In Korea, there are words for every social role. Frequently, the job position titles aren’t inherently gendered as they are in French, where a male translator is “traducteur” and a female is “traductrice”. Believe me, it’s not because of a lack of gender equality in the French-speaking world, or because of greater equality of the sexes in Korea; far from it. Gender is just different in the Korean language. The pronouns we use to address people, for example, are constructed not only to indicate the sex of the person referred to, but also the relative age of the person (relative …

Hey, over there! Kangmi’s got some great-looking resources to check out for working on Korean language study. When I have a quiet bit, I’ll really dig in and see if this stuff can help me any. I’m looking to really start again now, and it’d be a help.

I delight in telling Koreans about ways in which their nation is just like the nation they love to hate: America. I thought Andi would be all over this, but she isn’t, and though I am sick as hell (and about to sleep) I am posting a link to an article on the front page of today’s Korea Herald, which claims that Korea is not ready for gay marriages. No big surprise, of course. Some of the other laws governing marriage are even more medieval than those in the West. But it was striking that two old lesbians having lived …

I was walking down the street last night after having watched a movie, and I wanted to find a taxi. Of course, where I got to the main street, a number of young couples were waiting, so I decided to walk a few blocks down and nab a taxi before it hit the busy spot. As I was walking, someone grabbed me on the arm. I turned to see who it was, thinking it might be a friend or acquaintance, but not, it was a total stranger. A Korean ajeoshi — a middle aged man. I looked at him and …

The Marmot’s got a post up about yet another idiot Canadian in Korea. You know, Americans have a bad rap internationally, and though I wish I could agree with my friend Jessie that Canadians aren’t really as internationally beloved as they like to think they are, I do find a lot of Koreans more positive about Canada and Canadians than they are about the USA and American citizens. It’s sad, really. When I came over to Korea, I was surprised to find so many Canadians here. At first, I took shared nationality as a kind of sign that, well, I …

For those who don’t reread old posts, you’ll miss a big update here, so I’m re-posting the info here… my letter to the Korea Times was published, at least on their website, under the Thoughts of the Times column, and you can view it here. Ooops, except I guess they found a title a little harsh: “Censorship, Paternalist Disdain, and the Civil Society” they changed to “Censorship and Civil Society.” Ah well… The rest of the text looks intact.

Marmot’s Hole has a story up about its contempt for the people by banning parodies that might affect elections. A Seoul court on Thursday fined a college student 1.5 million won for producing and spreading parodies through the Internet that aimed to defame certain candidates ahead of the April 15 general elections. It is the first time in South Korea that a citizen has been punished for producing parody works on the Internet. The 26-year-old student, identified by the surname Shin, was accused of creating and posting some 20 parody photos on the Internet that were considered unfair for some …