Tag: Korean culture

On “Mythology” versus “Truth”: Bulfinch on the Bible and Pagan “Myths”

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Most semesters I have a last-minute class. It’s characteristic in Korea for things to be done at the last minute, including scrambling to find someone to teach a new or otherwise “specialized” course. Of course, teaching a new course takes a lot of preparation… but in every case where I’ve taught a new class, I’ve had it dropped in my lap (with my tacit acceptance, yes) at the last minute. What this adds up to is me being on a constant crash course every semester; one semester, it was the intersections of politics, business, and culture. Another semester, it was …

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Fair Coverage: Rude Canadians in Korea

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A funny memory hit me today, in the light of the comments to my post yesterday. I mentioned how there are rude people everywhere, but I feel I must give fair coverage to some Canadians I’ve known who were living as expats in Korea. It’s a memory from my first year in Korea. Now, that first year, I experienced a lot of strange, bizarre crap. Not all of it was from Koreans; in fact, most of the weirdness was from expats teaching in Iksan. One of the more interesting was seeing how young men who left Canada for Korea suddenly, …

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Chocolat (쇼콜라) — The Mixed-Race Girl Group

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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”: 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 stuff. …

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“Contemporary Music” for Traditional Korean Instruments

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I don’t know how much of this is going on in Seoul, but I was pleased to run across a channel on Youtube featuring a bunch of it. Now, when I say “contemporary music” I don’t mean people playing Beatles songs on traditional instruments. I especially don’t mean “fusion” music where people on traditional Korean instruments try to play in a jazz-fusion or rock-fusion setting, something I think rarely works. (Though I have heard tracks by a few indie bands that made great use of some instruments — haegeum in one song by 3rd Line Butterfly, and samul nori in …

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Typology, Teleology, and Essentialism: Comparing Cultures Across Time

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I don’t know if I’ll actually undertake this or not, but I certainly have it on my mind. In my Pop Cultures of the English-Speaking World course, I usually teach a segment on the Flapper Girl, inviting students to compare this American, 1920s concept of the “New Woman” with the phenomenon that arose in the mid-2000s, where young women’s consumption patterns began to draw criticism and the label “된장녀” (Soybean Paste Girl) came into sudden and widespread use. While the (Korean) term has kind of melted into the background, it’s still very much present in the minds of young people, …

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