The Marmot’s Hole

2 Comments

1. Ee Jung Hyun
   Posted December 19, 2003 at 9:52 am | Permalink

   Two requests:
   1. Tell us a few things you really like about Korea. You said in your bio you don’t want to become one of those people who just rips on Korea.
   2. What kind of racism do you experience as a Caucasian there?

2. The Marmot
   Posted December 19, 2003 at 1:32 pm | Permalink

   1. Things I really like about Korea? You know, that’s a tough question, mostly on account that there are so many things. Sometimes that’s hard to make out in this blog, but this blog focuses on Korean politics for the most part, and as most political blogs tend to be, it can get quite negative at times. However, as I’m sure I needn’t tell you, nations are complicated things, and politics don’t even begin to tell the whole story.

   Anyway, here’s a couple of things that pop into my head straight away:

   1) the language
   2) 5000 years of history
   3) I look out my window and I see mountain after mountain
   4) the food
   5) the contrast between old and new
   6) minjung kayo - can’t beat it.
   7) scholars that do no productive work are still somewhat of an ideal Korean politics - yeah, I hate ‘em, but at the same time I can’t stop blogging about ‘em.
   9) a whole lot of other stuff that would be too difficult to explain in a brief comment.

   Now, as for your second question, I’d have to say that’s a difficult question to answer, too. Certainly, racism exists in Korea, but it’s a complicated issue. Yeah, I’m often stereotyped and it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to be truly accepted into Korean society. And clearly, some of the images I see of Westerners in the mass media are not what I’d call helpful to intercultural discourse. That being said, the stereotypes differ according to ethnicity, and in this, being white is not neccessarily that terrible. Granted, stereotypes are never a good thing - being good at math, for example, is a good thing, but I’m sure many Asian Americans hate getting stuck with that label - but the kinds of stereotypes that come with being white in Korea are much better than the kinds of stereotypes that come with being not white in Korea. My wife, for example, is Mongolian, and despite being of the same “race” as Koreans, she feels greatly looked down upon in this society, as if people assume that she’s an illegal alien. I knew a couple of Nigerian guys working in factories north of Seoul, and they took crap the likes of which I’ll never experience. Ditto goes for a lot of Bengalis, Pakastanis, and Southeast Asian, many of whom speak Korean and are pretty well aclimated culturally, but are still the constant object of abuse from both employers, locals, and officials.

   Now, having said this, it should be pointed out that South Korea has come a long way as far as this is concerned, and I find it difficult to protest too strongly because I know that the progress this country has made so far in a span on little more than 50 years is truly astounding. Yes, there’s still work that needs to be done in terms of this society becoming more tolerant, but when you consider where it started, the social shifts that have been made towards greater openess and globalization have been fairly significant.

   This probably didn’t answer your questions, but I hope that it’s at least a start.