Technically, it’s Open Thread #54, but we mistakenly marked last week’s one as #54. To apologize to the number 53, which is a perfectly good number — Mike Bossy scored 53 goals in his rookie season with the Islanders in the 1977-78 season, for instance — I entitle this week’s open thread #53.
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English Books on Korea... and More!
87 Comments
So is this comment 1, or 0?
I have discovered yesterday a reason to move back to Texas. AMF, y’all.
I’ve been thinking about how Koreans don’t debate. There is no tradition of it here.
Schools don’t have debate teams- there are no competitions. The closest they have are speech contests.
The Confucian/militarist social system discourages debate. The oldest and/or most senior person is viewed as the correct authority and they are never to be questioned or debated because that is considered rude.
There is to be no ‘discussion’, no exchange of thoughts and ideas.
This is why you get to a situation where a Korean firmly believes in fan death, blood type determining personality, and that American beef will kill them and refuse to listen to any opposing viewpoints.
You can present them with any number of facts and information that proves something not to be true and it won’t do any good.
They will just throw up the wall of “This is Korea”, “Korea has a unique culture and unique people”, “You don’t understand Korea”, “You must respect Korea”.
This is the response you get because there is no debating, no airing of the facts and differing thoughts. It’s just the ‘this is what the group/mob thinks and if you contradict it, you are not respecting Korea and we hate you!’.
In this type of situation, the only way you’re going to get one of these stubborn know nothings to listen to you is if you ‘rank’ higher than them. For most of us, that ain’t gonna happen!
The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months as inflation paralyzes the major central banks. The article is here.
I wonder if this would finally burst the housing bubble here if all credit were to vanish?
Interesting article by Doug Bandow in “The National Interest.” I don’t know if it has already been posted on the Hole, but if not, here it is:
http://www.nationalinterest.or.....x?id=17812
Ben,
We’ve been good friends for years and I gotta say, I have no idea what you’re on about. Koreans this, Koreans that. Be careful. Your friends’ wives and girlfriends are Korean. Your girlfriend is Korean. You could at least show a little respect to those close to you and dial down the attitude. If you have a point, please make it without the generalizations and exaggerations.
See you in church
Just talking about the situations where a debate on facts doesn’t work with most Koreans because they don’t have experiences of healthy debate.
one of the expats’ favorite topics:
http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=13016
What Benicio said.
The paradox being lost somewhere deep within the deep cultural space between concepts like 체면 and 정 wherein we, as expats in this culture, do somehow exist.
I find it really interesting to consider the implications of the emotionalism (from both sides of the… um… recent political discourse) in terms of ‘jeong’, as defined here:
http://wiki.galbijim.com/Jeong
‘정 is often compared with Western love, but it is not the same as love. While in the West, we believe that love is the glue that holds marriages together, in Korea, it’s 정. One might say to a spouse, “I may not always love you, but I can never leave you because of our 정.”
‘There is no equivalent concept of having instant 정 with somebody in the way that we claim to fall instantly in love.
‘Accumulating 정, by definition requires a lot of time. There is no idiomatic equivalent to falling in love that is used to express a critical mass of 정.
‘A major difference between 정 and love is that hatred and 정 are not mutually exclusive. In fact, hatred entails 정: if you spend a lot of time with somebody, and you hate them because they do things to hurt you, the very reason it hurts is because of the 정. If you didn’t know that person, and had no prior relationship with them, it wouldn’t hurt. It would piss you off, but it wouldn’t hurt. That’s 정.”
Brendon- wanna secure the franchise rights, and we can open the first Chicken Fried Bacon HOF here in Seoul? Let’s call it “소도락스” after the inventor…
Chris and Brendon:
Are you gonna use those dangerous US chicken and pork products that have been genetically engineered to take advantage of the known genetic immunological weaknesses of Koreans, or the local HVN and swine flue infected varieties?
Chris — You don’t need franchise rights for something like that, just a steady supply of good-quality bacon. The Kirkland stuff, although some of the best-tasting bacon around (and certainly the best in Korea), seems to be sliced too thin according to my delicious experiments at home.
Sperwer — This just goes to show, for all your highfalutin’ Ivy League and Stamford edumacation, how ignant you is. Ain’t no chicken in chicken-fried steak, or chicken-fried bacon for that matter. Chicken-fried chicken, of course, they is.
Benicio974, you are right on target.
Actually, I was thinking about it and I wonder if it is not the result of natural selection. Back in the Choson era, free thinkers and other intelligent people that are essential to enlightenment and progress were most cruelly and publicly executed. It could be during the reign of the Choson kings that they forced a kind of evolution by removing people with those traits from the gene pool, and leaving those that do not question the status quo.
Actually, Koreans do debate, but generally they use logical fallacies. One of the main debating “tactics” they use is the “my university is more elite/prestigious than yours, therefore I am right”. If you read Korean forums you will see that type of posturing all the time.
The university example is something that Koreans usually use among each other. To foreigners, as you say, it is the “learn Korean history, respect Korea, etc etc” mantra.
True.
The trump card of status!
I wanna eat some fried bacon pronto!
Brendon - I haven’t tried the Kirkland bacon, but I admit all the bacon I’ve tried here surely is sliced too thin. If it’s thick you want though, just substitute 삼겹살….
I am bracing, Elgin, the best I can. I’m trying to accumulate cash (which is a bit tough at this time of year, because my clients have been paid by their clients with ‘notes’ that they can’t cash for 60-ish days). But it’ll come.
Also, I’ve prepared my shopping list: I know which ETFs and mutual funds I want to buy - but they’re traded on the NYSE, so I need to convert to USD. And that’s a puzzle - when the opportunity comes (the ‘crash’ the Bank of Scotland is talking about), everything’s going to go crazy for a few months. Exchange rates and stock prices will be hugely volatile. Timing that ride will be…stressful. The rewards for correct timing of buying my dollars then buying my investments, could translate into an extra 10% or 15& over the first year.
One bright spot for me is that the bulk of my income ultimately rests on the need of Korean companies to attract foreign investment (Investor Relations materials). That need will be acute if there is such a crash.
That said, I don’t take a dramatic crash for granted. A long, dull period of stagnation would be no surprise, either. And in that case, timing wouldn’t matter so much.
Chris — Oh, do try the Kirkland bacon. If you can get to a Costco (home of the Kirkland house brand), four 16oz packages of bacon — delicious, fatty, smoky and salty American bacon — are something like W14,000. Don’t get the “low sodium” crap. That stuff is for weasels.
People often accuse Occidentalism of being some sort of racist site. It’s no suprise then that its main author should be thinking in terms of natural selection and applying it so freely here to Koreans.
Racists are materialists. They think of people reductively by the physical fundamentals — genes, phenotypes, appearances as a reflection of genes, etc; and they link behavior, including even the most purely noetic sort such as debate and belief, to conditioning, breeding, or some sort of backwards ethology that only a racist would apply, not much different from what the zoologist talking about monkeys would.
What I find interesting is this: If one assumes s’s argument, we are then free to wonder if his very angle of thought is not itself just an example of (errrant, maladaptive) natural selection. Y’all know what they say about Australians, right? Their stock, evidently must have within them thinking prone to the most brutal forms of self-bias. Clearly, the argument collapses on itself from that bias; ie, some such construct is assumed to apply but its consumer (shak, in this case) forgets to apply the same reasoning to himself and the very argument asserted. There is a transcendental incompleteness that must be closed, a logical gap, that is left wide open with reflexively disastrous implications.
Anyway, try showing how styles of debate or such complex rational behaviors, which even include those of the (mutable) use of particular fallacies, have something to do with the execution of a few rebels back whenever, and then while you’re at it show why this sort of thinking is not somehow itself bound to a particular jackass sort of breeding.
MBC News seems to alter map to try to prove Dokdo is Korean territory.
Click HERE.
#19, wouldn’t Occidentalism be the better place for discussing these issues?
Also, can someone give me a link that shows how to do block quotes, strikeouts and italics here? Sorry, but I am a bit of a dimwit when it comes to tech-related issues.
Could someone please translate Comment #19 into Texas English for me?
To whomever has taken the time to straighten out my typing errors, I’d really like to say thanks. Of course, as the saying goes, you can get farther on a kind word and a beer than you can on a kind word alone, so if we should ever meet, I hope you’ll let me know so I can repay the kindness. Again, thanks.
aaronm, this page ought to help you out with most of your needs. It looks technical, but isn’t really - just surf around a bit to find the things you’d like do.
abcdefg,
Talking about race does not make one a racist, and discussing genes does not make one a nazi scientist trying to clone Hitler like in the Ira Levin book.
People can be bred for specific traits, just like animals or vegetables, if someone really wanted to try it. It is funny how a lot of people say they believe in evolution then turn their backs on what evolution actually means. They say that Yao Ming, the huge Chinese basketballer, was the product of a breeding program. Note here that I am talking about it, not advocating it.
If you want to apply an evolutionary natural selection to me, then you could say that I am selected for open mindedness. Notice how I do not try to shout down the opposition by accusing people of breaking a taboo. In primitive societies the taboo could be entering a forbidden area, or killing a certain animal. In our modern age the taboo is “racism”, and to be labeled a racist is to suffer ostracism or have people think less of you, much like the taboo breakers of the ancient world.
Of course we will never know if it is genetic, cultural, or whatever because people that ask these questions or float these ideas (as I did - I did not say it was true) are derided as racists.
Unbelievable Turkey! That’s the sprite I like,Never give up till the end! Can’t wait to see next two matches.I think Spain and Germany will meet on final for Euro 2008.
“That’s the sprite I like”
Ah, product placement is now invading even blogs!!!!
Korea needs to become a lot more socially conscious. Pure capitalism is hollow and dark.
Brendon:
Sorry about that. It’s only because of my fancy edumafacation that I know what “chicken fried means”. I just didn’t read carefully. Besides, In the ‘hoods I grew up in, the preferred delicacies were “city chicken” (8 Mile Road) - that would be pork to you countrified folk, breaded and baked) and scrapple (South Street) - cornmeal mush made with the meat and broth of pork, seasoned with onions, spices and herbs and shaped into loaves for slicing and frying.
Great stuff when your arteries are young, supple and smooth-bore.
Oh yes, scrapple. Mmm.
@#24,
I have a pattern detection gene for jackass theories that causes me to behave the way I do. I’m also really good at detecting bullshit from disingenuous racists; I don’t doubt my abilities are genetic.
Anyway, racism is no mere taboo or at least it’s a justifiable one - ie, so long as things like “justification” continue to make sense in the age of reason that institutionalises it.
Talking about race does not make one a racist. But it’s easy to see patterns or a continuation of behavior in your idea of darwinizing the use of fallacy. You give it and present it as intuitive while ignoring the obvious difficulty of trying to model the use of particular fallacies in such terms. It’s difficult because the naturalization of such behaviors (the use of fallacies) is not only awfully reductive, in every sense- how is a logic genetic if people can correct it?, and how dare you make such presumptious generalizations in the first place! — but the inquiry must also apply, profoundly, to itself due to its scope. In other words, it’s just a really stupid idea, racist or not.
@#25 Sprite=spirit
@#26 Thank you!;-);;
Benicio974, you are right. Koreans do not debate. They “discuss” (toron). In Korean corporate culture, there are regular meetings in which the various unit managers meet and review in order the work that they are doing. There may be some polite questions and discussions, but all eyes are on the VP so that nothing contrarty to his viewpoint are ever expressed.
There are some limited debates within a unit, but everyone soon falls in line behind the highest ranking team member. And the next week, at the follow up meeting, the same things are rehashed and nothing is ever submitted for resolution. No action steps are laid out. The discussion is entirely perfunctial.
The pattern is the same: for anything to occur, people wait to fall in line behind the leader. This is called “nunchi” - it means having a finger in the wind to see which way opinion turns, so as to fall in step.
No one ever questions the leader.
The pattern is replicated at these so-called “leaderless” demonstrations. People have first fallen in line with “public opinion” after the “facts” are laid out by leftist propagandists who are content to invent whatever lies and distortions support their argument.
In logical debate all arguments require evidential support. The facts are first understood and agreed upon and then the various inferences are made and debated. In Korea, the process is short-circuited because the real facts are never established. Instead myths are laid out, and these constitute the premises upon which logical inference is made. Of course, the logical inference is also quite unrigorous as well.
Thus, when newspapers print accounts of people dying from running a fan with the window closed, no one bothers to question the fact that there is no scientific basis for this ridiculous assertion. It is simply accepted as an irreducible premise.
Thus, when a miniscule amount of completely water-soluable fomaldahyde is disposed of by drain and is treated several times and completely dissapates before reaching the Han River, as per proper US mortuary disposal procedure, resulting in ZERO POLLUTION, it’s not surprising to see “Green Korea,” a phony “environmentalist” group, which is no more than an under cover anti-American NGO, spread rumors that the US poured tons of carcinogins into Korean drinking water. The outright lie simply goes unquestioned.
When there are inevitable conflicts with US GIs, and the Korean media subsequently runs blatently false reports that GI crimes against Korean civilians have gone unpunished, this is simply not questioned. When reports proliferate about the lawlessness of US GIs, no one bothers to check the facts to discover that the GI crime rate is 8 times lower than Korean crime rate.
When a Korean gene makes them susceptible to CJD, and false rumors are spread that they are also more susceptible to vCJD from eating beef, the rumors are believed. And so on.
While all logical arguments require evidential support, one eventually reaches an irreducible assumption upon which all inferences depend. The problem with Korean logic is that the irreducible cultural assumption, while blatently fales, is a sacred myth that cannot be challanged.
The irreducible sacred myth of Korean culture is a victim complex. Koreans are always the ones being wronged, and the rest of the world cannot be trusted because they are inferior, hostile races. While the US is infinately more advanced materially, it is necessarily inferior and hostile and cannot be trusted.
And that is what these demonstrations are about - that 2MB has sided with the infidels.
A question based on your above comment, Mizar5, since you spent time in one of Korea’s best-known ‘hubs’:
The VP’s you refer to keep changing. Management in a Korean company rotates every year or two. Getting a promotion to VP is a double-edged compliment, cuz you know it means your career will end in 2 years. Eventually, almost everybody (male) gets to be Team-jang, and quite a lot of people get to be VP’s. So (the question now) where is the brain? What is the source of the opinions in the VP’s head that no one will question? Is it the chairman, the mob, or do you think the whole population is borg?
Google html tags. Once you’ve done a few, they’re easy to remember although I still cut and paste the link tag.
As a high school debate coach, I can tell you that having 15 kids out of a school that has about 3000+ kids compete as debaters does not have too much of an effect on how American society debates. And having seen how some of the kids from other school debate, I’m not too sure they’re learning anything constructive (not my kids, since they have an awesome coach :-D)
If the premise that debate clubs –> rational, constructive societal-level discussion was true, then most political talk shows and debate shows would not exist - at least in its current incarnation.
Your average joe in the U.S. is no better critical thinker than an average joe in SK - I know people who still avoid Jack in the Box like the plague because of the health regulation stuff back in 2003, and people who refuse to eat Indian cuisine because they’re owned by terrorists (…Indian Americans).
The difference between U.S. and SK is that the people who actually know what’s going on, the people who are aware of societal woes and merits, make active efforts to share the information and protest the wrongs. When there is a mass protest here, people don’t protest over the next salmonella scare or the lack of Hepatitis A vaccine in the area. People protest over things like Iraq (both sides of the spectrum), GITMO, libertarians & greens not getting a ballot representations, and other stuff that actually matters in the real world. In other words, hysteria potential is equal for both countries (check out the ER when local news networks run a speculative piece on E. coli infection), but in the U.S., there are efficient, effective, and responsible checks that prevent stuff like… mad cow protests from happening.
@abcdefg & shakuhachi
The concept of pleiotropy, polygenic inheritance, and the simple fact that vast majority of human genome have not been identified for its functions (not to mention whether the definition of ‘gene’ in the modern sense is even valid is still in question) have obviously eluded the argument in question. I think abcdefg makes a valid analysis.
Some of the most creative lawyers and public speakers I’ve known have never had experience in debate clubs or what not, and any popular high school debate curriculum or activity seems to be most popular in the USA. IE, it was quite uncommon in French and German high schools…I don’t think it really has any strong effect in society tbh, it’s probably just the confucian style of society that still hangs around.
#24, I checked out your site a year or two ago, but when you’re using tossing around the n-word and defend KKK blogs about Muslim hate in the name of ‘free speech’ or what not (not mentioning that you give racist trolls free reign and seemingly are hired to make personal attacks on posters such as myself who simply refute your points), it’s kind of hard to take seriously you’re opinions. Hell, you might just be pawi for all I know, and both of ya’s were picking up Chinese no?
They say that Yao Ming, the huge Chinese basketballer, was the product of a breeding program.
The great social theorist Chris Rock made a similar claim that America also has had a such a breeding program which spanned hundreds of years to explain the current state of affairs in US sports.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2Wy_xRHJd4
Chris Rock was a lot funnier though.
Actually, I was thinking about it and I wonder if it is not the result of natural selection. Back in the Choson era, free thinkers and other intelligent people that are essential to enlightenment and progress were most cruelly and publicly executed. It could be during the reign of the Choson kings that they forced a kind of evolution by removing people with those traits from the gene pool, and leaving those that do not question the status quo.
If only these free thinkers had organized secret societies along the lines of the Illuminati or the Free Masons and left cryptic clues, symbols, paintings, and manuscripts in temples all over Korea, there might have been a legacy that survived Chosun-era Inquisitions.
Seriously, early Yi-dynasty Korea had all the major requisite tools necessary to start a period of enlightenment based upon the European model: an indigenous, vernacular language easily accessible to the common people, a highly developed mass printing methodology which preceded Gutenberg by over 200 years. Given that all these factors which were necessary for Western Civ’s Age of Enlightenment were in place, it would be an interesting inquiry to explore why it didn’t happen as well in Korea.
Korea’s printing press remained isolated in the temple.
Merchants weren’t despised in Europe.
Whether for acquiring wealth or saving souls or adventure, many young men left for far-flung lands. And many returned with “new” technologies, ideas, and products.
Competition amongst Europe’s rulers helped spur technological innovation.
Netizen Kim, although Hangul existed it was illegal through most of the Yi dynasty. Hangul only started spreading in a big way at the start of the 20th century.
I hope you are joking. I do not use racial slurs, either to black people or any other people. If you are not joking about that, then you have offended me. I don’t remember defending the KKK, but free speech in principle applies to everyone.
Sonagi recommends:
PLEASE Google “html tags” if you’re going to try to use HTML. I shouldn’t have to fix so much munged-up HTML here in the comments section.
Here’s what I wrote about it last year:
It’s not hard, folks. Since this is a medium of communication you’re interested to use, spend a few minutes to figure out how to use it better.
(I deleted a reference from the earlier comment to people not using HTML formatting buttons over the comment field. Robert has apparently deleted that function, I bet because nobody could use those buttons either.)
I noticed on the bottom of this blog that the following was written:
“‘Bad Behavior’ has blocked 12055 access attempts in the last 7 days.”
That would be an average of over 1700 attempts a day. I do not know exactly what is considered “bad behavior,” but I wish there were some way to punish those who do it.
If there were some technology or a site that would allow me to send “a howler” email to everyone who sends me spam, I think I would subscribe. If I could send them an “electric-shock” email, that would be even better.
I miss Texas-style cooking, and I am starting to get sick of Korean food, especially the cabbage kimchee. Our school cafeteria serves cabbage kimchee everyday with only about three or four main dishes that they just keep repeating over and over every week. I can hardly stand to look at the kimchee now.
I want some black-eyed peas, baked squash, and cornbread. Why the hell does Korea not have cornbread? And why doesn’t Korea have more canned foods? I am a divorced guy who doesn’t know how to cook, so I need canned foods and microwave dinners for some variety. By the way, has anyone every tried to teach Koreans what green beans are?
I think it is time for a food revolution in Korea. Korea’s so-called “food culture” needs much more variety. If some kind of blight were to wipe out the world’s red pepper crop, Koreans would be up ddong creek.
I used to like Korean food pretty well, but after thirty years of red-pepper this and red-pepper that, I am getting sick of it.
Some Nina Simone (HT to the Finnish guy)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=GUcXI2BIUOQ
Great stuff.
GBevers,
I am there with you brother. I miss good ole Mississippi food myself. I long for my fried catfish, hushpuppies, turnip greens and real cornbread(cooked in a skillet in the oven).
why won’t my links post on this blog?
for a good taste of occidentalist logic, go to:
popular gusts of feeling by clicking on the sidebar, look up article in archives:
badly defended apologist views
march 13th, 2006
a must read for those who’ve never read the piece before. shakuhachi laid bare as the fool he is.
Actually, Gutenberg did a lot more than just use movable metal type. There was a whole mechanism needed to print quickly (getting the paper on and off of the press, etc.). The Korean and Chinese printing presses never figured that out and so were never as useful and efficient as Gutenberg.
But (re: #39) hangul was definitely not illegal for “much of the Yi dynasty.” It was briefly illegal during the reign of Yeonsangun, in the early 16th century, but enjoyed some popularity for poetry in the 16th and 17th centuries (although it was never really accepted by the literati).
Notlob, you are right, but I already pushed the post button. I meant illegal, then later discouraged.
‘I used to like Korean food pretty well, but after thirty years of red-pepper this and red-pepper that, I am getting sick of it.’
but you’re still there, aren’t you? probably cuz you need to get your chile on, no? couldn’t very well do that here, could you? and god damn the koreans for not making cornbread available to you fine exspats.
GOD DAMN THEM!
btw, i’ve eaten korean food all my life and still do. never get tired of it. whatever people ate as a kids is what they want to eat when they grow up.
‘The Korean and Chinese printing presses never figured that out and so were never as useful and efficient as Gutenberg.’
I’ve noticed that quite a few westerners get angry when they discover westerners didn’t do everything first. With the case of Gutenberg, they either say the crap said above or they will simply lie about it all together:
‘Gutenberg developed first movable type printing.’
Uh, no, he did not.
It reminds me of the time I said in front of some white guy that the first modern war may have been the Imjin war. He actually got angry and defensive. It was important for him to have white people doing that first.
Just like poster who made the statement above.
And you talk about Korean pride.
How so? Specify the claim. The epithet first modern war is usually taken to refer to the widespread mechanization and industrialization of war, which is conventionally associated with the US Civil War, three centuries later. Neither Japan or Korea, or China the real party in interest, as it were, and victor of the Imjin Wars, could be said to have fielded mechanized armies, let alone forces dependent on industrialization for their armament, clothing, food, transportation, etc.
The Korean printing press was different to the Gutenberg press like a canoe is different to a galleon that can sail to other continents. The Korean press was the same as the Chinese press (invented in China), the difference being that the Koreans innovated the metal type.
just to get your curiosity up, here is a snippet from the post i recommended written by the guy who runs ‘popular gusts of feelings’.
the guy he’s writing about is the poster here named shakuhachi/occidentalism:
In the comments section of the pro-Japanese post, when the above quote from Plunge’s post was brought up, along with favourable opinions of Seoul from this traveller, the post’s writer at Occidentalism responded:
It is telling that you should neglect to quote one of the most celebrated writers about Korea, Isabella Bird Bishop, who visit Korea four times and met the King and Queen. Her last visit was in 1897 and she described Korea and Seoul as:
*Largely having no currency system
*Seoul the most odoriferous city in the world, caused by narrow ditches for garbage on the streets
*In Seoul, the houses of commoners were thached roofs and walls made of mud
*Seoul and Korea was compared unfavorably with Japan
He goes on to quote unfavourable views of Korea by Bishop, from the beginning of the book, which would have been recorded in 1894. He unfortunately omits these passages, from her last visit to Seoul in 1897:
Seoul, in many parts, specially in the direction of the south and west gates, was literally not recognizable. Streets, with a minimum width of 55 feet, with deep stone-lined channels on both sides, bridged by stone slabs, had replaced the foul alleys, which were breeding-grounds of cholera. Narrow lanes had been widened, slimy runlets had been paved, roadways were no longer “free coups” for refuse, bicyclists “scorched” along broad, level streets, “express wagons” were looming in the near future, [...] shops with glass fronts had been erected in numbers, an order forbidding the throwing of refuse into the streets was enforced [...] and Seoul, from having been the foulest is now on its way to being the cleanest city in the Far East!
This extraordinary metamorphosis was the work of four months, and is due to the energy and capacity of the Chief Commissioner of Customs, ably seconded by the capable and intelligent Governor of the city, Ye Cha Yun, who had aquainted himself with the working of municipal affairs in Washington [...]
Along with much else the pungent, peculiar odor of Seoul has vanished. [...] So great is the change that I searched in vain for any remaining representative slum which I might photograph for this chapter as an illustration of Seoul in 1894.
What really motivated me to write a response to the Occidentalism post was the following claim (using the photo from the top of this post), as it was something I was already looking into while researching this.
Koreans boldly claim that Japan destroyed many Korean cultural monuments that were in truth destroyed by Korean neglect. The above is a before and after photo of Namdaemun. Is this what Koreans mean by Korea being ‘ruined’ by the Japanese?
Again, this is a perfect example of choosing a very selective (and favourable) example. Yes, Namdaemun looks super. But what about Kyonghee Palace which was almost entirely destroyed during the colonial period? And what of Gyeongbok palace, which had only a few buildings standing by 1945, after the Capitol building had been built directly in front of the throne room; or Changgyeong palace, which had a zoo built on its grounds? Are there pictures of Seodaemun or Hyehwamun available that show how the Japanese restored them? Can replacing the Wongudan altar with the Chosun hotel really be seen as ‘preserving’ Korean cultural monuments? To see what Seoul looked like at the end of the colonial era, this large mapmade by the US military in 1946 even shows individual buildings, and allows you to see the remains of former palaces. The Japanese “made the Koreans take care of their cultural heritage”? How? Using the example of the capital city, all but three city gates were demolished during the colonial era, and out of five palaces, only two were left relatively intact. Preserving a cultural monument like Namdaemun, (or, more importantly, Seokkuram Grotto was the exception, not the rule. It was not ‘Korean neglect’ that demolished these landmarks, but decisions made by the Japanese colonial authorities that these structures were not worth preserving that led to their disappearance.
Our school cafeteria serves cabbage kimchee everyday with only about three or four main dishes that they just keep repeating over and over every week. I can hardly stand to look at the kimchee now.
Don’t know where your school’s located but if you don’t like the cafeteria menu you can always go outside of the school for food that more suits your tastes. There aren’t any rules that specify that teachers must only eat cafeteria food.
Unless of course you like the fact that the cafeteria food is subsidized.
Pawi (#49),
I do not know the slang “get your chile on,” but I am still in Korea because circumstances keep me here, including a large unpaid debt owned me. After I receive that and take care of a few other things, I will be leaving Korea and will probably never be eating kimchee or ramyeon, again.
South Korea has a pretty good society, but I do not want to raise my son here, mainly because of Korea’s messed-up education system. My son is the main reason for my wanting to go back to the US. Also, I am getting sick of teaching English to immature college freshmen who seem to lack a desire to learn.
If Korea could fix its politics and its legal and education systems, I think it would be a pretty nice place to live, provided that it also update its “food culture.”
Nasaj1000,
Yes, cast-iron skillet cornbread is the only real cornbearn.
Mins0306,
I eat in the teacher’s cafeteria and pay 2,800 a meal, which does not seem to be very subsidized to me. Yes, I could go outside the gate and eat at one of the three or four restaurants there, but they would be serving pretty much the same red-pepper food the cafeteria serves, and they wouldn’t have cornbeard, either.
I think allrecipes.com might have a cornbread recipe or two if you’re really that hard up, Gbev…
gbevers — You hate living here but stick around Korea because somebody owes you an unsecured debt? Listen shipmate, I got news for you: Nobody collects unsecured debts here in Korea without violence or the credible threat of violence. That’s why the legal “consumer finance” companies have to charge 49% interest per annum.
Life is too short for that. I hope the other circumstances are compelling, like being near your child.
PS, you can learn how to cook the things you can’t get on the economy. Hence my experiments with chicken-fried steak, chicken-fried chicken, chicken-fried bacon, and cream gravy. The first thing you need is a heavy skillet.
I’ll probably still have 신라면 now and then (with a little cheese thrown in) after I leave Korea.
Won’t miss kimchi though.
Collecting a debt, even if there is a legal obligation, is pert near impossible as Carr mentions. I took a business to city court in 1997 and won. They appealed so we went to provincial court and I won again. Their appeal for the supreme (?) court was denied and they were told to pay. This whole process ended up with no less than ten court appearances, lawyer’s fees, documentation, translation and interpretation fees, etc. Over the course of a year and a half. In the end I thought, “Who am I to impose my cultural values onto the good people of Korea,” and I had a prosecutor friend in Seoul call the judge presiding over the case which wrapped things up pretty quickly.
However, the business was registered in one relative’s name and the actual owners just took salaries on paper — pretty strategic on their part. The owner on paper had no cash as that was all paid out as salary to the other relatives so I had to have liens placed on their property until they paid.
There are lots of roadblocks that will get thrown up in your way, and unless you’ve got a substantial amount of money on the table or are genetically prone to extreme stubbornness you might as well let it go.
Brendon,
I do not hate living in Korea; I am just missing the United States.
My loan is only partially secured, and the person is still promising to pay it back, though I think there is less than a 50 percent chance of that happening.
It is probably the same all over the world, but I would not recommend making an unsecured loan to anyone in Korea, even if it is to a close friend. If you do, you risk losing your money and your friend.
I have loaned money to three people in Korea and have been paid back by only one, and I think that was mainly because the loan was not very big.
I am not sure what the Korean attitude is about loans, but, from my experience, after they get the money, they seem to act as if you are in their debt rather than they being in yours. In other words, they seem to hold you hostage to the loan over while asking for other favors. Anyway, I have learned my lesson and will not be loaning money to anyone, else.
I would like to learn to cook, so maybe I will find a good skillet and experiment, too.
Re: #50. The printing information I wrote about came from Korean books and historians. For example, Science and Technology in Korea, by Jeon Sang-woon, published by MIT Press.
No one is debating that movable metal type in Korea predated Gutenberg. The question is why it did not have the same effects in Korea and Asia as it did in Europe. And the best explanation I have heard is technological.
Feel free to apologize for being wrong…
gbevers - let me know if you find green beans. Fresh green beans! I found some ONE time last year, but have never seen them since. I ALMOST confused some small skinny gochus for green beans one time - whew, that would have been a hoot!
Brendon - You said to gbevers “The first thing you need is a heavy skillet” … would that be for the debt collection effort? or the learning to cook project?
Ben, no debate in Korea is due to the fact that someone might get their feelings hurt. After having a discussion with a Korean on US beef, he stated it was nice to talk about this, because you don’t talk to other Koreans about controversial issues because someone might become unhappy. I took this to mean you don’t want to disturb someone’s kibun. Harmony must be maintained. And THANK YOU Julian for finally mentioning jeong as part of what’s going on here.
re: debt collection, using hired help to collect does work, only if the debt is large enough and I will say, in Korea, fear opens doors rather than closes them.
Haddon House (Oksu/UN Village) carries fresh green beans.
Happy cooking, and happy eating!
pay 2,800 a meal, which does not seem to be very subsidized to me
Well, eating a meal at a typical Korean restaurant will set you back around 5 ~ 6,000 Won. The meal that you eat at the cafeteria also costs that much but the reason you’re only paying 2,800 Won is because somebody else is paying the rest of the cost of that particular meal.
And the price is?
Multitasking, multitasking. I prefer an 8 inch chef’s knife, though.
Mins0306,
I can get a hot crock of 돌솥비빔밥 with a plate of side dishes for 3,000 won at 김밥나라, and it tastes a lot better than the food at my school’s cafeteria. Unfortunately, 김밥나라 is not one of the restaurants outside the gate of my university. Food seems to be more expensive in Seoul than it is in some of Korea’s smaller towns.
Don’t know, Sperwer, but Haddon House ain’t E-Mart. Still, they’re a really great place to shop - IMO, they’re better than Hannam Supermarket. If you’re interested, head on over and check it out, or just give a call (02-794-0511).
Nonghyup might sell fresh green beans as well, and they’d likely be cheaper.
I’m shocked to hear Gerry has a soon living with him in Korea. Good luck to you, Gerry.
@Gerry,
Have you tried the cheaper student cafeterias or are they awful? At the university where I used to work, I would fill up on 3-4 kimchi and namul sides plus soup and rice for W1,300 in a university dormitory or do soup and side dishes only in the ala carte student cafeteria on campus. Maintained a 115 lb. figure and saved money to boot.
If you’re serious about learning to cook, Gerry, start with broths and stocks. They’re easy, easy, easy to make, and you can google recipes/instructions on the internet. Put a couple tablespoons of vinegar at the beginning and slow cook for several hours to draw out the minerals from the bones. Chicken makes the most flavorful stock/broth, hands down. As a Sunday brunch, I cook an egg in a little chicken broth. The bland egg white absorbs the rich flavor and the result is delicious! Add greens and you’ve got a meal. I always have some stock or broth on hand. Toss in veggies and some herbs to make soup or put a few tablespoons into a frypan as a healthy alternative to an oil-based saute. Sadly, your fresh seasoning ingredients are woefully limited, but garlic and onion work well with most vegetables.
If you have an oven roast a chicken. To keep it juicy brown the skin first in a frying pan before tossing it in the oven. Add onions, potatoes, carrots and garlic. You ought to be able to purchase a rosemary plant, so add a sprig. Once finished dump much of the grease, add some flour, butter, a bit of milk and black pepper, and you have gravy. About 15-20 minutes of work.
With the carcass you can make a soup stock.
If wine weren’t so expensive I’d give you a nice coq au vin recipe.
A few more tricks to keep the meat juicy:
1. Cover it.
2. Don’t keep sticking a fork in it all the time.
3. After taking the meat out of the oven, let it sit for 10 minutes before cutting. This seals in the juices.
#13, are you saying that Koreans may have a genetic predisposition to aqcuiesce?
There is nothing so unhealthy as steak fried like a chicken and yet delicious, especially with the white gravy. I believe it’s a sausage base. I used to get it at the restaurant I worked at in Plano, Tx. Huge, deep-fried and even the french fries that came with it I’d dip in the gravy. If you have a recipe for that white, peppery gravy Brendon, I’d be very interested. And where do you get a cast-iron skillet in this country? I’ve never seen one.
I completely understand gerry, and I’m surprised you managed to stay there for 30 years.
Sonagi gives some good advice but…wouldn’t you rather learn to cook from…Christopher Walken? Oh yeah…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43VjLCRqKNk
Thanks Seouldout, I think I can use that.
The proper base for the white gravy is “Vitamin G” — beef grease that leached out of your chicken-fried steak, some of the frying oil, and some of the bits of the batter that broke off while frying the steak. It surely is not sausage. You might add sausage to it if you’re going to ladle over biscuits or something, but all the recipes I’ve seen leave out the sausage and focus on the leftover drippings from the steak.
After you learn how to cook this one, quickly learn how to cook something else — chicken-fried steak is not so healthy for you, but delicious enough you might eat it every day until you expire.
Taking the streets in protest during the Japanese occupation and the post Korean War dictatorships was a valid way for the public to express its discontent…but not anymore. MB was democratically elected.
RIP George Carlin.
With respect to the recipe for the white gravy, the one I use is the recipe that this guy Scott Hargrove gives us on his instructional YouTube video. He uses bacon grease (also good, of course) in lieu of the beef-grease infused cooking oil which I like, and adds some kind of chicken bouillon which I can’t find here in Korea so I don’t use it — the key ingredients are milk, flour, salt, black pepper, and garlic powder. Hargrove dollops in a teaspoon of sour cream for tartness, which I’ve tried and heartily approve.
One thing Hargrove does with his steaks that I think improves them a lot is to put them aside in a 200-degree oven on a rack, so that the extra grease on the coating can drip off. It improves the steaks’ presentation quite a bit, and allows the cook to focus on the mashed potatoes and other vegetables (at my house, corn and peas since there’s little appetite for green beans, and little supply as well). In a larger kitchen someone else would be taking care of the sides, but in a home kitchen it’s all you.
Gerry, take a look at the video and see if you can’t follow along. All the ingredients are readily available in Korea and the result will warm your heart as well as your belly. The downside is the beef will be $4.00 a serving at least.
I’d also like to second Sonagi’s recommendation that a beginning cook spend a couple of weekends figuring out how to make stock. I’m not talking about securities law — I’m talking soups.
A good pot of beef stock can be frozen and used again and again for all kinds of soups. My favorite is French Onion Soup — also, apparently, not good for you, but so delicious.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/ww.....26307.html
I hope those aren’t American tomatoes.
#84 Revision: I hope those aren’t American “beefsteak” tomatoes…
It seems some Korean judges can make rational decisions, afterall.
“Samsung Crew Guilty in Korea’s Worst Oil Spill”
#83 They say Foie Gras isn’t good for you, either. But, strangely enough, I would eat it with some French Onion Soup.