my tired legs and napping in the gimjjilbong, then began my tour of the five palaces that I hadn't yet visited. The first palace (Gyeonghuigung) had a display of (plastic replicas of) foods that Joseon emperors ate. It was interesting to compare it to modern Korean food. Many dishes looked practically unchanged, including dumplings and kimchi, but also oddities like ginseng cake, complete with a full ginseng root on top of the icing. They also were giving out cardboard visors, which I completely now associate with ajima--older married women.The palace itself was what I now think of as a standard Korean palace. The architectural style, decorations, and even color scheme are all the same (yet for some reason I take pictures of all of them...).

There was a performance of a play about the royal family scheduled for later in the week, and I bet a lot of you theatre folks would love a performance space like this at your disposal:
Next to the palace was a free modern art museum. I thought that this building might be a temporary exhibition, but it was actually a reservations only display of Louis Vuitton purses. The actual art museum had a few interesting pieces:
I particularly liked this cityscape of printing press letters:

This piece reminds me of a etched print that Laurel made back during the '04-'05 school year and of which I helped her make eleven copies of the five plate design:

  I also liked these wire chairs covered in that foam that expands and hardens, which I'm sure I've made in a science class at some point, though the details elude me...

One the way to the next palace I passed the two plazas that were the end caps of the parade route. They were now repopulated and police free. Seoul Plaza had been decorated with cloth banners strung between the sky scrapers that were meant to look like a palace in the sky.

  At the stream (again) there were Korean teenagers with shirts that represented a year in the last 100 years, and they were all standing in the appropriate places in front of a poster of a timeline of important dates for the Korea in the last century. They were dancing to randomly mixed (mostly Western) songs from the various time periods. I was amused that they thought that all songs should be accompanied by the same hip hop dance, regardless of whether it was from the fifties, the eighties, or was actually a hip hop song.

  The stream also had a coin collection whose theme was one million won for one million wishes. I'm not sure what the money was for; it could have been a charity or just to try to recoup some of the money spent on the festival. Across from the Sky Palace of Seoul Plaza was Deoksugung, a palace that had been in use more recently than the others. From the 1890s until Japan conquered the country in 1910, Korea thrived and began to modernize under emperors ruling from here. They seemed to want to be neoclassical just like everyone else, judging by the buildings from that time period (as opposed to the restored ancient palace and the modern sky scrapers):

The palace had the remains of an ancient water clock. The emperors kept precise time both as a public service and as a symbol of their power.

Since the theme of the festival was palaces, there were lots of people reenacting parts from various time periods.

On the way to the next palace I passed Tapgol Park, where they know how to do lotus lanterns right:

There was a Go tournament outside Jongmyo,the next palace.

  There were reenacters here as well, performing a royal procession.
  The next palace was connected by a footpath over a busy street. It also had reenactments of a royal court in session.This palace (Changgyeonggung) also boasted an ancient Chinese pagoda, beautiful natural areas, and a truly ancient tree.It was only separated by the last palace by a wall, but there was no passage between the two, so I had to run back through it and Jongmyo and up through the streets to get to it.

  I missed the last English tour of the day, but the Korean tour was fine. Not understanding the guide made it so that I was willing to hang back and take pictures not filled with the dozens of tourists along for the tour. I was definitely glad that I saved this palace for last because I would have probably been rather bored if one of the others had been the sixth palace I'd visited. Lonely Planet is absolutely correct that Changdeokgung is by far the most interesting and beautiful of the palaces.

  Some of the architecture here was in the Chinese style, which only makes me want to visit China even more.

  The Lonely Planet guide is also correct to say that the most impressive part of the most impressive temple is the secret garden:

Though I also liked the buildings commissioned by a crown prince who wanted a nice place for scholarly pursuits:

Outside the palace there were folks from a nonprofit organization handing out free books in English. They wanted to promote Korean culture throughout the world, and I'll be happy to let anyone read my copy of "Chung Hyo Ye: Tales of filial devotion, loyalty, respect and benevolence from the history and folklore of Korea", since I happen to know that at least some of you are folklore enthusiasts.

After that I walked back to the train station and took the KTX home. Wow, I haven't gotten any better at writing shorter posts. Whew! So to review the Renn Fayre parallels, there was a huge party with a theme, a party that involved brightly colored lanterns, a token connection to medieval times despite really being thoroughly modern, a chaotic parade that ended with people in pads fighting, art structures, dance parties, and people enjoying simple things like shadow puppets and colored lights. Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch, but I'll take what I can get (Love Reed).