Let’s see: Personal Stuff Lime got a job today! Short term (till mid-September), but she wanted that, while she studies for the Neverending Huge Giant Evil Big-Boss (for you arcade game fans out there) Exam. For two months she’ll be working part-time in a hospital near our home. We’re going to Hong Kong next week. Just for a few days, because Lime won’t be able to travel the rest of the summer. I’m bringing my computer and writing on the plane, and for at least an hour a day. But travel is still travel, right? Theere’s a Korean expression I …
Category: KOREA
Wonmi Ghosts and Wonjjang Proofs
I was hiking Wonmisan (Wonmi Mountain) just now. It was dark, and got me to thinking about ghost stories. I’m supposed to be working on one independently, but I let it stall. It’s for this call for stories, but the problem is, I don’t really know any famous Korean ghost stories. When I’ve asked around, a lot of people have said there isn’t a “most famous” Korean ghost story, and couldn’t really name me individual particular ones. What they did seem familiar with was types of ghosts — the “hungry ghosts” to whom scraps of food are thrown during ancestral …
Catholics 1, Riot Cops 0
A brief note: as always with blogs by foreigners in Korea, caveat emptor. I’ve done a lot of work confirming a lot of this, but there are many points of view I’ve not represented. Yes, some protesters have been badly behaved. Yes, I haven’t been at the protests daily, like Scott Burgeson. Yes, I rely on my fiancée Lime for some news, some confirmation, and she’s a pretty good wingperson (er?) for photography, pointing out things I hadn’t noticed myself. Anyway, if this interests you, read other people’s posts about this whole series of events — I recommend Gusts of …
& Here Once Again Commences the Deluge. (Wherein Students Grumble Their Way to a Higher Grade… Not!)
The grades went up late this afternoon, and then I took Lime out to celebrate. She has a job interview next week, and I’m done grading. On the way home, though, I joked with her that my email inbox would be full of emails from students begging for a higher grade. This is a binannual ritual in Korea: professors enter grades into the system, and then students email pointlessly begging to have their grades increased by some modest, or immodest amount. Korean professors claim that this is much rarer occurrence between Korean students and themselves — that Korean students seem …
Only One?
There’s a student in one of my classes who got herself an unofficial final grade of 115.7% in one of the classes she took with me. The deal is that there’s a class blog, and students who post constantly during semester can do so at an unlimited amount, provided it’s quality stuff. They get one point per post, and one point per comment on others’ posts, or in response to comments made on their own posts. This one student posted fifteen times during the semester — a little more than once a week — and she left nearly thirty comments …
Inept Security Theater
It’s one thing when people have to put up with security theater in the airports of the world, but my sense is that, unlike one might expect, the Korean airport security have not quite upped the ante on pointless and officious ritual. It’s possible to get through security relatively quickly. Though, uh, that might not be such a good thing. Recent high rankings for Korea’s Incheon Airport — the main international airport in the country — in customer service and airport quality seem to ring a bit hollow, once you hear the story that just hit the news… Because you …
Using Technology in Classrooms
You know, I always find it interesting how people like to talk up the idea of using technologies in the classroom to help students “learn in new ways.” The fact of the matter is, learning in new ways is exactly what is making classrooms look increasingly obsolete. At least, classrooms as we know them today. Often enough, teachers seem to think so deep inside the box you sometimes wonder whether they even feel its cardboard walls anymore. For example, the computer in the classroom. Very often when I see computers in classrooms, I see them used either as a portal …
Greased Shipping Containers
Why do people keep saying Lee Myung Bak won with a “landslide” or “overwhelming” majority? (Example here, but I’ve seen it time and time again all over the Korexpat blogosphere.) Is Wikipedia’s entry on Lee wrong? Lee won the presidential election in December 2007 with 48.7% of the vote… and Voter turnout was one of the lowest ever for a presidential election in South Korea. Or is is a “landslide victory” now less than a majority of an apathetic voter turnout? I mean, even the examples in Canada (for example, which has a consistently multiparty election system) only include cases …
The Mountain’s Just Not Enough Anymore
As I’ve recently mentioned, I’m saving my protests-related observations for an article, but Matt has a great post up here. And I say that not just because he links to my comments, either. Gusts of Popular Feeling is one of those kinds of sites I’d aspire to run something like if I wasn’t just so completely worn out with/by/about Korea these days. This post has been, in part, inspired indirectly by things he and Joe Mondello have had to say of late, for their interest, engagement, and apparent happiness here. The contrast has shocked me into reflection, and the reflection …
Why SF Has Failed to Put Down Roots in Korea, Part I: To Start With, Questions…
I had a post I was going to write, about fantasy, SF, and the demonstrations going on in Seoul these days, but I decided to pitch it as an article idea. The editor to whom I pitched it liked the concept, so I’m binning that post to keep the juice for my article. That leaves me with two things to write this summer about SF and Korea. The article on the protests is a theme I’m putting off limits, but the paper on the general failure of the SF genre to take root in Korea in is something I can, …