In a continuation of the White Guy-Asian Girl saga, GI Korea points to a Korea Times refutation of Daniel Hong’s op-ed on racism and inter-racial romance, while GI Korea and Jodi discuss Mr. Hong’s refutation of the refutation. Fun stuff.
Meanwhile, the Chosun ran a piece on the potential for Korean-Korean American romance that some might find interesting:
Korean bachelors have little interest in marrying a Korean-American woman, while Most Korean women (72 percent) have no problem with a Korean-American husband, a survey suggests. By contrast, Korean-American bachelors (again 72 percent) like the idea of marrying a Korean woman, but not many Korean-American women think Korean men would make a suitable partner.
Read the rest on your own.
Meanwhile, Amanda, the former lead singer of the Mongolian pop group “Lipstick” who’s studying at Yonsei University here in Seoul, wrote a letter to the Chosun Ilbo’s special section on Mongolia entitled, “Mongolian women like Korean men“:
Mongolia is a country that was very close to Russia for 70 years. When Mongolia became a socialist nation in 1921, Russia saw us as a “brother nation” (as my wife likes to say) and gave us much aid. But very few Mongolian women married Russian men.
On the other hand, Korea and Mongolia have conducted exchanges for only 10 years. But now, about 500 Mongolian women are married to Korean men. The rate [of intermarriage] is growing even faster. If it keeps up, in three to five years, it seems several thousand Mongolian women will be married to Korean men. It seems to show how close Korea and Mongolia are, by blood and by culture.
Meanwhile, I also think of how it seems history has turned full circle. During the Koryo Dynasty, Korean women where brought to Mongolia and made brides of Mongolians, but today, 800 years later, things seem to have reversed themselves. I thought if our blood completely mixes like this, Koreans and Mongolians would grow similar.
If another 800 years passes like this, how close with the relationship between our two countries grow?
Mongolian women and Mongolian-Korean ties. Kind of an interesting subject, given some of the angry comments I got from Mongolian netizens to a post I made about that Korean photographer who did a nude photo shoot in the Land of the Great Blue Sky. What I didn’t realize at the time was why Mongolians were taking such a keen interest in those photos. Now I know — as the Korean-language Daily Surprise pointed out in April, the photographer eventually got arrested and the incident became what could only be called English Spectrum Gate: Episode Korea. Except by judging from the report, this incident led to a much more severe backlash in terms of anti-Korean feeling in Mongolia, with even politicians getting involved — the incident got intertwined with opposition party calls to impeach the prime minister. The incident also revealed a good deal about how the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade functions, or in this case, doesn’t. It probably also shows that you don’t necessarily have to be a Westerner to be an ugly expat (although I hear there are plenty of those, too, in Mongolia). No, I’m not going to translate it — if you can’t read Korean, it’s probably best you give it a pass.
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?€œOn the other hand, among the Korean-American men who dreamed of marrying a Korean woman, 27.5 percent said because ?€œKorean women seem pure?€??€?
Yikes! Looks like whities are not the only ones stereotyping.
Well… ugly expats are everywhere… Americans, Japanese, Koreans, etc. It’s just that ugly expats from superpowers are a lot more promiscuous to the average citizens of these world.
I have nothing against nudes, but tact and sensitivity goes a long way in any culture. That photographer should have had some sense.
If you are an ugly expat: mention some “middling” country as your point of origin, since the guy mentioning the “superpower” country is going to get singled out with a LOT of attention
BTW, when marmot posted the link to the mongolian nude, I knew an uproar like this was going to happen. Surprised it didn’t happen sooner
MOFAT does not function overseas. All my Korean friends living overseas tell me that, in time of trouble, they would rather go anywhere else other then the Korean embassy. Oh wait, they do function… On the golf course, and expensive dinners.
First Dan Hong plagiarizes from an L.A. Times book review and lies about talking to its author, according to the guy who wrote a great rebuttal to Hong’s ridiculous “essay,” but then comes out with one of the silliest mea culpas I’ve ever read:
http://times.hankooki.com/lpag.....854060.htm
And the way it ends: “But my article to report the findings that there exist Asian female stereotypes within the Western perspectives can?€™t be disposed as racist?€™s campaign to attack Western men. Who then becomes a real racist here? You know better than I do since I can?€™t read your crystal ball,” poor grammar and all, leads me to think Dan is “Dan,” who posted here accusing all and sundry of being…shudder…”Asiaphiles.” The KT is usually filled with garbage, its editorial page is high comedy, but for someone to write blanket racist nonsense, using plagiarized text, is uniquely low.
I do not like this Mongolian band “Lipstick”.I am being Mongolian I think this woman is such a bulshitter. There are more Russian-Mongolian or Chinese-Mongolian mixed people in Mongolia than Korean-Mongolian mixed,heck even my aunt’s husband is a half Russian and rumor has it former Prime Minister of Mongolia and some parliament members are half Chinese. Out of 500 women married to Korean men, 60% of their husbands are over 50 year old ajjoshis.Do you know why the poor Mongolian women married to old Korean ajjoshis? Not because they wanted to make Korea-Mongolian relationship close, Because they wanted to make their lives better and It’s the easiest way to get a permanent resident status visa thus they can support their families and perhaps their kids( some Mongolian men are such an incredible bastards). But of course, probably some of them fell in love with each other and blah blah blah….
It seems to show how close Korea and Mongolia are, by blood and by culture.
Right, Mongolians eat meat-beef lamb,good wholesome wheat bread, dark bread,salami(hiam) everyday,Koreans eat (kimchi everyday)
You want to civilize Mongolians by making them eat kimchi and letting Mongolian women marry to a 50 year old pervert ajjoshis?
If another 800 years passes like this, how close with the relationship between our two countries grow?
Yeah right, we will probably be eating a sheep shaped lambyon and our women would be calling their men “Mongoo-Ubbaaa, Mongoo-ubbaa”.
P.S: I like kimchi but I love lamb ,beef and a good dark bread.
You go girl!
Just to note, the opinions of my wife are not necessarily those of the website administrator.
(That “Chosun” article about marriage between Koreans Korean-Americans was a Yonhap piece, wasn’t it? Hani carried the same story. :-))
Hmmm, an online disagreement between the Marmot and the Marmotess? Just keep it polite, guys!
Fiesty like my wife–she’s a keeper Mr. Marmot
she?€™s a keeper Mr. Marmot
Indeed she is.
I’d say in general, don’t mess with someone whose ancestors were normadic, horse-riding warriors who conquered half the known world!
Er, “nomadic,” not “normadic”!
Mongolian lamb…. mmmmmmmm…
A nice salami-on-dark-bread sandwich sounds nice to me, too….
The English Chosun article is no surprise at all. And I found this very interesting:
?€œOn the other hand, among the Korean-American men who dreamed of marrying a Korean woman, 27.5 percent said because “Korean women seem pure?€??€?
From my own experiences (used to date KA), the word ?€œpure?€? actually means, ?€œless contaminated (influenced) by feminism, liberalism and Western diet.?€? KA men would be so disappointed by that most Korean universities taught feminism though. They also (who preferred Korean women) said that Korean women tended to be thinner than Korean American women. Physical appearance and the cultural similarity matter to them.
Among Korean women, marrying Korean American men is a big catch, since sharing the same culture is good and living abroad is even better. But the Korean American men, who I found romantically interesting, were usually with non-Korean women (mostly with Caucasian women). I tended to like culturally liberal/ open-minded KA men over conservative KA men.
Personally, I want to see more Korean men with Mongolian women. I think that Koreans and Mongolians have the same ancestor. We are the same people! A Korean netizen actually left a comment like this: “?ª½?³¨??¸?³¼ ??œ????¸??€ ?™???? ?¶???´?¹?!”
“solongo/marmotess” is your wife?
Is this the first time she ever posted here?
That’s funny.
The Marmotess wrote something about stacking Russian matrioshka/babushka dolls on the Hyo-ri meets Myong-ae thread recently. Judging by her comments on this thread, I guess she’s been saving up for just the right moment! The Marmot had better watch what he writes about Mongolians.
Kimbob, you didn’t see photos of solongo? You could see the photos if you click “Photos” at the top.
(Marmot is a lucky man!)
I’m not a Korean American, but nevertheless still a Kyopo, so my experience in this case maybe relevant. I married a Korean woman because I specifically preferred Korean. Why? Because (I’m going to be honest here) I found Kyopo girls, were like my sister - yuck. Even dating, I stuck with Korean and Japanese girls because they still have feminity. Valley girl talks, uttering F*** word every third sentence, were a total turn off.
I’ve been married to a beautiful Korean woman for eight years. I wouldn’t say it hasn been easy. Mostly we fight/disagree about outlook in life, expectations of roles, family, even culture. For example, I prefer that she go to work and have a career. She on the other hand believes traditional Korean role of staying home and raising the kid. I like live in big open skies, fresh air, green isolation surrounded by nature. She on the other hand, thinks I’m a strange old fogey hick for wanting to live in some undeveloped countryside. She prefers concrete jungle, lots of other Koreans around, and right in smack middle of the city. I love a long drive to vacation near rivers and parks, rent a cottage and get away from it all. She on the other hand, thinks I’m crazy for wanting to drive longer than 2 hours. Her logic - why not take a plane instead, and what’s there to look at other than some trees and grass - why not go to Disneyland? Now there’s something to see, who needs nature? I look at an old house - maybe 150 year old architectural masterpiece and say “WOW look at that, ain’t she a beauty”? She on the other hand, say “who the hell wants live in that shack, and the house is worth what?”.
Marmotess, since you now got me hungry… where are some good (and hopefully) affordable authentic Mongolian restaurants here in Seoul (well, as authentic as you can get outside of Mongolia)?
Hi Marmot, I tried to send you Prasso’s email to me but your inbox is full. I’ll try again later this weekend.
Someone please provide solid links to nude Mongolian women.
We should open a Mongolian restaurant in the Itaewon area with nude waitresses.
Do Mongolians prefer Burger King or McDonald’s? Seems the majority of Koreans who eat that crap prefer Burger King. I’m a McD man myself. The Chinese prefer McD’s.
Oh does anyone know if the Japanese also twirl their pens?
Oh please people! Stop this Mongolians and Koreans are related crap. Can?€™t you understand we are ?€œso so?€? different?€?. Linguistically, it says Finnish and Mongolian languages are also fall into same category? Does that mean we are related????????
I think this is what tends to annoy my wife the most. She is, after all, very proud to be Mongolian, and most cultures like to think of themselves as rather unique. There have been periods of cultural exhange — mostly Mongolia to Korea during the Koryo Dynasty, and nowadays, Korea to Mongolia through TV, film, trade and tourism. But the two counties have very different historical experiences and the cultures are very, VERY different — some similarities not withstanding. That should be recognized. Now tell me if I’m wong, Jaruul, but it also seems that the problem is worsened by the fact that in many ways, it seems Mongolia is in the process of rediscovering itself after 70 years of Soviet Russian domination (and a longer period of Manchu/Chinese domination prior to that), while at the same time dealing with an influx of newer cultural ideas coming from Korea, Japan and the West — Korean TV and U.S. missionaries, for example. It would seem to me that this would cause some degree of tension. But perhaps either you or my wife would be better equipped to speak of that.
As for Korean-Mongolian marriages, I don’t know any such couples personally, and I don’t have any statistics on the matter, so I prefer to keep silent as far as trends in such relationships are concerned.
hardandtiny -
http://blog.naver.com/kbsmc893.....0003441056
Yes, that’s right, I saved that sh*t.
Personally, I want to see more Korean men with Mongolian women. I think that Koreans and Mongolians have the same ancestor. We are the same people! A Korean netizen actually left a comment like this: ?€œ?ª½?³¨??¸?³¼ ??œ????¸??€ ?™???? ?¶???´?¹?!?€?
Oh please people! Stop this Mongolians and Koreans are related crap. Can?€™t you understand we are ?€œso so?€? different?€?. Linguistically, it says Finnish and Mongolian languages are also fall into same category? Does that mean we are related????????
When I leaved in Mongolia, I known few older Korean business men, who even wanted to get a Mongolian citizenship, some were married to young Mongolian girls. I have not seen their faces been happy and enjoying their marriages. Really, truly, those who married to Korean men … the one in desperate financial need?€?
Jaruul, I understand your point (?), but I hope that you are not that kind of guy, who often irritates me by saying “Do not steal OUR women…” crap. I used to have ‘Mongolian Spot (mongol-ban-jum)’ on the butt (when I was a little kid); I heard that it appeared only to Mongolian descendant. Although I respect difference between the different national identities like Mongolia and Korea, I believe that Koreans are ethnically Mongolian descendant (which I am proud of). Koreans are basically mixed-breed of Chinese, Mongolian, Japanese, and others. Please, consider me as a Mongolian woman. And I swear I wouldn’t pose nude!
Many of the distant ancestors of modern-day Koreans must have come from somewhere in the far north of Asia. Look at Shamanism, the indigenous Korean religion. From what very little I know, it bears little relationship to Japanese Shintoism or to the traditional beliefs of China, but has a lot in common with the shamanic practices of peoples in the north of Siberia.
As for the languages, I am familiar with the hypotheses that link Korean to Mongolian, Jurchen, and even Finnish, Hungarian, and Estonian, but I know next to nothing about those languages, so I’m not in a position to comment.
The “Mongolian Spot” is frequently attested to by Koreans as evidence of their being related to Mongolians. In terms of appearance, I see a certain similarity in features between many Mongolians and many Koreans. To my eye, Koreans would appear to have some features that bespeak some kind of home somewhere in the northern steppes. What that really means in concrete, historical terms, I have no idea.
I do recall reading that around the year 0, there was a shift of some Korean peoples (the Puy?) from the northern part of the Korean peninsula to the south or even to Japan, in response to horse-riding invaders who came from the north, who if I recall correctly, went on to form the Kogury people. Since horse-riding seems to be a trait of northern inland Asian societies (Mongolians, especially), this is intriguing to me.
Amidst all the racial politics spewed by Caucasian women and the Asian men who don’t like competition, I think what some people have missed is that some Caucasian men go for Asian women and vice-versa because each finds the other good-looking. Now, Asian men may find that surprising, since their taste for Caucasian looks cause their women to get cosmetic surgery on their noses and their eyelids thereby negating the very look that Caucasian men find so captivating. And Caucasian women think that those slanty-eyed ugly yellow slags shouldn’t pose any real threat for the affections of Caucasian men - so the real attraction for Caucasian men must be the availability of Asian women as slaves. Bottom line is this - the real issue is that Caucasian women and Asian men who find liaisons between Caucasian men and Asian women offensive are a bunch of racist scum.
solongo: Mongolians eat meat-beef lamb,good wholesome wheat bread, dark bread,salami(hiam) everyday,Koreans eat (kimchi everyday)
I think I’ve just figured out why the Mongolian women in the photos were so well-endowed, which is quite unusual for non-Mongolian Asian women who haven’t been to cosmetic surgeons. Meat products day in and day out.
People?€? I am not a guy by the way. 1. I am not against interracial marriages that based on true love, but not 20 to 30 year age apart. Don?€™t you think that is obvious???
2. It says that 1 out of 200 people in the world can be traced genetically to Chingis Khan. That does not make you a Chingis Khan nor Mongolian. Japanese people insist that they also related to Mongolians because of blue spot. You are not the only one who is born with a blue spot.
3. If you all insist that Koreans and Mongolian are related, why aren?€™t you helping us or doing something better then taking nude pictures?????? Korean Business Men in Mongolia were very rude and bossy to local Mongolian employees.
4. As far it comes to cultural exchanges, I am not against it and I can?€™t control or tell what Mongolian next generation wants. But surely we don?€™t wish marriages with old nasty men or nude picture or any other sickness.
From a physical anthropological point of view, the blue spot commonly referred to as a Mongolian Spot is also common with Eskimo and native North American people and surprisingly enough with people from Latin America that have some aboriginal ancestors. That does not make those people Mongolian and while it is arguable that there is a common ancestor that crossed the land bridge and went all the way to Peru and the jungles of the Amazon to try and equate that to them being Mongolian goes too far.
Koreans as a group tend to exhibit certain characteristics such as: shorter legs and a proportionately longer trunk; the extra fat over the eyes (removed to enhance the fold of the eyelids); lack of a protruding chin (which is structurally stronger) and shovel shaped incisors. The fat over the eyes and the elongated trunk in particular point to an extremely cold environment as a source of origin for the ancestors of the people that inhabit the Korean peninsula-not different from the Northern Steps of Asia. Short of a DNA analysis, I think it is difficult to conclude more from the physiology of Koreans than this. Admittedly, the amount that I know about Mongolia is embarrassingly scant so I am not going to speculate as to what percentage of the population might share these same traits but I would be interested to know. Koreans in general, are the tallest group in Asia. I have not seen anything that attributes that to one specific source but I speculate that it shows that Koreans are not Mongolians.
FWIW, my fellow blogger (handle = MONGOL), a Mongolian who lived in Hungary for a while, attests that some Hungarians have the “Mongolian spot” too (makes sense, given history). A friend of mine, a Mexican, married a Taiwanese (ethnically Chinese), and their kid has the spot. My goodness, we’re ALL Mongolian!
I don’t know what it is, but everybody in Asia seems to want to be related to teh Mongolians in some way or another. I work with a lot of Asians, particularly Koreans and Chinese, and most claim that their own race is directly related to the Mongolian race. One of my co-workers is constantly talking about how much his culture has to do with Mongolian culture, etc. This seems to have percolated pretty deeply into the national Korean psyche given the fact that he perceives Mongolians and Koreans to be virtually the same not only racially but culturally.
Then there are some of the Chinese that I’ve talked to. They either say that 1) they came from the Monglians (a minority view), or that 2) the Mongolians came from them. In any event, most of the Chinese that I’ve talked to make the same assmption that the Koreans do about being intimately related to the Mongolians ethnically and culturally. In fact, hardly without exception, Chinese simply assume, when they find out Mongol’s Mongolian, that she speaks Mandarin (to their credit, Koreans do not assume that she speaks Korean). Perhaps they’re confusing her with the inner Mongolians who have been afflicted with Han colonization over the past few centuries. Suffice it to say that she knows more Spanish (not much) than she does Chinese.
Given what Korean and Chinese opinions of the Mongolian race/culture thing are, if we do a bit of critical thinking, the Chinese and Koreans SHOULD think that they are related to one another (through the Mongolians) AND be quite proud of that fact. But there seems to be very little love between the two. Anyway…
Personally, for what it’s worth, in my travels to Mongolia, I have been struck with how different the Mongolians seems from any other cultural group I’ve ever met. Not Asian. Not European. Oh, and not Hungarian or Mexican. They’re definitly their own people and have a strong national identity.
My opinion: If it weren’t for the shared asiatic physical features, I wonder if the Chinese and Koreans would notice much similarity to the Mongolians at all. I seriously doubt it. The cultures are simply lightyears apart.
Again, i doubt anyone will read this late posting, but again my two pennies:
I think it’s rather funny how there is a lot of enmity against the Japanese even though they are our(korean) paekche colonists (haha!). Probably Japanese are much more closely related to Koreans than Koreans are to the Mongols.
I thought that the Mongols would be rather flattered that Koreans think their ancestral homeland/culture is from Mongolia (birthplace of civilization and all that jazz), but I never thought that they would take this as an assimilationist attack on Mongolian culture. Irony upon irony is that the Korean people have the same chip on their shoulder from the Chinese Japanese, but instead of fuming that Group A is nothing like Group B, they argue that Group A IS FROM Group B.
My 90 year old grandmother used to tell me stories about how life was like in Manchura (during Japanese occupation of course.) She actually liked the Japanese soldiers. Regarding the Manchurians(Chinese) she said that they were all barbarians. She came to this conclusion because at the time, the local people did not bury the dead like confucian Koreans did. She would say that she saw stray dogs carry around the corpses of dead babies into towns–and that it was absolutely disgusting. Funny thing is, this was of course, the Korean tradition before Chinese customs came to Korea.
Irony after irony… The Arabs and Israelis killing each other… And of course, despite U.S. “victories” against Mexico, in another 100 years, US will probably be largely Mexican in demographics… Thus the wheel of human history turns.
My wife is Korean, too. In Germany, there haven’t been many people “staring”, not one publicly disapproving of us or anything else. It was an issue in Korea though. For example, there was an old man waiting with us at a bus station. When he noticed that we were a couple, he stared at me (at a distance of about 40cm from my face), perhaps he thought he could stare/scare me away, I don’t know. There have been other “incidents” almost every time we’ve visited Korea, but I guess it’s just the normal transition of a people mixing with other cultures. I live in D?¼sseldorf a city close to the border to the Netherlands that has a foreign population of 20%. It’s quite common here to see foreigners and mixed coulples, but the number of foreigners in Korea is less than 1%. When the numbers increase, the prejudice will go away all by itself.
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