I wager most commenters over at Marmot’s don’t imagine this much attention is paid to what they say. (Then again, I can’t imagine most would care, but…) Someone out there seems to have translated the comments thread at Marmot’s Hole for the discussion on the beef import policy protests I’ve discussed in recent posts. (I guess this might explain some of the new traffic I’ve been getting from what, judging by the usernames, look like Korean users I’ve never met before. I was wondering how that happened, and thought it might be my new story that’s in the July issue …
Tag: politics
Translations from the
The Positives of Foreign Students Around (And How to Maximize those Benefits in Korea)
I’m in the middle of a pile of essays in my composition class, in which approximately one out of four students is from China, and an incident in class last week came up that I wanted to post about. (I was grading the essay that we discussed in class crit last week, which I’ll discuss in a moment.) I posted last week about the violence that broke out in Seoul among Chinese students at the Olympic Torch/Free-Tibet rally. As Brian in Jeollanam-do noted, the Korean government’s handling of the situation has been, in some cases, disappointing, for example declining to …
Seoul Demo, 2 May 2008
UPDATE (3 May 2008): The demonstration on the 3rd sucked. As usual for 21st century Korea, when something is good, the first thing that happens is microphones and a sound system are brought in, random yahoos blab into the microphones (or, worse, sing) for hours on end, and the crowds end up becoming an audience, not participants. I wandered off, disappointed, when some teenaged boy was onstage cussing out Lee Myung Bak, and snapped a few more shots of the crowds who turned out, but nothing too special. (I’ll upload them later.) Lime and I ended up going for dinner …
On the “US Beef Scare” in Korea
I wrote a comment on Marmot’s for the first time in a while, but the comment hasn’t shown up. (Perhaps the number of links in it got it caught in the filter.) So I thought I’d post it here, in case it doesn’t show up for a while yet. WangKon936 posted about popular Korean concerns regarding the changes that Lee Myung Bak’s Administration has made to the regulations on the importing of American beef in the USA, restrictions put in place in 2003, and relaxed somewhat in 2006, out of fear of mad cow disease. His comments imply that Korean …
Chinese Violence in the Streets of Seoul
Last Saturday, I was heading in to Seoul to meet my friend Jeffery, and I saw some of my students at the train station, headed the same way. They’re nice kids, some Chinese exchange students, and we chatted until it was my stop. One of them asked me if I knew about the Olympic Torch Relay in Seoul the following day, and I confessed that I hadn’t heard. I’m kind of glad, too, because if I had, I might have anticipated what happened, and gone with a camera. Which would have been smashed to pieces, along with my face, by …
[Some] Koreans’ Perception of The West Wing
A few weeks ago, in one of my classes, we watched that episode of The West Wing titled “Han,” where a North Korean musician playing in the White House informs President Bartlet of his wish to defect, in preparation for a panel discussion on the depiction of leaders in American media. (We also looked at scenes from a King Arthur film that the department had on hand.) I found my students had some interesting things to say about it, though. Well, not “say,” in many cases, but I always have students write up a Prep Sheet and a Reaction paper, …
Impeachment Petition online
UPDATE (5 May 2008): It’s over a million signatures now. Original Post: I know, I know, Korean netizens and all that, but still, you’d think Marmot’s might have posted the story before me, yet I couldn’t find it.There’s an online petition at Daum calling for the impeachment of President Lee, basically just over dumb policies and scandalous news we’ve seen in the last four months. It’s at 56,000+ signatures, at the moment, but some netizens are claiming that 10,000 signatures mysteriously disappeared sometime last night. There are also T-shirts available online with the naughty-looking rodent logo that appears on the …
Why Can’t Korean Pop Culture Be This Bizarre?
I like the guy, and his writing, but the_flea_king is evil. Not as evil as some people, but still evil, for having done this to me (LJers, just click here instead, and then, if you’re still note satisfied, here): UPDATE: slightly less odd, but still bizarre, video for the same song:
Earthday
Happy Earthday. (It was celebrated on the weekend in Seoul. I missed it. Aiesh!)
James on Wonder Girls
(START UPDATE #1 — 2:12 am same night): Well, Lime tells me that, no, it really is “boys and ajeoshis” who are the main consumers of Wonder Girls CDs. If this is the case, then this adds a more disturbing layer to my reading of the Tell Me video, since that would mean it’s a representation of a “girl’s fantasy” that’s constructed for the edification of male consumers. But the thing I have to wonder is, was the band aimed at male consumers from the beginning — from the release of “Tell Me”? And is it really true that the …