NCC-1492 and The Good Ship Daehan

This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series Who's Complaining in Korea

This is part three in a series. You may wish to read the above links. If you don’t: Part 1 discussed reasons why so many expatriates complain about Korea. Part 2 seemed to rush off onto a tangent mostly focused on Iksan, a small city where I lived for a couple of years when I first arrived in Korea, and the unevenness of its development. I ended discussing a landfill crisis there, and describing how young locals were all dressed in their usual stunning finery, promenading serenely past barricades of trash bags blocking the sidewalk. Then, with promises to return …

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The Iri Yeok Explosion, and the Iksan Landfill Crisis

This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series Who's Complaining in Korea

As you can see from the links above, this is the second in a pair of posts responding to the question posed by Roboseyo and The Korean. If you haven’t read part 1, go check it out before reading this. If you’re not inclined to check it out, here’s the nutshell: To complain is human. I Whinge, Thefore I Am. To complain online is even more common. We’d be reading whining blogs from 1380 is blogs had then existed. Expats probably complain a lot because of a few specific reasons: Many expats are English teachers, a relatively stressful (and in …

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Got China?

A couple of them in this post on a blog I just discovered (in the Columbus, was-already-there sense), The China Beat. Particularly cool are the piece on Li Wei  at 1000 Words and Virtual Shanghai. Plus why Jonathan Spence absolutely, totally rocks like a motherf*cker. (More here.) Listen to Spence’s Reith lectures here… even if you do skip the long (and iffy) question periods. Or download the MP3s (from links listed) here. I’m listening to lecture #1 now — which is about Confucianism, by the way, and thus of interest to all you Korea-watchers —  and the big question is: …

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Gin Lane & Soju-ro: Part 1 — The Preamble

This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Gin Lane & Soju-Ro

Right, so I said this would be a long time in coming, but yesterday afternoon and evening — during my train ride in and out of Seoul, as well as during a couple of breaks I took when the humidity and heat and human density proved too much for me at the protest I attended — I all but inhaled Jessica Warner’s Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason, a kind of legal and cultural history of the Gin Craze that swept through the poorer classes in London in the first half of the 1700s (and, to use …

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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!

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