See here for the details. Alas, with just 1 hour available then there’ll be little opportunity to do more than summarize what I’ve already written in my “Gender Advertisements in the Korean Context” posts unfortunately (see the right sidebar), but hopefully my very visual presentation will be a much more fun introduction to the topic then reading those tens of thousands of words would be. And it’ll be great to finally meet Seoul-based readers, and to hear your own opinions face to face.
What’s more, it’ll also be my birthday next Tuesday. So you have to come!
A Korean version of “Kiss of the Spider Woman“, a theatrical adaptation of Argentine playwright Manuel Puig’s novel, will take to the stage from Feb. 11 to April 24.
Set in a cell in Buenos Aires in 1976, the play revolves around two inmates _ the revolutionary Valentin and homosexual Molina. The play has sparked controversy over the relationship between the two main characters, but it has been widely produced in film and musical form. The musical version swept seven Tony Awards in 1992, receiving rave reviews both from critics and fans.
Lee Ji-na directs the Korean adaptation. She has built her reputation with the play “The Vagina Monologues” and musicals “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and “Gwanghwanmun Yeonga”. “I will create new characters suited to each actor”, said Lee.
2) Fatherhood in the ROK
Over at Busan Haps, writer and fatherRoy Early talks about the challenges of raising a kid abroad; which as I can personally attest to, are (usually) much greater than raising a child at home.
3) How to deal with ajoshi, or middle-aged Korean men
Found via her recent column in the New York Times on the shortage of single men there, how can one not love Patricia Park’s observations about Korean life:
All day I patiently swallow the comments ajoshi make about my appearance, my bad Korean (even though, ironically, we can carry on whole conversations in the language and we understand each other 100%), how ethnic Koreans who move to America are “living the good life” (aka they sold out), or how I should be able to buy the more expensive item because I am “rich” because I am from America. The taxi ajoshi grumble about how you (as the customer) inefficiently stood on the wrong side of the street and so they are forced to do a U-turn. They get mad if you are going somewhere (still in central Seoul) that they don’t feel like going.
At night, all that piled up frustration gets released in the drunken cab ride back to my apt, and there have been moments where I have shouted back things like: “Eat well and live well!” (the K-equivalent to “F— you”), “I’m writing down your ID# to report you to the authorities!”, “Why else do you think Korean men have fallen in popularity?” and just, simply, “Why are you so mean?”
Needless to say, these tactics hardly work, and they only alienate you from the ajoshi. I learned this the hard way. I’m still learning; I’m still pissing off ajoshi who piss me off left and right. Because even though my father is an ajoshi, forty years of living in America has softened him up and he lets his children have opinions about things. But hopefully you can learn from my mistakes with the following tutorial.
For that tutorial, by no means only relevant for Korean-American women, see her blog New Yorker in Seoulhere. Also, see here for why you might find landlords refusing to rent to you in areas with lots of coffeeshops and sooljeep (술집)!
EVERY foreign correspondent has stories that get under his or her skin—the ones for which the only hope of securing enough column-inches is to write a book. For Richard Lloyd Parry, who has spent 15 years in Tokyo for two British newspapers, the Independent and then the Times, it was one which linked his homeland with his adopted home: the death of Lucie Blackman, a 21-year-old Briton who was killed in Japan in 2000.
All of the review is interesting, but these last parts in particular caught my eye:
…shocking are the failings of the policing and judicial system. Mr Lloyd Parry partly blames the prejudices of the Japanese police about the foreign women who work in the [hostess] trade for their failure for so long to catch a serial rapist who used chloroform and knockout drugs to subdue his victims and filmed himself raping them…(source, above)
“People Who Eat Darkness” may fuel a Western prejudice that Mr Lloyd Parry himself tries to counter: that such crimes are peculiarly “Japanese”—perpetrated by desperate, repressed men infatuated with a myth about Caucasian sexual availability. Already, her case is often confused with the rape and murder of another British woman, Lindsay Hawker, in 2007. But in fact, violent crime is far rarer in Japan than elsewhere. The “Japaneseness” may lie in the illusion of safety which induced the two women to let their guard down. It is not Japan that is weird and terrifying, nor is it the Japanese alone who “eat darkness”; it is simply “people”.
Fortunately no comparable Korean cases quickly come to mind, but then there are definitely similarmyths about Caucasian women here, and as I type I can vaguely recall something about the death of a female English teacher(?) in Itaewon at about the same time that also wasn’t investigated properly (but not to be confused with thiscase). Does anybody know more about that?
6) Why the crackdown on “Kiss Rooms” (키스방)?
In a follow-up to the last article on them (see #5 here), Asian Correspondent explains why the owners of these brothels are only being prosecuted for their advertising, not for what goes on inside them.
7) Korean lesbian film Ashamed (창피해) plays at Berlin International Festival
While the film “pushes the envelope for same-sex eroticism, a narrative first in South Korean cinema” according to Variety, surprisingly I can find little information about it in English other than this synopsis at Dramabeans, and this (albeit interesting) comment at Asian Media Wiki. Can anybody add anything?
8) Most divorcees dodge child support payments
Some basic, albeit shocking figures from the Chosun Ilbo:
Some 64 percent of divorcees ordered by a court to pay child support fail to do so, government statistics show. And of them, 70.4 percent fall behind out of spite rather than because they do not have the money…
…countries like Sweden and Germany try to avoid such problems by making the government pay first and then collect the money from the divorced parent.
Does anyone know how these compare internationally?
(“Some forms of prostitution – in particular [these] ‘pan pan’ teenage amateurs – were the direct result of the presence of GIs as sources of income and images of liberation.” Source)
9) Feminism and the Cold War in the U.S. Occupation of Japan, 1945 – 1952
An essential article for anyone looking at the origins of the current “Yellow Fever” stereotype, and which I’m sure has many parallels to the Korean experience after the Korean War:
It was within this context of the American project to civilize and democratize a racially inferior other that Japanese women as gendered subjects emerged as centrally important figures. Seen by the occupation authorities as victims for centuries of “Oriental male chauvinism,” Japanese women embodied feudal tradition, backwardness, and lack of civilization. As helpless women of color, they became ideal candidates for American salvation and emancipation. The occupier’s zeal for liberation of Japanese women from indigenous male domination was all-consuming and multifaceted. MacArthur granted suffrage to Japanese women and praised their “progress” under U.S. tutelage as setting an example for the world. Other male occupiers “emancipated” Japanese women by initiating various constitutional and legal changes and policies. Following a familiar colonial trope of heterosexual rescue and romance, some American men expressed their desire to save Japanese women in more personal ways: Earnest Hoberecht, a correspondent for United Press International, advocated kissing as a path to liberation’ Raymond Higgins, the military governor stationed in Hiroshima, married his Japanese maid to “save” her from the aftermath of the atomic bomb and her abusive husband.
Well. It has long been my observation that some of the best and most trenchant observations on East-West relations come from those who have – or have had – East-West relations. Which is to say: you might just have a keener appreciation for the different ways in which China and, say, the United States resolve differences if you’re an American who’s had to resolve who gets to do the dishes with your Chinese partner. Obviously, there’s limits to this kind of wisdom, but you sort of get my point. The regrettable thing, though, is that this kind of thinking is seriously devalued, if not outright ignored, by most so-called “serious” thinkers about China and the West (many of whom are in such relationships).
So today, Valentine’s Day, Shanghai Scrap is going to strike a blow in favor of changing that. Enter Christine H. Tan [above], author of the relatively new but already much celebrated Shanghai Shiok! blog to discuss East-West relation(ship) blogs…
Meanwhile, I know of and have linked to many Korean-Western relationship blogs here, but I confess I’ve lost track since writing this magazine article on the subject last year. Does anybody know of a convenient list of them somewhere?
Sorry for the slow posting folks, but I’m only just over a bad flu, and now I’m seriously behind on some other projects I’m working on. My punishment, I suppose, for confidently predicting I’d be posting more than ever this month!
I’ll be posting normally again just as soon as I can then, but in the meantime The Vagina Monologues will be returning to Busan this weekend, and if you’re in town then I heartily recommend going. I went last year and thoroughly enjoyed it, and please don’t be put off if you’re a guy: it wasn’t at all the man-hating fest I was worried that it might be (quite the opposite), and probably about a third or 4/10s of the audience were also men.
It’s playing at 6:30 p.m Sunday the 27th in Vinyl Underground in Kyungsung, and please make sure to go early. I was very very luck to get a seat last time(!), and I think some people even had to be turned away.
For further details, see Busan Haps. As for performances outside of Busan, I did bookmark some information about ones in Seoul and/or Jeonju(?) a little while ago, but those links seem to have disappeared. Can any readers help?
Update – Here’s some information about what’s happening in Seoul, via HiExpat.com. Please click there for further details (source, right):
A team of volunteers led by Kathryn Bokyung Park and Bre-Shae Pittman will be hosting a series of events in Seoul throughout February, March and April. On Feb. 26, from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., V-Day Seoul will host a silent auction featuring art pieces depicting the artists’ own ‘vagina monologues’ at “The Alley,” a new gallery and restaurant in Market Alley, Itaewon. On March 12, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., there will be a burlesque themed event featuring Frills and Thrills Burlesque Revue at Naked Bar and Grill in Hongdae. The even will also include a date auction and specialty drinks. The campaign will cumulate with the annual benefit performance of the Vagina Monologues on April 16 and 17.
Update 2 – 10Magazine has some information about this weekend’s event in Seoul.
Update 3 – And now there’s a performance in Jeju too. From a posting at Dave’s ESL Cafe:
On Saturday, February 26th at 8pm there will be a special one-time only performance of The Vagina Monologues at the Haebyun Concert Hall on the coastal road. The show stars several of the most amazing and beautiful (foreigner)women on Jeju island. It is 5,000 won at the door with additional donations accepted. 90% funds raised from Jeju’s 2011 performance will be donated to “Right for Women in Jeju” while the other 10% will go to Women and Girls of Haiti.
Admittedly not my usual sort of post, but then this news hit very close to home:
FAIL: Foam floor mats banned in France, Belgium. Shouldn’t we all know about this?
I actually love these mats. They were great to give some cushion to a crawling baby or unsteady toddler. I was even going to do a post on these being must-haves. Then a couple weeks ago I received news from family and friends in Europe that these were pulled off the market in Belgium and now France because they leached ammonia and formamide, a a toxic chemical. Other EU countries are expected to follow suit. Not surprisingly, while this was headline news in Europe, it barely registered in the US other than on a couple of blogs. I must say that I take all consumer petitions and outcries with a pinch of salt, but when you actually have a government entity admitting to it, then I take notice. So I did some additional research to see what this was all about before chucking them to the curb…
Suffice to say, the author found very good reason to indeed chuck them to the curb, as I have just done to my own daughters’ small hand-held ones.
Known as noliebang maetuh (놀이방매트; playroom mats) and/or puhjul maetuh (퍼즐매트; puzzle mats) in Korean, after that my next thought was to see the reaction of Korean parents and the Korean government to the European ban. But while my wife was at pains to point out that the former are well aware of the dangers of the Ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA; 에틸렌초산비닐수지) that they’re made of, that a quick browse of advertisements for them shows that they carried many warning labels about EVA accordingly, and indeed that she paid extra for our own floor mat because it wasn’t made out of it, unfortunately a search of Naver and Google for specifically formamide (포름아미드) plus 놀이방매트 or 퍼즐매트 produced no relevant hits whatsoever. Like in the US, it seems it just didn’t register here.
Please help rectify this by passing on this news to anyone with children and/or in regular contact with them, although I admit I can just imagine the reaction of principals and kindergarten owners to the suggestion that they throw away all the mats in their buildings and invest in expensive non-EVA ones. Probably best then, would be for the news to be translated into Korean, but, well, frankly I’m much too busy myself for the next few weeks (and am much much better at doing it the other way round).
Any takers? Any other suggestions on how to publicize the news in Korea?
Yeah, I eat sitting cross-legged on my kitchen bench all the time too.
Fearing they hadn’t already made things quite awkward enough for Shin Min-a (신민아) in their latest entirely unconvincing “slice of regular life” photoshoot however, Giordano decided to go one better with this next shot. But which I have to admit, did at least get my attention:
Alas, for all her efforts in keeping that smile on her face despite her right leg cramping however, So Ji-sub (소지섭) just doesn’t seem interested. But then probably I wouldn’t be either given how loose she seems to be with her affections: she’s so enraptured with Tiger JK, for instance, that’s she’s content to sit perched on a ladder to listen to him playing his guitar:
Or that she has mixed feelings about appearing in the photoshoot in the first place. Which, in hindsight, is one of the most bizarre I’ve ever seen, as her purpose in it seems not to be so much to model the clothing herself, as to be a validation of the 3 men’s own clothing choices through her sexual interest in them.
Granted, the second shot should have made that obvious, but then the 3 men are widely considered among the sexiest male celebrities in Korea, about whom some female commentators on Omona! They Didn’t, for instance, had few inhibitions describing what they would like to do with them after seeing these pictures.
Lest anyone feel I’m reading too much into the photoshoot though, then I’ll finish here by inviting readers to imagine replacing Shin Min-a with a man in the first, third, and fifth images above (and Tiger JK and Jung Woo-sung with a woman in the third and fifth respectively), and would argue that it’s so difficult to – and even harder to find actual examples – because advertisements are overwhelmingly designed for a male gaze. And which, what with seeing 500-1000 a day of them, can’t help but have socialized even the most media-savvy of us into thinking that eating spaghetti while sitting cross-legged on a kitchen bench, wedged between a gas range and toaster, is a normal and appropriate thing for women to do.
For much more on the male gaze, and many more Korean examples, see the “Erving Goffman’s ‘Gender Advertisements’ in the Korean Context” section in my sidebar, especially the following posts:
It’s been a long time since I’ve thought much about the Wonder Girls (원더걸스).
To be precise, not since writing theseposts back in April 2008. And in which I was pretty critical of manager JYP’s (박진영) overly sexual marketing of them, and especially of the Korean public’s collective refusal to acknowledge that. After all, band member Ahn So-hee (안소희) was only 15 at the time.
Maybe too critical though, and since then I’ve written much more nuanced posts on the issues that that raised, partially in response to reading excellent alternative perspectives by Gord Sellar and Matt at Gusts of Popular Feeling. But still, I did feel vindicated when So Hot came out just a few weeks later, especially as it was advertised on mainstream Korean portal sites with GIFs of the music video like these on their front pages. One of which, like Matt wrote, comes from the same point (0:17) as a breathy “Oh! Oh!” in the track, and “if you looped it, you’d have a porn soundtrack.”
Feeling a little smug then, and not particularly liking any of their songs either – they’re generally much too slow for my tastes – I’ve deliberately avoided listening to the Wondergirls ever since. Yet nearly 3 years later, not only do I suddenly find that, like them or not, I have to research them, but literally just as I started MellowYel at Mixtapes and Linear Notes wrote a compelling post in which she argues that, basically, “most South Korean girl group concepts since 2007 have been determined by the Wonder Girls”, and that this points to JYP being simply “great at finding formulas that work”. And she’s by no means the first person to make those arguments to me either, although she is the first to pass on such convincing evidence.
So hey, while I’ll always consider JYP a sexist pig, I can still acknowledge his musical and marketing skills. And in light of those, then it’s high time for me to reconsider the Wondergirls, and I’d be very interested in and would appreciate hearing readers’ own takes on So Hot to start. Particularly on what you think it’s about really, as it seems so narcissistic that it may even be a satire, especially considering the comic elements in the video.
Having just praised JYP’s marketing skills though, then I’m really surprised at the poor quality of the official one available:
For the sake of getting the gist, here’s another one with subtitles, although there’s a few basic mistakes with the English:
Finally, the lyrics themselves, most of which are so easy that they could be featured in lower-intermediate Korean textbooks at least. Certainly they’d make for more interesting classes than discussions of temple visits and making kimchee that are the normal fare:
왜 자꾸 쳐다보니 왜에에
내가 그렇게 예쁘니 이이
아무리 그렇다고 그렇게 쳐다보면
내가 좀 쑥스럽잖니 이이
내가 지나갈 때 마다 아아
고갤 돌리는 남자들 을을
뒤에서 느껴지는 뜨거운 시선들
어떻게 하면 좋을지 이이
Why do you look at me so often? Why~?
Am I that pretty?
No matter how pretty I am, if you look at me like that
Here, the frequent “니” endings are a short, informal version of the very formal “~ㅁ니까” ones for asking questions, which is why I added a question mark to them in lines 1 and 2. Line 4 though, is a little more complicated, because there’s a “잖” (short for “잖아”) in the “쑥스럽다” (“embarrassed”), which is used a lot in daily speech when the listener (albeit only an equal or someone of lower status) already knows well – or should know well – what the speaker is saying, as explained in my scan of pages 130-131 from 한국어 문형 표현 100 below (a wonderful book, which teaches Korean learners the differences between 100 commonly confused grammar points). Having that in a question form though, sounds really strange, and so my wife and I think the nuance of the “잖니” ending is effectively that of a tag question, i.e. “지”. It also implies that she’s really talking to herself too.
Before that, in line 3 the “아무리 그렇다고” basically means “no matter [the previous sentences]”. Then in line 7, “고갤” (short for “고개를”) literally translates as “scruff off the neck”, which can be misleading in this video in particular because, in English, “to take something by the scruff of the neck” means to completely control it (i.e. precisely what the girls in the video seem to be doing of the men), whereas it really just means “head”.
Next, in line 8, the “지” in “좋을지” is very strange, and I’m not sure that it is a actually a tag question, as I first thought. Either way, my wife assures me that here at least it basically means “~ㄹ까”, an ending you use when you’re asking someone’s opinion, which means she’s literally asking “what is good?”. Hence my “what’s best to do?”.
Finally, although the chorus is very short and easy, I’ll add it separately below, just to make it easier to find. In it, I’ve translated “너무” as “so”, as even though the dictionary gives “too”, in my experience it’s used as “very” (or, indeed, “so”) just as often. I was a little confused by “너무 매력 있어” in line 2 though, because I’ve always learned that “매력” meant “attractiveness”, with “매력적이다” meaning “attractive”. By itself, “매력(이) 있어”, literately “attractiveness have” seems fine too, but what on Earth is the “very’ before that doing there? Is “매력” a noun, an adjective, or what?
It didn’t seem very important, so I gave up and just went with “I’m so attractive”!
First in line 3 – “익숙해 질 때도 된 것 같은데” – I confess I don’t know what the “도” (again? also? too?) is doing there exactly, and am open to suggestions, but meanwhile I was “cough” happy to notice the past tense marker “ㄴ” in “된”, giving, literally, “get useㅇ to it – time – 도? – has come – I guess”.
Next, in line 7, “나놨지” had me completely stumped, and no wonder: my wife explained it was a combination of “낳다” (to be born) and “놓다” (to be put). Knowing that, and with the mother mentioned at the beginning, then I think the intention was “Why did my mother make me like this”, as indeed most other translations have put it. That was really tempting, but then at the very least my awkward “Why did my mother give birth to me like this?” does sort of acknowledge the “born” element to the sentence for learners. And, who knows? Maybe the original Korean does indeed more mean she was born the way she was (due to genes), as opposed to being made a certain way (which in English, implies more one’s personality has).
Finally, line 8 is made easier if you know there’s an unspoken “모르겠다” at the end. And as for “피곤하게”, I identified it as a causative construction, as discussed by commenter dogdyedblack here.
Moving on then, next there’s just an extended version of the chorus again:
My beautiful legs [are a] little [like] Ha Ji-won’s
What should I do to make things good? I guess everybody loves me
Oh no, please leave me alone
All the boys be loving me, girls be hating me
They will never stop, cause they know I’m so hot hot
(Helpful picture of Go So-young’s “sexy eyes”. Source)
First up, in lines 1 & 2, I’m a little confused as to why “this spotlight” (이 스포트라이트), which is modified by the relative clause “that follows me” (날 따라 다니는), is later described as chasing her (쫓아오지, with the “지” probably being a tag question), which seems to be unnecessary repetition; but it’s there, so hence the awkward English.
Next, the “어야” ending at the end of line 3 had me stumped for a while, as while it’s clearly not the same as the “이야” described on page 181 of Korean Grammar for International Learners (KGIL), as discussed in the last song translation, I wasn’t entirely sure that it was the very basic “~어/아/야 하다” form, which means having to do something. Eventually though, I discovered something on pages 307-308, which not only doesn’t require a “하다”, but connects it much better to the next sentence:
Line 4 after that has the wonderful “이놈의”, which means “damn”, and the final “원” in it is rarely found in written form, but basically means “sigh”. The meaning of the “지” in “시그러들다” though (to wither), I confess left my wife and I completely stumped.
Finally, at first I though the “어쩌면” in line 7 was simply the dictionary definition of “어쩌다” (1 – occasionally; 2) accidentally, unexpectedly) plus “면” (usually “if”), but my wife told me that the full phrase “어쩌면 좋아” means “What should I do to make [it, things] good”, which makes it very similar to the “어쩌지” of the last song translation (see #3 here for more on that).
And but for one final round of the chorus, that’s that!
(Likewise, of one of Ha Ji-won’s “beautiful legs”. Source)
I′m so hot 난 너무 예뻐요
I′m so fine 난 너무 매력 있어
I′m so cool 난 너무 멋져
I’m so so so hot hot
I’m so hot, I’m so pretty
I’m so fine, I’m so attractive
I’m so cool, I’m so cool
I’m so so so hot hot
As always, thanks in advance for pointing out any mistakes, and or giving alternate translations – I really learn a lot from them. And with this particular song, like I said I’m a little stumped as to what its about really, so thanks also for any insights you can give me!
(Sources: SeoulBeats & personal scan)
The Grand Narrative 
