It's safe to say that cellularphonecompaniesarethemostdiscriminatoryestablishmentsinKorea. And since we're not in Seoul we don't have many of the side-steps that comes along with being in an international city. Now this topic has been covered before so this post will be short; after a brief survey of Mokponians, it seems like your best bet is in two options:
Korean Friend Get a Korean friend. Arranging an informal arrangement where the phone is in the Korean friend's name will give you access to the Whites Only "Phones for Korean People" but this does introduce a dependency. If your friend is a co-worker (i.e. co-teacher) then you run the gambit of him or her insisting that your cell phone is not really your cell-phone but company property. In this situation, despite the fact that you've been paying the monthly bills, you may be forced to return the phone at any time.
Pay as You Go Get a pre-pay phone. For a foreigner it is comparably cheaper but less convenient since they require monthly charging by way of handing money over to the clerk at the store. It is important to note that SK does not offer any such service but most Korean tour guides are oblivious to this fact and will take you there anyway. From a brief survey of Mokponians it seems that both LG and Show offer pre-pay phones plans that can be registered in a foreigner's name. In an e-mail from Angie I got this helpful information:
I use the "Pre-pay" service with LG. 30 000won one-time connection fee, then 10 000 won a month after that. Still quite expensive (I think you only get about 20 minutes of talking time for your 10 000won, so I stick to text messages and receiving calls only).
I always find the LG shops in Old Mokpo, near the railway station to be much more cooperative and friendly. They even gave me a bonus renewal once my phone credit had expired.
Important Vocabulary From Emanuel I got some useful words:
아줌마병 (aka Ajummabyeong) is an often mis-diagnosed but common disorder affecting post-menopausal Korean women. While at first it may seem controversial that a condition is linked to an ethnic type, it is not uncommon. For example, scientists have long identified Sickle Cell Anemia as being,
...found in people of African, Mediterranean, Indian, and Middle Eastern heritage. In the United States, these disorders are most commonly observed in African Americans and Hispanics from the Caribbean, Central America, and parts of South America.
But what's puzzling the current research is the high density of the affected women living within the Korean peninsula. In comparison, samples of ethnic Korean women who live in other countries have a remarkably low probability of developing ajummabyeong. In the fact the relationship between developing the condition and proximity to Korea is almost exponential; while nearly 100% of Korean women living in Korea will develop some degree of ajummabyeong, the likelihood for a Korean woman in neighboring China was shown to be drastically lower. This trend continued, and as Dr. Ha Foon Ni in his paper Relationships between Ajummabyeong and Ethnic Korean culture points out, his team links
...smaller probability with longer distances, up to a point where the furthest distance sampled, North America, contained almost negligible cases of developing ajummabyeong with this caveat: the numbers were reported lower since, of the discovered cases in the target cities, it was shown that a large percentage of these females had a high ratio of Life in Korea vs Life in Host Country. Likewise, Koreans who had a lower ratio, that is people had spent more of their life in their host countries, were virtually free of symptoms attributed to ajummabyeong.
Again it seems absurd that a condition could target a specific gender from a specific country. But after Googling some similar results I found out that ajummabyeong isn't the only affliction targeting Koreans. There's also stomach cancer.
While Gastrical Cancer is another emerging Korean-only condition, it doesn't discriminate as blatantly as ajummabyeong, again, statistically speaking and compared to neighboring countries. But nonetheless Korea somehow has an improbably high rate of stomach cancer and while the cause of ajummabyeong is so far a mystery, scientists are blaming kimchi for the cancer. This idea is something that is at best described as contradictory to Korea's collective belief. For example, consider this lead paragraph from the Digital Chosen Ilbo:
Cancer is Korea’s biggest killer, responsible for 25 percent of deaths. Its causes are still not fully known, its treatment too often remains a stab in the dark, but it is clear that a diet rich in kimchi and other traditional Korean dishes can be highly effective in preventing cancer.
While the argument between kimchi and cancer may be convincing, it would be premature to suggest a connection between kimchi and ajummabyeong. A cause (and heance cure) is still unknown at this time. However, the symptoms for ajummabyeong are fairly easy to identify but the tragedy is that many women fail to recognize their own symptoms before it's too late. And even then most women tend to go without treatment due to a lack of awareness. From a quick search on the internet I can list these most common symptoms:
Drastic metabolism reeducation. Unfortunately the high metabolism that is generally acknowledged in keeping young Korean women fairly slim simply stops working, resulting in immediate weight gain. As a side effect the addition weight bears down on lithe skeletal frames and most women, as ajummabyeong progresses, lose a considerable amount of height. In serious cases this results in a stoop.
Hair protein realignment. Scientists don't know why during the on-set of ajummabyeong the subject's scalp will start producing a different strain of hair protein. The closest related phenomenon is female balding, except that the effect is slightly different. The average Korean 'straight' hair will start to contract, resulting in wavy or curly hair. As the disease progresses, the realignment becomes so severe that the subject's hair will contract to a point of oxygen starvation and (for lack of a better term) the apparent suicide of the hair folical. The end result is permanent hair loss.
Polymorphic light eruptions. More commonly know as light allergies, PLE are skin complaints triggered by exposure to natural light affecting roughly 80% of women diagnoses with ajummabyeong. The more severe cases will require the subject to cover all exposed skin including the hands and face. While in the past many women were held prisoner by this aspect of ajummabyeong, the invention of UV-coated plastics has greatly liberated their suffering. To avoid the 'mummy' look, Korean women can wear a face visor, a UV-coated shield that covers the entire face from the painful rays of the sun.
Many experts agree that the first obstacle in curing ajummabyeong is awareness. And, like the Green Ribbon, the Pink Ribbon, the Red Ribbon, and even the Pink and Blue Cloud Ribbon, ajummabyeong has its own kimchi-colored awareness campaign ribbon. I don't quite understand the logic behind the selection of Red, Orange, and Green to signify the disease but I have to applaud the effort that Koreans are just now starting to make toward fighting this terrible affliction that affects nearly all Korean women. After all, awareness is vital in the fight against any diseases and hopefully the more Korean women that recognize that they are suffering from ajummabyeong, the more Korean scientists can learn and come closer to finding a much needed cure.
From a paper on high tech worker stagnation I found this little chart on tertiary education that probably helps explain some aspects of the Korean generation gap. Similar data is presented here, albeit in individual graphs. The various shapes represent age demographics within the country and the line length is a measurement of the difference. The delta (the largest one there) between the generations in Korea is a good measure of the education divide. Of course 55-64 years ago Korea wasn't the same as it is now:
33% of primary schools destroyed, 60% of classrooms unusable, 80% of books and equipment lost, 38% of teachers missing, 25% of upper secondary schools demolished, 20% teaching staff missing. Such was the situation of Korea’s education system in 1952.
The mandatory E-2 interview is a new part of the Korean E-2 (i.e Teaching English) visa process. The new regulations came into effect shortly after the great pedophile scandal of 2007 in which Christopher Paul Neil, a Canadian national and target of a international pedophile manhunt, was arrested for sexually assaulting a nine-year-old boy in Thailand. Shockingly enough, before living in Thailand, Neil was working as an English teacher Gwangju at the Gwangju Foreign School.
But after roughly 3 months in to the process, it's still fair to say that the regulations have done nothing but increase criticism of Korea's TEFL hiring process and many ex-pat commentators view this a classic case of a knee jerk reaction leading to poor policing making. The new rules are doing more harm than good to Korea's ESL industry; the simple matter is they simultaneously fail to stop more Christopher Paul Neils and deter qualified teachers from considering Korea.
The thing that I'm finding the most useless about the process is the interview. From the initial stories coming in it seems like they are beyond wasteful and border on insulting. Even way back in November, a Korea Herald article voiced some initial concerns:
There are concerns about the logistics of the consulate interview part of the plan. "It's about time they had criminal record checks, and the health check is a good idea," says Tricia Elliot, a teacher at a private institute in Seoul. "But this interview at the consulate is a bit overboard because it cuts out a lot of people from smaller areas of large countries.
"A lot of the Canadians who work as teachers are from the East coast and the nearest consulate is in Montreal," she explained. "That's really far away, and impossible for most people to get to on short notice for an interview that doesn't guarantee a job."
So at first it seems like nobody really thought of mandatory interviews in a country that has 3 consulate and 6 timezones. But is the Korea government that short-cited to force mandatory travel on distances that are five times the journey from Mokpo to Seoul? This wouldn't be the first time that I've come across this phenomenon. I've talk to friends and family from Japan, England, and other small countries and they don't quite grasp the shear magnitude of Canada's landmass. Of course they all think that Canada is mainly a permafrost country where we eat baby seal eyes for breakfast, live in igloos, and our policemen have yet to discover car technology. But I digress; consider this quick map mock-up:
Basically the distances involved for some people are equivalent to asking people to travel to and from Japan, China, Russian and even Taiwan. And it seems like still there's a lot of confusion about these interviews; for example you can submit an Introductory CD if you're in the jurisdiction of the Vancouver Consulate (but live outside of BC) and a rumored telephone interview if you're in Montreal Consulate's jurisdiction. But if you're in Northern Manitoba it looks like you're out of luck; I couldn't find anything about a compromise on the Toronto Consulate's website.
Geographical and logistic ignorance aside, the actual interview itself comes across as shear stupidity. At first it seemed normal:
1) Where will you be employed? 2) Do you enjoy working with children? 3) What is your educational background?, transcripts were reviewed and discussed with interviewer. 4) Why do you want to work in Korea? 5) What is your teaching philosophy? 6) If you weren't going to teach in Korea, what would you be doing? 7) Do you smoke? 8) Cool Have you done drugs in the past? 9) Have you ever broken the law? 10) How long do you want to stay in Korea?
But then there's the other stories, like in a comment over at the Marmot's Hole:
I just spoke with two Canadians who arrived in Korea this evening, fresh off the boat. They’d done the whole rigmarole: Degree double-checking, background checking and even an interview at the Korean Embassy in Montreal. Apparently, the interview involved a guy who “barely spoke English” asking them where they went to school, then checking on the school’s existence. Then it got weird. One girl was asked how many high schools there were on Prince Edward Island. She was also asked if she’d heard anything about teachers working in China and Japan, and what her feelings about Japan were. The other, who’s got a degree in Psychology, was asked to “Please psychoanalyze me [the Korean interviewer].”
I don't know if you can put that much weight with one comment but there's more, like over at Cows by the Fence
My name was written Zauhory, good times. The diplomat asked me my name, where I was from, my educational background, and my opinion of the Spitzer affair. The whole process took less than five minutes to do. Then I had to hop the bus home which was another four hours out of my day. Eight hours on a bus for a five minute interview?
"The interview was HILARIOUS. He asked: 1) Where my last name came from 2) About my experience in my two years in Daejeon 3) My possible long-term plans in Korea and 4) Was surprised and delightedly commented on the little Hangul I wrote on my visa application. It was less than 10 minutes. [After] a $45 fee, another week [delay] and today I FINALLY HAVE MY PASSPORT WITH MY E2 VISA IN IT."
A few minutes later, probably an hour ahead of my 3 PM appointment time, I was called back for my interview. Behind a tiny table wedged into a corner of some forgotten area of the office was a Korean man in a bad gray suit. He seemed pleasant enough. He asked me a few questions about why I wanted to come to Korea, what I knew about Korea, and what I had studied in school. He made a few notes on the visa form I filled out, and I mentioned that I had left some things blank, but he said, “Don’t worry about it.” I’m pretty sure I would've flunked the interview if I was being scored on it. It lasted five minutes, and he said, “Thank you, there is the door.” I stood, bowed slightly, thanked him, and left.
Then I drove home in inclement, snowy weather, another 3 hours. My total time spent in Chicago was probably an hour and a half. Thankfully I know the city pretty well so it wasn't as big a deal as it could've been if I was unfamiliar with driving around in Chicago.
I was forced to drive to my "local" Korean consulate where I had mailed the application materials to complete an interview with the consul to determine my eligbility. This meant taking three hours to drive to Newton, Mass. for a ten-minute interview and driving all the way back. Had I known this (and they could have told me when I called and asked a bunch of questions about the visa process), I would have scheduled the interview and brought in my application at that time, instead of paying FedEx to overnight the docs. What a hassle. I went, though, and got even more angry that all the consul asked me was already written on my application, plus the question about why I want to teach in Korea, all of which could have been done over the phone (they refused a phone interview).
I wasn't sure what kind of questions to expect when I went there, and the interview was more of a getting to know you type conversation then a formal interview. I did the get ones I expected, such as: How long do you want to stay in Korea? If given a situation A as a teacher, what would you do? Where do you want to be in Korea? What subjects have you taught?
The last one was amusing; the interviewer stopped me in the middle of my answer to say that this question was more for his own sake than as a part of the interview, as his son needed help in AP Chemistry (which is one of the subjects I am currently tutoring). And no, he didn't offer me a tutoring job for his son.
At the end of the interview, he also mentioned that being a Korean-American will work in my favor in the decision making and more than offset my lack of any teaching certifications.
I've probably copied and pasted enough examples to make my point but I really appreciate this last example. If I'm reading this right, then a member of the Korean consulate just said that ethnic origins also play a factor in the visa application process. Does that mean that belonging to some other demographic will be detrimental? That's a policy that hasn'tbackfire:
South Korean police have arrested a Korean-American man wanted by the FBI for first-degree murder. The suspect had fled the U.S. to South Korea 10 years ago and had been teaching English in private language institutes until he was captured.
The Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency on Wednesday said it had arrested a 31-year-old Korean-American man identified as Nam on charges of killing a retired American policeman in the U.S.
...
Nam was finally arrested on Tuesday. He had been teaching at a private English-language institute in Toechon, Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province for two months.
Over the past decade, Nam had moved from one English-language crammer to another in Seoul, and Gyeonggi, Jeolla and Gyeongsang provinces, working two or three months at each institute. A South Korean court will rule on his extradition.
Now I doubt that was the true intention of the comment; I would vote for properly trained Korean-anything as a teacher but the consulate interview by the government's own admission is about security, not teaching qualifications.
So the policies, the logic, and even the implementation behind these interviews belongs to some understanding that eludes most westerners. Maybe the real reason behind the mandatory interviews is to physically examine the candidates and somehow spot the eugenically bad seed since its obvious that the questions do nothing to filter out the potential Christopher Paul Neil, or, to finish on a big rhetorical twist, the next Seung Hui Choi.
The previously mentioned Indian Wave is in Korea, although in a slightly different form from what's going on in Japan:
An increasing number of Korean children now study in India, where they can learn English more cheaply than in the U.S. or the U.K. Parents are also impressed by the reputed strengths of Indian education in math and science, making the country an affordable alternative to the traditional destinations for Korea’s “educational refugees.”
Of course somebody beat me to breaking (well, blogging about) the story; Seoul Buffoon has already weighed in with his experience and has noted this amusing side effect:
At half the cost, the kids can get a decent education conducted in the English language. But of course, there is a caveat. They will end up speaking with Indian accents!
In fact my partner was there for two years (thats where I met her and followed her to Korea) and she speaks English with an Indian accent! Infact if she speaks in English on the phone, the person at the other end may actually think that she is an Indian!! Joking ofcourse, but the point I am trying to make is that if Korean parents can “tolerate the Indian accent” it works to their advantage.
I find this interesting since I'm now forced to reconcile the contradiction between the parents who send the kids off to India and the parents who are blind to acknowledging anything other than American English. I spell colour with a U even though I'm told that it's wrong.
But there's something else about this article that caught my eye: Educational Refugees. It's the first time that I've heard that term but to me the word refugee is loaded with so much tragedy and suffering that to use it to describe children of affluent parents and their personal education choices is very questionable. I'll grant that there maybe some validity when used as a commentary on Korean education but this goes too far and turns the affair into a sad hyperbole. For one, I'm sure that the Chosun isn't being hipster ironic and for another these Korean children are not being left behind:
As a high school teacher and guidance counselor, I am currently dealing with the fallout of [The No Child Left Behind Act] as I try to find schools for students who are not doing well in our school. We are a "failing school" that is "in need of improvement" and heading toward "corrective action." Yes, our test scores are low. But they are low because we are a transfer high school, meaning that we take in students who are being pushed out of other schools that need to meet AYP and these "weak" students will prevent them from doing so by scoring abysmally on the tests. The mission of our school is to educate these second chance kids, NCLB be damned. However, on occasion we do have students that need to tranfer to another school. And this is what happens: nobody wants these students. There are hundreds, probably thousands of students that no school will take in because those students are a "liability." The schools that have been educating these second chance kids for decades and trying to open up other possibilities for them are now being punished for doing so. NCLB hangs over schools like ours menacingly. We have been educating students that no other school wants for 25 years. When schools like ours disappear or are "restructured," what alternatives will kids have?
In this comment the Educational Refugee label has some merit since these children have no other alternative in the mainstream education culture. In another example, I found this website that uses the same metaphor albeit entrenched in a Christian motif:
Quite often, they start their homeschooling because of some negative causes, such as their children getting bullied in public schools. They are always in need of various kinds of help and encouragement from outside. Sad to say, many Japanese churches are not cooperative to the homeschoolers in Japan Homeschoolers often do not receive cooperative or positive reactions from other church members, and this can be detrimental for their Christian life. Even some of them are "persecuted" by other church members.
Even though I don't agree with subject matter, this contemporary use of Educational Refugee seems appropriately well placed, reinforcing the notion that Educational Refugees are members of society targeted for exclusion. This then poses the question: Are the Korean Kids being alienated by the national educational policies? I would say no. It seems like they (or their parents) are instead opting out of the educational system to gain that extra educational edge:
The OECD recently released the results of its Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). In the survey, Korean students finished first in reading skills, fourth in mathematics, and 11th in science. When the report was released, Koreans made a fuss about the science ranking plummeting to 11th from top place six years earlier. But the foreign press still regards Korea as a nation of excellent students. Despite the students' outstanding performance, Korean parents are uneasy about the country's education system. They covet an "advanced education," setting their eyes on overseas schools. They are aware that high scores don't necessarily reflect real abilities or skills. Nonetheless, they are so worried that they send their children to private crammers and continually push them for higher and higher scores.
So it looks like it's safe to say that the Chosun's usage of Educational Refugee is a good example of mediocre journalism that's thankfully outside of the current emotionally charge atmosphere. Except that I found Rieko Fry's PhD thesis Japanese children abroad: Politics of education for kaigaishijo and kikokushijo with this breif history in it's introduction:
Business expansion in the 1960s and its associated international strategies have meant that many Japanese company employees and their families were sent abroad on long-term assignments. The children who accompanied their parents on such assignments and then returned to Japan were first described as 'educational refugees' and were regarded as culturally ambiguous, socially marginalized and academically disadvantaged. The Japanese government considered that special measures were needed for these children, as they had missed out on the standard education that they would otherwise have received. Consequently, it introduced various educational options so that they could reintegrate smoothly into Japanese society and its educational system. Later, in the 1980s, when 'globalization' became vital to Japan, the attributes associated with such children were recast and they began to be regarded as 'valuable national assets' for their supposed rich cross-cultural awareness and bilingual abilities, the very qualities the government sought in the new generations of Japanese.
Interestingly enough the term was at first referencing an internal demographic, much like the left behind of No Child Left Behind, but soon became a fashionable (i.e marketable) quality. I can only guess that this is the same logic behind the Chosun's usage; the term has mutated within the Korean monoculture to a point of direct contradiction with it's dictionary definition. Simply put, Education Refugee is now Konglish.
But then I find this story and learn what it means to be a true Korean Educational Refugee:
The educational exodus from Korea has created not just success stories. The number of students who give up on their studies overseas and return to Korea is increasing, from 8,019 in 2001 to 13,586 in 2005. Some soon pack their bags again because they can no longer adapt to their home country either.
So it seems clear enough: the Konglish definition of Educational Refugees is an umbrella covering all Korean nationals who acquire education outside of Korea. This is a mislabeling since these students don't become Educational Refugees (by measure of the rest of the word) until they return home and experience the alienation brought upon by their foreign education -- much like Seoul Buffon's Partner but of course to a larger and less humorous degree -- and acquire a new designation in the Korean monoculture: The Educational Nomad.
The middle week in February (for Mokpo schools and I'm guessing everywhere else in Korea) is Graduation Week. And the pinnacle of that week is Graduation Day and the pinnacle of that day is the Graduation Ceremony, celebrating the 3 years that students have spent in high school. It's also the last requirement in my 4 days of work in February. I won't be back online until March 3rd.
I brought my little point and shoot video camera with me to document what turned out to be no more than an hour of high school pageantry. Here's what I learned:
Location The ceremony took place during the day, around mid-morning in the gymnasium, a fairly recent building with no heating. The floor was covered in tarp and the Grade 3 students were given the seat of honors on the main floor while the school band played the equivalent to pomp and circumstance. Grade 1 and Grade 2 students sitting in the bleachers were forced to attend, although their numbers were suspiciously low. And in select areas portable heaters were trotted out, giving places for the standing parents (and teachers) to congregate in the back of the gym. Everybody was cold.
Flowers Flowers are apparently mandatory gifts during graduation. Flowers are suitable for both boys and girls (and even teachers) but must be as Koreanly ornate as possible. Bouquets stylized along the lines of Disney Princess Prom are perfectly acceptable for all genders and ages. I couldn't figure if there's some timing involved with the presenting of flowers, some students seem to have them right from the start whereas other produced them after returning from the back of the gym and taking the snapshots of parents, students and smiling diplomas. By the end of the ceremony everybody seemed to had flowers and were proudly displaying them in the numerous camera friendship photos.
Hair Hair is the big thing for the graduating student. Like flowers, hair is another area of great cross-gender investment. Some girls had gone the extra pretty distance, but for the guys, perm, waves, coloring, etc was all the norm and done according the current Korean trends, something I am utterly clueless about. One of my favorite students became the poster child for Korean Perm today. I'm going to make a English-Korean dictionary and put his photo under the word awesome. Okay?
The Ceremony The ceremony itself is what you expect: classes come up on stage, get their piece of paper, and go back to their chairs. But the way that they did it is completely different from North American. I guess ceremoniously is an adjective that does not translate well from English to Korean:
And it's easy to see that same je ne sais quoi here, during the principal's speech:
This is during the principals address to the students but it's clear that the students are done. Done with school and done with him since they're all chatting about their upcoming two weeks of vacation before back to university.
Flour and Eggs Unfortunately I missed the flour and eggs:
What was comical however was the Korean tradition (from what has been explained to me) of what the students do once they've graduated. Because theirs no offical ceremony of passing the certificate to the students, the students just show up in their uniforms....and at this point, they're "itching" to rip it off for good. So after all of the formalities are over, and the parents have gone back to the work, the students whip out......flour and eggs; Lots and LOTS of eggs. What happens next is hard to witness, as the flour somewhat blocks a clear view. However, when the "dust" settles, what you have are students covered head to toe in egg yolk, shells, and tonnes of flour everywhere - most importantly, all over their uniform.
It was only when I was in the car heading to the retiring teacher's farewell lunch that I saw the students walking along the streets with flour all over their uniform. I guess they're done with the uniforms too.
I just happen to be in India when I caught this headline over breakfast: Losing an Edge, Japanese Envy Indian Schools. The article describes the emerging Japanese opinion of India as an educational superpower to the point where Indian practices are favored over the current Japanese system.
Given that the story came out a month ago I'm surprised that I can't find any feedback about the move. There's another article from an Indian internet portal and a commentary from college newspaper site but that's about as much as Google gives me. The basic situation is something like this:
Japan, an Asian powerhouse, is losing its international engineering and math prestige to the likes of China and India. The Japanese can write off China as being that wacky idea communist military country across the sea, but India is a unknown maverick and harder to excuse. A former colony turned democratic power that has surpassed Japan in crucial (i.e. lucrative) knowledge industries is in sharp contrast with Japan's image of India being stuck on the short bus and it's only now that Japanese are recognizing the discrepancy. The solution is to use the ancient India teaching ways to help Japan regain it's edge in the Asian world.
There are some finer details in the article though that are worth examining. The education in questions is only engineering and math and the magical education systems seems to differ only slightly from previous systems that focused on memorization. In fact the ancient Indian secret is to just start the kids younger, faster, and harder--and Japan is doing it, albeit at a specific school in some suburb:
Most annoying for many Japanese is that the aspects of Indian education they now praise are similar to those that once made Japan famous for its work ethic and discipline: learning more at an earlier age, an emphasis on memorization and cramming, and a focus on the basics, particularly in math and science.
India’s more demanding education standards are apparent at the Little Angels Kindergarten, and are its main selling point. Its 2-year-old pupils are taught to count to 20, 3-year-olds are introduced to computers, and 5-year-olds learn to multiply, solve math word problems and write one-page essays in English, tasks most Japanese schools do not teach until at least second grade.
Anther point is the erosion of Japan's nationalism, almost as if the international pressures are forcing it to acknowledge systems outside of the itself:
But in the last few years, Japan has grown increasingly insecure, gripped by fear that it is being overshadowed by India and China, which are rapidly gaining in economic weight and sophistication. The government here has tried to preserve Japan’s technological lead and strengthen its military. But the Japanese have been forced to shed their traditional indifference to the region.
Grudgingly, Japan is starting to respect its neighbors.
“Until now, Japanese saw China and India as backwards and poor,” said Yoshinori Murai, a professor of Asian cultures at Sophia University in Tokyo. “As Japan loses confidence in itself, its attitudes toward Asia are changing. It has started seeing India and China as nations with something to offer.”
The up shot to this scare is the realization that maybe Japan was too arrogant, too full of national pride, to recognize that their close-mindedness shut out new ideas from other cultures. This could push Japan into opening its immigration program to include incentives for other ethnics to come in and contribute.
Now where have I heard of external pressures challenging a nation's (maybe) racist and xenophobic policies? But really, after re-examining this article it seems that Japan is just 'Riding the Indian Wave' or more precisely, some Japanese people who do like to ride waves are now riding an Indian one. I suspect that a Japanese take on Indian education will not find solid ground in mainstream Japanese education and won't be the magical cure-all for Japan's lagging test results.
My up shot to this article is that, like the circumstance behind Korean's influx of foreign brides, this article does describe another facet of a monocultural society dealing with an economically forced multiculturalism. So while importing Indian education techniques may be written off as a fad, the fad's simple existence creates an interesting footnote in some larger study on emerging multiculturalism in monocultural societies. Maybe I'll get around to writing that someday.
Brian, over at Brian in Jeollanam-do, has a found a fun way to stalk people. Using Naver People search you can search for people with the following criteria:
Name (이름)
School (출신학교)
Birthplace (출생지)
Job (직업)
Organization (소속기관)
The school option is an interesting one but I don't quite understand the results. The famous alumni at 전남제일고등학교 includes only 5 people while the list of famous alumni at 전라남도목포상업고등학교 omits its most honored son, Kim Dae Jung, class of 1943.
The Korean Wave is a buzz word describing the export of Korean culture; whenever another country does something connected to Korea, it's labeled by Korean as riding/catching/whatever the Korean Wave. Of course taking that logic further means that there's been a British Wave, an American Wave, and to an extent, a Canadian Wave.
While the popularity of the Made in Korea label grew quite quickly, it has yet to make it's way out of Asia. One explanation is that Korea was the first to glam-up existing Asian culture:
Experts offer several reasons for the Korea Wave phenomenon. Among them are the facts that most Asian countries share Confucian culture, that Korean culture professes nonviolence, and that the quality of Korean culture and communications have increased sharply in the past few years. In other words, fans embrace Korean cultural products because they convey similar Asian cultural sentiments in sophisticated packages.
Of course one unique aspect of the Korean Wave is how tightly integrated it is to Koreanmonocultural identity. For example, if you think that Nascar sucks, it doesn't mean that you hate the USA. Well maybe...
But seriously, a product of monoculture societies like Korea is that any criticism towards the culture wave is immediately interpreted against criticism against the country:
Thus the actor ZhangGuolin has said China is becoming “a giant in importing foreign culture” and watching Korean TV dramas was tantamount to “selling out the nation.” The film magazine Mingxing insisted in December that the Korean government tries to hinder not only agricultural and fishery imports from China but also cultural products, according to KITA’s Beijing office. China’s State Administration for Radio Film and Television (SARFT) also said last December that China had been too generous with the import of Korean TV dramas and called for a stricter screening process. It said China could limit airtime for Korean dramas to 50 percent
Then there's the Japanese criticism that seems to welcome and reject the products of the Korean wave based on a cultural supersaturation.
“I really want to say this,” the director said, clearly exasperated. “To me, Japanese women who flock to see Yonsama (Korean actor Bae Yong-joon) are repulsive. When I see something so repulsive, whoever they are carrying on about, it makes me feel profoundly sick.”
The director was accompanied by his wife who, as it happens, is an admired performer in Japan. Maho Toyota, too, would like a little less of the Korean fare. “As an actress, I feel like the presence of Korean actors on Japanese television is excessive,” she said. “It would be good if all stars could perform freely on the Asian scene regardless of their nationalities. It’s a pity that the current tide is leaning too much toward one particular phenomenon.”
She said she was concerned how long it will last. “I hope this leads to the development of a unified scene where Asian people can exchange their cultures and share them, I hope that Koreans will feel the same way.”
The words repulsive and sick are strong words here, but given this example I find myself somewhat sympathetic.
But of course nothing is simple with Korea and Japan. Kenkanryu (aka Hating the Korean Wave) is the controversial Japanese criticism in comic book form and 혐일류 (aka Hyeomillyu or Hate Japan Wave) is the respective Korean response. Both Gusts of Popular Feeling (who breaks out Scott McCloud'sUnderstanding Comics) and Occidentalism do a good job analyzing the comics and I'll have to take their word for it until I get myself an English translation.
HONG KONG ― A high-ranking Dutch diplomat and his wife, who adopted a 4-month-old Korean girl in 2000 when he was posted in Korea, gave up the child last year, officials here said.
Now, officials here are looking for someone to take care of the school-age child.
The girl, Jade, is still a Korean citizen because the adoptive parents, whose names were not released, never applied to give her Dutch citizenship, according to an official at the Hong Kong Social Welfare Department.
She doesn’t speak any Korean. She speaks only English and Cantonese, according to people close to her.
And she doesn’t have Hong Kong residency status, either.
The Hong Kong Social Welfare Department, where the Dutch diplomat left Jade in September last year, has had responsibility for her ever since, the official said.
Jade has been in Hong Kong’s foster care system, according to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.
The paper also reported that the diplomat, who has a senior management role at a European consulate in the city, said “the adoption had gone wrong,” without any further explanation.
“It’s just a very terrible trauma that everyone’s experiencing,” he told the paper. “I don’t have anything to say to the public. It is something we have to live with.”
The diplomat’s wife thought she was infertile when the couple adopted the Korean girl in 2000, the official said. After they moved to Hong Kong, the wife got pregnant. They now have two children of their own.
The story has fueled anger among the Korean immigrant community in Hong Kong, which criticized the diplomat couple for “irre-sponsibly renouncing their custody of a child who’d been with them more than six years after delaying the naturalization process in Netherlands for years.”
A couple of potential families in Hong Kong showed interest in the adoption, but are struggling to complete the adoption process because of the strict legal qualifications here, Koreans familiar with the incident said.
The Korean Consulate in Hong Kong said it is aware of the situation.
“We could send her back to a Korean orphanage, but she’s been away from Korea for so long, and it would be very difficult for her to re-adapt in Korea,” said Jeong Byeong-bae, a consul of the South Korean consulate in Hong Kong. “So it is for the best under the circumstances to find a Korean family in Hong Kong.”
I understand the anger coming from everybody, but since the various takes are giving me flashbacks of another child in limbo I'm more curious about the parent's decision rather than simplynjoining the bandwagon of eople calling for their heads. After some researching on why people return their adoptive chilren I found this story where the adoptive child turned out to be harmful to the younger children:
The agency didn't tell us about his mental health issues, and they knew he had them. It took us 4 years to figure out that he had Reactive Attachment Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Depression, Fetal Alcohol Effects, and Mood Disorders. By the time we educated ourselves and recognized what was going on, it was too late. Our son was raging in our home everyday and had tried to kill his little sister twice in front of me. This started many trips to the ER and to psyche hospitals. Two in one month.
I found some other takes on the Dutch story but the additional information is minimal. One give the girl's age as 8, the outpouring of support from the Hong Kong Korean community and even this bit of trivia:
In Korea, parents cannot return adopted children, but no such law exists in Hong Kong.
At first read it seems like a laughable sentences. I mean, it poses the questions: Is this incident so crazy that the Hong Kong courts haven't had any history to create a precedent or did Korea experience a time where Korean children were being returned to the orphanages. The outpouring of support from the Korean community should be a good sign about how Koreans feel about adoption but then I find this in a post by the happy couple in Kimchi and Cornbread:
The wrong is this: single mothers in Korea are forced by societal norms to either give up their baby for adoption or have an abortion (Korea has one of the highest abortions in the world). This equates to 6 children per day being put up for adoption, despite the country's low birth rate (the 4th lowest in the world.)
But Koreans do not and will not (for the most part) adopt other Koreans. Bloodlines are important in Korea. So important that they would never adopt another child not related to their family. Especially if it were a boy, who would one day receive his parents' inheritance.
It doesn't shed light on the discrepency in law, ut it's interesting that the attitude of Korea Koreans kind of contradicts the offers of help from the Hong Kong Koreans. Then again, the cynical side of me see the Hong Kong incident as something more to do with uniting against the white devil motif rather than show of support for a girl who has been tainted in the eyes of Koreans.
In the same Google search I also I find that it is possibly illegal to volunteer at an orphanage thanks to an interpreation highlighted by last year's BabopaloozaIncident. In fact volunteering for anything isn't as easy for a foreigner:
Han Heek-young, who works at the information desk at the Seoul Help Center for Foreigners, had also never heard of non-Koreans getting in trouble for volunteering.
"I’ve never even before thought that it could be illegal," she said.
When she called the Immigration Bureau on Friday, officials would not provide her information if she would not tell the nationality of the inquirer. She said officials said the question was important because foreigners for these purposes are divided into two groups: Chinese and everybody else.
Officials said foreigners were less likely to have problems if their volunteer work was unrelated to their paid work, Han said. For example, English teachers volunteering in kindergartens are likely to be suspected of taking money under the table for English instruction.
When Han spoke to immigration officials on Monday, they told her that foreigners should have no trouble volunteering, as long as no money is exchanged, even to recoup costs.
It's somewhat related (if only by the fact that it matches the key words of 'foreigner adoption korea') but it's good to know for the Mokpo foreigners who do help out at the local orphanages.
Update: The story has evolved the past week; Monsters & Critics has this account from the maid:
The woman, who has requested not to be named, worked for the Dutch vice-consul Raymond Poeteray and his wife Meta in Hong Kong and when the family was based in Jakarta in 2002.
She said she thought it strange that the girl, now eight, was so quiet.
'They did not treat her the same way as the son. There was not the love there,' the maid told The Post.
However, the couple issued a declaration which was published in the Dutch daily newspaper De Telegraaf Thursday that rejected the accusations published in the Hong Kong media.
The Poeterays said their eight-year-old daughter Jade, adopted in 2000 as a four-month-old, was suffering from what they called 'commitment anxiety' and that they were advised by the Chinese Social Services to 'place her in foster care temporarily.'
They wrote that 'contrary to what has been written in the media, we do not want to get rid of our daughter. We never even considered giving her up.'
By way of The Lost Nomad I came across the annual Foreigner's Forum. It's only a Seoul thing but the article notes many of the problems that fuel the ex-pat blogs. For example:
“I could not withdraw money from my Korean bank account with my ATM card when I was traveling abroad. But I saw my Korean companions withdraw money without any problem,” said Anne LaDouceur, the moderator of the meeting and a member of the city government’s Foreign Investment Advisory Council.
Some in the audience noted that they could not even use their ATM cards in Korea for several months after they opened new bank accounts here. “Nonghyup recently refused to open my account even though I have lived here for four years and have an alien registration number and a passport. I was ashamed,” said a Nepalese man.
Officials from Woori Bank had a hard time answering the questions, so city officials said they would figure the problems out and provide the information later on the Web site of the Seoul Help Center for Foreigners (http://shc.seoul.go.kr/).
Sound familiar? Unfortunately this is the 9th foreigner forum and having these issues raised here means either that these are surprisingly new challenges or that its a recycling of complaints from last years forum. From what I've experienced with Korean culture I suspect the latter. I tried researching for the minutes of past meetings to make the comparison, and even though the schedule has an item to take up the minutes from the 8th Seoul Town Meeting, the link for further information circularly sends you back to the home page:
13:30 ～ 13:35
13:35 ～ 13:40
Opening Remarks (Vice Mayor)
Welcoming Remarks (FIAC Representative)Brief Follow-up on 8th Seoul Town Meeting (document available on-line at http://shc.seoul.go.kr)
I did find this document, a pdf file that may be the correct link. Unfortunately it really doesn't tell me much; contrast latest foreigner police problem with the 8th forum's collection of policing problems:
1. What have SMG [Seoul Metropolitan Government] done in order to prevent spitting and littering? ⇒ Those people can be caught and be fined. 2. Emergency phone number available 24hours? ⇒ 112 for criminal cases. 3. Ways to report law breakers? ⇒ Dial 112. 4. Good driving habits nurturing law? ⇒ Driving law is applied 5. What do you think about smoking in public place? ⇒ They should be fined. 6. Is it possible to prevent riding motorcycle in sidewalks? ⇒ Clamp down on those riders starting from this coming May. 7. Bus no.3 in Iteawon is blocking the sidewalk at night ⇒ Inform the local officials of the fact. 8. Why policemen don't prohibit riding motorcycle on the side-walk? How to improve traffic conditions in Seoul? ⇒ Pan-National campaign is being scheduled. 9. Blinker light and siren of police patrol cars are bothering. ⇒ In case of emergency, public understanding is required. 10. Discrimination against diplomat cars and US army vehicles. ⇒ Law enforcement is unbiased for everyone 11. Road signs are confusing at times ⇒ Report it to the local government when you find error.
Apart from the minutes there are some other points to the foreigner's forums that make it feel like a half-hearted or even useless attempt at changing a basic element of Korean culture. Elements like the officials from Woori bank not being able to explain their own foreigner policy, the fact that foreigners had to pre-register for a Friday lunch-time meeting, or even logic of offering complimentary tickets to Ballerina who loves B-Boyz.
Given Google's plan for world domination it's hard to imagine why it is having such a hard time getting a foothold in Korea. Then I found this article that explains it all:
A prevalent theory in Korean dotcom circles is that Google failed to impress demanding Korean customers with its lousy service. This is at least what Naver and other major local portals want Koreans to believe.
Choi Mi Jung, who leads Naver's "Knowledge Man" service, a Wikipedia-like online encyclopedia built by the spontaneous participation of Netizens, scoffs at the sloppy interface and unfriendly way Google's Korean site presents its search results. "It is how meticulously their service was designed that made the difference," she says.
However, the real reason behind Google's difficult path in Korea is that its highly praised search technology was rendered practically useless in the Korean language sphere when major portals decided to block Google search robots from crawling around the content they hold, industry observers universally note.
It's a Walled Gardenapproach and it basically means that all information is basically owned by one company. This model works well in a monoculture environment, just like it did during the early North American dial-up days where your Internet provider was also your content provider.
Following the path of AOL that worked so well during the early days of dial-up connectivity, Korean websites decided to build their own "walled gardens" on the net, where users would create content themselves or copy and paste other content they found elsewhere.
But what worked well in the beginning will not scale well when Naver tried to grow:
Experts say Naver will not be successful on the global scene if it refuses to take the approach of sharing data with others.
They warned the dominance of Naver and its operator NHN could become diluted, even on the domestic market where the Web portal has prevailed over the past few years.
"In the 10-year history of the country's Internet business, the title of the leader has changed twice. Naver should not be complacent," said Peter Kim, CEO at UCC site Pandora TV.
"Naver is overly proud and sometimes it appears to be arrogant. That has been a signal that heralds the collapse of the top player. Naver should keep this in mind," he said.
Actually, history here has created an eccentric jinx that any Internet firm claiming the top spot stays there for no longer than three years.
Around the Bloc is travel memoir by Stephanie Elizondo Griest relating "her experiences as a volunteer at a children's shelter in Moscow, a propaganda polisher at the Chinese Communist Party's mouthpiece in Beijing, and a belly dancer among the rumba queens of Havana."
There are plenty of book reviews to judge if it's a good read or not, but what I found fascinating was how Griest tales of interacting with Communist China are eerily similar to waygooken's tales of interacting with South Koreans. There are tons of examples, but here's two dealing with mianzi, the respect of "face" that has hindered so many foreigners. Take for example dealing with a superior:
Late that September, I heard word that Lao Chen wanted to meet with me. Widely rumoured to have been a People's Liberation Army officer in his youth, Lao Chen had the unenviable job of keeping tabs on the danwei's foreign experts. After politely inquiring about my well-being, he announced that nearly all of his experts had requested the following weekend, Chinese National Day, off.
"So we'd like to offer you the opportunity to work in China Daily for us that Sunday and Saturday," he said grandly.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I can't I've already made plans to go to Shanghai then."
"Why don't you think about it for a few days and let me know what you decide?" he countered.
Assuming he misunderstood, I repeated myself. "I'm sorry but I really can't. I'm going to Shanghai for the holiday."
"So think about it and let me know."
I stared at him. What was he trying to do, play some Jedi Knight mind game on me? "But...I know right now that I can't. My friend and I bought plane tickets and booked a hostel in Shanghai weeks ago.
"Think about it, and let me know if you can help us," he repeated, his face stony.
This continued for five excruciating minutes, neither of us giving and inch until someone else entered the room. Then I stalked of, furious at both of us: him for being so difficult to deal with and me for not knowing how. Time like that, I almost envied "ugly Americas" for being so blissfully unaware of their cultural faux pas. Far worse is being cognizant that you're blowing it but are unable to figure out how to stop.
If there was a textbook on native speaker and co-teacher interaction, this would be a textbook example. The key points here are plans made without consultation, illusion of foreigner's choice, and debate by refusal to acknowledge foreigner's statements and the repeating of the statement again. It's so common a pattern that's really expected in all aspects of Korean life and requires some preparation of effective strategies. The easiest example to illustrate this pattern is dealing with vacation.
Another great example of the same-same but different comparison is in the glaring cultural ignorance of African Americans. I already posted about the Korean views about African and the visibly similar and I hinted that what most foreigners experienced wasn't really limited to Korea. Greist confirms this in the same chapter:
I learned this the Saturday afternoon my paper held a free screening of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner for our readers. To give the event some authenticity, Lao Ye asked me (token American) to introduce the program's hostess, a Chinese professor of American culture. Some 250 colleges students showed up that day, and never having seen the movie I lingered beyond my duty. The screening took nearly three hours, as the professor kept on pushing the pause button to expound cultural insight. Her commentary made my blood run cold, though: Not only did she refere to African American as "Negroes," she pronounced it like "Nig-gar-o"--and the the students followed suit. Unease churned in my belly. Should I correct her, at the risk of her losing mianzi? Or let it slide?
After the film ended, the student asked more questions about the present-day status of "Nig-gar-oes," and the professor responded with the stats she probably researched in the 1960s. At last, one girl stumped her: "What's the difference between a drive-in and drive-through?" The professor thought a moment or two before her eyes lit up: "I know--let's ask our American friend!"
I had every intention of promptly sitting back down after my response, but once those 250 pairs of eyes focused on mine, my years of training as a race and diversity facilitator for the dean of students at UT [University of Texas] surged forth as an extemporaneous speech about people of color in my country. When I mentioned that the terms Negro and Colored had been obsolete for as least three decades, the professor--who had been beaming beside me sank into her seat. I quickly tried to return the floor to her, but a dozen hands shot up, each with a question for me. I spoke for nearly fifteen minutes, during witch time the professor left the premises.
My colleagues brought the program to a close, but a clump of students followed me outside for more discussion. Once their numbers dwindle to a manageable half dozen, I invited them over to drink tea. They stared back aghast, as if I'd suggested smoking crack instead. When one boldly agreed, however, the others trotted behind. As soon as we were locked inside my apartment, the real questions spilled forth. Did I have any black friends? Could I trust them? Why were they so violent? Did they really dress the way they did on TV? What made their hair stand so high?
Never actually having met a black person, they had formed their perceptions largely through Hollywood and news coverage of the race riots that erupted on several Chinese college campuses in the 1980s against African students accused of "stealing" their women." I tried to explain racial profiling and stereotyping by drawing a parallel between blacks and people a little closer to home: the highlight oppressed Muslim Uighurs of northwest China. They didn't buy that analogy ("But Uighurs really are that violent!"), but the message seemed to stick when I revealed a few stereotypes that many American had of Chinese. ("But I'm terrible in math!" on protested.)
A quick search on the Internet will reveal that racism and xenophobia is quite prevalent in Korean society. There's tons of blogs, articles, and forum posts to define the treatment that non-Koreans get within Korea. While it's not quite as pronounced as in some othercountries, both do exist and are an unavoidable by-product the Korean monoculture.
Damn Foreigners As previously mentioned, financial institutions recently created some extra restrictions for foreigners and these extras hoops, based more on fear than reality, are a good illustationg of Korea's institutionalized xenophobia:
Foreigners who stayed here less then three months will be banned from opening new accounts, raising concern about possible discrimination against foreigners.
For those foreigners who lived in Korea for more than three months, they can open accounts with the provision of their qualification papers, including work permits and identification certificates.
But they will not be able to access online banking and ATMs in the first three months even after they opened an account. They will need to directly withdraw and transfer money over the counters at banks during business hours.
The industry essentially said that they hold the entire foreigner population responsible for recent incidents of scams and in turn exonerates any Korean national. From a western stand point this seems like trying to swat a fly off your nose with a shot gun withought any though for your head. But in this case it somehow made sense to punish the many to get at the few. When the policy went into effect this fall it wasn't long before the short-sightedness was made apparent and criticized:
When a Chinese resident in Korea went to an ATM machine run by the Korea Post during the Chuseok holidays, he was taken aback by a text that appeared on the screen asking him to confirm his identity at the service counter. Since it was a holiday, the post office was closed, leaving him without cash throughout the break. ... But the blameless Chinese man felt it was discrimination. "They treat us as if we're some kind of imposters," he said. Korea Post says it only meant to protect innocent citizens from fraud, but admitted the measures could have affected another innocent group.
The policy is suspended but there are other laws still in place that specifically target the foreigner community based on an institutionalized foreigner fear; consider the foreigner-illusive credit card:
...I cannot get a credit card in South Korea because I am a foreigner. The banks say giving credit cards to foreigners is risky because they might leave. They give credit cards to unemployed teenagers ... In Australia, anyone can get a credit card. So most foreigners in Korea believe that the Korean banks are racist. We also think that the Korean treatment of the tens of thousands of ethnic Chinese who have been born in Korea or lived here for 50 years - but who can't get Korean passports - is institutional racism.
In the simplest of terms, financial institutions do not trust foreigners. All of them. And the portrayal that foreigners get in the national media doesn't help calm these fears. Starting with the image of foreigners as a illegal migrant workers, news agencies paint their stories with themes of illegal drugs, miscegenation, and the ever popular Chester the Molester (sex-hungry foreign men preying on helpless Korean girls) spin. And all while subtly equating foreigner crime to English teacher crime. Gusts Of Popular Feeling incredibly details the entire history (since 1996) of Korean media's construct of male English teachers and Mongori has a nice coupleofexamples for viewing:
While the main institutions stop at the Korean & non-Korean divide, the more omnipresent monoculture continues the segregation and actually divides the foreigners into the good and the bad. A quick peek into the adventures of foreigners gives us this racial hierarchy:
Thais and Malaysians are ignored by taxi drivers or humiliated in department stores, and Africans are called all sorts of names by uncouth Koreans who see black people for the first time in their lives. Africans actually say that they have never faced such severe discrimination in any other country. In contrast, Caucasians from so-called advanced nations such as the US or European countries are given royal treatment that borders on the absurd even in the eyes of the Caucasians themselves. It is ironic and also disgraceful that Koreans, so sensitive to the discrimination they suffer as the ethnic minority in the West, are so used to discriminating against foreigners at home.
A job posting for North American Caucasians (more on this here) seems to celebrate this pecking order and firmly places African or the visibly similar down at the bottom. Unfortunately, this hierarchy is so tightly bound to the monoculture that most Koreans simply cannot understand this as a violation of human rights.
The African Problem A long post by Jasmine on a 2003 thread in Dave's ESL Cafe illustrates the two main factors in the Korea's African problem. First there's the blatant discrimination,
We were told repeatedly by recruiters that the schools they were hiring for wouldn't hire black people. It took us months to find a job in Korea this time around...always the same story - "I'm not prejudiced but....it's the parents, it's the directors". Not only are they racist, but they lie about it and deny it - which I think is worse.
and then there's the cultural ignorance
Not a day goes by that my boyfriend doesn't hear - "Oh! A-puh-ri-ka saram". He's American. On top of that, he been asked a barage of stupid questions like: are you in a gang? Do you own a gun? Do you play basketball? Nice raggae perm! Like people can't grow curly hair naturally. And, oh, my god, the staring.
The more you look at the discrimination problem, the more you understand that Korea is not alone and in fact all of Asia appears to have the same unfounded belief that lighter skin is righter:
European imperialists are often blamed for bringing the "lighter skin is righter" mentality to indigenes of colonized lands in Africa and Asia. Critics of this mental colonization don't always acknowledge in the same breath that many North African and Asian cultures had placed a premium on light skin PRIOR to European exposure. Indian folk songs praised the beautiful woman who has "the color of butter" (Indian butter is white, not yellow). Pre-colonial Indonesian women used plant-based skin treatments to make their complexion pale.
However, the fact that pre-colonial colorism exists does NOT absolve Europeans of their responsibility for indoctrinating non-European populations with harmful racial ideologies. Pre-colonial colorism in many cultures is fundamentally different from modern Western racism; the vocabulary and assumptions used in the discussion of modern racism are not necessarily helpful or relevant in understanding pre-European-contact attitudes towards complexion.
And within the Asian historical context there is some economic reasoning behind this colorism:
Pre-European-contact colorism occurs in the context of members of the same "race" (quotes being used because "race" is a modern Western concept we are applying anachronistically). Wealthy people did not have to work in the sun, and thus were lighter-complexioned than poor workers and peasants. Light skin became a symbol of wealth and class. Fatness, another physical characteristic associated with a lifestyle of prestige and plenty, was also deemed attractive. Famed medieval North African writer Ibn Battuta described "the most perfect of women in beauty" as "pure white and fat."
But attitudes remain relatively unchanged since the day of feudal landlords; this article about China could have easily been written about Korea and illustrates the modern mentality.
"According to your status in society you receive different benefits and power. Rural people and city people; ordinary people and officials. In such a social structure, we can predict that the Chinese will have very strong feelings of racial discrimination."
Yu believes dark-skinned foreigners are likely to face more obstacles than whites, as many Chinese see them as inferior.
Many have ingrained impressions of African wars, famine and disease from the mass media, says the sociology professor. Plus a perception of a dichotomous West with exclusively well-educated and prosperous whites, and poverty-stricken ethnic minorities.
If colorism is the basis of Asia's African Problem, then, like the rest of Asia, Korea has done little if anything to correct the perception and continues to exacerbates the situation. The Korean monoculture still irresponsibly applies the skin dichotomy to immigrants and continues to construct incorrect images of dark skinned people; the stereotype of the tribal Negro is instilled during childhood and runs around almost unchecked in Korean adult life.
They Don't Mean to be Racist, but... There's something to be said about those embarrassing moments when you make an ass out of yourself. And then there's something to be said about those embarrassing moments when you make an ass out of yourself on tv. But what is some culture's comedic blunder is another's comedic gold. The recent Misuda scandal is a good example to illustrates a cultural ignorance that's almost understandable when displayed in the vacuum caused by the Korean monoculture.
All was as it should be—maybe—until lovely African-American Leslie Benfield was performing a rendition of a Korean song. It was then that one of the panel—singer Cheon Myeong-hun—jumped up on stage wearing a rasta wig and began chanting "sikameos, sikameos," a reference to a black-face routine made famous by comedian Lee Bong-won."
The anger from the incident shows that Koreans understand that racism is bad thing, or at least that it is wrong to insult a pretty girl, but the producers somehow didn't know that Black Face Comedy in front of the African American may be considered a social faux pas. At first the show refused to apologize:
The show’s production team, however, told StarNews there was no racist intent behind Cheon’s stunt. They explained Cheon did what he did to give the show’s atmosphere a bit of a boost. They also said they have no intention of dropping Cheon from the show.
A couple months later an apologetic interview with the woman in question, Leslie Benfield, emerges and tells a different story.
"Oh, you mean the Shikamoes thing? Yes, I was really surprised they left that in." I was perplexed expecting her to be livid, given that "sikeomeotta" (from which "Shikemoes" derives) means "jet-black." However instead of siding with recent public animosity and demanding his head on a proverbial platter as many of Korea's legions of online "netizens" have done, she surprises me again with, "I feel sorry for him. I heard he got fired for it."
She continues, "Anyone who lives abroad experiences ignorance." She said instead of singling out one person and demanding an apology for their actions, we should think about why we find certain things funny. It was a statement that really made me think, especially as I watched Sacha Baron Cohen's infamous character Borat.
For those who are still not satisfied, he apologized to her in person after the show.
Cultural ignorance isn't just limited to television. It creeps up now an then in unexpected ways. Take, for example the entry for advertising that is the only graphic used within the entry. Ruminations in Korea has more on the entry and a brief peek into the history of Slavery in Korea. Or, better yet, take the Hitler Bars, a series of Nazi themed bars sprinkled around Korea. An interview with an owner reveals that, like the producers of Misuda, he simply didn't know that spending 50,000,000 on a bar who's patron was responsible for one of the worst genocides known to mankind (let alone ignoring the imperial Japaneseconnection) would be a bad idea. And, while yellow star cocktails may seem like an amazing black-humour novelty drink, when Koreans add anger to this ignorance and they create their own Konglish style of anti-semitisicm:
Like the African problem, the fascination (and consequential) ignorance of German Nazism goes beyond the Korean monoculture and is prevalent is other parts of Asia thanks to a lack of education:
In some parts of the world, World War II is not taught in schools as a battle of political ideologies, but as a conventional war. This type of education means that Hitler and the Nazi Party are not treated as war criminals or evil, but merely as charismatic and powerful leaders of countries during wartime. Some east Asians are interested in what Adolf Hitler said about east Asian history and philosophy; the Nazi work ethic; as well as militaries that wore Hugo Boss uniforms and drove tanks made by Porsche and Mercedes-Benz.George Burdi, the former head of the neo-Nazi record label Resistance Records, claimed to have sold many CDs to Japan, because some Japanese believed themselves to be the white men of the east. In Turkey, Hitler's book Mein Kampf is an annual bestseller.
From a Korean perspective however it seems that both scandals could be avoided if somebody in charge took the time and effort to understand the cultural difference. While Koreans make so much effort (at least from personal experience, here in Mokpo) to educate the foreigners to the Korean Way™, they don't recognize anything outside of their monoculture and in turn fail to establish cultural equivalents. Equivalents like the emotions generated by Golliwog and Comfort Women toys.
The Uncategorizable A system that enforces a racial hierarchy breaks down when dealing with Mixed-Bloods; the monoculture segregates pure and impure Koreans the same way that it segregates Korean against Non-Korean and White against Black. How close Multiethnic Koreans get to the respect jackpot depends on how well they blend into the hierarchy's good kind of people. Again this phenomenon isn't localized to Korea and different Asian countries have their own take their own emerging multiethnic populations:
I recently noticed that TV in Japan is filled with half Asian and half White people, who are simply called “half”. I was shocked to find that even kid’s programs on TV have many “half” people. I suppose the “half” people represent the Japanese desire to be more international. What is interesting is that they no longer are interested in 100% White people. The overt idolization of white people is apparently over. They now prefer somewhere in between. I would imagine that this trend is also being fueled by the popularity of White-male Asian-female couples in the 80s and 90s. Their kids are now in their teens, ready to sing and dance.
The popular Korean example is Hines Ward, the first Korean-American to win the Super Bowl MVP award. The monoculture (imported by his fellow Korean immigrants in U.S.A.) at first shunned him because of his African-American father and his Korean mother but later, after he became famous, he was suddenly Korea's favourite son. The news agencies create the impression that any Korean, once they have found fame and fortune, would naturally love to return their ancestral home. The story outside of the media tells a different story:
From April 3 through May 30, 2006, Ward returned to his birthplace of Seoul for the first time since his parents moved to the United States when he was one year old. Ward used his celebrity status to arrange "hope-sharing" meetings with multiracial Korean children and to encourage social and political reform. Ward cried when describing the discrimination he faced. At one hope-sharing meeting, he told a group of children, "If the country can accept me for who I am and accept me for being a Korean, I'm pretty sure that this country can change and accept you for who you are." On his final day in Korea, he donated $1 million USD to create the Hines Ward Helping Hands Foundation, which the AP called "a foundation to help mixed-race children like himself in South Korea, where they have suffered discrimination."
And the agencies that did acknowledge his mixed parentage did so by highlighting his Korean mom and downplay his African American dad:
One dangerous tendency I noted, from not only conversations with my friend, but also with the way the Korean media talks about him, is the way Ward's mother's "good" seems played against the African-American father's "bad." This is what's responsible for my friend's easy assumption that Mr. Hines may have a contentious relationship with blackness, which resembles the somewhat "disciplinary" tone that I sense in the way blackness-as-deadbeat-father is or may be played against sacrifice-as-Korean-mother.
Korea the Multicultural If Hines Ward did anything, he at least became a poster child for anti-discrimination in Korea, being herald as the symbol of South Korea's multiculturalism:
Capping it all was Ward’s triumphant visit last month to his native South Korea, where he was feted by its president and hailed by the local media as a Korean hero and a symbol of new South Korean multiculturalism.
The monoculture's dominance should be evidence enough that the level of multiculturalism is at best a novelty in Korea; calling Ward a symbol of Korean multiculturalism then borders on irony since, at last count, most English teachers have spent more time living in Korea than Ward. But there's now a celebrity associated with the problem and that in turn is stirring up some self reflection. But a another hidden factor for that self reflection is that Asian countries have the same aging population problem as other industrialized countries:
The name Sony summons visions of all things Japanese. Yet its board chairman, Iwao Nakatani, recently called for mass immigration, opening Japan to different faces and influences.
Mr Nakatani is worried because Japanese are living longer, yet having fewer children. The result is a shrinking workforce which threatens economic growth.
The real challenge to the Korea's racism and xenophobia is its own desire to maintain economic growth; more and more Koreans are realizing that the monoculture must change if they're going maintain their western-like standard of life:
As many as 10,000 Vietnamese brides enter Korea each year, and with an ageing population and low birth rates the country’s dependence on foreign labor is going to intensify. We should not look down on these people because our economy is better off. These are pillars of the Korean economy who work in the “three D” (difficult, dangerous and dirty) areas of Korean industry, working hard for low wages without complaint. Is it not overly cruel to put them to work, directing them with body language, the day after they arrive still confused? They are not slaves sold here for low wages. We need a mature attitude that recognizes their human dignity and individuality.
Even though it will look like Hines Ward single handily brought multiclturalism to Korea, behind the scenes it'll because of Korean economic policies. As a brilliant counter-example, the neighboring NorthKoreans who have a different, internal economic model are free from such financial pressures:
Such changes have prompted North Korea's Rodong Shinmun (the Workers Party`s paper) to fiercely criticize the South Korean government.
It said, "South Korea is denying its national race and its 5,000-year history by professing to be a multiracial nation. Such moves will Americanize Korea, ruin its past history and weaken the power to combat dominative U.S. forces."
The North Korea idea to associate America as the source the multiculturalism is somewhat incorrect. Recently the pure foreigner population broke the 1,000,000 mark but it's the Chinese immigrants who make up the largest group, following by Vietnamese, Filipinos, and Thais. And the increase of foreigners implies that the multiethnic population will also grow:
In fact, demographic trends indicate that by 2020, there will be considerably more than 1.5 million mixed-race Koreans. One in three newborns will be multi-racial, and one in five people under the age of 20 will be multi-racial. For the next 15 years at least, South Korea is going to be an easy target for those wanting to highlight its xenophobia - but given its dynamic demographic nature, a multicultural Korea may not be far away.
While economic policies will break down racist and xenophobic laws in Korea (and in theory make everybody sign and dance in a big happy circle -- just like America), the mechanism that will create the new generation of multiethnic Koreans is the monoculture itself:
Tens of thousands of South Korean men look to China, Vietnam and beyond for wives, in response to a shortage of brides caused by a generation of gender-selective births. Since ultrasounds became widely available in the 1980s, parents in South Korea could screen out undesirable daughters, resulting in a gender imbalance of 113 males for every 100 females. The countryside’s shortage of marriage-age women is exacerbated, with young women migrating to the cities and escaping the patriarchal lifestyle of their youth, in search of careers and urban husbands. The trend also diversifies the homogeneous country while aggravating comparable shortages of women in China and elsewhere. With men willing to pay up to $20,000 to tie the knot, the global trade in wives is quickly becoming big business.
With a poster boy, economic incentives and a bunch of babies who are a byproduct of a self-destructing monoculture it seems like Korea (well, South Korea) is slowly warming up to the idea of a multiethnic society that against racism and xenophobia:
Office worker Lee Eun-yeong (30) received a proposal from a Canadian friend, a man working at a Korean company, to go to a sogaeting. Eun-yeong happily said yes. “Thinking that your lover and life partner must be a Korean man is so old-fashioned, isn’t it? My parents? I’ll think they’ll be ok with having a foreign son-in-law.”
Korean society is quickly becoming multi-cultural with a diverse population. The number of foreigners living in Korea passed 1 million on the 24th of last month. That is 2% of our population.
Of course the country calling itself multicultural because of 2% seems, by comparison to other more, establish multicultural countries, a bit boastful:
By the beginning of the 21st century, the proportion of people with British, French, and/or Canadian ethnic origins had dropped to below one-half of the total population (46%). (The term “Canadian” ethnic origin was first introduced in the 1996 census.) An ethnic diversity survey published by Statistics Canada in 2003 showed that 21% of the population aged 15 years and older was of British-only ancestry, while 10% reported only French origins, 8% were Canadian only, and 7% were a mix of these three origins.
Jesus. This one hell of a blog post. Since I'm only a couple rungs down from True Korean on the Korea Racial Hierarchy™ my experience differs from otherpeople. I can however recognize the different levels of treatment I get here Mokpo, be it in the staring contests I get into with stragers, random children yelling "Hello, how are you!" from across the street, or even in the service that may be a novelty not shared by some:
The men sitting next to us bobbed their heads and smoked. We made a sort of wordless toast to the music, and the three of them, Yoo-te and the men, asked us if we were familiar with the Korean concept of service-ah. "Service," Konglish again, and yes we were. Free stuff (sweet!). Yoo-te took down a fresh bottle of Hennessy V.S.O.P, and cracked the plastic. Woaaahhh, thought we, hold on a sec. Free?, at over $160 on the menu, we had to confirm. The men poured shots, and together, to a fuzzy-bliss soundtrack, we shouted "gambay!" and took in the smoky pleasure that is good cognac.
This Thursday one of my schools decided to take me out to lunch. Beautiful! They even took me a to a vegetarian restaurant, because they weren't sure what I could eat or not. But then they started to pick me apart for the way I eat with my chopsticks.
I eat with these people every week in the cafeteria, they've seen how I eat with chopsticks, and have never said anything. Now we're in a restaurant and they're making a big deal about it. It was so embarrassing. They were being very loud and making a big scene showing me how to do it. People were starting to watch.
I guess I'm pretty lucky in that regards.
I know that I'm just wading into the this area of Korean social studies; Scribblings of the Metropolitician, The Marmot's Hole, Foreign Dispatches, and even ROK Drop are all better places to hang out for recommended reading since they love this stuff and do a better job at me at following the day to day stories.
