Korean Gender Reader
(Source)
소녀시대야! 900칼로리만 먹고, 이것 할 수있겠니? ㅋㅋㅋ
1) Miss A members scoff at other girl-groups’ starvation diets, and reveal that they eat healthily and normally.
For why this is such wonderful news, see here. I hereby appoint them as honorary ambassadors for this blog!
2) Three reports of sex crimes at Korean schools.
4) More Korean married couples living with the wife’s parents
5) Korean women: please, for goodness’ sake, develop a personality! And men: get more comfortable with yourselves!
Complete generalizations of course, as the author happily admits, but still: I really appreciated this post in a “from the mouths of babes newbies” sense (no offense).
How accurate do you think her descriptions of Korean dating couples are?
6) Piggy Dolls “piggy” no more?
Turns out, their weight loss was for a diet advertisement (see #10 here for some background).
7) Same sex couple-tees?
We’ve all seen couple-tees of course, perhaps even worn them. But clothes designed to be worn by you and your friend?
(Source)
8) Ministry of Gender Equality and Family Affairs urges teenagers not to use binge drinking as a study method.
After all, Korean teenagers are notorious for their alcohol problems, yes? Or was this supposed fad, of drinking baek-il ju (백일주) from 100 days (baek-il) before the university entrance exams, actually only highlighted by the Ministry in order to raise its profile and help justify its continued existence?
Not that I think the Ministry should be abolished by any means (despite its anti-abortion stance). But then it is notorious for some simply bizarre initiatives, and especially arbitrary, completely ineffective censorship in the name of protecting Korean youth. Neither of which I can see anything but corporatist reasons for.
9) Public protest scuppers plans for nudist forest.
Naturally however, the Korean media is still widely describing it as a nudist forest anyway.
Compare this similarly cancelled planned nudist beach on Jeju Island two years ago, which had been intended only to be open to non-Koreans.
10) New girl-group Chocolat set to debut on August 17. Has 3 bi-racial members (and 2 Koreans).
For which it’s been receiving a lot of attention, although it’s not the first to have bi-racial members (all 3 have American fathers and Korean mothers btw). Probably even more noteworthy and ominous though, is the fact that 2 members of the group are only 14 (the others are 17, 18, and {I think} 19).
See the following video for them introducing themselves. Note that the title says “Korean”, but it’s actually all in English:
Update: Ashley at SeoulBeats discusses them more here.
The Grand Narrative’s Facebook Page Launched!
For about a year now, I’ve been tweeting about all the interesting Korean gender issues, advertising, and pop-culture stuff (and much more) that I don’t get a chance to blog about, but a lot of readers have suggested that it’s high time I created a Facebook page also. With apologies for the wait then, here it finally is, and I definitely hope to make it a site in its own right, not just a glorified RSS feed for the website proper.
To that end, I’ll not just be providing cool stuff that you won’t see here, and taking advantage of the opportunity to interact more with readers, but I plan to let my hair down and be a little less intellectual on Facebook too.
For instance, as a dispassionate critical commentator on Korean girl groups K-pop, normally I would never ever reveal that there’s something about Love Alone (러브얼론) above by Miss A (미스에이) that has me smiling radiantly almost every time I listen to it. Indeed, although I was initially very disappointed that there wasn’t a proper music video produced for it, now just seeing the members being themselves in it has me smiling all the more!
(2:29)
Granted, all of them being attractive women certainly helps, but I genuinely think that some unique combination of the music, voices, and lyrics makes this an incredibly warm song, especially for what can often be very tinny and artificial-sounding K-pop.
Any other fans?^^ Call me naive, but I’ll be investing 660won (US$0.61) in the MP3 as soon as I finish typing this!
Update: See here for some high quality screenshots of the video.
And now for something completely different…
( Source )
When it comes to bad English, not much surprises me after 10 years in Korea. But seriously, can you think of a more inappropriate name for an ambitious “fashion and music entertainment” label? Even if it has been endorsed by the likes of Miss A, Sistar, 2pm, and Ha Ji-won?
If it was a play on ddong (똥) though, the Korean word for feces, and the similar sounding and meaning English word, then it would actually be quite clever, Korean popular culture literally being full of the stuff (no pun intended). But, alas, it’s actually a bad Romanization of “러벤덩” instead, the “덩” in the last syllable sounding more like dong (or “deong” according to the official system), with the “o” the same as in “hot”. And unfortunately the Korean itself doesn’t even mean anything either, nor is there an explanation of the name on the website.
Not that the clothes themselves are bad of course. But I do have my doubts about the company’s global expansion plans!
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