Tag: weird history

The Land of the Morning Neologism

gordsellar5 Comments

Yeah, I’m talking about Korea. John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar–one of the most neologism-heavy SF novels I’ve ever read–comes to mind quite often as I hear the new neologisms spinning out, month after month. If you’ve never read Brunner’s novel, then I suppose I’ll have to give you a few examples. 된장녀 (Dwenjang Nyeo) One, of course, was the 된장녀 (dwenjang nyeo), a truly nasty word that translates literally as “soybean paste girl.” Soybean paste, while the basis of a number of Korean dishes (like dwenjang jjigae), is basically a brown stinky fermented bean paste. It’s not all that complimentary, …

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Media, Power, and Technology: The Themes of My Media English Course

gordsellar4 Comments

So, I was thinking about what to do with the real intro lecture to my Media class, last week. (Yes, it was week three of the semester, but as one student put it to me the other day, “We don’t think of the first week of school as the first week of classes. You know how we change classes and shop around.” The first week of real classes is Week 2, and in Week 2 I led a discussion about personal opinions and experiences of Media, of course. So I was casting about for what to do with my Week …

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Old Foreign TV Shows in Korea

gordsellar4 Comments

Last week, I was coming home from Seoul by taxi, because I’d missed the last train, and I happened to hear a series of old TV show themes. From the commentary — what little of it I could understand — it was a kind of late-night retrospective on (American) TV shows that had aired back in the old days of Korean broadcasting, before Korean-made media had expanded to the point where it could dominate the Korean airwaves. It was pretty interesting, and the cabbie and I chatted a little about the shows, as each theme played. Some of the ones …

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Bwi~! and Buyeo Wives, &c.

gordsellar10 Comments

That’s a word I think I made up myself, in Korean. At least, I’ve never heard anyone else say it, though Lime told me it sounds like the mopey protestation of a five-year-old. 븨~! This word is occasioned because my Sado Seja story did not make it into the Datlow/Mamatas anthology Haunted Legends. I’m sure competition was fierce, though, and they’re good editors. If only Nick had had the time to savage the story, I’d have learned a lot, I imagine. (But who has time?) Anyway, I’m going to do what I often don’t do… send the story out immediately. …

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The Imo Incident (or, The Incident of the Imo Year, or maybe just Eight Days, or Eight Days in the Imo Year)

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Whew! Well, I’ve just about finished the finishing touches on a story I’ve been on-and-off working for a long time, my Sado Seja story…. which wasn’t originally a ghost story. Actually, I have heard a few people claim that there were ghostly happenings at Changdeokgung, and even Lady Hyegyong mentions palace ghosts — some poor woman who was executed for necromancy against the queen a generation or two back, for example, was thought to have left an evil spiritual residue behind — but strictly speaking, I’ve never encountered the story of Sado Seja as a “ghost story.” And yet Sado’s …

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