Happy Earthday. (It was celebrated on the weekend in Seoul. I missed it. Aiesh!)
Category: KOREA
From a Student Paper
I’m grading at the moment, and I ran across something so priceless I couldn’t NOT share. (I am not mentioning the student’s name, so it’s anonymous, but as a piece of observation by someone from another part of Northeast Asia, it’s fascinating and made me laugh aloud!) It’s from a paper discussing the hybridity of Korean popular culture, and what foreign influences have affected Korean popular culture. It’s written by a foreign student who had the following to say about her experiences of “culture crash” (ie. Culture Shock) and the shock of coming into contact with real-life Korean culture, in …
James on Wonder Girls
(START UPDATE #1 — 2:12 am same night): Well, Lime tells me that, no, it really is “boys and ajeoshis” who are the main consumers of Wonder Girls CDs. If this is the case, then this adds a more disturbing layer to my reading of the Tell Me video, since that would mean it’s a representation of a “girl’s fantasy” that’s constructed for the edification of male consumers. But the thing I have to wonder is, was the band aimed at male consumers from the beginning — from the release of “Tell Me”? And is it really true that the …
The Rip-Off
Some weeks, things really do raise my hackles. It’s the concatenation of all kinds of things that are probably universal, but which in Korea are much more in-your-face or more, I don’t know, commonly accepted. What’s hitting me more and more is how the atmosphere of acceptability impacts negatively on individuals and on society in general. That’s what I’m focusing on now, here in this post.
Student Culture & Student Expectations
I recently posted about student expectations with regard to course difficulty. Students — the same ones — have been mentioning, again, how difficult my two content courses are. This is not surprising, really, since in one we’ve been discussing the contribution of African-American popular culture to mainstream American (and really, global) popular culture — in terms not just of tangible contributions like to the musical language, to language itself, to style, to abstract ideas like “cool,” but also how African-American culture (or certain understandings [and misunderstandings] of aspects of it) got taken up consciously by, say, the beats, as an …
Brain-Cardio: Should University Be Easy?
(UPDATE: I’ve reflected further on student expectations and culture here, in part as a response to comments to this post. If you want to read it, you’ll have to log in.) Today, I was discussing next week’s work in one of my classes, and the third student in a row commented that the book I’d assigned for reading is not easy. I said, “I know. It’s difficult. It’s weird. It’s about stuff that happened before you were born, or when you were little babies. It’s about technology, and cops, and weird stuff that feels like it has nothing to do …
Thank You, Gim Hyung Tae
I don’t know whether he’d like or approve of any of my fictional depictions of Korea, but I find Gim Hyung Tae a great inspiration in that area. Whenever I’m writing anything trippy, weird, or odd about this country in my fiction, I turn to his music for inspiration. It’s a strange combination of trance, rock, folk, and 뽕짝 — in proportions that vary from song to song and album to album, but always in proportions that both work, and sound absolutely like Gim Hyung Tae. By the way, if you’re looking for his CDs, you’d be best to ask …
많이먹어라…
Sometimes, you just have to wonder what makes people behave the way they do. When I arrived at the professors’ cafeteria this evening for dinner, I noticed this weird-looking guy staring at me constantly as I made my way up the line, adding food to my tray. When I’d finished, I stopped to get a cup of water, and by then he was staring directly at me. I noticed that he had a face like, well, like a slab of tenderized beef… meaning, I think the man had partaken in more than his fair share of fisticuffs. And, of course, …
Popular Gusts Blow Through Salon
Matt at Gusts of Popular Feeling was mentioned in today’s installement of the column at Salon called How the World Works. I’ve long considered Matt one of the best bloggers on Korea, period, and would like to take a development history course from him if he were to offer one — I know I’d learn a lot — so if you haven’t checked him out, do so. (The Salon column was okay, too.) Thanks for the unwitting heads-up, Tristan!
Ajummas Gone Wild
Via Justino’s Hep Jive, another of those Youtube videos that reveals something about what it’s like to be in Korea. LJers, check the Youtube video here, and pop over to here and login to see my comments following the video. I’m not complaining, whining, griping, but really, seriously, that’s what plenty of older people (of both sexes, but just more often older women) are like in South Korea. Which is something plenty of Koreans have been around all their lives and sort-of accept as “the way it is”… though it annoys younger South Koreans too, believe me I know. I’ve …