Two separate forms of disconnection, I’m on about here. One, I’m reading Pico Iyer, on the recommendation of ___, and the other, I’m getting annoyed with some kind of glitch in my on-campus net service. Getting internet connection for free is cool. Sort of. It’s cool when it works, but for the last few days, it’s only been working sort-of. Connection drops out for a little while, or else I get flagged as having a virus — ha, yeah, the Ubuntu Linux system is so vulnerable to computer viruses! The University server seems to think that continuous connection with updates, …
Category: KOREA
Zuper Kim
Hilarious, even if it’s also a little disturbingly close to reality. (Via the esteemed Marmot.)
A Riot in North Korea?
Andrei Lankov reports what little is known, and why it might be significant.
Korean Women and the Upper Limits
Jodi’s posted on The Glass Ceiling in Korea. Excellent as usual. Go read. Also on the subject, Lost Nomad pointed at this article. Ah well, at least adultery by wives in on the rise in Korea, reports Marmot. During dinner with an old friend, I was discussing the fact that red light districts are so well-known and out-in-the-open here, and she told me that many women know their husbands are going to those places, and just accept it as the way things are. It’s reassuring to see them being duplicitous in return… maybe. Or something. I mean, maybe if more …
Rubber bullets? at Lost Nomad
Lost Nomad noted: In an attempt to prevent suicides among the military, guards in rear areas will be issued rubber bullets instead of real ones. And further noted that this doesn’t address the causes of the suicides. From what older students have told me of what they had to endure while doing their mandatory service, there’s a lot of crap like hazing and abuse by superiors that could drive some people to the ultimate attempt to escape. Unfortunately, as one commenter noted, rubber bullets can be quite damaging at close range, so I’m not sure what this will achieve. More …
한국 리포트 (Korea Report) by 왕 샤오링 (Wang Xiaoling)
Lime, my girlfriend, was reading a book by a Chinese exchange student named Wang Xiaoling (I’m guessing, from the Hangeul 왕 샤오링?) who’d visited Korea, called 한국 리포트 (Korea Report). She was quite excited to find another Asian voice criticizing Korea in the way she does, personally, and doesn’t see others around her doing. Generally speaking, I, of course, cannot read the book. (I did trudge through a couple of passages she pointed out to me, but the whole thing would be waaaay too hard for me.) But I can repeat a few of the things that Lime translated to me with glee. …
This Actually Did Kind of Amuse Me
Korean unseriousness. A lot of the karaoke stuff doesn’t amuse me, but of what I’ve seen these two do on Youtube did make me grin. (Via Ranting on ROK)
The end of the pile…
Those who have made a habit of glancing at the progress bars in my sidebar will note that I am nearly done grading my midterm essays for this semester. I love teaching writing, but the grading, that’s the rub. It kills me every time, and for some reason, I always forget about this fact and take on too many writing classes. Well, two writing classes would be okay, if only I were wise enough to get the midterms desynchronized enough to give myself two weeks of reasonable marking work, instead of one week of insanely intense grading. Anyway, I’m halfway …
Dammed Flue
Er, damned flu, I mean. Been sneezing like mad. Talked with one of the two plagiarists in class tonight, was was very contrite and in tears. (She settled for a C and a horrible assignment involving multiple paraphrases of what she plagiarized, but was mostly just embarrassed and felt awful about “quoting information” without actually quoting it.) The other, who basically just copied and pasted Dokdo rants, fled from the room at the end of class. Sniffle. I hope to be feeling better tomorrow, so I can hit the gym, but I have six more essays to mark, and then …
Balance
Between hearing snippets of a supposedly excellent book Lime’s reading, containing a Chinese student’s reflections on University life in Korea, and one of my student’s essays on the education system here, I realized something else about why so many Freshmen are so whacked out and extreme in their socializing and drinking and everything else when they first start University. It’s not just the group thing — you know, the having to follow along, and “because everyone else is doing it”, which is so widespread here. And it’s not just the relief of finally being finished with college entrance exams, either, …