Tuesday, 7 December 2010

Jack London in Korea



I am not a fan of Jack London. Anyone who writes a Marxist novel as embarassing as 'The Iron Heel' or anthropomorphises a stupid dog as in the children's 'classic' 'White Fang' is no literary hero of mine.

I like his quotes about his time in Korea, though. Some details from the site 'Literary Traveller'

Some examples:
Soju is ". . . white, biting stuff distilled from rice, a pint of which would kill a weakling and make a strong man mad and merry.", makgeolli "...a warm, sourish, milky-looking drink, heady only when taken in enormous doses.", and
Kimchi a pickle "... ungodly hot but which one learns to like exceeding well... It is a sort of sauerkraut. When it is spoiled it stinks to heaven."

His novel 'The Star Rover' has a section on Korea starting here: Star Rover chapter 15

The main character gets drunk, eats dog, has Duk crammed into his mouth by kisaeng, chases the local women and gets in trouble after a change in management. All fairly familiar stuff, really.

One quote from a book of reportage about Korea always makes me laugh. London writes "... the first weeks of a white traveler on Korean soil are anything but pleasant. If he be a man of sensitive organization he will spend most of his time under the compelling sway of two alternating desires. The first is to kill Koreans, the second is to commit suicide"

Not my experience, certainly, but then my organization is not as sensitive as it used to be.

Saturday, 27 November 2010

Body and Soul


You may or may not already know this, but the concept of 'mind' is slightly different in Korea. Ask a Korean where their mind is and they may point to their chest. 'maum'/마음 is one translation of 'mind'. Koreans can seem very emotional, quick tempered and sentimental, though of course everything depends on the individual's temperament. My wife is all of the above, wears her heart on her sleeve, and, I guess, keeps her mind where her heart was.

Saturday, 4 September 2010

Me First!




Just back from the UK. My first taste of Korea came at the airport. The plane was delayed and, when we got to the departure gate, there were alot of people already sitting there. Alot of Korean people. I queued up in front of the economy check about ten minutes before boarding to get the baby on quickly- airlines usually seat you first, away from the other passengers, if you have reserved a place for a kid under two years old. People queued up behind us. An ajjuma pushed me in the back and stared at me stone faced. Children ran around screaming while their parents gazed peacefully into the middle distance, doing nothing (Digression: the contrast with the shopping mums at TK Maxx was enlightening. I remember one Arndale mum threatening her kid with the unfinished statement "If you don't sit down in your push chair I will hit you so hard...". The kid sat down.). Finally, predictably, inevitably, a middle aged ajjoshi and his family sidled up to the side of the queue and started their own line. With them at the front.

At that point I realised I was still 12 hours away from Incheon and told him, in a crude combination of Korean and English to join the back of the line. I don't like personal confrontation, but it worked on this occassion. I wouldn't have bothered, but others might have decided to join the new queue, being as it was nearer the front, or maybe even started a third one. We all know what that means...

Wednesday, 7 July 2010

Psychedelic Traditional Modern Korean Art
























Today I visited the Busan Museum of Modern Art with my wife and baby. The little one got excited, shouted a bit and threw cheese on the floor, but there were only about two other people in the whole gallery so no one was really disturbed. And that was just the wife, ho ho.

The best of modern Korean art can hold its own with the innovations from China and Japan. I remember seeing Japan and Korea share exhibition space at the Venice Biennale in 2004. One thing I don't like, however, is when Korean artists paint cherry blossoms, fish markets, mountains and other traditional subjects in a pastiche of 20th century western artistic styles (impressionist, cubist, can't be arsed to think of any more more so will write etc., just like my students).

Lim Nam Jin, whose work I first saw at the Gwangju Biennale a couple of years ago and which is now on display in Busan, inverts this unoriginal approach. She- I of course initially assumed it was a he- treats modern Korean life as a sort of psychedelic piss take of traditional Korean painting. Visually her paintings look great- big, colourful, accessible, strange and full of vulgar humour. Above are a few examples. Lots of other interesting and exciting stuff to see in the Busan gallery at the moment.

I don't know much about art, but I know what I like quote unquote.

Friday, 28 May 2010

North Korean Art























I saw this picture on the 'Ask a Korean' Website.


















All I could think was, 'Nice carpet and...wait a minute... for a piece of totalitarian propoganda that painting looks KIND OF AMAZING'. The artists name is Kim Sung Geun (김승군) and, like the soju bottles below, it is hard to find images on Google. I think his style is fresh and original (not sure about the last picture, though) and I will be using it for my computer wallpaper at work. Imagine having an entire wall covered by an original...

Monday, 24 May 2010

Blue 007 Soju




























Soju used to be more imaginatively packaged. I think these are some of the only pictures of the old blue soju bottles outside Naver.

I have two questions. Why did the soju companies change from blue to green bottles? And why aren't I drinking a bottle of awesome 007 soju from a blue bottle, wearing an official 금복주 T-shirt RIGHT NOW?

Definitive proof, as if more were needed, that everything in the past was better than it is now.

Tuesday, 18 May 2010

Korean Literature- The Good, The Bad and The Weird.





The best place to begin experiencing Korean literature is probably 'The Portable Library of Korean Literature' series, a collection of short modern novels. As this review from the blog Korean Modern Literature in Translation points out, these books do tend to dwell on the miserable experience and aftermath of the Korean civil war. Other themes to the fore include family relationships, food, sickness and poverty. To be honest, this came as a quite a disappointment to me after the technicolour violence and hyper reality of modern Korean cinema. Reading about the minutae of everyday rituals and the petty frustrations of economic reality in Korea is educational, even necessary, but not always appealing. Even very recent works like 'A Photoshop Murder' by Kim Young-Ha were heavy on the soya bean soup and complex web of social obligations.

I particularly disliked the (apparently much esteemed) Yi Mun-Yol's 'An Appointment With My Brother'. A quick extract: '"Your brother is more than ten years your senior, so I think you should make a bow" Mr Kim said to my brother...It was a great relief to me and helped make my first words to my brother easier to bring out. I returned my brothers full bow with a half bow, and could use the plain form of speech without any hesitation or uneasiness'. Would it be culturally insensitive to suggest that this is awkwardly translated and makes the author sound like a pompous arse/stuck up ajjoshi? Most of the book continues in this vein. I kid you not.

Yi Sang's 'The Wings', on the other hand, was a revelation. A vivid description of mental dislocation and disintegration, it seems to stand completely apart from the other works I have read in the series and has encouraged me to look out for more translations of Korean novels. Yi Sang was heavily influenced by European writers, and and this may have made his work more accessible to me. Still, he is something of a national hero (having spent time in a Tokyo jail for 'Thought Offence') and most Koreans, young and old, will have studied his work in high school. See perhaps the only photo taken before his death in 1937, aged 27, below:



















Finally, a poem from the poet Ku Sang, from the 'English Translations of Korean Literature Series'. I am not a fan of his work, finding it laden with heavy handed (Xian) religious imagery and simplistic appropriations of Western culture.

You've just got to love this one, though:

Even the Knots on Quince Trees, part 3:

In Minor Seminary,
early one New Year's Day,
having cut out from the newspaper a picture
of Her Imperial Majesty all dressed in white,
I rushed straight to the toilets.

Having done like the serpent in Genesis
who, squirming his whole body, expelled
like pus a blasphemous passion,
I turned my back on that monastery
in which I had spent three years.

And I became a follower of isms.

ㅋㅋ

Saturday, 15 May 2010

와탕카...



...translated into English is a good introduction to real Korean Kultur. They should distribute this book to new teachers in Korea, rather than teaching them about spicy Kimchi, making soap and all the other sparkling PR bullshit to 'educate foreigners' about a sanitised version of Korean culture that has never really existed. 와탕카 is crude, silly and funny, as you can see from this predictably 똥 fixated example here. It is also satirical and cynical about authority figures and traditional social roles/responsibilities. Comes in handy for introducing lesson topics to older students, as well.


Cottage Cheese & Maekolli

The other day my daughter threw up a bucketload of home made cottage cheese in my face at a a samgyupsal restaurant. She was facing me in her baby carrier and suddenly turned into a little vomit volcano. It was pretty funny. In retrospect. It was also all my wife's fault for making her eat the vile stuff. I wrote a longer post about it, but the only thing worth reading was the punchline, so I deleted it.

Best new discovery in MegaMart: mini cans of maekolli. 6 for about 3,000 won. Overpriced, but somehow more fun than the plastic bottles. If I get drunk on Stout and maekolli tonight, I might end up eating the remaining cottage cheese in the fridge.

Wednesday, 12 May 2010

Sign Language





















1 and 2: What's the point in coming here then?
3 and 4: From a safety warning/notice by a lake in Jinju. What is that man doing behind the pillar? And why is the boy flipping me the bird?
5: Old Kimbap Cheonguk sign.
6: OTL = frustration emoticon... some joker rearranged the toilet sign at my uni.

Tuesday, 11 May 2010

Friday, 7 May 2010

UK election




The UK election results are nearly in. The Conservatives have the most seats, but not a majority. The Labour Party is pretty much knackered and looking for a deal with the Liberal Democrats. Although the LibDems seemed well placed, due to Vince Cable's strong performance during the economic crisis and Nick Clegg's 'victory' in the TV debates, they failed to make significant gains in the election.

As for me, I was trying not to weep into my breakfast cereal when I saw the Tory gains against Labour. When their lead was only in opinion polls it seemed so much more remote. I was at university the last time the Tories got kicked out, and it is terrible to see them on the brink of power, especially since objective external circumstances (ie. the economic crisis caused by laissez-faire economic policies) have ripped the guts out of their free market nonsense. The pro-Cameron, Murdoch owned tabloids will start shrieking that Cameron should be PM despite being unable to win a majority.

I hope a Lab/Lib pact screws them all over royally and radicalises a Labour Party that abandoned it's grassroot members and supporters more than a decade ago. I think the reason Labour squandered it's political and economic opportunities and capital so horribly is that the entryist liberal leadership thought they were just too smart to listen to trade unionists, doctors, nurses, teachers and all the other ordinary people who believed Labour would offer something better than discredited Thatcherite bullshit. After all, these people were working at the point of delivery as the government wasted millions on layer upon layer of managers who served no useful purpose except to inspect, observe and harrass their staff in the name of accountability. It was also the core labour supporters who warned them most insistently to go with Europe rather than the US over Iraq. These two basic mistakes, along with a misplaced faith in the City of London, ultimately destroyed New Labour.

After all this, we are faced with the dread prospect of Tories in charge of aggressive cuts in the public sector, letting unemployment soar whilst cutting benefits for the poor and taxes for the better off. Their proposals for electoral reform could help to keep them in power for a decade or more. I just hope what remains of the liberal left can, in effect, snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in the next 24 hours or so.

Update:
Or not. As you please.

Wednesday, 28 April 2010

CJD 2MB


I recently noticed these beauties on a student's motorbike as I walked back to my office from class. The first thing I thought was, of course, "Fantastic. Another total English disaster" and I took a couple of pictures. After that I started to think about the mad cow protests of 2008. It seems much longer ago than that. I remember my wife told me at the time "Korean people are quick to boiling (sic) and quick to calm down". In retrospect it really looks like a storm in a tea cup.

Later, following a link on Korean Rum Diary, I read this letter to the Korea Times asking why there has not been a comparable response to the Cheonan disaster koreatimesletter . The writer does repeat his point about a hundred and fifty times, but the question he poses is a tough one for politically active Koreans. The simple answer is probably not that Koreans hate America more than North Korea, but that they are more scared of North Korea. However, this attitude does make some of the more hysterical reactions in 2008 look a little bit silly. It also suggests the underlying anti Americanism/xenephobia of the protests.

I think alot of commentators may have missed the point about the protests. Of course, it is never nice to be accused of selling infected meat, but focusing on irrational CJD scaremongering (tampons infected with CJD!) and Anti-Americanism ("I'm from America", says the Mad Cow!) can obscure the real reasons, and even justifications for, the protest.

The first point to make is that the government under Lee Myung Bak is not exactly playing the political game gently. It seems quite brazen about its contempt for popular opinion ( link ), the independent media ( link )and trade union organisations ( link ).

The aggressive prosecution of the previous president was old style Korean politics at it's worst (a traditional Korean expression claims 'Dust will rise from anyone if you beat them hard enough') and helped to destroy a man who, for the most part, behaved like a democrat in office. The reinstatement of the head of Samsung was an absolute scandal, and would have been percieved as such in countries where the 'national interest' is not a get out of jail clause for scoundrels with enough money ( link ). And- guess what?- a huge public gathering took place in Seoul a few weeks ago with no interference of any kind from the police. Why? because they were Christians. Nothing political about that, right? Except the president is a prominent member of some tithing evangelical Church, invites ministers to the Blue House to pray with him and has provoked conflict with the Buddhist community since he came to power ( link ).

So is it right for the organized opposition to seize on and exploit an emotive issue to destablise his government? Although the bogus nature of the health claims will diminish their impact in the long run, the success of the candlelight protests point the way to future demonstrations against the government. 'Politics is the squalid scaffolding of more serious matters'(Tawney) and to criticise the methods used by those behind the protests as unfair or irresponsible is, frankly, naive.

I often wonder whether my American acquaintances and the online commentators I have read at the Marmot's hole etc. see politics as a college ethics class on a grand scale. The extent to which they criticised the protesters and backed the government crackdown on the protests surprised me. Their comments seemed to suggest an unhealthy obsession with balance in political debate, reflecting the 'checks and balances' which apply to their durable political constitution, but not to American economic or social life. "On the one hand the government is wrong for this, on the other hand the protesters are behaving badly... argument A, argument B, conclusion, essay finished.". I think this government shows worryingly undemocratic tendencies and getting people out on the streets in large numbers is a real and effective counterbalance to them. I would argue that the dialectic is a better model than consensus politics in explaining how change occurs, especially in Korea.

The second point is about free trade. If there were health and safety concerns about Korean beef, I would expect American or European consumers to be worried and their governments to consider import restrictions. Clearly the vast majority of Korean consumers were against importing American beef in 2008. However, as part of a Free Trade Deal with the US, Korea is supposed to open its markets- and it is the elites who support the government who stand to gain most from this deal. Whether the benefits of open markets outweigh the costs in the long run or not, easing import restrictions on American beef that year wasn't exactly popular democracy in action. The beef protests were perhaps as much a flashpoint as a flash in the pan.

Korea's development flies in the face of neo-liberal dogma. This country developed as a result of big business and government working together to invest heavily in protected industries. With this historical background it should not be assumed that unrestricted free trade is the best or only way forward for the Korean economy, or that it will improve ordinary Korean's lives. The main benificiaries of more open markets will be the export orientated Chaebols and those that work for them. Consumers may pay lower prices for imports in the long run (assuming the supermarkets/distributors pass on the savings) but Koreans with less economic power are probably going to suffer as a result of increased foreign competition. Part of the reason why the US is pushing the FTA so hard is to deal with Korea's unfair advantage in American markets. If the balance is to be redressed in America's favour in some areas, there will be losers in Korea. The general scepticism in the ROK about free trade is, to a certain extent, understandable and the 'No FTA' campaign that accompanied the beef protests cannot be explained away as a health scare.

I am fully aware that both ends of the political spectrum, and probably most points in between, are resentful of outside influence and, by extension, foreigners living in Korea. There was much to be embarrassed about in the 2008 protests. However, I think this country deserves better than 2MB's government. The beef protests were a bad day for him and his cronies and may even have helped to make a younger generations of Korean's more politically active. Certainly, I don't think many young Koreans will vote for his party next election. That alone (almost) excuses making a big fuss about... nothing.

Sunday, 25 April 2010

First!




I came to Korea because of (a) burnout from being in charge of three A-level courses at my London college (b) Korean cinema. Unfortunately for me the 'Korean Wave' of new cinema broke and rolled back shortly after I arrived in Korea (about 2005). I also found that, ironically, it was easier for me to watch new Korean films in London because, over here, there are no subtitles in the 'movie theatre'. So far, so fail.

However, I found that DVD rooms, despite their seedy reputation over here (a result of the various nefarious uses which young couples and single men put them to), were a great alternative. When I lived in Jinju I used to go with a list of hangeulised films from Koreanfilm.org and ask the ajjuma behind the counter to check her library of DVD's. It was good fun taking a group of people along and introducing the other students on the TESOL course to extreme Korean cinema.

The next step was the film festival circuit in Korea. PIFF (Pusan International Film Festival) is well known. I think the Jeonju Film Festival is probably the most pleasant- lots of great films in a comfortable small town setting.

Nowadays I (have heard that you can) download films from wedisk. The charges are minimal, but you may need a Korean helper and ID to set up the account.

If you live in Pusan, you must visit the Busan Cinematheque . They show world cinema, often with English subtitles, though if you get a month of Japanese or Chinese cinema you may be shit out of luck. They do try to provide information for English speakers and they have a small library with some excellent books on cinema.

Here, in no particular order, are ten of my top Korean films, old and new. The films from the 60's, 70's and 80's are just as deranged and genre hopping as the films from this century.

1. Kim Ki Duk- Samaria

2. Kim Ki Young- The Housemaid

3. Jang Jun Hwan- Save The Green Planet

4. Bang Dae Hun- Madame Freedom


5. Park Chan Wook- Oldboy

6. Bong Joon Ho- Mother

7. Won Shin Yeon- A Bloody Aria

8. Kim Ji Woon- A Bittersweet Life

9. Yu Hyun Mok- Aimless Bullet

10.Im Kwon Taek- Seopyonje