The Fulbright Researchers (2014)

Last year, I wrote a very long post that detailed the research projects of the Fulbright Junior Researchers. (They make up the other "half" of Fulbright Korea; every year we have about 120 teachers and two dozen researchers.) Though I'd planned to do the same after this year's spring conference, I quickly became too busy to transcribe my notes.

This morning, while cleaning my desk, I came across them again. They're not as pretty or doodly as my notes from last year, but I still think the information is worth putting down somewhere. So, better late than never, here are brief descriptions of some of the 2014 Fulbright Researchers' projects:

Multicultural Korea

Dorry Guerra informed us that in 2010, 1 in 3 Korean births were multicultural -- that is, babies were born to one ethnically Korean parent and one non-Korean parent. Korea now leads the world in international marriages. This is a cultural phenomenon due largely to the fact that men in rural areas of Korea can't find wives, so they marry immigrant women from China or Southeast Asia. In a sense, these women are mail-order brides, but whatever their circumstances, they arrive in Korea and then they and their families have trouble fitting in. Korea's bloodline ideology, the idea that Korea is one completely homogeneous race and should stay that way, is actually a recent bit of propaganda that promoted national solidarity in the early 20th century, back when the country was in a shambles. Now that that is changing, what is going to happen to the multicultural families? (By the way, Korea is not nearly as homogeneous as the history books like to claim: their blood has been pretty well mixed with Chinese, Japanese, and Mongolian over the centuries.) According to Ms Guerra's estimates, up to 10% of the country will be multicultural by 2050. That's a huge jump from one generation ago. She warns that belief in racial essentialism, or the idea that the different races have deeply-rooted "essences", is a reliable predictor of stereotyping, prejudice, and conflict. So if Koreans generally believe in racial essentialism, then multicultural Korea is in for a rough ride for the next few decades.

Chaebols

Mike Chung gave an economic lecture on the Korean 재벌, or conglomerate. The word chaebol is derived from the Chinese 財閥 (cai2fa2), or "wealth clan". These rose to power during the regime of Park Chung-hee in the 1970s. His government, to put it frankly and with a touch of bias, allowed certain businesses to cheat for the sake of national economic growth. Now, the conglomerates hold unimaginable power over the country. They are seen as both necessary for its success and dangerous and unfair for a developed country that needs to switch to a more fair-play mode.

Korean Adoption

Hollee McGinnis (who was published in the last issue of the Fulbright Infusion!) talked about the mental health of adolescent adoptees and orphans. Following the brutal Korean War in the 1950s that ripped many families apart, 2 million children without parents have been sent to orphanages. In contrast, 85,000 have been sent abroad for adoption, and less than half that number have been adopted domestically. The statistics for 2010 alone show that 15,700 children needed care, 1,400 were adopted domestically, and 1,000 were adopted internationally. There were 8,590 abandoned infants. So the problem of parentless Korean children is not just (or no longer) a direct result of war. But adoption is still stigmatized in this country: it is usually carried out in secret so that a family's friends and neighbors don't know that the new child is actually from another family. Infants are preferred over children and adolescents. Also, because sons in a family usually perform ancestral rites on traditional holidays, and without a direct blood connection this can be seen as wrong, females are also preferred over males. So, Mrs McGinnis' organization, Also-Known-As, provides help and support to adoptees as well as their families.

(Another researcher, Andrea Cavicchi, also focused on adoption, especially on its history -- the 1962 Family Planning system instituted by Park Chung-hee, the controversy surrounding "baby-selling" during the 1988 Seoul Olympics -- and on the issues that make it so enticing for unwed mothers to give away their children. In fact, tens of thousands of orphans do not actually indicate that Korea has an orphan problem. It has a child abandonment problem.)

Nuclear Energy

Andrew Ju told us that South Korea imports 97% of its energy. That's quite a lot, but understandable for a country that has so few natural resources. Unfortunately, less than 1% of the energy that the country does produce is renewable. On the other hand, Korea's nuclear program, which began in 1978, is the fastest-growing in the world, and it exports a ton of its nuclear energy. (Well, these statistics may have come before the near-nuclear meltdown at the Kori Nuclear Power Plant in 2012, which led to some shutdowns and public outcry against nuclear power. And then there's Fukushima...) Anyway, South Korea wants to continue using nuclear energy, especially since it stands to gain quite a bit from an energy alliance with the US. But I personally hope that it decides instead to lead the world in green energy.

Healthcare and Migrant Women

Sangita Annamalai cited the rapid birth rate decline in Korea (now at 1.24 children per woman, the 5th lowest in the world) and connected it to the rise of immigrant wives for men in rural Korea. The subject matter is related to Ms Guerra's project on multiculturalism, but Ms Annamalai focused on the women themselves and on the public health resources made available to them in a country and language not their own. She went to public and private migrant shelters in rural and urban areas, where women who came to Korea through marriage brokers and found themselves struggling could go for help. There, she found that Chinese (or Chinese-Korean) women had much fewer problems than most; that Vietnamese women had problems with using contraceptives and tended to begin having children right away, which led to even more adjustment difficulties; and that Eastern European women could sometimes pass as half-Korean, but were generally more outspoken than Southeast Asian women, which led to domestic trouble. When the difficulties become too great, the pressure put on these women (by the government and even by the public women's shelters) to reconcile is strong, because in the event of a divorce, the citizenship of the wife is revoked. It's quite a sticky situation, isn't it?

North Korean Defectors

Stephanie Choi, who visited North Korea with me last February, gave her presentation about the acculturation of North Korean defectors in South Korea. There are an estimated 300,000 refugees from North Korea in the world: people who have escaped the tightly-controlled borders of the country seeking political freedom or just a better life since 1953. In the early 2000s, the number of refugees entering South Korea specifically grew exponentially as a result of a devastating famine in the North, but it has tapered off in recent years, following the death of Kim Jong-il and a tightening of security by Kim Jong-un's regime.

Today, the 26,000 defectors in South Korea make up just 1% of the country's minority immigrants. The North Koreans in South Korea are much different from the first waves of refugees. Instead of political elite who were lauded as heroes when they defected pre-Soviet collapse, defectors are now mostly women and children just looking to survive. And they are not treated very positively once here. After a long three-month investigation and assimilation period at Hanawon, where they are simultaneously interrogated in-depth about their background as North Koreans and scrubbed clean of that identity in order to fit in in South Korea, they encounter a host of problems. Some try to hide their identity, but their accent and unfamiliarity with basic skills required in a capitalist society, such as managing a bank account, can give them away. Others are fiercely proud of their background and, stating that you can't change where you were born, are involved in activism to try to change South Koreans' stereotypes about North Koreans (e.g. that they're staunch Communists, freeloaders, or a drain on governmental resources). Many are lonely and turn to each other for support (much like the Fulbrighters, scattered all over the country, tend to hang out together) or to religion. 80-90% are Christian, having been converted by missionaries involved in rescues and border crossings in China. These days, reunification is being talked about more and more. At the beginning of 2014, President Park announced that it would be possible by 2050, calling it a "reunification jackpot". I don't know how I feel about this, but I hope that whatever change occurs will come about peacefully. 땅의 통일, 사람의 통일. One land, one people.

Patriarchy and Politics

Chelsea Carlson researched women in politics, asking the question, "Why aren't there any?" Or at least, as many as there should be? Korea is notorious for its gender inequality, but why is this happening in politics? And will Park Geun-hye, the first female president, change things? Ms Carlson outlined the strictly-defined systems of networking in Korean politics: for men, their classmates, fellow alumni, and seniors/juniors (선배/후배) are all that matters, but women depend mostly on their families and husbands to make connections. This, coupled with a secretive nomination process to select candidates for publicly-elected office, makes it hard for women to get a foot in from the get-go. Women just don't have enough social clout to be elected, it seems, and the system, while not explicitly sexist, isn't helping. In my own opinion, Park Geun-hye utilized the networking system to secure her win. Her family is famous, of course, as her father was a former president(/dictator), and regional loyalty to the Parks is indomitable. Unfortunately, I don't think Park is a champion for women's rights at all; she has done nothing to close the gender pay gap or balance the systems of parental leave in order to help mothers return to their careers. So, gender inequality in politics will likely persist. Ms Carlson then offered a few ways this could be remedied, including a "local service requirement" for candidates (which women could easily attain and use to their political advantage), more transparency in the system, and even affirmative action.

(Another researcher, Aileen Kim, did her research project specifically on Park Geun-hye, and focused on the power of "dynasty" that helped secure her presidential win.)

Hip-Hop and Racial Consciousness

Whitney Barr countered the idea that Korea's infamous racial insensitivity could no longer be deemed as a mere product of ignorance, since Korean millennials have grown up with decent exposure to Western media and other cultures -- specifically, black and hip-hop culture. She explored the positive appropriations of hip-hop culture in Seoul, but also contrasted it with general dismissiveness or outright racism against black people, including the double-edged usage of words like 흑형 (black brother; Google that to get the idea) or 깜둥이 ("darky"), and the consideration of multiracial icons as purely Korean or "at least" half-Korean, discarding their other identity.

Performance Art

Adam Glassman described in colorful detail his experiences with shamanism and street dance in a project that aimed to capture Korean performance art in all its vicissitudinous adaptation to the present day. Why are shows like Nanta, in which the performers encourage tons of audience participation and turn it more into an interaction than a "show", so popular? Why has street dance skyrocketed in Korea in recent years? Mr Glassman suggests that it has something to do with the long-standing performers' directive to "create joy together" with their audience. Focusing on the 무당, or shamans, who practice a traditional religion in decline but still deeply-rooted in many people's belief systems, he described how the rituals they perform attempt to establish a tangible, physical connection between the people and the gods. Of the over 40,000 registered shamans in Korea, Mr Glassman was lucky enough to find one who opened up his home to him so that he could observe daily life and learn more about shamanism. From watching and recording the performative aspects of shamanism, he looked for similar patterns in modern iterations of performance art. Mr Glassman's eventual goal is to return to the United States to reinvent American theater, so that the audience is no longer merely a cold, voiceless participant but living and breathing, with just as much a stake in the performance as the performers themselves.

Miscellany

Other Fulbright research projects focused on more scientific matters that might have interested my students, but weren't necessarily compelling to me. One researcher is researching cancer treatment using electric plasma. Cool! But most of his lecture went over my head. Another is looking at the antihistamine effects of the Korean 다래, a fruit that is essentially a small kiwi. Also, two researchers did their projects on art and painting, and one of them is having a solo exhibition in Seoul in a few weeks! That's pretty exciting.

PSY, JLC, FOB, and the Transmission of Culture

"Oh. My. GOD!" complains the exchange student played by Kim Sungwon as the audience erupts in laughter. "I don't understand about Korean culture!"

Questionable English grammar aside, this Western student's frustration is very relatable. In the popular sketch "School of Mental Breakdown" (멘붕스쿨) on the Korean comedy show Gag Concert, a brief and hilarious few minutes are spent trying to look at Korea through the eyes of a foreigner. (Well, not in the episode shown above; that one's about American superhero movies, but it's the only one I could find on YouTube.) This school is obviously the parody of parodies, but we can laugh at some of the stereotyped portrayals of one slice of Korean culture, its education system.

This does raise some questions about perspective, however. "School of Mental Breakdown" aired last year, but the memory of Kim Sungwon's outbursts came to me as I chatted with my English co-teachers over cheese and crackers at our semiweekly book club. We're reading Amy Tan's seminal The Joy Luck Club, and the bulk of each period is spent discussing that amorphous thing known as "culture". As I am Taiwanese-American, they were interested in whether the issues of cultural assimilation, immigration, and language that are so central to the stories of the four Chinese families were the same as those that my family and I have faced.

Certainly, there are a few similarities. The language barrier that rises between generations after a geographical shift is one of the big ones. There are smaller tidbits that I cheerfully identified with, too, like the story of steaming live crabs or the childhood hours spent banging away fruitlessly at the piano.

But I had to admit the other day that a lot of the cultural symbols are just as mysterious to me as they would be to your average Western (and non-Chinese) reader of The Joy Luck Club. I am totally unfamiliar with the folklore and mythology so often referenced in the stories; I don't know which of the five elements I was born lacking, and I have never heard of Xi Wangmu. My comfortably middle-class family has never lived anywhere near a Chinatown. And perhaps the biggest difference is that my parents immigrated to the US in the 80s from Taiwan in order to seek higher education, not from China in the 40s in order to escape war.

But then I realized that The Joy Luck Club, which for decades has stayed on high school reading lists as one of a few representative books about Asian-American minority culture, has probably influenced hundreds of thousands of people toward a certain idea of what it means to be a Chinese-American or part of an East Asian immigrant family. And while that idea, within the pages of the book, is at least not contrived or too narrowly delineated, it is also -- dare I say it -- outdated.

I mean, Asian America looks much different now, in 2014, than it did when The Joy Luck Club was published in 1989, let alone in the 1950s when the memorable just-immigrated stories and childhood stories take place. But what does every high school sophomore who reads these stories today come away thinking? If they're not Asian, they now think they understand Asians. If they are Asian, they try to match up their own lives and experiences to the lives and experiences of the protagonists, to varying degrees of success. In neither case is the media self-contained; that is, it will always inevitably be extrapolated onto others (and onto the Other). Comparisons will be drawn. Judgments will be made. Conclusions will be jumped to across the wide chasm of sixty years of change.

Now how does this come back to Gag Concert and Korean culture? Well, before your average Westerner steps foot in Korea for the first time, they may not necessarily know anything about the country. Surely they've heard of kimchi and PSY, and maybe they're aware enough to know that Samsung, taekwondo, and Kim Yuna are Korean and not Japanese. But when we arrive, there's more than enough in this culture to shock us into thinking, "Oh my God, I just don't get it!"

Thus, Korea has made great efforts in recent years to export not just electronics and cars, but also its own culture. Hence the Hallyu Wave, which has globalized Korean music, TV, and celebrity culture, and the breakneck speed at which Seoul has been metamorphosing into an international metropolis. Korea is flinging its influence in every direction while also urging everyone to come in. But not everything sticks, and not everyone stays.

I want to look at the odd things that do stay in the minds of non-Koreans about Korea. Everyone is still kind of at a loss to explain why PSY's "Gangnam Style" was such a global hit -- it now has over two billion YouTube views -- but, well, here he is. Intentional or not, his cultural influence is powerful and not likely to go away soon. Korea wanted the world to love K-pop and gave them BoA, Rain, Big Bang, and Girls' Generation. The world chose PSY.

The American-educated, somewhat goofball rapper, whose past three music videos have poked fun at various aspects of his home country, certainly has something to say. His most recent video, "Hangover", which satirizes Korean drinking culture, has racked up nearly 70 million views in one week. It is impossible to ignore the fact that PSY's entertainment output is influencing the way the world views Korea. I watched and commented on "Hangover" when it was first released, noting at the end of my post that a viewer should certainly not assume that all Koreans drink from sunrise to sunset and get into street brawls. Yet they do drink a lot! There's enough truth in the parody that before you know it, tourists in Seoul are going to attempt to imitate the dozen different ways to down shots of soju as portrayed in the video and ask their Korean friends why they aren't doing the same.

What I am trying to get at here is that Korean culture can never be fully understood just by watching a few videos, listening to a few podcasts, or studying a few books, but the bits and pieces of it that go viral will become representative of it, for better or for worse. Some would argue that PSY's music is not bad inasmuch as it opens doors for people to get better acquainted with Korea, or at least K-pop, once they are first exposed to his earworms. Whatever it takes, right? On the other hand, it's equally likely that viewers will watch "Hangover" and content themselves with the assumption that Korea is a bizarre land of drunken wtf-ery. I mean, this is the country that produced PSY, after all.

To the confused exchange student at the School of Mental Breakdown: OMG! If you want to understand Korean culture... don't watch K-pop videos.

At least, don't just watch K-pop videos. Without a doubt, "Hangover" does provide the casual viewer with visuals and symbols of Korea, like karaoke rooms and cup noodles; it's not a completely vapid party anthem after all. But my point still stands: we cannot necessarily choose the things that represent our culture to outsiders, especially in this day and age when instant fame and influence on the Internet can fall into the lap of literally anyone. Pop culture entertainment may not be the ideal way to raise awareness about you and your community, but it tends to be the most successful or accessible conduit for those who aren't already commanding the stage on a global or national level.

Hm, where am I going with this now? Eh, here are some conclusions. The Joy Luck Club did a wonderful job of representing Chinese immigrants to the US. But it does not represent them all. PSY does a good job of bringing Korean culture to global consciousness. But he does not represent it all.

I hope that we can all be more aware of how media and entertainment (which includes books and novels) shapes our worldviews and influences our perception of anything unfamiliar, whether we like it or not.

Okay, now watch this:

This is a first look trailer for a new ABC series coming this fall called Fresh off the Boat. It's about a Taiwanese-American family trying to adjust to life in Orlando in the nineties. What do you think? From what I saw so far, it's funny, it has a talented cast, and it captures some great moments familiar to me as a Taiwanese-American kid who grew up in the nineties. Already, the very concept is causing a stir, because 1) Asians in media! and 2) that title...

Yes, there will be controversy. Like I've been saying, as scenes and storylines from this new show undoubtedly raise a lot of questions about issues of race, people will start to compare every Asian they know, including themselves, to the high-profile (fictional) Asian family they can now watch on TV every week.

I know that I'll be enthusiastically watching FOB, even if it turns out to be awful, because I'm really excited about having a sitcom family that is so representative of me and my culture. At the same time, I'm not going to stand for anyone who even thinks they can reduce me -- or my family -- to a set of stereotypes derived from a TV show. Remember: "...but not all."

The Difference Between Migrants and Expats (MAMF 2013)

MAMF 2013 in Yongji Cultural Park, Changwon

After church today, some friends and I visited the Migrants' Arirang Multicultural Festival being held in Yongji Cultural Park, conveniently just across the street from Hanbit Presbyterian Church. I had heard of this unique cultural festival last year, but I didn't attend. This year, it appeared to be a much bigger event, and since it was so close and also because there was the promise of food, I went to check it out.

My first and most enduring impression was that there were a lot of people there, and the diversity was stunning. Now, I know that Changwon is home to thousands of non-Koreans. Ever since South Korea's rise to economic success, people from many other countries in Asia have arrived to seek their fortunes here. But I never realized just... how many there were. I have literally never seen more non-East Asians assembled in one place until today. And I emphasize non-East Asians because Western countries were hardly represented here. More on that later.

Mongolian representatives enter the wrestling ring.

The festival had been running all weekend, but the crowds were still bustling and events were going on all the time even on its final day. In one corner of the park, a large group of Vietnamese were holding a talent show. They were decked out in traditional clothes or t-shirts with their national flag on them. In another area, what looked like a beauty contest was taking place for the Cambodian community. Right next to them, a Nepalese man decked out in hip-hop attire was giving a rap performance to an attentive crowd. Pakistani university exchange students were blasting music and dancing together, too, to the amusement of the many Koreans wandering by the park. One of the most interesting events I witnessed was a demonstration of Mongolian wrestling, or Bökh (Бөх). The athletes braved the cold in their very bare uniforms (see photo above) and also did some interesting balletic salutes to their flag and to the crowd before commencing their bouts of grappling and throwing each other to the ground.

In addition to the events, there were numerous stalls promoting each country's unique culture and food, as well as stalls for kids to experience the "multi" aspect of the culture by creating buttons or decorating flags. My favorite part, of course, was browsing the food stalls for delicious things to eat. Vietnam had pho, Japan had takoyaki, Indonesia had sate ayam, and Russia had a barbecue grill that was billowing enormous clouds of smoke in every direction. For lunch, I got menudo, a kind of meat stew, and turon, which are like fried banana egg rolls, both from the Philippines. I also sneaked bites of my friends' pad thai (Thailand), tandoori chicken (India), and fried calamari (Indonesia). This lunch reminded me a lot of Multicultural Week at my high school, where student clubs would raise money by selling foods from all around the world, and because my high school was in Fremont, well, the diversity of authentic ethnic foods you could find at our little high school fair was superb.

Food stalls! So many good smells emanating from this area of the festival...

So here's the odd part. The first thing I looked for when I realized that it was a multicultural festival was the stall for Taiwan. I didn't find one. China had a food stall, where they were selling dumplings and milk tea (unfortunately, when I asked for one, they had temporarily run out of water... at least I got to practice my Mandarin!). But Taiwan was nowhere to be found. I also noticed that there were food stalls for over a dozen Asian countries, including countries that I must admit I never think about (like Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh. I always forget about Bangladesh on Sporcle quizzes...), but the only European country represented was Germany, whose popular wurst stall was being run by a Korean.

It didn't take me long, however, to realize that it being the "Migrants' Arirang" festival, the only countries represented would be those of... migrant workers. I then looked around and realized that all these South Asians, Southeast Asians, and Central Asians that I had never noticed before were probably from communities of migrant workers or immigrants in Korea, and I had a really big "OH" moment.

I think that up until now, my astoundingly narrow-minded idea of the "foreigner" (외국인) in Korea was of the Western Anglophone: an independent twenty-something  from Canada, South Africa, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, or the US, most likely white, here in Korea for one to four years on a short teaching stint before moving home or on to the next Asian country. Of course, living in Changwon expanded that idea a bit to include young couples on a short teaching stint, old couples on a very long teaching stint, missionaries, foreign exchange students, and lots and lots of engineers from all over the world.

Most of these kinds of foreigners I can also categorize as "expats". The dictionary definition of "expatriate" is someone who is banished from or purposely withdraws from their native country to live somewhere else, but it has less of a negative or political connotation in expat circles today, especially when it comes to communities of expat English teachers. I've noticed that the word "expat" now refers primarily to Western foreigners, a more exclusive circle than 외국인.

And now I can see clearly how there is a huge group of people categorically left out of the discourse: immigrants (이민자). I never see them because they are mostly employed in industry, like in one of Changwon's hundreds of factories, in a completely different part of town. Migrant workers (이주 노동자) are supposed to be temporary, making enough money to move back home or onto something else in just a few years. However, I learned that in some immigrant communities in Changwon, families have lived here for ten or more years. Their children have grown up here. They are, in fact, exactly like the permanent immigrant communities in California that I'm so accustomed to (that I'm a part of, actually), only their adopted country is Korea, not the United States.

I find it somewhat awkward that this had never really occurred to me before -- it was a curious case of culture shock. That there are huge communities of minorities threaded into the seemingly solid-color fabric of Korean society shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. But it took my seeing all of them "out in the open" to realize how sizable the demographic really is.

Perhaps the other awkward part was realizing then why I couldn't find Taiwan today: there are relatively few migrant workers in Korea who are from my motherland, because Taiwan is developed enough economically for its people not to have to go abroad to find work. (Plus, Koreans don't crave stinky tofu the way they crave jajangmyeon.)

And that then made me think about how strange it would be if I did run into a poor Taiwanese enclave somewhere in the world and found myself staring straight into the face of my American privilege. Taiwanese-Americans and ABCs of my generation have generally done very well for themselves in the US. What if this wasn't the case somewhere else, and I met a community of Taiwanese emigrants who were living virtually unrecognized in a society that only acknowledged them once a year with a festival that celebrated but also completely Otherized them? I don't know what I would do. I would probably also have trouble communicating with them, beyond asking for a 布丁奶茶 and explaining that I'm actually from California.

Perhaps I'm over-thinking this now. Readers, what do you think about migrant workers and immigrant communities in the place where you live? Do you think about them at all?

In any case, I did enjoy spending time at the Migrants' Arirang Multicultural Festival today, and above all else I'm happy that Changwon hosts a festival like this, in the midst of Korea's festival-overload season. (Also happening this weekend were the Andong Maskdance Festival, the Busan International Film Festival, the Jinju Lantern Festival, and the Korea Drama Festival, and those are just the ones in the Gyeongsang provinces alone!)

P.S. Here are two articles about MAMF 2013 that I will get around to reading (and maybe translating -- they're in Korean) if I have the time: Nocut News and International News.