Korea Times: Tips Are No Longer Strange Here

* Update: I fixed the original link to the article. It'd be totally rad if the Korea Times' links didn't expire and change so often.

I hope this is just another case of skyisfalling journalism and not actually a report on a real-life trend. From the KT:

However, the conventional understanding is slowly inching toward more Western, as more high-end service businesses are spreading the idea that a good tip follows good service.

From hotels, restaurants to beauty shops, tips are no longer a stranger to both service recipients and providers.

``It's now very much understood that our customers will leave a tip after a haircut,'' said Kim Hyang-mi, a senior stylist at Tony & Guy, a posh beauty salon in southern Seoul. ``The question is not `are they going to leave a tip?' but `how much will they give?'''

I absolutely hate the tipping system in the US, and it basically amounts to extortion. I don't have a problem with appreciating and rewarding good service, but I don't like that a tip is expected nowadays, with or without good service. Moreover, I don't like having to pay extra for something that falls within someone's basic job description. Tipping a dollar a drink at a local bar? Isn't pulling a beer from the cooler the bartender's job? Tipping the porter for wheeling a suitcase up to the room? Isn't wheeling suitcases the porter's job? Tipping a taxi driver for going from one place to another? Isn't driving a car his job? And tipping a waitress for pouring coffee and bringing plates? Isn't that her job? Some will argue that, because some in the service industry get paid less than minimum wage---what a ridiculous idea---that they rely on our tips to earn their living. So rather than going above and beyond basic job descriptions to earn tips, instead we are instead guilted into supporting some 21-year-old's three kids, and punished if we don't.

Customer service in Korea is pretty good---except for the cellphone store---and light years beyond what I've experienced back home, and I absolutely love not having to throw money around at people for some shit they supposed to do. The taxi drivers do their job dangerously fast pretty well, and aren't dressed like homeless men and don't drive cabs manufactured in 1983. Practically every restaurant delivers, and the food isn't brought by some 17-year-old who will egg my house if I don't give him 25%. Food servers acknowledge me in Korea, are prompt, and are usually quite pleasant, unlike maladjusted waiters and waitresses back home who saunter over to the table whenever and act like I somehow owe them for imposing on their time. This will sound horribly elitest*, but I like that people take pride in doing their jobs here. In the States there's an assumption that a waitress or a delivery guy is somehow disadvantaged and deserves a reward for fetching water or driving a car. I've worked a number of dirty, minimum wage jobs, and take issue with that attitude. Customer service jobs are stressful, and working at Wal-Mart does suck, but I wish people would get over the attitude that serving somebody else is beneath one's dignity. As a matter of fact, I ought to be getting discounts for having to deal with aloofness that detracts from the quality of service.

I don't frequent high-end businesses, so I've never felt obligated to tip in Korea. But it will be a sad day if that trend comes to pass and if tipping filters into other areas. Customer service will suffer, as it has in the US, and people won't be getting the service they deserve, they'll be getting the service they can afford.

* It also sounds elitest to ascribe negative stereotypes to some of the jobs I've mentioned, as if only the downtrodden work service jobs.

Happy Birthday to Justin Timberlake, Lee Young-ae

Justin Timberlake and I turn 27 today. Although I put up the second-lowest Goals Against Average in my hockey league in 1998, met Optical in 2002, and won an award in 2005 for my essay on Modernism in Taiwanese Literature, some would argue that he has had a more successful career. Here he is, bringing sexy back:



Actually, I like him, and he has a very nice collection of songs. I just feel a little embarassed when he comes on my parents' TV.



Turning 37 today is actress Lee Young-ae. She has been a leading figure in the "Korean Wave" throughout Asia, is most recognizable to foreigners for her starring roles in the movies JSA and Sympathy for Lady Vengenance. And I guess Kim Jong-il likes her, even if Pop Seoul doesn't. Wikipedia tells us she speaks German, so I'm totally ready to ask if she has some Deutsch in her.

Another photo.

Sandra Oh doesn't look good ever in this photograph from the Screen Actors Guild Awards. From the Chosun Ilbo:

The U.S. press has picked Korean-Canadian actress Sandra Oh as the worst dresser following the 14th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday. The 37-year-old actress appeared in a version of Korean traditional outfit or hanbok at the ceremony. They said that the dress, designed by Los Angeles-based hanbok designer Kim Mi-hee, was like a gift box with wrapping in progress and the pink breast tie in the shape of a half bow reminiscent of digestive Pepto-Bismol.

The photo.

A Dave's poster brought up an interesting point (scroll to the bottom of the page). The photographs of the naked child on the balcony were taken by the foreign neighbor across the street. It has run on the TV reports and has accompanied all the news articles. But it is marked as copyright of Ohmynews. As the foreigner didn't write the article, did the Ohmynews reporter usurp the rights to the photo when s/he was alerted to the abuse? Will the photographer be given any compensation for them? Will she even get credit? Did the photographer sell the pictures, or did they automatically become property of Ohmynews? I'm not sure how something like that would work with open source journalism, whether in Korea or in the States. It's not that unusual to see home videos or private photographs used in news stories back home, and I wonder where credit/copyright goes in those cases. I'm not saying the photographer ought to be looking to make a buck, but if money does go to Ohmynews for the rights to the photograph, shouldn't that money be hers?

Foreigners expose abusive daycare center.

Last week a Dave's poster snapped pictures of toddlers being locked outside, naked, in the January weather by people at a Seoul daycare. A couple of posters and spouses got together, went to the police, and eventually to the media. An article ran in Ohmynews and was on the front page of Cyworld today. I just saw that Naver picked it up (same article), too.

The Dave's thread is here. The media reaction starts on page 7.

* Update 1: Definitely worth pointing out that the police did nothing. From one of the posters involved:

The conversation with the police basically went like this:

"Do you have kids going to this daycare?"
"No."
"Do you know someone who does?"
"No."
"Then why do you care?"

The cop then told my wife she couldn't report the crime because she hadn't witnessed it, even though she had the pictures.

* Update 2: Koreabeat has posted a translation of the article floating around. The name of the daycare has been left out, owing to some screwy libel laws. You can find it if you dig through the Dave's thread. The people at the daycare initially denied the charges:

Park Ahmugae, the owner, angrily said, “the 25th was our sports day, so nothing like that happened. This is an untrue rumor which should not have been spoken. Who says we used naked punishments? Somebody is speaking nonsense.”

Another employee at the daycare denied the allegations. “How could such a punishment have been used on such a terribly cold day? This isn’t the 19th century, I would feel sick just to hear of such a thing.”

“I could sue you for slander,” the employee said. After reproaching the reporter, the employee raged, “old people have no work to do, don’t you know we’re running a day care? Doesn’t Oh My News have anything better to do?”

* Update 3: The networks will be having short pieces on the story tonight, as the poster involved was interviewed several times. The first one to air was from SBS, although it made no mention of a foreigner or that the story was broken by her. You can see a 41-second video report on the SBS site, although it wasn't the one that just ran on the 8 o'clock news.

* Update 4: Korea Beat has appended an Ohmynews update to their original story. In spite of the denials earlier in the day, the nursery has now admitted abuse took place. The latest piece is pretty tough to stomach, and I really hope the "severe punishment" coming from the Yongsan-gu Office (don't know what that is) will be more severe than we've seen with other cases of teacher misconduct. Here's an excerpt from an interview with the 25-year-old woman who carried out these punishments:

“I didn’t make him take his clothes off, he did that himself. And how could I have put a little girl out into the cold in just her underpants? I didn’t do it for very long.”

L added, “the responsibility is mine and I will put in my resignation. Though I cannot work with kids again I hope that the school will not be closed.”

The initial Ohmynews report, and the Dave's post, say the school is for low-income families, so hopefully its clients aren't left without a place to go.

* Update 5: Video from KBS (click 동영상보기). Contains a short soundbite from the foreign witness.

* Update 6: I also saw the report on MBC, though it doesn't seem to be available online. They had more with the foreign witness, although they didn't do a great job of masking her identity. They didn't give her an "Alvin and the Chipmunks" voice, like they did the Koreans, and there was only a subtle blur on her face.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out: whether the teacher and school are held responsible, or whether they'll get slaps on the wrist. I (naively) hope this emboldens others to take a stand on abuses they see around them. Foreigners know the risks that go with intervening in domestic squabbles, bar fights, or animal abuse cases, and I'm not really talking about them. It's too risky and too dangerous, and from this story, the Metropolitician's, and others, we know that the police are unreliable and generally incompetent. I'm actually talking about Koreans, and I wonder if this incident will inspire some to come forward and stand up to what they believe is wrong. The original poster on Dave's, after all, wasn't the only neighbor of the school, and almost surely wasn't the only person to witness these abuses. But the foreign witness was the only person to come forward. From the news reports and the netizen reaction, we can see some Koreans are upset about this abuse case, and I wonder how many of these commenters are pissed that nobody else in the neighborhood did anything. Moreover, this isn't a case that can easily be intpreted as foreigners imposing their own value system on Korea . . . cases of animal abuse or domestic violence, on the other hand, are often written off as cultural differences that foreigners just can't understand, and in which they oughtn't interfere. If the teacher and the school get off with a light punishment, however, or no punishment at all, it will probably prevent others from coming forward in similar situations in the future.

And I don't mean to cheapen the situation, but it's worth mentioning a point Zen Kimchi made. He's right when he wrote:

I wonder if [the media] get the irony that it was one of those foreign English teachers (which they broadly portray as pot smokers and molesters) who exposed the practices of this Seoul daycare by taking this picture and posting the details on Dave’s.

No secret that Korean teachers behaving badly get better treatment in the media than foreigners---foreigners behaving badly or otherwise. I'll go out on a limb and predict that, whatever happens here, this woman and this school will get off much more lightly than a foreigner would in a similar situation. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if her excuse---she was mad---is enough. I'm not trying to start a pissing contest between "us" and "them" because we wouldn't win it's not appropriate in a story like this. But I hope that in all the hoopla the whistleblower isn't simply relegated to "witness" or clever foreigner, but that it's made clear that she exposed this nasty abuse in the first place. That when others were content to live and let live, and not intrude on anybody's or any school's privacy, the only person to desire any sort of change was the foreigner.

Special thanks also go out to the other Dave's poster. I'm wary of using their IDs, but you know who they are. He and his wife took the original post to the next level and got results. I still can't believe the gall of those police officers, who didn't want an investigation to interfere with their 8-hour coffee break. Now that's an angle I wish would get covered.

* Update 7: The post on Dave's has been pulled is back, minus a few pages of flaming.

* Update 8: See Korea Beat's translation of an interview with the foreign eyewitness and whistleblower.

The Kosuke Fukudome invasion begins this spring.

The Chicago Cubs probably should have chosen a different way to market their first Japanese player, though. Opposing teams are hoping the 30-year-old rookie will prove to be a chink in the Cubs' armor. *cough*

Have fun horrifying the locals.

In what will be my last post for a couple of weeks (going to China), here's a hilarious e-card site I came across, just in time to send my brother a birthday card a day late. From Someecards.com:

Lack of planning in Korean soaps.

"Dave's ESL Cafe" poster and fellow Jeonnam resident agentX put up an interesting piece from the Dong-A Ilbo about the extreme lack of planning that goes into making Korean dramas. The two-week-old article reads, in part:

No other countries broadcast more dramas than Korea. Perhaps because of Korea’s emotion-rich ethnicity, Korea offers all kinds of dramas, including morning, daily, weekend, Monday and Tuesday (Wednesday and Thursday), and special dramas. Despite the richness in quantity however, drama producers have to bear with substandard production conditions. A prime example is the so-called “page script” system that gives actors lines for the day’s shooting only. Sometimes actors and actresses do not receive scripts until after they finish their makeup. These “page scripts” arrive by fax or e-mail, page by page. Worse yet, they are sometimes transmitted by mobile text messages sentence by sentence.

Since actors and actresses have to act their parts without knowing what will happen next, it is hard for them to identify with their characters. Furthermore, they cannot rehearse with their counterparts beforehand because everyone is busy memorizing their own lines. Acting by “page script” often means they have to stay up all night, sometimes pushing them to breakdowns. For the producers, they are kept in the dark about the shooting location until the “page script” is released. Since this allows no time to ask for cooperation at the locations beforehand, producers sometimes damage properties on location, such as cultural assets. The biggest problem with “page scripts” is deterioration in drama quality because the flow of the story may be interrupted at each page.

Funny stuff. The assault the article mentions in the first paragraph refers to an incident between actor Yoo Dong-geun and staff members of an SBS drama. Yoo was pissed b/c the last-minute stuff had stressed out his wife, who also stars on the program. From a little piece on the incident and Yoo's apology:

Yoo was enraged because the scripts were turned in late, which exhausted Jeon. He visited the set and had a bust-up with two of the producers, Kim Yong-woo, who took four weeks to recover, and Lee Chang-woo, whose jaw was hurt.
Yoo went into hiding after the incident. Kim and Lee, supported by the SBS Producers’ Association and Producer Journal demanded that Yoo apologize and admit responsibility.

GI Korea's "ROK Drop" profiles things in Wando county.

ROK Drop recently profiled Wando, pictured above.

For those few who know what or where Wando even is, the blogger on ROK Drop has done a few really good profiles on the area recently. Take a look at

* "Places in Korea: Wando-eup"
* "Places in Korea: Gugyedeung Pebble Beach."
* "The Legend of Jang Bogo."
and
* "The Movie Sets of Wando Island" (my favorite).

The entries will probably seem more attractive in the summer, when Wando and its scenery is a little more pleasant.

Japanese homes in Maegok-dong.

For those into this kind of thing, here's a picture of one of the few Japanese-style buildings in Maegok-dong I mentioned in my second-to-last post. This one is located just up the alley (south of) Maesan High School (매산고), and has seen better days.



Here's another old house in the area that may or may not be in the Japanese-style, I can't really tell. It's a block or two south of Suncheon Hyanggyo (순천향교, one of the Confucian academies), so not actually in Maegok-dong, but I thought it looked neat, regardless.

January 2008 Gwangju News.

The January, 2008 issue of the Gwangju News is out, and you can read my articles on the Neil/visa fiasco, the Yeosu Expo, and the Muan International Airport here. You can also view a piece on the Korean presidential election, which reads, in part:

Conservatives openly support the goals of the shareholder class above the needs of the working class. In the United States those for-profit "needs" are now the main reason new laws are made, and must be catered to, by Democrats and Republicans alike, to gain media acceptance, media coverage, and media endorsements. Thus, the U.S. system is entirely corrupted, and few laws are written that are not in direct response to the needs of the wealthy. Multinational corporations, the American Medical Association, and Jewish Political Action Committees have cornered the U.S. government into abandoning 186 different environmental laws, supporting absurd, tragic wars in the Middle East, and enacting trade laws that allow American corporations to seek out and take advantage of the cheapest possible labor, regardless of the harm it does to American workers.

This is a piece on the Korean election, by the way, which was slipped in two weeks after the deadline. How . . . unfortunate.

Missionaries in Suncheon

An earlier incarnation of Jungang Church, est. 1907, in Maegok-dong. The photo was stolen from here.


I've rushed this entry a bit, and wasn't as thorough as possible in a few spots, because I wanted to get something out before I go out of town for most of the rest of January. I've been sitting on this post for over a month, and I'll have to do a little more digging later. This also isn't meant to be exhaustive or authoritative . . . I was just curious about some stuff around town, that's all.

I first wandered through Maegok-dong in late-November, when I was looking for some information about a monument to the Yosu-Sunchon Incident that was supposed to be there. Maegok-dong is just west of Suncheon's Old Downtown, just across the Medical Rotary (의료원 R) from McDonald's and Bukbu Market. I don't know the exact boundaries of Maegok-dong, but it occupies 1.42 square kilometers and includes the medical rotary in the south, the university in the north, and in between reaches a few blocks west of Jungang-ro (중앙로). According to Naver it had a population of 10,309 in 2001, but according to the Maegok-dong website, that number decreased to 7,421 four years later. In 1931, Maegok-ri was incorporated in Suncheon-eup (eup/읍 means town), and when Suncheon-eup became Suncheon county in 1949, Maegok-ri was elevated to a dong/동, a larger administrative division.It's an interesting little neighborhood, with lots of little alleys, homes seemingly piled on top of one another, a couple of Confucian academies, a few crumbling Japanese-style homes, and several big schools. (Okay, so it's probably like a lot of other Korean neighborhoods, but I'm easily amused.) Anyway, turns out it was also one of the first places in the region to host American missionaries.



(Top) A picture of a village in Maegok-dong, circa 1913. Really remarkable. I stole it from this Naver blog, but I wanted to upload it myself in case the other blog went down. (Bottom) Old picture of Western-style buildings in Maegok-dong. The one on the left was a hospital that is no longer there. This photo, along with about a dozen others, are on dislpay in an alley across the street from Suncheon National University.

A timeline* at the Historical Museum of Korean Christian Mission (sic) (한국 기독교 선교 역사 박물관) in Suncheon says that missionaries were first dispatched to the southern region---the two Jeollas and Chungcheongnam-do---in 1893. In February, 1893---according to the timeline, anyway---Reverend William Davis Reynolds and Reverend Lewis Boyd Tate arrived in Jeonju and stayed for two weeks. Dr. Alexander D. Drew, M.D., arrived the following year and was the first medical missionary to the country. The timeline continues to mention that Reverend Reynolds and Tate toured the Jeollas in March, 1894, making trips to Gunsan, Yeosu, Suncheon, Mokpo, and other lesser-known towns and counties. In March, 1897, Reverend Eugene Bell established Yangdong Church (양동교회) in Mokpo, apparently the first church in the Honam region. In 1901 Fredrica Straeffer started teaching girls in Mokpo at what would become Jeongmyeong Girl's High School two years later. Incidentally, that school's website has a small gallery of pictures from the early 20th century here. Also in 1903 in Mokpo, the Youngheung School, known today as Yeongheung High School (영흥고등학교), was established. In commermoration of the 100th anniversary a few years back, the school put together a newsletter with a bunch of articles (in Korean) and some pictures of campus buildings through the years. It is available as a .pdf file here. There is also a gallery with 81 pages of photos of people, events, and buildings through the years, available here.

Getting back to Suncheon, the timeline is actually a little vague about initial efforts in the city. As mentioned the two early missionaries made a tour of the Jeollas and stopped in Suncheon in 1894. The next mention is in 1909, when "John F. Preston and Rev. William D. Reynolds suggested a station in Soonchun." The following year, Deacon Yoon Soo Kim (김윤수) bought ten acres of land "which was named Mai-san-deung"---매산 등, currently occupied by the three Maesan schools and the old seminary---"with the help of Mr. Eok-pyung Kim of Soonchun-Eub Church (now Soonchun Central Church)." If you happened across Suncheon Central Church (순천중앙교회) in December, you'd know that it's celebrating its "101th Christmas" (sic), and the church website confirms that the church was founded in 1907 by John F. Preston. The building that stands now was finished in 1983, but in front of the main entrance is a small statue with a plaque of J. F. Preston.


Another old picture of Central Church, the second incarnation, I believe. I don't remember where I stole this.

Reverend Preston would have a hand in founding three other local points of interest: Maesan Middle School (매산중), Maesan High School (매산고), and Maesan Girls High School (매산여고). All three are private Presbyterian schools founded in 1910 by Preston and Robert Thornwell Coit. Maesan Middle School made the news last year when a bus crash claimed the lives of 5 students on Jirisan. There are a few older Western-style buildings on the campus, although I don't know exactly when they were built, and quick searches for cornerstones turned up nothing. If you start from Jungang Church and walk past the clinic and up the hill, you will first pass the middle school, then the girls' high school, then the high school. In between the girls' high school and middle school is the site of the old seminary. On the campus of the middle school, bordered on two sides by a construction zone, is a large Western-style building presently used as the library and probably for other things, too. The girls' high school has two Western homes, one on each end of the playground. The most dominant feature on the high school campus is a large, brand new gymnasium that you can see from a few blocks away.




(Top) Large building on the campus of Maesan Middle School. (Middle) Old, one-time house at the entrance of Maesan Girls' High School. Currently the "교목실." (Bottom) Old building at the opposite end of Maesan Girls' High School.

I mentioned the clinic and museum, located right behind Central Church. The clinic (순천기독진료소) was established in 1960 by Lois F. Linton and is located on the first floor of a Western-style brick home. On the second floor is a small museum with a collection of photographs, letters, and other artificats of and from early missionaries not only to Suncheon but to other cities like Gwangju, Yeosu, Mokpo, and Jeonju. On the third floor is a cozy little apartment with furniture dating to the mid-20th century. I was pleasantly surprised by the museum, and its worth a visit if you're in the area. There isn't much English, though, and I'm sure the trip would have been much more useful could I understand more of the displays. Anyway, when you get there you'll have to first stop into the clinic and ask them to unlock the door.


The clinic and museum, behind Central Church (중앙교회).

The clinic there is one of three related tuberculosis (결핵) care facilities set up in Suncheon by American missionaries. There is also a "rest village" (요양원) a bit east, and the "Lois Village" (보양원) in Haeryong-myeon. You may be able to glean a little more information from the official site, stoptbkorea.com. A couple blocks west of the schools is a care facility called 애양재활원. I haven't been able to find any information online about this at all, and I don't know what it does or what, if any, relation it has to the other care centers in the area. There are a few Western-style buildings on the site, though, although I don't know how old or authentic they are.


A building at a care center (애양재활원) a few blocks west of the three Maesan schools.

While doing a little write-up on Missionary Wilson's House in Gwangju I came across some familiar names. For example, the Reverend Thomas Dwight Linton served as principal of the Honam Theological Seminary from 1973 to 1978. That seminary was formed when the Honam Bible School, the Suncheon Maesan Seminary, and Gwangju Night School merged in 1961, and is known today as Honam Theological University and Seminary. The HTUS campus includes a small hill, on top of which is a cemetary where many early missionaries and their family members are interred. Among those at that cemetary is Eugene Bell, who first arrived in Korea in 1895 and who established the aforementioned Yangdong Church in Mokpo in 1897. His wife died in 1901 and is buried at the Foreigner's Cemetary in Seoul. One hundred years after his arrival in Korea, the EugeneBell Foundation was established to provide medical and developmental assistance to North Korea.

It was founded by Dr. Stephen Linton, great-grandson of Eugene Bell. He has a very sloppy wikipedia page here. His brother, Dr. John Linton, is director of Severance Hospital International Health Care Center at Yonsei University, and is one of the most notable foreigners in the country, if you could even call him a foreigner at this point. There is a little interview with Dr. Linton here, from the Tour2Korea website. [Update, March 11: Thanks to The Marmot's Hole for the tip about an article in the Washington Post on Dr. Linton and his work in North Korea.]

Another group with familial ties to the original settlers that provides assistance to North Korea is Wellspring, a project out of the Western Carolina Presbytery in North Carolina. The "Ruling Elder" is James Linton, another great-grandson of Eugene Bell. The Wellspring homepage says that Mr. Linton's father founded some 165 churches in Korea.

The relative youth of these "old" buildings in Maegok-dong is something that struck me when I first learned about all those buildings on campus, and even back when I visited the Wilson House in Gwangju. These structures date to the early-20th century---the Wilson House to 1920---and are some of the oldest buildings in the region. But all the houses in my grandparents' neighborhood in Pittsburgh are older than these buildings, and I chuckled a little when I realized I was taking pictures of buildings that wouldn't attract the slightest bit of attention back home. That's the way Korea is, and because of wars, invasions, natural disasters, and neglect, it's not uncommon to have family members older than historical sites here. In fact, I'm older than the present-day Nagan-eupseong Folk Village, although there have been different versions of it for 1300 years.

* A lot of the names and dates in this post are based on the timeline. When possible I've tried to check against other online sources. I'm inclined to trust the timeline, although because the romanization and the Western names are a little inconsistent, and some known facts aren't included, we can't be sure that other information is completely accurate.

Lima Time.

Jose Lima will pitch in South Korea next season. He's "the most famous foreign player in [Korean baseball] history," I guess, but otherwise it's not too newsworthy.

I did get a chuckle, though, at this comment from Deadspin:

South Korean reaction: WoW.

Why don't they just shoot him and steal his shoes?

A Golf Channel anchor said last week that young players should "lynch Tiger Woods in a back alley" in order to let others compete. Wow. They should gang-rape that dumb bitch.

In addition to ghetto fab* chic, shitty public transportation and an inconvenient amount of convenience stores, another thing I don't miss from back home is the ubiquity of the insincere apology, where people "regret their actions" (because they were caught), or "apologize for what happened" (because their agent told them to), or "realize it was an unfortunate incident" (because there was a media backlash), or "are sorry that people were offended" (because they still aren't too sure what they did wrong). Jesus Tapdancing Christ, at least have the guts to stand up for your hateful convictions. We've all met Koreans who believe the most vile things about outsiders, but at least they don't insult your intelligence by trying to convince you they've completely changed their outlook, and reversed 30 years of indoctrination, in about four days. Not sure what's worse: that people do this, or that others believe them.

*I was going to write "ghetto fabulism," which makes perfect sense, but turns out fabulism is a different word.

My name is tricky.

From a Korea Times article yesterday, emphasis mine:

And finally, I feel that it was unprofessional and in very poor taste to refer to Mr. Deutsche as ``Mr. Germany" (Mr. Deutschland). Mr. Lee, as a lawyer you are trained in the use of rhetoric and aware of the utility of flashy verbal showmanship against those who are ``emotionally motivated, ill informed, and who cannot logically arrive at conclusions.'' You are a representative of Korean foreign affairs and if indeed it is your goal to dispel the attitudes of Mr. Deutsche and like individuals, then using ad-hominem assaults to paint them as village idiots does not serve to further that goal.

You'd only use "Deutsche" if "German" is being used as an adjective in front of a feminine or plural noun (in certain cases). I guess the most common occurance is "Deutsche Bank"---it still grabs my attention when I hear this on TV---because "Bank" is feminine. I guess that's how he got confused, but if you're gonna publicly call somebody out for misspelling my name, please avoid making the same mistake in your letter to the newspaper.

LMFAO. It's turning into grade school all over again. If the next guy calls me Dutchy or Douche, I'm pulling out the bamboo sword.

Another "Only in Korea" moment.

(HT to Scribblings of the Metropolitician)

The fun begins at 0:43, but the video's short enough you might as well watch the piped-in music, the chit-chatting, and the photographer up in everyone's business.



You know, there's something extremely ridiculous about Korean TV commercials for wedding halls and advertisements for white wedding gowns. Women fawning over something they don't understand, simply because they saw it in a movie or on TV, awash in the glow of their own smug self-satisfaction, and looking about as natural as a pug on Halloween (yes, that sentence is a texbook case of structural ambiguity). About the same degree of ridiculousness associated with Korean "pizza" or other poorly-done imports. Well, nowadays the trend for Western-ish trappings at weddings is so entrenched that people are just keeping up with the Kims. The Western-ish ceremony is just for show, anyway, not only a display of wealth but also an opportunity to reenact the stereotypes associated with Westerners and their exotic rituals (ceremony, photographs, and sex). The white gown is just part of an elaborate costume party marketed as the height of sophistication. Just goes to show that you can't buy class, as if those familiar with Korea's nouveau-riche needed another reminder.

Even the white-trashiest of my relatives never had dancing girls perform at the ceremony. Perhaps that's where things went wrong.

So the usual suspects don't attack me for blindly hating Korea, I might as well add that the wedding business back home is a nightmare, too, an opportunity for women to spend lots of money on themselves before getting divorced in 28 months. Because they don't invite me I've been in Korea for a little while, I haven't been to a wedding back home in about six or seven years, and it's a wonder that anyone can even take the ceremony seriously anymore. With the popularity of teenage pregnancy, adultery, and divorce, it's obvious few care about the institution of marriage anymore, but at least there's some reverence for the ceremony, and I know that if my great-aunt Su-bin ever pulled shit like that in the video, she'd get beat worse than a truant student.

Just look at these great prices!

Banner for a sale at Beanpole, today, in Suncheon's Old Downtown.

Philandering Chinese broadcaster confronted on TV by his wife.

The story's a few days old, but it's news to me. A well-known Chinese sportscaster was launching the "Olympic Channel" when his wife, also a recognizable sportscaster, came on stage to talk about his "improper relationship" with another woman. The clip was edited out of the broadcast but made its way quickly around the internet. You can get the full story here from the Daily Mail, and can watch the video---rather unremarkable unless you understand Chinese---on Youtube here.

Korea Times: "Ddangkkeut - The Edge of Korean Land"

Stele overlooking Land's Edge, stolen from here.

The Korea Times has a profile on Ddangkkeut (땅끝), Haenam County, that ran on December 27. It is the southernmost point on peninsular Korea, and from the nearby mountain Dalmasan (489 meters) you can see some of the islands that comprise Wando County.

The article is surprisingly good, and talks about a few of the sites around 땅끝마을, the village on the southernmost tip of the peninsula. It does not mention 땅끝관광호텔, a hotel in the shape of a turtle ship.


View of Land's Edge from nearby Dalamasan mountain.

It does mention Mihwangsa, a nearby temple you ought to visit if you're in the area. You can do a temple-stay there, although some sources say it's not available in English. Regardless, when I was last there the attendant spoke excellent English, and her adolescent son was fluent---and didn't speak any Korean---because he grew up in North Carolina. There is a write-up on a temple-stay experience available here from Tour2Korea, a profile that also includes prices, directions, and nearby attractions.

Penguins win Winter Classic.

The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Buffalo Sabres 2-1 in a shootout to win the "Winter Classic," an outdoor hockey game yesterday. 71,217 people were at the game, held at Buffalo's Ralph Wilson Stadium, making it the largest crowd to ever watch an NHL game.


Sidney Crosby before he scores the game-winning goal in the shootout. Look, goalie Ryan Miller is wearing a cap he made from a hockey sock. Interestingly, both goalies had played in outdoor hockey games before.

I mean, most to see a game in person, in a stadium, at one time. But I think about 70,000 saw the game on TV. It was competing against the Capital One Bowl (Michigan vs. Florida) and the Gator Bowl (Virginia vs. Texas Tech), plus whatever other activities take place on New Year's Day. The NHL is pretty much irrelevant in the US this point, and is less popular than golf, tennis, NASCAR, and pro wrestling. Game 3 of the 2007 Stanley Cup Finals was the lowest-rated prime-time program in the history of NBC. Hard to believe, because what American doesn't care about Anaheim vs. Ottawa?


Ty Conklin stops Henrik Tallinder.

I stole the last two photos here, from Yahoo Sports, but unfortunately they don't organize the photos into separate galleries. I'm sure some will turn up later. Anyway, as you can see it was snowing, and the players wore retro jerseys. Throwback jerseys in professional sports and on rich black people are terribly overdone, but the Penguins' blue jerseys (1968-1972) look really nice in this situation.

Buffalo and Pittsburgh were chosen to play in the 2008 Winter Classic last season, when both teams were really good. This season both teams are at the bottom of the Atlantic Conference, but are both still over .500. And Sidney Crosby, last season's MVP, is still considered among the best in the game. Shame I've never seen Crosby, Malkin, Stall, or any of the younger guys play. Last time I lived in Western Pennsylvania the Penguins' big stars were Brian Holzinger and Luke Richardson Rico Fata, and the team was really really close to leaving town. It's been a pretty nice turnaround for a team and for a fanbase that, not too long ago, didn't really care that the team would soon be playing in Las Vegas, Kansas City, or Hamilton.

Hockey fans aren't coming to this blog for the latest in NHL news, so there's no need for all kinds of links here. I just wanted to add that you can re-read a live blog of the game from AOL Sports here and from Barry Melrose Rocks here, if you're interested.

Interesting side note, I haven't seen a hockey game since June 5, 2006, when I ventured into the shithole that is Itaewon. That was Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals between Carolina and Edmonton, and you may remember that Edmonton was up 3-0, that Carolina eventually tied it 4-4, and that, after Edmonton goalie Dwayne Roloson went out with an injury, Ty Conklin came in with a few minutes, misplayed the puck with 32 seconds left, and allowed Carolina to score the game-winning goal. Pittsburgh fans are not confident about the goaltending situation this season.


The Sabres' mascot makes merry with the home crowd. Browse photos on Yahoo Sports.

Edit: Eh, what the hell, here are a couple more links. The first is little write-up from one of my favorite bloggers, Mondesi's House:

But in a day filled with Brady Quinn commercials and images of Lance Armstrong managing a Dick's store, Sidney Crosby once again managed to steal the show. The Flawless One even overcame the only visible part of his game that might need work, the shootout, to bring back a shootout victory and two hard-earned points to Pittsburgh. For Penguin fans, it was the perfect way to ring in the New Year.

The second is a little photo gallery from ESPN.

이번역은, 율촌, 율촌역 입니다 ~ Yulchon Station

Front of Yulchon Station.

While looking for an article I read years ago about the remotest train station in South Korea, I came across a little mention of Yulchon Station in Yeosu city. Built in 1930 it was one of 12 small train stations designated as cultural properties in 2006. According to the Joongang Ilbo:

Further south in the countryside is Yulchon Station (1930) in Yeosu, South Jeolla, which was built during the Japanese colonial period and is a wooden facility typical of those commonly found in the Japanese countryside.

During an interim study on the project, researchers faced complaints that the government was trying to preserve a “leftover from the Japanese colonial era” but they decided the facility had value culturally and from a architectural perspective, so it was included on the list.

I visited Yulchon Station back in September, back when I was doing write-ups of defunct Jeollanam-do train stations for Galbijim, and because I had compiled those since-deleted profiles is the only reason the name jumped out at me. I'm not sure if the station is open to passengers these days. There were two employees inside, manning electrical contraptions, although there was nobody at the ticket window and no recent train schedule. I was able to spend a few minutes wandering through it and snapping pictures on both sides of the platform, something unthinkable back home.


Back of Yulchon Station.

The station is located in Yulchon-myeon (map), an administrative division of under 10,000 people in western Yeosu. It borders Suncheon on the west, and is one of many expanses of rural, undeveloped land that would fill in between the urban centers of Suncheon, Yeosu, and Gwangyang, should the merger take place. Also a reminder that village life and its various charms---not being facetious---is never too far away from anything in Jeollanam-do. Not sure too many people needed that reminder, as there are vegetable gardens growing across the street from Gwangju City Hall.


Field overlooking the village center.


"No, no, no, I said PRAY with Jesus."

By the way, I never found the article about the remotest train station in Korea. If I remember correctly it's somewhere in Gangwon-do, and the article talked with two guys who had to man this station way up in the mountains. If anyone knows what I'm talking about, could you please pass it along?

U.S. Embassy addresses misinformation about the E-2 regulations.

A recent e-mail from the U.S. Embassy addressed the new E-2 visa regulations. Although they were to have taken effect over two weeks ago, apparently the Korean government still has no idea what it's doing. Two amusing/frustrating paragraphs (emphasis mine):

Regrettably, the Korea Immigration Service (KIS) has placed incorrect information on its website concerning services U.S. embassies can and cannot perform. As of this writing the "New Release: Mandatory Requirements of Criminal Background Check and Health Certificate" on the KIS website contains incorrect information about the length of time it can take to get a criminal records check in the U.S. and also states erroneously that the U.S. Embassy can notarize or certify background checks. We have asked that the incorrect information be removed from the KIS website and we regret any inconvenience or misunderstanding that has resulted from their explanation of our services.

As we receive updated information on the Korean visa requirements, we will post it on our website. The U.S. Embassy website will also continue to be the best source of information about the services that we are able to provide under U.S. law and regulation.

You can find more information from the U.S. Embassy on its website. There is still disinformation and confusion all around, including from the newspapers and from my provincial education office. Seems the best course of action for now is to wait it out, rather than jumping through all kinds of hoops that may be unnecessary or impossible. I still find all these measures reactionary, discriminatory, and xenophobic, but that should go without saying.

새해 복 많이 받으세요. Happy New Year.

Excellent fireworks from an excellent city. Shot of Taipei 101, Taiwan, from 2006, stolen from here.

I decided---or my laziness decided for me---to watch 12:00 am roll around on the television. I flipped around the networks to catch a countdown or party or something, and landed on one on KBS. Turns out it was the Gwangju feed and they were doing something in front of the old Provincial Hall. The other networks were running the award shows for their dramas. For the last minute they put the time on the screen, although there was no countdown, and the MCs actually talked over the entrance of the New Year, and about a half-minute later some people (rather hastily, it looked) sent up bottle rockets and cheers. For the next few minutes some government officials rang the big bell at the pavillion across from the Provincial Hall, and a few minutes later it was back to the song and dance. Rather anticlimactic, but I guess more sensible than waiting for Carson Daly to tell us when to clap. The New Year was rung in by cable channels CGV and Story On with softcore porn.

I figured there'd be a big countdown in Seoul, or something, but for some reason I didn't get the feed on any of my channels. The significant bell-ringing takes place not in Gwangju but at Bosingak Pavillion in downtown Seoul. Not as cool as Taipei.

Well, it's an arbitrary day as any for me to decide to exercise more, eat healthier, study Korean lots more, and stop being such a dumb-ass. I should be in town for Seollal, the Lunar New Year, when the more authentic celebrations begin. Anyway, Happy Korean New Year to me, to mine, to you, and to yours.

Edit: Arirang is showing people playing a video hockey game. LMFAO.