You’d think that, after I told my students that their absence from class tonight would be excused on account of it being so close to Chuseok, as long as they sent me an email before 5:00pm, in English, informing me that they would not be attending, it would have sunk in. You’d think that my saying, “Write badly in English, okay, write in Korean, not okay,” would’ve had some impact. You’d think that considering I’m teaching them English, they might think to email me in English… or at least to attempt it. Or at least babelfish it, though that’s a …
Category: KOREA
It’s Chuseok,And You Know What That Means
It means tons of hours-long traffic jams—even on the nation’s highways— grocery stores basically full of people, bank ATMs running out of money, and general craziness till sometime next Tuesday. For me, Chuseok isn’t such a special time. I mean, I can grasp how it means a lot to people here; though it’s more like Thanksgiving in North American culture in terms of the content and practices of the holiday, it’s an event that matches Christmas on the Western scale… the biggest holiday of the year. I understand that. I just don’t really feel it. For me, it’s more like, …
Foreign Fiction About Korea
I don’t often get a chance to stick something in the two categories Korea and Lit, so I’m excited. Here’s a list of short fiction about Korea in English. It’s mainly by non-Koreans… and the list also includes a link to a similar page for novels in English about the Korean War. That’d make an interesting area for some Korean lit major in which to draft a doctoral thesis, I bet: foreign depictions of Korea through the lens of war.
New Korean Expression
같은 값이면 다홍치마. It came up in conversation the other night, and Lime and her friend couldn’t explain it to me, so I asked Chullsung here at work. He explained that it was something like, “If the two skirts are the same price, I’ll take the fancy royal red one!” Something roughly like that. 다홍 is some kind of word for red, which I could perhaps have guessed knowing that 홍차 is “red tea”. Apparently this means something about choosing the better of two options, given that each one comes at about the same “price”: the nicer of two men, …
FAQ: Standard Questions In Korea
Note: these answers are very dated: this FAQ is from 2005. What’s a faq? FAQ means: Frequently Asked Questions Frequently means “often”. So a FAQ is a list of common questions and answers. Sometimes foreigners hear the same question many times in Korea. This FAQ answers these kinds of questions. Koreans can learn all their idle wonderings about me, while people who’ve never lived in Korea can get a sense of the kinds of questions I get asked all the time by total strangers. They’re also the kinds of answers that, in large part, I cannot give in a …