Category: KOREA

Debito Arudou’s “Micro-Aggressions”: What Really Drives the Highly Sensitive Expat Crazy

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UPDATE: I’ve been thinking about this post, and I think the HSP concept may be just as flaky as the notion of “microaggressions” (at least as Debito Arudou presents it); it seems to me there’s a simpler explanation possible, which is this: many, many of the people whom I’ve known in Korea who were constantly dogged by the drive to understand why certain kinds of behaviour were so common here, were humanities majors. Humanities majors, when they actually are properly trained, tend to be analysis machines, and just as nature only punishes the most extreme of extravangances in phenotype (the Irish …

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Ze Art Off Traduction…

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Earlier this semester, I noticed a senior student had signed up for an intro-level conversation course. I asked her what she was doing there, and she just kind of shrugged. When I told her that she and I both knew she didn’t need the course, she told me it was a requirement for graduation. Now, a sensible administration would provide a simple test for students to qualify for a waiver on this particular course… which by definition makes it impossible for us to have such a system, because our administration is useless and intractable. So I told her, point blank, …

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Fruitful

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I have in the past written about negative things in my experience in Korea, and not as much (especially in recent years) about positive experiences. So I thought I’d talk about a positive one, and believe it or not, it was a class discussion of the recent blackface incident on MBC TV. 

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Coming to Seoul: Dance Performance of Shaun Tan’s The Arrival

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In the first week of May 2012, the New Zealand group Red Leap Theater (a dance company, by the looks of it) will be performing their rendition of Shaun Tan’s award-winning (and wonderful) wordless graphic novel The Arrival. I’m a huge fan of the book, and have tickets booked for Miss Jiwaku, myself, and our friend Sanko. The performance will be at the LG Arts Center, and you can book tickets here. It’s selling out quickly, so if you are in Seoul and like fantasy or SF, this is a special treat unlikely to be repeated. Tickets are 30,000, 50,000, …

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Blackface, Korean Media, and the Context of the American Vaudeville Show

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Apparently, there has been an explosion online regarding an incident in which Korean performers donned  blackface for a performance over the Lunar New Year: Yeah. And this isn’t all that rare in Korean media. In fact, Matt over at Gusts of Popular Feeling hits the highlights with an excellent and carefully-researched history of Three Decades of Blackface in Korea, though it’s not an exhaustive history — he doesn’t get into every example. Just the big ones, and especially those in programs (as opposed to in advertisements). Like, for example, the all-Korean production of Roots here. Yeah, seriously. Go give it …

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