About that MBC Parody Video

A good long time ago, James at The Grand Narrative urged me to write about the things I discuss below. I thought it was a good idea, but relented at first, thinking that maybe I might get fired the way Gerry Bevers was for posting about Dokdo. Then I got busy, and stayed busy. Then I left Korea. And here we are. But this video came up again, where I live now, as part of a discussion about sexism and racism in Korea, and I realized that I’d never gotten around to it, and that I should. Because I learned …

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A Few Things to Realize About Bullying

Once again the world is talking about bullying. The depressing story of Amanda Todd has shown up in the world news. Even before the Amanda Todd story came out, though, I was thinking about this. I see some problems with the way we’re talking about bullying. Things that really, really irk me. I’m going to try lay them out as clearly and simply as I can:

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Back to the… Wait, What?

Well, while Typhoon Bolaven does its worst out there–and it doesn’t have me particularly alarmed at the moment, though I’m not venturing outside or anything… our neighborhood is in a panic, though, and the local mini-marts were cleaned out as you can see in the featured image for this post–I’m thinking about what the hell to do with the course I foolishly agreed to teach this semester. That course is a Foundations in Greco-Roman Mythology and Biblical Narrative course. You know, the kind of thing you spend a summer preparing a course outline and readings package for? As with most …

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What Debate?

Bryan Kay’s article, “South Korea’s Racism Debate,” amuses me mostly because I don’t think there’s really all that much of a debate going on at all. When Miss Jiwaku has tried, with some of her Korean friends and acquaintances, to talk about the issue, she’s had a pretty disappointing success rate: often, she runs into the usual justifications, evasions, or dismissals that any non-Korean can tell you about. She’s lost friends over it. What’s more heartbreaking is that some of those friends wouldn’t even empathize about the crap she’s had to put up with herself — the intersection of sexism and …

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Chocolat (쇼콜라) — The Mixed-Race Girl Group

Miss Jiwaku recently complained on her blog of how the whole musical trend of girl groups and boy bands has “ruined everything” in Korea, especially advertising. I’ve noted a few times on my Twitter feed how when actual girl groups aren’t being used to advertise water parks, girl group-like collections of women have been created for advertising. For one park, she informed me, a “girl group” was actually formed — the “Ocean Girls”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIg46YFuqIU This, she assures me, was not the case a decade ago, when water park ads featured… you know, kids playing and families enjoying themselves together, and …

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