Category: KOREA

The Hub of… Outmoded Software Shackles?

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In one of her essays, Ursula K. Le Guin described a Native American culture (I think it was) in which the metaphor for moving in the future was of people walking backwards — looking into the past, which can at least be seen, if not always so clearly, and walking blindly into the unforeseeable future. This metaphor came to mind today as I logged onto my Gmail account on one of the computers at my department office. At the top of the screen was a note informing anyone using the PC that Google was discontinuing support for the browser I …

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Ze Mad Rushin’

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No, this is not a post about Rasputin, but about the first day of the spring semester, which was today. I had the first class for three of my four courses today. I’m not sure if it’s just that one of the two office assistants (the less helpful  one, generally speaking) quit last week, but something has left our remaining office staff in a tailspin. I had syllabi for only one of my courses (the others were lost until after the second class had finished), and the attendance sheets are blank in the front, as I’ve never seen them before. …

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I’m Back in Korea, And Yes, It’s Just Food Poisoning

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I got back to Korea this morning. Just in case anyone was wondering. No major delay in the flight, no big problems. I am sleepy, but had to bang out a syllabus for that Business Across Cultures course. Yay! The Corporation is available online. (In a few places.) By the way, as the KCDC gotten more paranoid or something? I handed in my health questionnaire form, with check marks on diarrhea and vomiting among my experiences in the last ten days. The guy who was collecting the papers gave me a shocked, slightly horrified look — which suggests a lot …

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It is to Flunk

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I was grading a stack of student assignments — specifically, feedback on readings, which I make them do on the theory that it helps them prepare for discussions of the texts — when I ran across a particularly saddening passage in response to “The Multiculture,” an essay about Torontonian multiculturalism, which I’ll only paraphrase here: If I were a Torontonian, I would look at foreigners in two ways. In one way, I’d see them as invaders, because they would be speaking foreign languages and bringing foreign customs to my land. But I would also see them as bringing new life …

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A Random Linkdump and Concert Tonight…

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No time to post anything too significant today, or for the next couple of days. Oh yeah: this is late notice, y’all, but… Hwang Shin Hae Band is playing tonight. No idea if there are tickets available but I’ll be there a few hours early, trying to get one! Show’s at 8, and here’s a map to the venue — the Sang Sang Madang live hall… So anyway — my content free post of… Shiny Links! Some stories by people you should know about: Tina Connolly’s “Hard Choices” at Brain Harvest (or play the game, made by Kaolin Fire, here) …

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Orcs!

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This entry is part 28 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

One of the fascinating things that keeps coming up in my Korean lessons is the generation gap. It’s not that I was unaware of this before, but my tutor has made a careful point of noting when she shows  me a word that older people either won’t find appropriate in speech, or which she considers a “young people” word. One example is 찌질하다, which is a word I can’t quite translate into English. My tutor explained it as something that someone would say to a friend who is acting like goof or a geek, but at a party a few …

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Not Quite Foucault, But…

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I’m grading final exams from my Media English course — where, unlike what the title might suggest, we didn’t just use media to boost English. Instead, we looked at issues ranging from copyright, User Created Content (or User Generated Content) online, censorship in media, the power of one medium to supplant another, the politics of (ostensibly) non-political films, and so on. Personally, I thought it was a great class, but the real proof is in the pudding. And though the students drafted the majority of the final exam — with excellent, excellent questions — the final question was mine. There’s …

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Back in the [Korean Study] Saddle Again

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Let’s see, in my notebook there are the following new vocabulary terms: 신상 정보: personal ID information 생물측 정보: biometric information 심리학: psychology 작업 멘트: pickup line 몸이 좋[지않]다: to [not] have a good body 핸드폰 번호 따다: to get [someone’s] phone number 세계 구역기구: The WTO 합병하다: to take over [something], for example, the WTO taking over the UN. 세상: universe (to be used in the context of discussing baby universes) 사고 | 나다: accident | occur (occur being the verb for accident) 화학전쟁: biowar[fare?] 증거: evidence These words, of course, are all related to the two stories I’ve …

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On Roh’s Death, Steve Reich, and the Tao of Imagining Sisyphus Happy

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I’ve been saddened by what happened recently in regard to ex-President Roh’s suicide. Not the suicide itself, or all of the political wrangling related to it.I’m saddened because I fear suicides will worsen here, for the next while. Korea has a serious suicide problem. It’s the number one killer of people in their twenties, as many blogs are eager to state. It’s the kind of thing many people think about in their youth, of course. But suicide is tragically common here, and in recent days a number of people have talked about it with me. Korean people, I mean. Young …

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