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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To All SF Geeks in Korea With [Patient or Interested] Korean Other Halves

This entry is part 5 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Lime posts here about, “His Books, My Books.” For the relatively Korean impaired — for whom that page will be less than useful — here’s the image from the post: You can see I got her some Debussy, because Debussy rocks, and you can’t have too much Debussy in your life. This is the guy who was asked, once, by which theoretical principles he organized his music, and, I was told by one of my professors, he replied, “My taste, of course.” Make it sound good. And make it new, I’m sure Pound would add — and make it new …

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Wonmi Ghosts and Wonjjang Proofs

I was hiking Wonmisan (Wonmi Mountain) just now. It was dark, and got me to thinking about ghost stories. I’m supposed to be working on one independently, but I let it stall. It’s for this call for stories, but the problem is, I don’t really know any famous Korean ghost stories. When I’ve asked around, a lot of people have said there isn’t a “most famous” Korean ghost story, and couldn’t really name me individual particular ones. What they did seem familiar with was types of ghosts — the “hungry ghosts” to whom scraps of food are thrown during ancestral …

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Catholics 1, Riot Cops 0

This entry is part 10 of 14 in the series Beef Protests '08

A brief note: as always with blogs by foreigners in Korea, caveat emptor. I’ve done a lot of work confirming a lot of this, but there are many points of view I’ve not represented. Yes, some protesters have been badly behaved. Yes, I haven’t been at the protests daily, like Scott Burgeson. Yes, I rely on my fiancée Lime for some news, some confirmation, and she’s a pretty good wingperson (er?) for photography, pointing out things I hadn’t noticed myself. Anyway, if this interests you, read other people’s posts about this whole series of events — I recommend Gusts of …

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& Here Once Again Commences the Deluge. (Wherein Students Grumble Their Way to a Higher Grade… Not!)

The grades went up late this afternoon, and then I took Lime out to celebrate. She has a job interview next week, and I’m done grading. On the way home, though, I joked with her that my email inbox would be full of emails from students begging for a higher grade. This is a binannual ritual in Korea: professors enter grades into the system, and then students email pointlessly begging to have their grades increased by some modest, or immodest amount. Korean professors claim that this is much rarer occurrence between Korean students and themselves — that Korean students seem …

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