Usually, we use that acronym — Too Much Information, TMI — to respond when someone is disclosing information about herself or himself that strays beyond the boundaries of what we’re willing to listen to: the quality of recent bowel movements, what it feels like to have a colonoscopy, why vomiting this food is grosser than vomiting that food, weird sexual proclivities, and so on. However in this case, I’m referring to the kind of information requested by a major Korean company that shall remain nameless and the questions in their application form. Now, I must repeat, the company must remain …
Category: KOREA
Anju? No Review…
Look, I am willing to adapt to a different culture, I really am. I understand that in Korean drinking establishments — especially the kinds of places where soju is available and sold for a pittance — it is traditional to expect customers to order some food, and it’s considered unusual for someone to order drinks and no food. I get that. If little hole-in-the-wall places didn’t make people buy food, they’d go out of business in no time, plus given the local genetics (in terms of capacity for alcohol metabolization), it makes sense to insist people consume something that will …
Film List… Thoughts, Anyone?
So, I have just had a lit class dropped from my schedule and a film classes added, and while I cannot complain — the film class is an interesting opportunity, and a block of 3 hours which makes watching and discussing a film in a single go quite a lot easier — I am hurrying to put together a list of films we’ll be watching. It’s a mix of British and American films, through which students are supposed to be able to get a better handle on culture, history, and the commercial context of films. So far, my list includes …
ER Horror… and Why I Think “Just Bear It” is so Toxic
Miss Jiwaku needed to go to the ER the other night — no worries, she turned out surprisingly okay — but we saw people in pain, and the worst pain we saw was, indeed, emotional. There was a family in which the son had some kind of respiratory problem. He’d just had minor surgery and was recovering. His mom and younger brother had brought him in, and I can only guess that the father had been out with his buddies, drinking, because he seemed to show up all of a sudden and start shouting at people. Yes, shouting: it was …
Chew on This…
A teacher is a man who must talk for an hour. — Ezra Pound, in (I think it was) Guide to Kulchur. And he is, gender-exclusivity aside — plenty of women must talk for an hour too — quite right in this observation. The teacher must talk whether talking educates, or does not educate. The teacher is employed as one who “teaches” and there are all kinds of expectations that may make teaching a rather different endeavour from educating. Not that one should take Pound at his word all the time; he was a nut. But he also claims somewhere in …
박민규의 지구 영웅 전설과 카스테라
Park Min Gyu is a Korean author that has been recommended to me by several people, independent of one another. After hearing about my novella “Wonjjang and the Madman of Pyongyang,” Stephen Epstein recommended Park’s book 지구 영웅 전설, which I’ll render here sloppily as World Hero Legend or, a little less sloppily, as The Legend of the Earth’s Superheroes, a novel featuring a Korean supe who supposedly sets out to become a superhero and ends up calling himself “Banana-man” and ends up being a kind of gopher or page for American heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman (who sends …
Subways and Culture
Once again, I’m linking to Matt’s site, this time where he links an article on how the seats reserved for the old, pregnant, ill, weak, and disabled are, well… some old people seem to think those seats are just for old people, and doing things like shouting at pregnant women for sitting in those seats. Or, in one case, getting into a fight to the death over who gets to sit there. And, well, you know how it is: nobody’s really stepping up to tell them, “No, you have it wrong you crotchety old bastard, now STFU before someone knocks …
Students: Do They Have Human Rights?
The answer to the above question is such that one would hope everyone working with kids would say, “Yes.” And to their credit, some teachers, parents, and students agree, as they showed by hosting an event back in July: Seven chapters of the progressive Korean Teachers and Education Workers’ Union, the Parents Association for True Education, and the youth human rights group Asunaro will host an event Wednesday to launch the Seoul headquarters for rules on students’ human rights. Can you imagine who disagreed? In response, the conservative Korean Federation of Teachers’ Associations released a commentary Tuesday saying, “Legislating laws on …
“… For Your Nation…”
Okay, so, imagine you’re a trilingual Korean. When you’re interviewed by a certain nationalistic, ridiculous TV station — not that I’ll name it specifically, ahem — and they explain the ridiculously low pay they’re offering by explaining that you are, in being offered this job, given a chance to do work “for your nation,” which of the following do you do? (a) laugh in the their face (b) politely ask for more money knowing you won’t get it, and say, “Well, I can make more money teaching in a hakwon, so I think that would be wiser for me.” (c) …
이끼 (Moss)
Well, it’s been a while since I saw a Korean film that I couldn’t quite understand with my limited Korean. (Of course some lines go over my head, but I usually get the gist.) This film, on the other hand, frustrated me like mad. I think part of the reason–probably because it’s based on a comic book–is that there is a lot of non-action action. What I mean by that is, there are a lot of sequences that serve the same function as action sequences, but which actually feature characters either standing still or movingly only a little. Frankly, the …