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.

성 패트릭의 날 - Saint Patrick's Day

The following short biography of St. Patrick is from the Book of Common Prayer.

Patrick of Ireland (389 – 461)

At the age of sixteen, Patrick was kidnapped from his home by Irish marauders and taken to Ireland, where he was sold as a slave to a chieftain and forced to herd livestock. After six years of slavery, Patrick escaped to his native Britain. Because he believed that his captivity and deliverance were ordained by God, Patrick devoted his life to ministry. While studying for the priesthood, he experienced recurring dreams in which he heard voices say, “O holy youth, come back to Erin and walk once more amongst us.” He convinced his superiors to let him return to Ireland in 432, not to seek revenge for injustice but to seek reconciliation and to spread his faith. Over the next thirty years, Patrick established churches and monastic communities across Ireland. When he was not engaged in the work of spreading the Christian faith, Patrick spent his time praying in his favorite places of solitude and retreat.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! Unsurprisingly, absolutely no one in my school knew about the holiday. The extent of my students' knowledge of Ireland (아일랜드) ends at its location on the world map at the back of my classroom: "next to United Kingdom." I came to school with my green shirt, green cardigan, green bow tie, and green corduroys and began each period with a "top of the marnin' to ya, class!" in my barely-passable Irish accent. My students said, "Teacher, what language is that?"

No green to be seen! It's not a common color for my students to wear. My co-teacher happened to be wearing a lovely green ensemble, but it turns out she had picked the color because it was a nice spring day (China's yellow dust notwithstanding). Our cafeteria did not serve any green food (and it wasn't even the absence of food coloring; I realized that our school lunches don't do green vegetables very well. They're always either canned, pickled, or drenched in some mayo-based sauce...)

Having expected this lack of spirit, I'd taken on the task of introducing a bit of Irish(-American) culture to my school by hastily repurposing the tail end of my lesson on pipe dreams to talk about Saint Patrick's Day. Fun activities included hiding little paper clovers all around the classroom to have students search high and low for the single four-leafed one (네잎 클로버) and watching some Irish step dance! My students now know that people drink 13 million pints of Guinness (기네스) on Saint Patrick's Day and that the Chicago River is turned an impossible shade of green.

The funny thing is that I've rarely celebrated Saint Patrick's Day myself. The Irish-American community in the States is very large (nearly 12% of the population), but in northern California, I was surrounded by Asians. Saint Patrick's Day for me was just a fun day to wear green to school, drink green milk, and pinch my friends; it never meant anything more. Yet here in Korea I feel a sort of duty to share what little I know with my school community, since I -- who have had nothing whatsoever to do with Irish culture -- represent America to them. Odd, isn't it? Hopefully today's mini cultural lesson will pique a student's interest and they'll want to find out more about the rich history and heritage of Ireland.

Have a safe and happy holiday!

Twinsters, the reunion of Korean sisters separated at birth

Following up on yesterday's post about SNL Korea's offensive adoptee skit, I'd like to share this "Facebook story" that I really like: "Twinsters".

via facebookstories

About a year ago, I was linked by a friend to a Kickstarter page for a documentary that a Korean adoptee wanted to make... about her newly-discovered twin sister. Thanks to YouTube, Facebook, and the crazy power of social media, she found out that she was one of a pair of girls given up for adoption from Busan in 1987. Her sister was raised in France, while she became American. They reunited, visited each other's adoptive families, toured South Korea, and inspired thousands of people along the way as the story of their reunion unfolded together.

Again: they visited South Korea together (for a Korean adoptee conference). They returned to the land of their birth. As far as I'm aware, they did not reunite with their birth mother or family. Goodness knows if they had, it would not have happened remotely similarly to the crude parody that SNL Korea embarrassed itself with last week.

On that note, SNL Korea has apologized for their skit on Twitter, according to allkpop.com. "We bow our heads and sincerely apologize to the Korean adoptees overseas and their families who've been hurt by the skit... Due to the carelessness of the production team, which failed to handle a sensitive matter with the utmost care, we apologize and will get rid of the relevant corner (코너, Konglish for 'feature')." They admitted that they tried satire and failed miserably. Their sad attempt at in-group humor only alienated an already stigmatized and misunderstood section of Korean society. Hence, the apology. Fair enough. I just hope they don't do it again, but honestly, chances are they'll just make the same mistake with a different marginalized group...

Here is a link to the tweet and the full apology in Korean.

Adoption is no joke. I mean, I'm all for finding humor in various family situations, but we must realize that a line has to be drawn somewhere. And really, isn't it ultimately more rewarding to follow a 'feature' like "Twinsters" that explores adoption not through probing, farcical humor but through mystery, surprise, and genuine storytelling?

Anyway, Facebook did some great work with the infinitely more interesting story, and I encourage you to follow the visually-stunning timeline of their intertwined lives. I'm looking forward to watching the documentary when it is released next year.

SNL Korea fail in their attempt to satirize Korean adoptees

This news story has been making the rounds on Facebook, and I thought I'd share if you weren't aware.

Saturday Night Live Korea has a history of performing skits that poke fun at various members of Korean society in a way that outrages Western audiences. In the past, they (along with many other TV shows) have used blackface to satirize Africans and African-Americans, and this drew ire from the international community. Perhaps you could point to cultural ignorance in defense of their choice of comedy, but what they've done now is pretty much inexcusable.

A recent sketch parodies the reunion of a Korean adoptee arriving in Korea for the first time to meet his birth mother. What starts off as an emotional meeting quickly descends into idiocy as the adoptee butchers his Korean, uses improper honorifics, and asks his mother extremely rude questions. The humor is supposed to come from the adoptee's complete unfamiliarity with the Korean language and culture, but the international Korean adoptee community is not laughing at all.

One of my best friends in Korea is an adoptee, and she has never met her birth mother. I can't imagine what it must have felt like to watch this video and think about how this video reflects what Korean society thinks of her. Was the audience laughing because it's funny that a person separated from their family and raised on the other side of the world has difficulty communicating their thoughts and feelings? Do they find it funny that what could be the most emotional moment of their life is reduced to an overwrought demonstration of kicking and flailing that is meant to be taekwondo? Are they aware the adoption is in many ways an industry in South Korea that began with the orphans from the Korean War and continues today with babies of underage or unwed mothers being exported all around the world?

SNL Korea's skit is insensitive at best and utterly heartless at worst. In choosing to satirize this very painful reminder that the Korean diaspora is irreversably split and scattered, they show disrespect not just to adoptees, their birth families, and their adoptive families, but to all of Korea, all around the world.

Some links:

KoreAm Magazine coverage, a summary of the issue as well as a link to the original video.

Open letter from Jane Jeong Trenka, a very heartfelt and beautifully-written plea for #AdopteeDignity.

Reddit discussion of the skit.

But the most convicting thing I've read by far was the dozens of comments left by the international adoptee community on SNL Korea's Facebook page, blasting them for their poor taste and cruel sense of humor and relating some very personal stories about their experiences as adoptees. These comments are real. I hope the folks over at SNL Korea get them translated and actually read them. We'll see what happens...

Bangkok is One Big Food Court

And now, I will attempt to recall my two weeks of travel in Thailand and Laos with one blog post per day. It will probably take more than fourteen days.

The Chinese Gate in Bangkok.

Day 1 (Jan. 24): Travel.
I first flew from Busan to Kuala Lumpur with AirAsia, a super low-cost airline that leaks advertising out of its pleather seat cushions and turns its aircrafts into billboards. They know the importance of branding. Stepping out of the plane in KL was my first experience in Southeast Asia, and it was muggy. Waiting in line at the international transfers hall for over an hour was my second experience in Southeast Asia, and it was annoying. Beginning and finishing The Things They Carried while waiting five hours for my next flight was my third experience in Southeast Asia, and it was alternatingly confusing, captivating, and boring. I was pleased to leave the KL airport.

I arrived at Don Muang Airport in northern Bangkok near 11:00pm. This was when I actually felt like my travels had begun: exchanging money, seeing signs everywhere in the Thai script, which I can't read at all, and walking around with my heavy backpack on: all of this certainly kicked my wanderlust into high gear. I'm somewhere I've never been before! I'm alone! I have no strict schedule! This is going to be awesome.

Bangkok travel tip: don't take a taxi from either of the international airports to downtown. From Don Muang (DMK), take the A1 airport shuttle for 30THB and 30 minutes to the Mo Chit metro station. From there, take the subway or the Skytrain (BTS) downtown. From Suvarnabhumi (BKK), take the airport link. I don't like taxis. Use this transportation website to help you plan.

So I caught the last airport shuttle (11:30pm) heading out and then the last Skytrain heading downtown just after midnight. Bangkok's metro system seemed really clean and modern; on the other hand, its streets are not. And it was these dark, dirty, post-market, traffic-fume-clogged streets I walked through for twenty minutes before finally arriving at my hostel.

Bangkok hostel rec: New Road Guesthouse (run by Visit Beyond). +1 for $7 dorm housing, +1 for proximity to Chinatown and Sukhumvit Road and distance from the craziness of Khao San Road, +1 for computers and wifi, +1 extremely friendly and helpful staff (among the best I encountered in my entire trip), and +1 for the cool map of Bangkok they gave me.

My first night, I actually stayed up long past when I should have passed out after a day's travel, because I met some local Thai guys working at the hostel and chatted with them at the bar. Like I said, friendly and welcoming staff!

Bangkok Chinatown: gold stores and red charms for the Lunar New Year.

Day 2 (Jan. 25): Bangkok is one big food court.
So, my first "cultural" experience in Thailand was in the Chinatown of Bangkok. It was a pleasant half-hour walk away from my hostel, full of different sights and sounds than the ones I'm used to in clean, organized Korea. I wended my way through streets overflowing with vendors as the early morning traffic turned into late morning traffic. I bought a whole sliced mango for a dollar! There were tons of food stalls, restaurants, and a string of gold shops. Many vendors were selling red lanterns and gilded decorations for the upcoming Lunar New Year. It was funny that I was surrounded by the symbols of Chinese culture rather than Thai culture, but obviously the cultures have influenced each other greatly, so who's to say what icons and traditions belong to whom?

For breakfast, I met up with two fellow South Korea Fulbrighters who happened also to be in Bangkok, although they were going to leave for Cambodia that day. I really enjoyed catching up with Taxi and Jessica and hearing their thoughts on Southeast Asian culture as they'd experienced it so far. What they told me -- and what I eventually came to experience for myself -- was that the poverty was so dire at times as to be physically arresting, and that I could expect to be made uncomfortable by the tourism industry's complete lack of subtlety. Although our time together was brief, it was nice to start everything off with a set of friendly, familiar faces.

Taxi, Jessica, and me in front of Wat Traimit.

For lunch, my dad set me up with an old colleague of his from Taiwan. Dr. Weng moved to Thailand five years ago to do Christian missions work. He had gotten to know many Thai immigrants to Taiwan(1) whose accident-prone industry jobs landed many of them in his hospital. He had ministered to them and encouraged them to bring the Gospel back to their rural hometowns in Thailand.

Later, he heard that they were having trouble establishing Christian communities in this 90% Buddhist and 0.5% Christian country, so he felt called here to help. Fortunately for him and his wife, they found support at the Bangkok Christian Hospital, where he is now based. He travels regularly to other cities in Thailand, especially rural areas, to aid their church congregations and also preaches (in Thai! He found it easy to pick up the local language, partly beacuse it is pentatonemic, just like Mandarin). Dr. Weng gives sermons regularly at a small community church in Talat Phlu, and he invited me to visit the following day.

Also, lunch was delicious. We had papaya salad, steamed fish, sticky rice, and a variety of spicy dips for the rice. I found it easier than I expected to get to know my dad's colleague, since we spoke for most of the time in Mandarin, which I haven't used in years. But anyway, I was happy to get to know him and his work and was blessed by his gift of a Thailand-shaped wall hanger.

After lunch, we took a walk in a nearby park. That park turned out to Lumphini Park, one of several sites of the anti-government protests that have taken over the capital city. More on that later...

For dinner, I made a date with two Americans I'd met in Changwon. Chris and Leah were teachers in Korea for one year, but then moved to Thailand, where Leah now teaches at an international school she loves and Chris is starting up a sustainable carpentry business. They are such a lovely couple.

Chris and Leah in Soi 38 of Sukhumvit Road, with burgers from Daniel Thaiger's food truck.

They took me to the area around Sukhumvit Road, which is famous for its food alleys. Soi 38 is a dead street(2) during the day but comes alive with restaurants and food stalls at night. It is home to what Chris calls the best burger truck in all of Bangkok. I didn't get a burger, but I did try Thai noodle soup and coconut-mango sticky rice for the first time (and fell in love). "Well, this is a neat little food court," I remarked.

"All of Bangkok is a food court," said Leah. She is so right.

In the evening, we went to their church. It's called Newsong, and I thought that that name sounded very familiar... Then, one of their members made the connection for me: they're a church plant of Newsong in Irvine, CA! That's the megachurch my missions team visited every single summer before and after our week-long service trip in Tijuana, Mexico. I was really astounded by how small the world became; however, I wonder how many people at Newsong are actually aware of this passionate, sixty-odd-strong group of urbanites over eight thousand miles away?

Anyway, Newsong Bangkok was delightfully friendly and welcoming, expats and local Thai alike. I liked how comfortably they squeezed into a renovated space the size of your average Korean cafe, how everyone wore flip flops and a smile, how energetic the music was -- and they sang some songs in Thai! I was touched when one of the guitarists shared a song he had written during a time of depression, and I was impressed with the simultaneous interpretation of the sermon (given by their super chill bro-y American pastor) and announcements into Thai.

By the end of just one short service, I really missed church. I attend an international fellowship regularly in Changwon, but it's not the same by a long shot. Yes, I love my community, but to be honest, I haven't felt like I've received much spiritual nourishment from the services for several months. Newsong has a lot of the typical factors that appeal to Christians of my generation and a definite hip (or hipster) aura: young congregants, Saturday-evening services, relevant teaching rooted in real life, and even a fair-trade coffeeshop. Its diversity is also stunning; not just in having a congregation that is 50% local Thai, but also the wide variety of foreigners.

As Taxi and Jessica had told me earlier in the day, and as Chris and Leah reiterated when I asked them, Bangkok's diversity is pretty difficult to rival, and its foreigner population(3) is comprised of all sorts of unique and awesome people. It's not like Korea, where most of us waygooks are English teachers. People come to Bangkok from all over the world to study, to sell jeans, to start businesses, to "find themselves", to teach, to learn, to open up gyms, to get married, to do missionary work... Bangkok is crazy multicultural. I suppose it's comparable to Seoul, but Jessica said that even Itaewon has nothing on Khao San Road.

Mmm, and with cultural diversity always comes a smorgasboard of delicious food. So that was my first full day in Thailand: I met awesome old friends and made new ones, and I got just a taste of something "different" that would come to define the next two weeks. Oh, and I also went to the Bangkok anti-government protests, but that's a story for tomorrow.

Mango with coconut sticky rice; this stuff is amazing, and it only costs a dollar or two!

- - -

(1) Confusing, isn't it? Even a lot of Koreans mix up my ancestry, thinking I'm from 태국 and not 대만.
(2) Soi means "alley", and many streets in Bangkok are numbered and referred to as Soi 1, Soi 2, etc. of the nearest large road.
(3) So we're not even counting the dozens of different ethnic groups that are all Thai by citizenship.

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.