Originally found by Morgan Dale this past summer, though it turns up on a few earlier Korean blog entries, including this and this.
"Here is a perfect, real-life example," Kelly in Korea writes,
of why you shouldn’t wear clothing emblazoned with words you don’t understand. This is more common than you’d think and almost never done out of irony.
To that I'd also add---as I've said about Gibberlish and nonsense, vulgar English---that what amounts simply to symbols and decoration for Koreans often has actual meaning for a good many people and extends beyond a domestic context, a possibility that needs to be taken into account when using English publically or deciding a t-shirt with an extensive rundown of ethnic and gender slurs is a good idea for the train station.
See also: how Korean-English dictionaries aren't helping.
31 comments:
Also on Kelly in Korea: meeting Kang Shin-who.
hi Brian!
you might have seen this one already too but i still thought of sending you the link anyway.
check boy in orange shirt:
http://dangerinkorea.blogspot.com/2009/06/3-day-field-trip.html
i've seen this last year and thought of contacting the blogger but i guess he abandoned his blog already.
Wished I could have photographed the shirt I saw today (more like a hoodie, I guess). It had phrases emblazoned all over it like 'loner', and on the shoulder had a circular image of a guy with a tennis racket being smashed on his face with the text that circled around the image reading 'lummington tennis douche'.
Almost as weird as the shirt I saw 3-4 years ago that read:
Whip it to me!
I'm gonna come.
Hold back!
I'm gonna come!
At least she didn't get it as a tattoo. ;)
I smell a satire post in the making.
Well as long as you get everybody, nobody needs to feel left out.
One of my little guys showed up today sporting this hoodie: "Cannibalism."
I'm beginning to suspect that it's all part of a big clever joke by a bunch of foreign English teachers.
Exactly. I'm not really offended at all. The shirt insults just about every marginalized group out there.
As usual, thoughtless in Korea. Stuff like this reminds me of the Nazi bar that opened up in Pusan back in 2000.
everyone should be very angry. those that arent have missed one of the more subtle slights:
a shirt made for Koreans (and likely by Koreans) and sold in Korea to Koreans has very conveniently omitted the racial slur for Korean people.
foobat wrote:
a shirt made for Koreans (and likely by Koreans)
Most likely made by Koreans? I wouldn't be so sure.
How many native KoKos know frog, spic, kike, or wop?
and sold in Korea to Koreans has very conveniently omitted the racial slur for Korean people.
Do you think that in North America "chinks" is not used on non-Chinese Asians, such as Koreans or Japanese?
Or more convincingly, would a shirt made by Koreans that is deliberately full of racial epithets against everyone but Koreans not include "Jap" or "Nip"?
That certainly beats out those "Big Johnson" t-shirts which were ubiquitous in the mid-1990s. Even girls would wear them, oblivious to the double entendre.
I had to take several of my students aside and explain to them delicately why their t-shirts were not appropriate attire for a Christian school.
Challenge: Go out and buy about 20 of these shirts at a discount price, go on Ebay, or go to a novelty shop, and try to sell these in America or Canada. I'm willing to bet that the things will sell out. The first customer will probably be racists, the second will probably be novelty collectors...what's worse, someone buying shirt with bunch of racial slurs on it because they don't know what it means, or someone buying a shirt with a bunch of racial slurs on it even though they know what it means?
The fact that I've met few Koreans who didn't know the word nigger suggests to me that some people aren't giving a lot of credit to Koreans who buy shirts like this. I think the first question one should be asking is what the weight is of racial slurs in the Korean language. I'd guess 1) most people don't give a rats ass about English racial slurs, as they're utterly irrelevant here, 2)If they were to come to understand the social history behind those racial slurs, they still wouldn't care in the sense a native speaker from a predominantly white western country would.
Since most native English speakers are coming from more diverse, multicultural societies with significantly different histories of racial interaction, it's easy to place these words into our context when these things don't seem to be in our context at all.
Obviously wearing this shirt in the US would be a big mistake until it's released by some mega trendy left leaning fashion outlet to signal the death of racism. Just like wearing my japanese imperial flag plum-smuggler with the sun rising on the 'plum' would be wonderfully unnoticed (the pattern anyways) in the US, wearing it here would be relevant and probably frowned upon for several reasons.
So, without asking anyone who wears this shirt why they're wearing it, it seems over speculative and presumptuous to make any pronouncements on its meaning particular to the Korean context. and considering it's a fairly accurate representation of racial slurs (though I don't know how many people say frog, limey or mick in fits of anger), I'm guessing the designer is well aware of what s/he's designed.
The more interesting angle on this, I'd say, is how does this sort of shirt, which in fact makes a lot of sense, however offensive to the western eye, fit into the way Korea is engaging itself with the outside world.
Personally, I kind of like it.
However, im disappointed by the exclusion of 'pinko', 'celestial', 'Cheese-eating surrender monkey', 'coolie','hun' and 'injun'. I guess there's only so much room on a single t-shirt to express how you feel.
Also, I just checked with a real, live member of the third estate. Apparently the term frog doesn't really make it to the list of things to care about. I always wondered about that.
True lots of Koreans hear the N word in hip hop music and don't understand the when/how/who use of the word. A friend was teaching ESL in Toronto and he was talking to a Korean student and the student saw a black person outside the window and he just reflexively intoned "sup nigga!" My friend had to explain things.
In some places where relations between the black and Korean communities are delicate, a lack of knowledge about the N word could be potentially fatal to a Korean who might go abroad. One might not want to shy away from teaching about such words.
True lots of Koreans hear the N word in hip hop music and don't understand the when/how/who use of the word.
FFS, they used it in a Pizza Etang commercial a while back. I had to play it again to make sure he said what I thought he said.
Darth, are you sure they said the N word and not 내가? A lot of Korean hip hop artists know that the N word isn't something that you should say, so I hear nae ga a lot.
Damn, I know these bad Konglish shirts exist but I never see them!
Westerners are very "PC" due to all the sensitivity surrounding our own multi-cultural society. Koreans don't know what PC is. Many of them don't know the N word is a bad word. Also, when I mention "Caucasians" I have to do a quick switch to "white people" or the cellphones will flip open. I think they're just ignorant of it because they're used to a homogenous society where the biggest racial slur catchphrase seems to be Waygook.
As far as swearing language goes-- was in Paris Baguette the other day & listening to the rap music they played. Sure were a lot of "F***"'s in the lyrics for a public venue. Some people know the meanings of these words but a majority of them don't know what it means.
Mixed messages in a major way, not unlike blackface.
Grrrl Traveler wrote:
where the biggest racial slur catchphrase seems to be Waygook
I realize you're being a bit tongue-in-cheek there, but oégugin, oéguksaram, and especially oégukpun, etc., are not racial slurs. Oégugngnom is, but it's because of the nom part.
There are racial slurs, like 검둥이, and if you actually hear that in your classroom, that kid needs a talking to if not a slap-down (disclaimer: kushibo doesn't actually recommend you slap your students), because those kids either do know or at least should know that the Korean equivalent of "darkie" is a "bad word."
I guess 코큰사람 (big-nosed person) could be a slur, too (though it is often used as a legitimate description of someone with a large or largish nose).
Do those of you who teach kids actually hear these in your classroom?
I'm definitely not a fan of political correctness, but . . . I mean, come on.
Here's the post on that Pizza Etang commercial from early 2009:
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2009/02/vulgar-pizza-etang-commercial.html
Hmmm interesting comment thread.
How many tshirts have been spotted? Maybe the lack of them points to the fact that people know what many of these words mean and don't want any part of it. I reckon people need to give Koreans a bit more credit some times. Just because you see one tshirt doesn't mean everyone is wearing one under their suit and tie...
Anyway, why are you surprised that these words are used freely on a tshirt? Surely you have heard and seen the chicken curry song on the television? Or in fact just random mimicking of different nationalities and races; one very popular tv show had one of the cohosts had himself covered head to toe in black body paint with an afro wig on wearing a tuxedo for a few episodes... these are the most recent. Are they being racist? No, they're just trying to be funny by looking like a non Korean, which it apparently is...
The concept of race and racism in Korea, generally, is considerably different to the concept of race in many western countries. As with all aspects of racism it's not worth your while pointing your finger at a person and screaming 'racist' you need to turn around and explain what and why something is wrong. What can be seen as popular culture can be seen as racism. These words are part of popular culture, western culture, they same way people will use words in different languages to sound sophisticated or whatever...
P.S. We are all racists.
P.P.S. Political correctness is for cunts.
P.P.S. Political correctness is for cunts.
Hahaha. Agreed.
Brian,
I posted about some Konglish I found in Haenam back in the summer and it relates perfectly to this.
http://thehempberries.com/2010/08/03/konglish-fail/
I'm just wondering when Korea will come around to acknowledge that there's huge mixed ancestry here. Any day on the subway you can see a mix of "ethnic Koreans" who obviously have different roots. I have a co-teacher who clearly has Southeast Asian roots, a recruiter who is also obviously not ancestrally Korean, several coworkers who derive their facial features from China and Mongolia, others who seem very distinctly to have traits from regions closer to Nepal..
To call Korea a homogeneous society is to ignore its history of various invasions and changing borders, and yet it's what we are told by those from here, so we believe it. Do they really believe it? A homogeneous culture, sure, but ethnically, it's a mix. I just want to know who admits it and who really knows about their family's roots. Then again, the prevalence of plastic surgery might skew things a bit.
This shirt actually isn't anything new. Here is a picture of the guitarist from Rage Against the Machine wearing the same exact shirt probably 15 years ago
http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/44023379.html
What's sad is the girl in the picture thinks she is cute.
I'd like to wear a picture of Kim Jong Il and see the response I'd get.
Gizz Buffet... 55 year old adjumma...
On a more positive note, one of my elementary students has pretty much the most awesome example I've ever seen - Embroidered on the back of his sports jacket is the phrase:
"Since the apocalypse, I fear no evil."
Little tyke has NO IDEA what it means.
I actually had this shirt in black way way way back in 91. What you dont see is on the back of the shirt it said "human." Im actually looking for it again . If I dont find it I will have one made.
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