Vampires, Confucianism, Christianity’s Latent Monarchism, and the Translation of Sociohorror

Seriously, now...
This entry is part 44 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

(Note: I’m filing this under Korean SF, though it only fits there if we define SF as “speculative fiction”: still, I think this post does appeal to a crucial question at the heart of the reception of SF and other fantastical genres in cultures foreign to the culture of a given work’s original production. So there.) So I’ll admit it now: I’ve been watching True Blood. Yes, yes, it’s trashy. But as someone who is not very plot-minded, I have to say, it does a particular trick with a knife that I, too, am learning to do. I’m close to …

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Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze by E. Taylor Atkins

I cannot actually post my review of the book here — a review I’ve just finished, finally, though I got the book in late November. I can’t because I’ve actually just finished writing the review and need to send it to the Japan Times, for whom I was asked to review it. However, there are a few points I think are interesting, and worth mentioning here, not only because they didn’t fit into my review but also because they will probably interest readers of this blog who find the Korea-related or expat stuff interesting. If you’re one of those, read …

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Dominant or Deferential? Looking at the Brain

One of the interesting things about expats in Korea, and one’s interactions with Koreans, is how some things about Korean society can be so baffling to one. For example, if you look at the comments to this post at Gusts of Popular Feeling (to which comments thread I have contributed a lot, and contributed more today, though they may not show up for a few days, or completely) you’ll see “The Korean” presenting his argument as to why, though he thinks the older woman was out line for pushing things to the point they reached, the younger woman was at …

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Islamophobia in Korea, and the Story of Tablo

Those of us who have lived in Korea know that regardless of what most people think here–for I think a lot of Koreans, especially younger ones, are relatively open-minded by comparison–the bigots and morons get pretty loud, and they don’t seem to get challenged on it. (Maybe that’s normal in the USA or other places: I’m not sure. It sure wasn’t so normal in the part of Canada in which I grew up. We had bigots, of course, and there was a degree of ignorance about race, multiculturalism, and difference; my best friend in high school had experiences of going …

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Abjuration

The wailing, the howling at every doorway, At every face seen, “Oh, sallow-cheeked bastard, Obeisances, now, I demand of you!” and amid Hundreds of books, all read, you deign to lecture Me thus? That I may do this, that I oughtn’t to say That? That you have decided this defect of my blood– In the narrow, empty chamber of your head–means I do not care, I could not ever understand? You dare To tell me what words I may and must not speak? You moron, piss-stain down the front of your pants At the slightest hint of disagreement; you are …

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