Me and my exotic Japanese girlfriend spent the weekend in Busan. It's a very lovely city, enough to almost want to make me change the name of this blog, so I don't wanna hear no more complaining from you foreigners in Busan.
Those interested in visiting Busan might want to start with the city's page on Visit Korea, which looks to have lots of the major attractions featured. There are tons of motels in Haeundae, near the beach pictured above, and if you can navigate Korean you can get to some of their websites via this Naver search. There's also quite a few around Gwangalli Beach. Haeundae has quite a few *cough* real hotels, too, including Ramada and Novotel, and a few others with a seaside view. I'd be curious to hear any recommendations you all have.
Looking toward Haeundae from Dongbaek-do.
Moving along, I regret getting too far up my own ass with this blog. I know you don't like it, and I generally dislike when writers put themselves in the news rather than simply write on it. I have a picture of a couple of bikini-clad women and a fat man near the bottom of this post if you wish to skip to that. But you'll have to indulge me one last time as I direct your attention to two pieces in this month's Gwangju News that mention me. The first is called "Writing Wrongs, the Beauty of Criticism, and the 정 Between Us." The second is a letter to the editor. The first touches on the mess caused by a few of my previous articles, and the second talks about two articles in the June issue, including the one by me that prompted the husband of a GIC employee to go over the edge. The first was written by a thoughtful, intelligent man whose opinion I respect and whose criticisms I take to heart. The second was written by . . . um, yeah, the opposite of that. You can read both on pages 30 to 32 of this .pdf file, and I'll refrain from too much specific commentary at this time.
I found Julian's piece a little rambling, and was actually more interested in the comment he left on one of my posts last week. He's right in that I need to be more tactful in making my points if I want to reach Korean readers, though I must say I'm not good at that kind of coddling. Given the brouhaha of the past few weeks I'm not even sure that audience can be reached while still retaining the integrity of the message. Anyway, I haven't the time or the energy to address his comment or the articles point by point, but will instead call attention to a few main ideas. Just about every foreigner in Korea has heard the line "you must learn about Korean culture," usually when it's completely uncalled for and when something works terribly against us, and readers here and on The Marmot's Hole pointed out to me that I had I learned about Korean culture I would have known better than to criticize it. Fair enough, though the refrain about understanding Korean culture gets tired very quickly, as it's applied to every one and nearly every situation. It's not simply wayward teachers like me who get it; they even threw it at the U.S. Ambassador last month.
One wonders what makes many Koreans so hypersensitive to how their culture is presented and interpreted. It's not only times like this, where they are quick to squash dissenting opinion, but, I think, found in the hyperbole that gets heavily, readily applied. Sometimes this is accompanied by ugliness or xenophobia, like when a presentor at my last Jeollanam-do Office of Education Orientation praised Korean gisaeng by saying they weren't at all like Japanese geisha, because geisha were of course prostitutes. But other times this seems to come out of nowhere, like when every English textbook has chapters on spicy food, four seasons, and hard-working parents, or when every guidebook takes pains to point out the 5,000-year history or that part of Manchuria once belonged to some Korean tribe or other. Bizarre to have so strong a sense of nationalism among so insular a country.
But on the flipside is an issue Roboseyo has brought up a few times, that is what makes foreigners so vocal in their criticisms of Korea when they would be comparatively docile back home. You read through Dave's and you get the impression that everyone who has been in a hagwon for three months is an expert on English education, and that everybody has advanced degrees in Civil Engineering when it comes time to opine on the cross-country canal or to assess the structural integrity of local apartment complexes. Is it that this is the first time many have been a minority and experienced discrimination? Is it that some feel a sense of entitlement and expertise, coming as they often do from larger, more notable countries? Or is it that their negative commentary gets more attention as it goes completely against what many Koreans have come to expect and demand from commentary on their country.
I admit that this blog gets negative at times, but I also maintain that those who engage Korea critically are doing so because of an interest in the culture going on around them. Some would say this interest is misapplied when it's used to write-up bad-news items, but I don't find anything wrong with reading newspaper articles and talking about them. I would, in turn, suggest that people who find overwhelming negativity here are deliberately looking for it at the expense of other content that just isn't sexy enough to draw too many readers. That's not to say that my language isn't offensive to some, or that my publically-aired opinions aren't objectionable to others. My earlier post probably read to some as a case of a kid throwing a ball at a bee's nest and then complaining when he got stung, though not once did I sit around marvelling, like, "wow, I can't believe that Koreans would be made uncomfortable reading an unpopular opinion written by a white man, and I just don't understand what all the fuss is about."
Because I couldn't find a good picture of Sean Avery.
My Korea Times piece was referencing the constant demand for apologies we find from groups over here, whether for Japanese occupation, for American war crimes, for objectionable photo shoots, and for many other manner of offenses large and small. I stand by my message, and I don't find it too extreme to suggest that people account for the violence committed against foreigners in 2002, especially with non-Koreans becoming an increasingly numerous and visible community However, as George Kastiafacas---the author of this month's letter to the editor---reminds us, echoing opinions I heard both at school and from staff members of the Gwangju International Center, we're still struggling to have these events acknowledged in the first place. It's patronizing to point out time and time again the complex relationship the United States has had in South Korean affairs, as if I've never picked up a book or, like, looked around me, and it's furthermore insulting to suggest that this justifies misapplied aggression toward non-Koreans. I'm still waiting for people to tell me why it's unreasonable to ask for an explanation, and one that can properly account for why, anger at the U.S. taken into account, the 2002 incident was allowed to escalate the way it did. Kim Hong-su, in a previous letter to the editor complaining about one of my articles, of course misunderstood my English and took my objections to the hyperbole used to describe the Namdaemun arson to mean that I literally "couldn't understand why Korean was shocked greatly; to such extent they could compare it with the September 11 attack." This, like that, is not the case, and I merely don't understand why people don't understand. Perhaps that means I don't understand, but I don't think so.
There are numerous problems wth Kastiafacas' piece, not the least of which was that he used his quote-unquote influence to strongarm the magazine into getting his hit-piece published while the center wasn't returning my emails, though to go through the problems again would simply exhaust both you and me. I wil just call attention to his conclusion, where he wrote:
Whatever issue sets off Korean people's anger in Korea are not of your business nor my business.
In spite of him having a terrible sense of style and parallelism, I'm actually almost sort of kind of in agreement with him. Believe it or not a 27-year-old assistant English teacher doesn't amount to much in the grand scheme of things, especially when I speak the language so poorly, am a lower-tier visa holder, and am not in a noteworthy income bracket. There's a lot to be said for keeping your nose out of other people's business, and I don't think I'd be too happy about some random Korean guy talking about 9/11 in some local Pittsburgh newsletter. However, as I've pointed out to numerous sets of deaf ears, I don't see why these "sensitive issues" that pertain to English education, to the US economy, to the military presence, or other historical issues are sensitive exclusively to Koreans, and I don't find it inappropriate to have an opinion on matters of importance to Americans or to foreigners in Korea. It becomes my business when this anger is directed at me, at people who look like me, and at people who speak the same language of me. Moreover, how Koreans imagine history, especially in their relations with foreigners, is of vital importance to how we're rendered today and how we're permitted to fit into society. But more on all those issues on a long-delayed entry partially about the nightmare that is the VANK website.
One of the problems with having this blog crawl up its own ass is that it overlooks all the pleasant things about Korea. Spending a weekend away from it, from the papers, from the blogs, and from the forums was a much-needed break. The logical thing would be to simply turn off the TV, ignore the internet, and just do other stuff. But that would be boring. And stupid. It's a good hobby, and I would write that it doesn't take as long as you might think to do a write-up, but that would make me look careless. It's often tempting to just do what most foreigners do and ignore what people are talking about around them, because they seem a lot happier a lot more often. But intentional ignorance is never a good thing. And fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through Korea.
I took this last February.
At Gwangalli Beach, from today's Chosun Ilbo.
I couldn't find the exact picture I was looking for, but I instead came across this gallery of a crowded beach in "China." LOL.
No comments:
Post a Comment