Ye Olde Chosun reports that actress Bae Doo-na — whom I kind of dig — has released a photo essay book that promotes Seoul.
Said Bae:
She expressed her love for the city she lives in, saying, “When I was traveling in other countries, some foreigners who didn’t even know it well made belittling remarks about Seoul, and I felt really bad every time. After traveling extensively overseas, I haven’t found any other city that is as wonderful as Seoul.”
Riiiiiiiight.
Would love to see the book, though.
{ 54 comments… read them below or add one }
i love seoul and hope to live there at some point, and the only foreigners that i’ve met who know seoul have fully enjoyed it.
Where’s she traveled so extensively, the backwoods of Missouri? (Sorry Brendon!). What a hopeless moron.
Bae, that is.
I find it hard to believe that some people, including family and friends, that think my crappy, boring little hometown is the best place in the world to live. I sometimes think there is something wrong with them, but each to his own!
So she- Bae Doo Na- actually is into photography and not just pretending in that “pix dix” commercial.
Of course, photography with those ginormous cameras and super expensive lenses is the hip hobby these days!
No offense, but Bae Doo Na always reminded me of E.T.-
football shaped head ala Stewie from Family Guy and freakish disproportionately large eyes.
Maybe that is her intrigue- that she looks so weird!
The only foreigners who would have an opinion about Seoul are those who’ve actually lived there, and most former Seoulites you meet in North America are ethnic Koreans whom Bae would not consider as “foreigners.” Maybe the belittling remarks that inspired Bae to make this book were questions like, “Where’s Seoul? Is that the capital of Japan?”
If she’s in another country isn’t SHE the foreigner????
Seoul is a fun city, but it has its share of problems. I’m assuming Bae hasn’t been to Tokyo, Melbourne, Prague, Amsterdam and an array of other “wonderful” cities.
Perhaps she finds that most people in Seoul speak pretty decent Korean, which probably isn’t the case for most other places she’s been. As a general rule I would say the more you get to know a place the more you find to appreciate about it. I’ve only been to Tokyo a handful of brief times and I’ve yet to find much to recommend it apart from amusing museums about decolonialism in Africa and Asia. I’d take Seoul over Tokyo any day. One of my best friends from high school was from Prague (and he now lives in Tokyo), but the endless carping about how great it was put me off. Amsterdam’s pretty cool. I’m one of those strange people who prefers Sydney to Melbourne.
@2
She’s a “hopeless moron” because she likes her hometown and doesn’t like people to talk bad about it?
I think that many people love their hometowns, for all their flaws. But I suppose that a bunch of rootless, disconnected, and bitter expats aren’t likely to understand that.
8. “I’d take Seoul over Tokyo any day.”
“What, are you on drugs?
Speaking of ridiculous lenses and fancy cameras, this GigaPan imaging system looks like a lot of fun http://gigapansystems.com/system-page.html
You can attach any standard 10MP camera to it, set the dimensions of the pan and the number of images, and capture your own 1000MP or greater images. Really cool results for things which hold still, not so much for scenes with moving objects. I’ve got a dyesub poster printer and I really want to try dumping something at around 132,000×44,000 pixels into it, around 15GB worth of data uncompressed. With only 512mb of RAM on board though I can see it taking days to print all the data.
At least you can smoke in bars in Seoul. Why is smoking banned in 99% of the bars in NYC? Why can’t there be some bars that allow smoking? Why not just ban alcohol in bars? Do people really feel they’re going to get sick because someone is smoking in a bar? Isn’t it enough to not allow smoking in restaurants? What is with these fucking pussies? Can we at least allow smoking in clubs that have bands playing that became famous when smoking was allowed in bars? Go back to TGIF and get drunk. Get the fuck out of here!
giga pan? Offset your camera on a 20 dollar tripod to the capture plane and merge the photos in photoshop.
@hardyandtiny,
You’ll get no sympathy from me. Your habit is genuinely offensive to me, and there is no reason at all why I should have to tolerate it in a public place.
To be honest, I was leery of the smoking ban at first. Now I’m convinced that any effort to demonize smoking is a step in the right direction.
@tmc1233
Maybe not. In English, yes. But in Korean, the term 외국인 is often used by Koreans when abroad to describe nationals of other countries. Honestly, I think a better interpretation of 외국인 perhaps should be “non-Korean.” Does anyone else know more about this?
@hardyandtiny,
You’ll get no sympathy from me. Your habit is genuinely offensive to me, and there is no reason at all why I should have to tolerate it in a public place.
Watching a woman dance around a pole with her tits exposed is offensive to some people and they can choose to not go there. What’s the issue? Why can’t we have smoking bars?
Photoshop only goes up to 30kx30k, plus merging and aligning are a PITA.
Bars and restaurants are not “public places.” lrn2private property
@hardyandtiny,
That’s not a good comparison. To use your metaphor, people cannot “choose not to go there.” What if every movie, including children’s movies, was interspersed with five minute segments of pornography? There’s no choice at all. Either don’t watch movies, or watch movies with porn.
Same deal here. Non-smokers for years were not given a choice. Either get lungfuls of smoke with your pint, or don’t get a pint.
I fully respect your right to smoke. All I’m asking is that you respect my right to not smoke, and don’t do it anywhere near me. The burden of making accommodations for your habit is on you, not us.
You’re right KRZ, there are limits to the technique I use.
@Colontos:
That’s not what she said, though. She compared Seoul to the other places she has visited in her extensive travels and declared it more wonderful than any. If you don’t understand the difference, your powers of rational and aesthetic discrimination are as pathetic as hers. No bitterness here, I just don’t suffer fools galdly.
miguk doesn’t have a da-bang.
what hardy wants is a da-bang.
cigs, alcohol, coffee, meals, girls, music.
This is from Japan, originally, right?
what does the “da” in da-bang refer to anyway?
Variety?
seriously, teach me about da-bang.
i only sat in one, once as a kid, because a shady relative of mine was operating one. It went out of business within 5 years.
I never thought it was a family place, no matter which da-bang it is. I say so, because my mother never took me to one, and neither did my father.
although, it seems men and women do go to da-bang for “suns”, match making meetings.
really would like to know. Old guys, help me out.
this I know for sure. Mool-jangsa in Korea is a dirty business.
fucking Grandfalloon..metaphor…fucking christ. People can know what is offered before they enter and then make a decison. Supposedly the USA operates as a free market. We can have smoking and non-smoking bars and let the market play out, no? If certain activities within a place require an age limit; drinking or viewing titties, than I think we can work out smoking as well. What a lazy sack o shits this country has become.
Bae said that Seoul is “wonderful”. Koreans are allowed their subjective value judgements and we the readers are free to wonder what the fuck Bae is on about. She’s neither correct nor incorrect. Seoul IS wonderful but it depends on how one looks at it. Perhaps Bae is in love with the detials, the unique ‘bunhuigee’ and soul of Seoul.
Don’t knock dabang, wjk. They’re a dying breed.
By the way, about “da”
http://hanja.naver.com/search.nhn?query=%D2%FE&ie=euckr
“miguk doesn’t have a da-bang. what hardy wants is a da-bang.
cigs, alcohol, coffee, meals, girls, music.
This is from Japan, originally, right?”
that’s a good laugh
No girls, and it’s not from Japan.
I don’t want a da-bang. I want an Irish pub with smoking allowed.
hardyandtiny,
Well, fucking, I’m always skeptical when people offer up “free markets” as a solution, but I’d be willing to go along with designated “smoking bars,” just to see how it played out. I have a feeling, though (and this is purely a guess) that most existing bars wouldn’t survive after having been forced to choose which clientele they would cater to.
But that’s a practical consideration. I’m not opposed to designated smoker bars in theory, just as I’m not opposed to restaurants that serve everything with a side of spam.
You don’t do a good job of mimicking the word “fuckin”..you should try something else.
The free market was the solution for as long as we can remember. The new idea is we won’t allow people to smoke – in a specific place.
It’s not a concern of your feeling or the health of some random business.
Actually, the free market as a solution to all our problems does not have a great record. The free market did nothing to end slavery or segregation. The free market does not induce businesses to keep adequate health standards. The free market did nothing to help handicapped citizens. And now you think the free market is going to protect your “rights” as a smoker? Be careful what you wish for.
But again, we’ll never know. Rather than take a chance on the free market, the solution that the US has opted for is just to ban smoking everywhere. And it’s fine by me. Like I said before, it’s your habit. You make the compromises, not me.
@Granfalloon–
I understand the premise and I understand what 외국인 means. However, I get tired of being called a “foreigner” even when I am in my own country– it has happened before. Perhaps it is just nitpicking, but if Koreans really want globalization they way they claim to, they have to start realizing that it is not productive to constantly label everyone as a member of the 한민족 or merely some 외국인, and also have to remember that in other countries THEY are the 외국인. Back to the topic though, I can understand her wanting to defend her hometown (as much as I hate Seoul), but really– who aside from those who have been there would really know enough about Seoul to even comment in the first place? I sense a little exaggeration on her part. She probably met like one person who once said something about a less-than-stellar experience in Seoul.
#10 a-letheia
“What, are you on drugs?”
Sometimes I wonder if I am, or just born insane. But I’m pretty sure I could get a job in Tokyo if I wanted to, but I don’t, so it must be true. What’s your excuse? Not in Seoul?
Well, you guys might argue about smoking in bars, but I want the government to make all my decisions for me, such as banning trans fats and fast food, because they are bad for me, and happy hour pricing, because otherwise I’d drink too much, and universal health care, because I’m not capable of making my own choice as to what type of insurance I need. Yes, it’s far better for the government to make all my decisions for me so I can live life in infantile, no-worries bliss.
Oops, back to topic. Obviously, this lady needs to do a bit more traveling if she thinks this place is a panacea.
…because I can’t afford the type of insurance I need.
…because I can’t get the type of insurance I need due to a pre-existing condition.
Seoul is a fun place to go to…but live there? No thanks. If I had to live in a large Korean city, I’d pick Pusan over Seoul without giving it a second thought.
@tmc1233,
I totally agree with you. Sociologically, I think it really holds Koreans back that they tend to lump the rest of the world together in one category. Worse than that, the us/them worldview all too often becomes an us vs. them worldview.
Still, I think it would be interesting as a linguistic study to explore the word 외국인. In every dictionary I’ve ever seen, it’s translated as “foreigner.” But it seems to me it’s used very differently from how we use the word foreigner.
<Still, I think it would be interesting as a linguistic study to explore the word 외국인. In every dictionary I’ve ever seen, it’s translated as “foreigner.” But it seems to me it’s used very differently from how we use the word foreigner.
Indeed it is, and a full reading of 외국인 would necessitate a full gloss of “minjok” and the entire, disconcerting subject of Korea’s volkische/blood-and-soil ethno-nationalism. Good luck with that!
@Wedge,
Were your comments aimed at me? I’m honestly not sure.
Also, where you wrote “panacea,” I think you meant “utopia.”
Wedge’s comments are purely reflective of his desire to have a solid identity – the way some guys buy large trucks, or some chicks go for the blond magic-straight look. Wedge and Carr are positioning themselves like those old guys in the balcony on the muppet show, eager to watch the Obama show.
Back in college we used to call one of our buddies “Wedge.” He started protesting this once he realised it was sneaky way of calling him a simple tool.
I feel exactly the same way about Newark.
They should be eager, given the fact that they gave Obama and the Democrats the keys to the country.
Here’s a fun exercise: Imagine taking a time machine back to November 3rd, 2004, the day after George W Bush was re-elected and Republicans held an 11-seat edge in the Senate and a 31-seat edge in the House. Bush was talking mandates, Rove was talking about permanent Republican majorities, and people like the two old coots in the balcony were whooping it up and gloating.
If on that day just after the election, you were to tell the best and brightest political analysts in the nation that in just four years time, that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama would be elected president in a landslide, and that Democrats would control both the House and Senate by large margins…you would not only be laughed out of the room, but you would likely be committed to a mental institution.
But that’s how far the worm has turned. So of course the irony of watching the old coots in the balcony now flail around desperately with doomsday predictions of liberals run amok ruining America… is that it’s people like them who are most responsible for putting the Obama show on stage in the first place.
Their undying support and constant cheerleading for Republicans throughout the last 8 years kept the Bush/Cheney train of arrogance and incompetence rolling right up until it plunged off a fucking cliff and gift-wrapped the last two elections for Democrats.
When Obama is inaugurated, the first group of people he needs to thank are the scores of short-sighted buffoons in the Republican party who were incapable of seeing the W disaster until far, far after it was too late.
Thanks balcony fellas!
I guess some people here can’t see the difference between libertarianism and the Republican Party (and note the small “l”). But yes, go ahead non-crotchety hipsters and let anti-libertarian nannyists like REPUBLICAN Mike Bloomberg decide what you can eat and where you can smoke, because after all, the experts know better than you.
Well, it’s sure reassuring to know from a fan that when Obama and the Gang aren’t channelling the Clinton Administration they will be conducting public business with all the wisdom and skill of the Cookie Monster and his pals.
In truth, I have strong sympathies with Wedge, and it’s not just a philosophical exercise for me. I found a generic blog for the town that I and Mrs Linkd have chosen as our new home when we return to Canada next year (Medicine Hat, Alberta), and I’ve scanned a few threads. It turns out that one of the biggest topics of discussion for the past couple of years has been the efforts of some citizens’ organization that wants to get a ban on displaying Maxim and Cosmopolitan magazines at checkouts.
In terms of alcohol, Alberta’s not as bad as Eastern Canada – at least we have privately-owned liquor stores, but you still can’t buy a beer at the 슈퍼 anytime of the day or night. And all the zoning laws that make Canadian neighborhoods so boring – fields and fields of houses, without so much as a little 세탁 with its neon sign to brighten up the odd corner. And starting a business – good god. I’ve been in business for myself here in Korea for 2.5 years, and I’ve NEVER made a single contract, nor dealt with a lawyer for any reason, nor discussed insurance or liabilities with anyone. All that shit that creates such a barrier to entrepreneurship in an “advanced” country.
I have my complaints about Korea for sure, and I wouldn’t recommend to anyone this country as a place to do business (another discussion perhaps), but there are a lot of things about living in this supposedly rigid confucian society that strike me as very free, and a lot of things about the Land of Freedom in North America that strike me as very meddlesome.
blueballs, have you ever been to Newark, New Jersey?
Seoul is infinitely more appealing than Newark, New Jersey.
Newark, NJ, is the number one homicide capital of the US. If not the world.
Newark, NJ shows clear evidence of white flight.
blueballs, I hope you lose both balls.
@20
“That’s not what she said, though. She compared Seoul to the other places she has visited in her extensive travels and declared it more wonderful than any. If you don’t understand the difference, your powers of rational and aesthetic discrimination are as pathetic as hers. No bitterness here, I just don’t suffer fools galdly.”
What the fuck is your problem? Realize what you’re saying here. You’re calling a woman a moron because she likes her hometown more than other cities.
“Rational and aesthetic discrimination”? What? Are you serious?
Don’t you ever get tired of this irrational hatred of anybody who says anything positive about Korea?
It’s “gladly,” by the way.
외국인 is no different than Gaijin (外人)
That could use repeating. Constant whining and butthurt is over the top here.
외국인 is no different than Gaijin (外人)
“While the term itself has no derogatory meaning, it emphasizes the exclusiveness of Japanese attitude and has therefore picked up pejorative connotations that many Westerners resent.” Mayumi Itoh (1995)[4]
The term is avoided by mainstream Japanese media whenever possible.[12][39] Now that gaijin has become somewhat politically incorrect, it is common to refer to non-Japanese as gaikokujin.[26][39]“
That’s all ya got, a correction of a typo?
I don’t begrudge her her affection for her hometown. Again, though, actually, she said Korea is more wonderful than the places she has visited in her “extensive travels”. That’s just stupid, unless she has never visited New York, Paris, Chicago, San Francisco, Montreal, Milan, Prague, Rome, London, etc., etc., etc. Seoul wouldn’t even be in the top twenty. Babbitry is bad in the land of its birth; it’s pathetic in Korea. But you have caused me to reconsider having labeled her a moron; just her statement was moronic. The personal sobriquet has to be reserved for knuckleheads like you.
Recently Koreans have been using the word “외국분,” (a raised up form of foreigner) “외국분들” if it’s plural, to be polite. It should be sufficient to be a politically correct term considering that the word 분 is a highly polite term. What do you guys think about 외국분?
분 (Naver English-Korean dictionary):
1. an esteemed person.
이분: this gentleman[lady]
A라는 분: a gentleman named A; a (certain) Mr. A
한두 분: a couple of people
오늘 몇 분이나 오십니까?: How many people are you expecting today?
분 (Naver Korean dictionary):
1. 사람을 높여서 이르는 말.
반대하시는 분 계십니까?
어떤 분이 선생님을 찾아오셨습니다.
2. 높이는 사람을 세는 단위.
손님 다섯 분
선생님 두 분을 모시고 모임에 참석하다.
Maybe she likes kalbitang, jimjilbangs, Seon temples and talking to taxi drivers in Korean. In which case I’m not surprised she prefers Seoul to New York, Paris, Chicago, San Francisco, Montreal, Milan, Prague, Rome, London, etc., etc., etc.
Doesn’t help explain to SomeguyinKorea why she prefers Seoul to Pusan though. Perhaps she has a rare allergy to beaches.
I don’t think you are eing fair to her, I could say exactly the same thing about Houston, my home town, and everyone else on earth would laugh at me. But I honestly feel it is true. There ae magical things about Houston that make it different and in certain ways better than any other place on earth. I know a Taiwanese girl who would say the same thing about the ever horrible Taipei, and though she lives in the US it will always be true for her.
There is nothing so unlovely that someone cannot love it, if it was your first big city that you lived in, a Minneapolis or a Warsaw can be as wonderful as Paris.
I grew up in Detroit. I have fond memories of it. It would never occur to me to claim that it is (or was) as wonderful as Paris. I’m sick of hearing Koreans carry on as though Seoul is. It may be their very own “pempek schwiata” ( you mentioned Warsaw), but it’s full of lint jam.
Sperwer,
Just out of curiosity, why the Koryogyny? If you dislike Seoul and Korea and Koreans as much as you you appear to, why do you bother with spending your time on the subject… as much as you do? Lint jam? I’m also curious what you consider lint jam. Sure, Seoul has its share of problems and idiosyncrasies, but it’s a hell of a lot better place to live than the majority of major cities in the world. Then again, I suppose it is more fun being negative and critical- which is probably how you just happen to like passing your time.
“Newark, NJ, is the number one homicide capital of the US. If not the world.”
Try again. Nevermind the world, it’s not even the homicide capital of the US. That has been DC for a long stretch of years with New Orleans giving it a good run over the last few.
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