Children's Novels about Korea by Linda Sue Park

Last spring, when I was informed that my school's English department had hundreds of dollars' worth of extra funding to purchase classroom materials, I decided to spend my share of the money on books. I was hoping to use some of the books as educational tools in my classroom, or at least to lend them to students for extracurricular reading.

Now, I realize that that was a foolish hope, since few of my students are at a high enough level of English to read entire novels, even children's novels, and even if they all could or wanted to, they simply don't have time. They have to study all day and can't read for pleasure, unless it's short-form webcomics or books in Korean that they can get through quickly, between periods.

So, all those wonderful books I bought are being read by nobody except me. 아쉽다! That is, ashipda, or "too bad"... because two that I finished recently would be of great interest to my students, I think. They are both written by Linda Sue Park, a Korean-American author whose work mostly focuses on Korean history and culture.

The first book of hers that I read is called When My Name Was Keoko. It is about a young girl whose family endures the harsh treatment of Koreans by the Japanese because of the occupation during World War II. Actually, the family's story is told from two perspectives, by the girl, Sun-hee (whose Korean name is changed to the Japanese "Keoko" per official mandates at the time), and her brother, Tae-yul, who enlists for the army because he wants to fly planes.

I really enjoyed the novel because it was a personal look at a period in history I know very little about. Of course, I've heard so much about how the occupation was a time of cruel treatment toward the Korean people and irreparable damage to Korean culture -- in fact, centuries of on-and-off oppression have left many Koreans with a bitter vendetta against Japan. But when the facts are told through the eyes of two young children, they become manifested in a way that a history book cannot capture. The book was gripping, dramatic, and inspiring, and I'm sure my students would like it, too.

The second book is called A Single Shard. This book won the Newbery Medal for children's literature in 2002. I had no idea! It appears to have been the book that really made Park's career.

This novel follows the adventures of an oprhan boy named Tree-Ear (I'm guessing that's 목이/木耳?) who dreams of becoming a master potter and learns at the feet of an irritable man who specializes in famous Korean celadon. This is also historical fiction, as it is set in 12th century Korea, which looked nothing at all like Korea today. I mean, this was during the Goryeo dynasty. The capital of Korea was Songdo/Kaesong (in modern-day North Korea), not Seoul. There were no roads, let alone cars, and the society depicted is really just many small mud-hut villages separated by seemingly impassable mountain ranges. How Korea has changed!

I feel pretty neutral about this book; it wasn't bad, but not nearly as interesting as Keoko, because it moves at a slower pace and is further removed from me historically. Still, it was elegant in its simplicity and unique as a carefully-crafted window into an overlooked period and culture.

However, there was one tiny anacrhonism in it that really bugged me: Korea's national dish, kimchi, didn't have red pepper flakes in it until the late 16th century (thanks, incidentally, to the first wave of Japanese invasions...). But when Tree-Ear discovers kimchi in his meal, it has those characteristic red flakes. I don't know why it bothered me so much that there should be such a trivial error, but I guess I'm just... attached to kimchi, after eating it almost once a day for two years!

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So, I got these books, and many others that could be classified as Asian-American lit, just so that my students could read them and see a bit more representation than they're used to form American media. Unfortunately, they'll only gather dust on the library shelves if I don't actively incorporate it into my class somehow.

Actually, when I was talking to some English teachers today, they mentioned that they knew about When My Name is Keoko, so I guess in the past decade, Park's novels have been introduced to English education circles in Korea. I'm very happy about that!

On another note, some of the other books I bought are Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin, which really is for children, so I found it too simple for my liking, and a few graphic novels, such as Gene Luen Yang's Level Up and American Born Chinese, as well as Derk Kirk Kim's Same Difference. These I certainly also bought for my own benefit -- i.e., I wanted to read them myself -- but I also thought that because they are graphic novels, my students would find them easier to read. Well, one of my third-years tried American Born Chinese, but the slang in it was beyond him. Oh well, at least he enjoyed the pictures.

What are your favorite English-language books that feature minority and/or foreign cultures?

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."

머리스타일, 놀라워 - Meolistyle: No, La, Woah!

JH got up from his end of the table and sat down again with his tray, right across from me.

"Talking is fun," he said. Boom. Day made.

Meanwhile, JM was eating with his eyes trained on the television show playing on the screen in the cafeteria. The show was some sort of reality TV filler that followed the members of one of Korea's most famous boy bands, Infinite. I like one of their members, Hoya, who starred in Reply 1997, but I don't listen to any of their music (1). As we watched them do vaguely interesting things, my eyes were drawn to their hair. All of the members have pretty flamboyant personal style and fashion sense (though I definitely don't think any of them has any control over his public image). One in particular (maybe SungJong?) was sporting a head of singularly unattractive bubble-gum pink hair. It made me laugh out loud, and I looked at JH.

"JH, would you ever want to have pink hair?"

"Never," he said.

"Well, then, if you could dye your hair any color, what color would you want?"

JH thought for a minute, and his eventual answer surprised me: "Gray! Like an old man."

I dig it. (from Pinterest)

I think that could work. Instead of gray, though, I told JH that he might want to go for silver. It's been done!

I also told JH that I'm thinking about cutting all of my hair off, shaving it really close, as it was when I first came to Korea two years ago. The reason is that my black belt test in taekgyeon is in a few weeks, and I'm getting really tired of having my hair in my face all the time when I'm trying to concentrate on my kicks or forms. I use a bandana or a headband to keep my bangs in check, but it's still 불편해 (inconvenient)!

Showing JH and JM my really, really long 앞머리, I quipped that it was so long I could almost braid it. "Do you know what a braid is?" I asked. They didn't. I very, very rarely see any Koreans with braided hair (땋은 머리). I'm not really sure why... it's just not a thing here, I guess. Women always have their hair down. And men generally don't sport long hair, anyway.

This reminded JH of an old Korean custom. He explained that in ancient times, Korean men and women both had long hair and kept it up: women had unbelievably elaborate braids and updos, while men had top knots (상투) (2). According to JH, people would never, ever cut their hair, because they considered their hair to be a part of their ancestral heritage. I find that idea very intriguing.

But then, so the story goes, the Japanese came and cut off all the men's top knots. It's more than a bit symbolic, as Japanese colonialism really did sever Korean culture from its roots. Ever since, Koreans have had more "modern" hairstyles.

The picture I showed my stylist.

And today, hair is big. There's no question about it. Hair salons are everywhere; there are four or five in a ten-minute radius around my house. It is extremely common for anyone to perm and dye their hair, no matter their gender or age. I've seen toddlers in barbershop high chairs and old ladies getting their latest ajumma perm. My taekgyeon master permed his hair last week; on Friday it was straight, and on Monday it was a tangle of loose curls. Of course, people my age like to follow trends, and as far as I can tell, right now dark brown is in, but simple cuts are not. For guys specifically, they're asking for something called 투블럭 ("two-block"), which is equivalent, I think, to an undercut. The sides are shaved close and the top is left to its own devices, sometimes with the help of a perm or wax.

Now, one year ago, I was pretty set against ever changing the super-straight, super black natural state of my hair. In a nutshell, I didn't want to be a trend-follower, I didn't want to possibly contribute to the stereotype that Asians prefer a look that is more natural for Caucasians, and I didn't want to send a message to my students that I was at all dissatisfied with my natural hair. But I did want to change my hair, simply out of... I don't know, call it an early-twenties desire to color outside the lines every so often.

In February this year, I dyed my hair brown. I was literally dragged into Punk Shalom by my friend Katelyn, who told the folks there that I wanted a change and that they could make it happen however they liked. It was, in fact, a very fun experience. When I returned to school the following March, I got double-takes and plenty of compliments.

Before, During, After!

So by last week, almost four months later, the roots were growing out and everything was just getting too long, and I decided I needed another haircut. But then I toyed with the idea of perming (파마) instead. It's another way to keep my bangs out of my eyes, and also... I won't deny it, it's popular.

Thus, I brought paperwork to a salon near my house that I'd been to once before and corrected my students' speech drafts for three hours while sporting curlers and a head saturated with chemicals. Yeah, a perm takes a long time. The result was, as you can see... wavy.

It's not pink or silver, but it's certainly crazier than anything I've ever done with hair -- and that includes bleaching it myself in the dorm bathroom three years ago.

Did I worry this time about compromising my values? No. Do I have qualms about how my friends, family, co-workers, or students will react? Not in the slightest. But am I now wondering about how closely hair is connected with identity, and considering how changes in my appearance may reflect changes in myself that two years of living in Korea have wrought? Yes.

And am I also considering letting my hair continue to grow out until I can make a respectable top knot?

Yes.

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1) This is one of Infinite's most recent music video releases, for a song called "Last Romeo".

My reaction: Eh... 별로. Unfortunately, this video is the epitome of what is popular in K-pop today: angsty, strangely-albeit-immaculately-dressed men pointing at the camera and dancing really well in dimly lit halls, reaching longingly toward the same forgettable girl only to have the entire library explode into confetti from a thousand fake books.

2) Speaking of top knots and taekgyeon, 관장님 told me that when taekgyeon players during the dynastic periods sparred, sometimes the winner would be determined by which man could hit -- rather than the face -- his opponent's top knot first. Illustrations of taekgyeon being played in bygone eras show men with very long queues in the ring, while those who watched wore their hair up. (Actually, he also said that only married men sported 상투...)

P.S. Title of this post comes from an Akdong Musician song, 가르마 (Hair Part): 머리스타일 하나로 다른 사람이 되다니 정말 놀라워. Translation: You can become a different person just by changing your hairstyle, it's amazing.

News on North Korea

Just some links tonight. Some of these stories I've wanted to share for quite some time, so I might as well just lump them all into one post. Happy reading!

What It's Like to Meet a Brother You Haven't Seen in Six Decades (TIME) -- a moving piece about two brothers who participated in last month's North-South family reunions (남북 이산가족 상봉). A former Fulbrighter contributed to the article!

North Korean elections provide clues to reclusive Stalinist state (CNN) -- an analysis of the DPRK's rather pointless elections. Kim Jong Un, unsurprisingly, won 100% of the vote. More interestingly, the election is used by the ruling party as a kind of census: if someone fails to show up to the polls and they're not accounted for in a prison camp or something, it's a sure sign they've defected.

The Land Where the Lord Has No Work! (DailyNK) -- following the release of an Australian missionary who was detained in Pyongyang while I was there, a North Korean website ran some propaganda claiming that the nation's brand of socialism is so successful that Jesus himself "would have nothing to do even if he came." Bold statement.

Understanding Christian witnessing in N. Korea (NK News) -- also touching on Christianity, specifically the motivation protestant Christians have for evangelizing in the DPRK, even though it is strictly prohibited, and the pros and cons of their methods of engagement. There's a lot of good analysis in this article, as well as some quotes from one of the organizers of the Pyongyang Project, my DPRK tour group. Fun fact: one hundred years ago, Pyongyang was a center of religious revival in Asia; it was called the "Jerusalem of the East". Today, Christians are ruthlessly persecuted unless they belong to one of a few state-run churches in the capital.

Mixing with the Cleanest Race: My upbringing in North Korea (NK News) -- part of a highly unique series written by Monique Macias, a Guinean who was raised in Pyongyang under the care of Kim Il Sung. Her experience is truly like none other.

Pyongyang's Hunger Games (New York Times) -- an explanation of some appalling statistics on food aid, government/military spending, and the lavishness of the Kim regime, from the recent COI (Comission of Inquiry) released by the UN. In short: people are starving, and the government has the ability the help them but not the willingness.

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...

America, the Superpower of the Present Age

I sound like a Tea Partier, don't I? Ha.

My co-teacher spent seven weeks in Austin, Texas this past winter break. She participated in a Fulbright-sponsored teacher training program that brought Korean English teachers -- most, but not all, associated with Fulbright schools -- to the US for cultural immersion and educational exchange. She stayed with a Texan homestay, visited cultural landmarks in Austin, and taught classes on Korean culture to students at a low-performing high school.

I've been very eager to talk to her about her experiences in the United States, as this was her first time there, and it was for such a long time, too! Seven weeks is longer than my orientation training for Fulbright.

So, I asked her over lunch what her most enduring impression of America was. Surprisingly, she said that although seven weeks was not enough time to draw any strong conclusions, she saw enough during her time there to understand why America is the strongest nation in the world. I raised an eyebrow. She explained, "the sheer number of garbage cans on the streets was so impressive. You know, having garbage cans everywhere means that the government can afford them. Even though it's a seemingly small thing, it kind of represents how much abundance there is in America."

I commented offhand about how I would have interpreted the profusion of garbage cans as a sign that Americans produce far too much garbage. "Well," she replied, "maybe it's both."

She also spoke in slight awe of the enormous bathrooms ("Necessary for all of those fat Americans?" I asked.), the impressive museums and art galleries ("Well, compared to D.C...."), and the fact that they would turn on the air conditioning when it was 75°F outside. The wastefulness of this behavior notwithstanding, all of it pointed to abundance, and my co-teacher went on and on. Austin is only the 11th-largest city in America, but it has airports, museums, and beautiful buildings to rival Seoul and Incheon. It's as if the United States has at least eleven Seouls -- the magnitude was overwhelming.

Obviously, Seoul is inimitable and there's no comparing it with Austin or any other American city for that matter, but the point is that she came away from her experience in the US thinking that Japan, France, and even England now seemed like superpowers of the past, while America is the superpower of today.

So that was interesting.

On a different note, my co-teacher also talked about the thing that surprised her most about American schools: she and all of the other Korean participants in the program agreed that the American students they encountered in every classroom situation were on the whole far better behaved than their own country's students. They were extremely polite and extremely PC: one class hushed an ESL student when he asked my co-teacher how long she'd been studying English, but she smiled and simply asked him to guess. The Korean teachers came away with glowing reviews of American high schoolers. I had a hard time believing this, but I guess there's something in the lunches in Texas...

Also, she was extremely shocked to find the extent to which America's "melting pot" was actually more like a 3.79 million square-mile pizza with 314 million toppings on it, all squished together but never mixing. Case in point: Spanish-speaking students who had been living in the States for two years who could still only manage, "Me no speak English." She described it as students learning EFL (English as a Foreign Language) instead of ESL (English as a Second Language), since they were living in a completely Hispanic community and weren't even encountering English in their daily lives, not even at school.

We chatted about immigration and how it forms a dynamic society, the deal with the over-achieving Asian immigrant stereotype, and some of her other experiences with places she visited and the Americans she met. I've been thoroughly enjoying all of these conversations, as my casual cynicism is being given a run for its money by my co-teacher's rave review. And the best part is that I find I'm learning a lot about my country.

My country? Every time my co-teacher shared her stories about the United States with me, she would call it "your country". To be honest, that sounded strange to my ears. It's because she went to Texas and experienced Southern/Southwestern culture. I'm from California, and I've never been to Texas. Although I introduce myself as American or Taiwanese-American, I consider myself culturally Californian, not simply American (Since "American culture" can mean so many things, it tends not to mean anything at all.), and I certainly can't identify with any part of Texan culture. All I know about it are stereotypes. So the foreign experiences my co-teacher had had sounded somewhat foreign to me, too. This has gotten me thinking about how the United States of America really are united states, discrete and different but all trying their darnedest to get along.

Ah, USA... you are a bottomless well of culture and cultural issues that make every conversation about you utterly fascinating. Keep it up, home country. Keep on being the beautiful mess that currently controls the rest of the planet. I'll be back soon.

Kumamoto (熊本)

Kumamoto Castle. The young lady in the kimono is dressed up for Coming-of-Age Day.

Kumamoto wasn't always called Kumamoto. Those of you who know your kanji/hanja/hanzi might wonder if this city really is the origin of Japan's bears. Actually, its ancient name was 隈本, also read as Kumamoto, but the first character means "corner" or "shadow/shade", not "bear". The origin of shadows? Nah, it's really just a place name, probably kind of a boring one, too, because in 1607 someone thought it would be clever to change the first character to its homophone (熊, which means "bear"), and the new moniker stuck.

That someone, I believe, was Katō Kiyomasa, a daimyo (feudal lord) who ruled in Kyushu in the late 16th and early 17th century. Kiyomasa is an important figure in Kumamoto history; he is also quite the antagonist in Korean history. As a senior commander of the army, Kiyomasa led invasions of Korea during the Joseon Dynasty and captured Seoul, Busan, and Ulsan, among other cities, though the conquest was unsuccessful in the end. He was also an enemy of the Japanese Christians in his domain and brutally persecuted them not long before Christianity was banned outright.

On the other hand, Kiyomasa is responsible for expanding and completing Kumamoto Castle (begun in 1467), which is the main landmark of the city and one of the most gorgeous buildings I've ever seen. The castle keep you see today is actually a reconstruction, since the fortress was besieged during a rebellion in 1877, and the castle was burned to the ground.

Erik and me at Kumamoto-jō.

Erik and Kiyomasa of the tall hat

Walking the grounds of Kumamoto Castle, I noticed several archetypically Japanese things: koi in the river, a woman dressed in a kimono for Coming of Age Day, men in costume as ninja and soldiers for tourists' photos, beautiful artwork on sliding wooden doors inside the museum, a traditional tea ceremony room... It got me thinking about Japanese culture and its portrayal as a monolithic entity to Western eyes.

Google "Japanese culture" and you get a pretty uniform set of images: geisha, sumo wrestlers, Buddha, Shinto shrines, sushi, cherry blossoms, and more geisha. Maybe throw a little Hello Kitty and martial arts in there. (Do the same for "American culture" and you'll see a lot of flags, fast food, and bland diversity-themed stock photos.)

I wondered aloud to Erik if the historical periods in which geisha, sumo wrestlers, ninja, and samurai all came into existence were chronologically close to each other at all. These human icons are, of course, all unique and representative of Japan, but I think we should find it strange to see them juxtaposed, as we would pause at the sight of ninja prowling around a castle in 2014 on the hunt for tourists with fancy digital cameras. Remember Katy Perry's infamous yellowface performance at the American Music Awards last year? "Look at how much she loves and appreciates Japanese culture," they said. "She's dressed as a geisha. There are cherry blossoms falling from the ceiling. Her backup is doing a Chinese fan dance. Ooh, taiko drums!" All of those elements of Japanese (and Chinese) culture appropriated and smashed together to appeal to a Western audience.

Let's turn the tables: I want to see G-Dragon perform his latest hip-hop number on a stage accompanied by Asian cowboys, breakdancers with uh... braided hair extensions, and women dressed like Lady Liberty. GD's a great dancer: he can show off the Charleston, the Dougie, the New York Hustle, and eight beats of perfectly-synchronized tutting with his crew, finishing it off with a square dance as maple leaves and Wal-Mart coupons rain down from the ceiling. "Look at how much he loves and appreciates American culture!"

Erik's apple pie a la mode!

Anyway, cultures collide in odd ways. Erik's favorite dessert in Japan is not mochi or roll cakes but a new McDonald's menu item called "A la mode". It's literally a McD apple pie in a cup, topped with McD soft serve and chocolate sauce. You can obviously make this yourself at any McDonald's, but in Japan it's actually on the menu.

Back to Kumamoto, then. On my second evening in the city, we met up with a friend of Erik's and ate dinner at a great all-you-can-eat shabu shabu place, vowing to consume more than our money's worth!

We followed it up with a night of arcade games. It's been years since I've set foot in an arcade, so I hardly recognized any of the games. A lot of them looked glitzy and super high-tech, including a newfangled rhythm game called "MaiMai" that resembles a giant washing machine. Timed to music, players must tap buttons around a circular screen as colored rings reach them. It looks and feels silly at first, but once you get warmed up and choose a harder skill level, suddenly it becomes really fun. And addicting. I was sad that Dance Dance Revolution was nowhere to be found, but MaiMai more than made up for it. There was also an amazing air hockey game called "Big Bang Smash!" that unloads dozens of tiny pucks onto the court for a minute of pucking madness. It was awesome.

Big Bang Smash! Air hockey on  a sugar high!

What else is there in Kumamoto? I can't forget Kumamon (not the Digimon), Kumamoto's friendly bear mascot! Thanks to Kiyomasa, this city is able to market its namesake with Kumamon toys, Kumamon t-shirts, and Kumamon's smiling visage on everything from cookies to face towels. I don't have any great photos of or with him, even though he is everywhere in Kumamoto, but I did get a face towel... Another mascot is the adorable puppy you see below. I can't remember its name, though, or what exactly he represents. Kawaii-dom, if nothing else.

강아지 (kangaji)! こいぬ (koinu)!

And... I'll sign off with some shots of our beautiful hostel, the "Dyeing and Hostel Nakashimaya". It's part traditional dye store and part traditional inn. Its cozy rooms have tatami mats for sleeping instead of beds and trunks with heavy locks instead of lockers. The lounge area has tons of manga, stunning decor, ancient maps, and modern computers. Every inch of the hostel is exquisite and charming, every figurine placed so that everywhere you look you're reminded that you're in Japan. Even the stairwells were decorated. Again, I wonder how well all the pieces fit together chronologically... is it classy or kitschy? Well, I trust the hostel owners' taste. It was too bad we only spent one night here, but it was enough to leave a solid impression. I highly recommend it.

That's a kid's samurai costume!

Gorgeous paper art.

Oh, and here's a video of some of the arcade games. We're a long way past the days of DDR...

Beauty

So I taught a lesson on beauty.

I was nervous as I planned it, because even though I was using resources shared by other Fulbrighters -- which meant that I didn't have to create this lesson entirely from scratch -- I felt like I wasn't adequately prepared. A lot of "beauty lessons" that are passed around in native English teacher circles have similar themes: beauty is only skin deep, beauty is cultural, everyone is beautiful in their own way, etc. It is certainly more of a "moral" lesson than a grammar-based one.

The reason I felt unprepared was that I had a hard time deciding what my own lesson plan should focus on. I had the material to compare traditional standards of beauty in different countries around the world, show what the media and Photoshop can do to change our perceptions of beauty, and teach an American idiom or two. I also had photos, fables, videos, statistics, and various classroom activities at my disposal. It was too much to cover in one hour, so I had to pick and choose. And thus I had to think critically about what message I wanted to send to my students.

I decided in the end to focus on just two things: what is considered beautiful differs in many countries and cultures, and the way we perceive beauty is heavily influenced by the media. I hope that these are objective ideas. What I wanted to avoid was moralizing or preachiness, as well as too much sentimentality. 75% of my students are teenage boys; I felt like it would be difficult to reach them on an emotional level.

Furthermore, because I also wanted to know what their thoughts were, I gave them a (admittedly very boring) worksheet to fill out as we went through the lesson. (To be honest, it was also partly because I've been getting annoyed with my students for not bringing a notebook to class regularly; this way, they have to write something. And then I can read it.)

So here are some of the questions I asked, along with some selected answers. Most students didn't finish their worksheets, for various reasons. But almost everyone had at least one interesting answer. The most clever, cute, or thought-provoking I've compiled here, errors intact.

A Korean man/woman/person is beautiful if...
Male student: they have small face and length over 180cm; best of all, they look like American.
M: they are slim and they have a plastic surgery and they seem like [student's name].
M: A Korean woman is beautiful if her face is pretty and she is kind.
M: they have V-line on their face.

Female student: A Korean woman is beautiful if she is skinny.
F: A Korean man is beautiful if he is tall and has thin body and looks like woman.
F: A Korean man is beautiful if he gets plastic surgery.

Beauty is different in every culture. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
M: I agree. Beauty is decided by culture, and culture 영향을 받다 [is influenced by] environment.
M: I agree because everyone thinks differently, especially people from different cultures.
M: No, I don't agree. These days, Thanks to TV, Internet, SNS... what people want in beauty is very similar.

Where do we get our ideas of beauty?
M: we get our ideas of beauty from friends or TV or Internet. But In my case. I get ideas of beauty from my heart.

A beautiful Korean person might not be considered beautiful in another country. Do you agree or disagree? Can you give an example?
M: disagree. Korean persons are most beautiful in the world.
M: I disagree. For example, 한지민 is a beautiful Korean actres. She is always beautiful and sunshine anywhere.
M: dis, worldwide human love kpop and korean idoles.

A person who is considered ugly in Korea might be beautiful in another country. Do you agree or disagree? Can you give an example?
F: agree because they may think ugly Korean women seems true oriental.
M: Agree. Hyoyeon in Girl's generation is most ugly in GG by Korean people said. But in the other country people said Hyoyeon is beautiful.
M: No. Ugly is Ugly.
M: PSY

You are beautiful even if you do not look like a Korean celebrity. Do you agree or disagree?
M: agree. If someone tell me handsome. I'm handsome. If someone tell me not handsome, I'm not hansome. So, I can't judge it.
M: I disagree, because I'm not beautiful.

You are beautiful even if you are fat, or have freckles or an unusual haircut, or have single eyelids or double eyelids. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
M: I think they are beautiful if they are attractive enough to cover these proplems.
M: I agree because real beauty is not a external beauty. real beauty is internal beauty.
M: Disagree. These are makes people look like ugly or disgusting.
F: If I am fat. I am not beautiful.

Overall, I was not surprised with the answers. I need to actively tell myself not to be disappointed, however, because to be quite honest, it saddens me that most of my students are unable to see beauty in anyone who is not tall, thin, fair, and cute. For them, fat can't be pretty. Hairless can't be pretty. Tattoos and piercings cannot be beautiful. Freckles, in particular, are atrocious. (I think my students initially thought that the freckled girl whose photo I showed actually had a bad case of acne, even though I provided a Korean translation: 주근깨, not 여드름. Nevertheless, they were literally revulsed by her.) Why, teenagers, why must you exhibit such shallowness?

Well, Andrew, you say, because they're teenagers, duh. And because you asked them for their opinions, and they gave them.

Right you are. I've got to cut them some slack. After all, beauty is subjective, and it's silly to bemoan a difference of opinion.

On the other hand, I know that I gave at least some students something to think about as they left class. US, one of my more likable students, told me that at first, he believed that our individual ideas of beauty came simply from our own minds, but now he can see that what we see in advertising and on TV does influence us.

- - -

On a side note, I also showed the Average Faces of various East Asian races, and my students could pick out the Korean every single time. It was impressive; I had trouble distinguishing the Koreans and the Japanese, but my students knew instantly who was Japanese (and made disparaging noises at them...). When asked to vote on the most attractive face, most hands up went for -- you guessed it -- the Koreans. Second-place finishers were the Taiwanese, weirdly enough.

How well can you do? Take a look below.

Which country is each "average man" from? (Answers below)

Which country is each "average woman" from? (Answers below)

So, that's evidence that familiarity breeds liking (I think I'm mis-using that psychological concept, but anyway). It's no surprise to me that Koreans like Koreans. But what about races that they're arguably unfamiliar with? I showed my students white faces next. A majority of every class thought that the bottom left pair were the most beautiful, but nobody correctly guessed what country they were from.

Each man-woman pair represents one country with a majority White population.

So, in light of Dove's most recent beauty campaign and its consequent backlash, I've thinking more than ever about beauty and its role in our society. There's so much to be dissected here that I'm really tempted to do a follow-up lesson with my students and see what they think of concepts such as inner beauty, unconventional beauty, and self-esteem.

I would love for all of my students to think highly of themselves, because they're all quite smart and I'm not just saying that. But in addition, I believe that because everyone is created in God's (spiritual and physical) image, there's beauty to be found in every face, and I hope that knowing they are beautiful just as they come can help my students battle the pressures to conform to the unnatural and impossible beauty standards that we face.

- - -

Okay, and now for the "Whose face is that?" answers:
Men: (top left to right) Mongolian, Taiwanese, Chinese, (bottom) Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese
Women: (top left to right) Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Mongolian, (bottom) Japanese, Chinese, Korean
Whites: (top left to right) Italian, French, (bottom) American (!), Swiss

Why am I not surprised that my students found the Americans the most attractive, even though they kept guessing that they were English or French?

The Researchers (+ an announcement!)

The Spring Conference was not only a chance for Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) to get together and share what new and exciting things they were doing, but it was also a major gathering for the Fulbright researchers, affectionately known by us ETAs as "our other half". These two dozen-or-so independent academics, some fresh out of college and others working on their Masters or Doctoral degrees, have been in the country since last fall. Their research spans a wide variety of topics all related to South Korean history, culture, economics, health, or politics, and it was all quite well done.

During the last day and a half of our weekend in Jeju, the Fulbright researchers presented their research -- mostly background and updates, since they have not been here for too long yet -- to the entire Fulbright community. I actually expected it to be tough to sit through tons of these presentations at a time, since I knew that I'd be tired from the island tour and also probably not very interested in their subject matter. Boy, was I wrong. I was completely engrossed by more than half of the presentations, and I didn't doze off once. I think the doodle-notes helped a bit; during the presentations that didn't engage me as much, I took to "enhancing" the notes I'd taken on other segments and ended up with a pretty page of tons of information about South Korea. Here are some notes! Browse at your leisure and leave a comment or question!

Suicide
Joanne Cho is researching suicide in the country whose suicide rate is the greatest among all OECD countries. Suicide (자살) is the leadingcause of death for Koreans aged 10-40 (age 10?!), although a higher proportion of older men and women commit suicide, which makes this a social issue on all fronts, for all people. The reason behind this is often cited as stress, social pressure, and inadequate mental health care, but Ms. Cho thinks it's not so simple. She is investigating not only the mental health care system and its purported deficiencies, but also the stigma and the paradoxical influence of high-profile suicides on public perceptions of how to deal with shame.

Obesity
Emerson Song is researching the effects of 한식 (hanshik, or Korean cuisine) on obesity. Koreans have a significantly lower average BMI than residents of all Western countries, but the number of overweight and obese adults is rising. Also, did you know that Asians and Caucasians gain weight in different ways/places in the body? Due to this, it might be necessary to reevaluate the way Western medicine defines "obese". The more you know!

Korean-American Return Migration
Stephen Suh has been interviewing Koreans who have lived abroad (read: in the US) for extended periods of time but have since returned to Korea and are living stably and comfortably here. Why would Korean-Americans want to come back to Korea? For one, the economics prospects in the US still suck, and native-like fluency in English can get you a long way in any job in Korea, not just as an English teacher. But the typical locations of Korean return migrants are indeed English education and international businesses, as well as in the US military, which might indicate a propensity toward vocations that accentuate a return migrant's American identity. Does the US exert a strong cultural influence on Korea without using military force? Yes. (Mr. Suh calls this neo-imperialism.) Do 재미교포 who come to Korea have a role to play in all of this? Perhaps.

Chaebol Urbanism
The 재벌 (chaebol) is a unique type of business conglomerate that has flourished in South Korea and, arguably, been at the root of its meteoric economic rise in the past fifty years. Justin Stern did a unique economic and architectural study of the effect of these conglomerates on the visual landscape of Seoul. There was a lot of fascinating history included in this presentation: did you know that in the 1960's, the South Korean government extended huge benefits to Lotte, then a small confectionery company, so that they could finance the building of a grand hotel, and then an amusement park, and then an apartment complex? These business depended on the government for their big breaks, but once the construction began, it took off and hasn't stopped since.

These days, the mark of the conglomerates is huge. Names like Samsung, Kia, Hyundai, GS, and LG are everywhere: on gas stations, cafes, department stores, office buildings, theaters, phones, and even life insurance. They have spread their influence so far that even the government now wouldn't dare funnel any money into any project without first getting the okay from a chaebol. Anyway, how has this affected the urbanization of Seoul? Well, aside from having everything that makes a city a city owned by one conglomerate or another, each chaebol's headquarters appears to have staked out a geographic portion of the city to call its own, which, when you consider how every chaebol wants its own skyscraper and beautiful, futuristic office complex in its own neighborhood, will give us a strange, scattered skyline in twenty years or so.

Cosmetic Surgery
Kayleigh Nauman is heading up an interesting project investigating attitudes of foreigners in Korea toward cosmetic (plastic) surgery (성형수술). This is informed by the fact that there are between 400-600 cosmetic surgery businesses in the Gangnam neighborhood of Seoul alone -- and yes, they are regulated as businesses, not as medical practice. Loads of foreigners travel to Korea for "medical tourism" (150,000 in 2012), but why do they choose Korea?

Ms. Nauman wanted to dispel the stereotypes that cosmetic surgery in Korea was the cheapest in this region of the world (because it isn't), or that Asians wanted to look like K-pop stars, or, heaven forbid, that Asians want to look more "Western". (I mean, I've realized by now that suggesting that the Korean or Asian beauty ideal is just Hollywood glamour transplanted onto the other side of the Pacific is, in fact, a misguided opinion at best and a white- or American-centric microagression at worst. And it still wouldn't really answer why Korea is such a hot spot for people who want to cut up and realign their legs and boobs and faces. (By the way, I acknowledge that I did write about this very idea a month or so ago. And +1 for embedded parenthetical statements.)) Anyway, this was interesting research that was definitely on my mind as I planned a lesson on beauty standards for my second-years for this week.

Doodle-notes! (Clicking on the photo will make it bigger, but it will not fix my handwriting.)

Miscellany
There was a quintet of Fulbright researchers whose topics involved North Korea and North Korean refugees. They were so informative and intriguing that I took copious notes, and I will write them all up as a separate post later.

Overall, I felt really fortunate to be able to hear the presentations given by the researchers. It was academically fulfilling to tackle these issues and get some dialogue going with my fellow Fulbrighters. It was also very refreshing to see Korea through the lenses of people who have not been dealing with students and principals and lesson plans and classroom management for six months. I'll say, teaching can really swallow you whole; after a while you begin to forget that anything else exists outside of your various classrooms.

In addition to the Fulbright researchers, some other parts of conference were given to Fulbright ETAs who were doing their own side projects, independent research or community events, things like that. As I heard from my colleagues who are compiling cookbooks, editing our annual literary magazine, or developing education-based NGOs, I obviously felt like I've been absolutely unproductive with my time here. I'm so lazy and not driven compared to everyone else! But hearing about everyone's projects was great nevertheless.

This is all such a far cry from Fall Conference in Gyeongju last October. Our last conference was themed around solving the myriad problems that had cropped up in the first-year ETAs' experiences thus far in the grant year. We're all a long way from that now: small group discussions were no longer "how to address school issue X and homestay issue Y" but more for living in Korea (dating advice, dealing with sexual harassment, exploiting every feature of your smartphone) or preparing for life after Fulbright (resume building, pursuing teacher certification). And, as I've noted, all of the large group talks were presentations on amazing projects we've accomplished since last August.

Most importantly, while I was anxious about my future around the time of Fall Conference, I can proudly and excitedly declare that during Spring Conference, I decided to renew my grant. This means that I will stay in Korea for one more year! I get a month-long break in July/August, and then it's straight back to teaching. I'll get to watch my second- and third-years graduate again, and I'll gain so much more experience in teaching and living in Korea.

Hooray!

Black Hair, Brown Eyes

Two Koreal Life things today: I got my hair cut and I had to call the landlord about a leaking faucet. I'd like to think that these two opportunities to use my broken Korean in real-life situations makes up for the fact that, otherwise, I did absolutely nothing productive today.

First, the haircut. I'd been tempted for a while to "be frivolous", as a friend put it, and do something more off-the-wall with my hair. It seems that everywhere you look in Seoul, especially in Hongdae, people have their hair dyed, permed, and styled in crazy fashions, men and women alike. Many of my American friends have gone the same route and splurged on a new hairstyle.

On the other hand, I've got a bit of a complex when it comes to changing my hair, especially with regard to color. Yes, in college, I did bleach and dye my hair; it was a fantastic shade of maroon for several months. But ever since my hair returned to its normal black, I haven't thought about going back. I think a part of it has to do with being in Korea. I feel like I don't want to change my hairstyle these days because everyone does it, and maybe the way to be unique -- as an Asian -- here in Korea is to remain completely normal. Also, and this is more important, I can't shake the thought that the bleaching and perming that has become so ubiquitous has its roots in the culturally ingrained notion that Western faces and heads are more beautiful than natural Korean looks. Am I about to get very controversial? Sure.

In Korea, "white" is beautiful. A pale complexion is prized and many women go out of their way to prevent a tan. It doesn't surprise me that there is a prejudice toward a certain skin color, since this kind of look-ism exists in all cultures in different forms. But it's not just skin. The most beautiful Korean woman is not only pale, but also tall and skinny, and has large eyes and wavy brown hair. Look around at all the advertisements and posters featuring any of Korea's hundreds of music and TV personalities: the majority of them have faces and hair all perfectly sculpted to appear distinctly un-Asian.

Honestly, when I say that "white" is beautiful in Korea, I fully acknowledge the ambiguity of that statement: white is not just a skin color but also a race. And it seems to me that the beauty standards in Korea are greatly influenced by those of white-majority countries such as the US. Do Koreans explicitly want to look like white Americans? No, of course not. But American culture has such an undeniably strong presence in Korea that it's easy to see how our standards have rubbed off on theirs.

I wonder every day now, when I see beautiful Koreans walking down the street with unnatural hair, "What's wrong with straight and black?"

So there's my complex. I want to dye my hair because I think it would look cool and because it does seem like the kind of "when in Rome" thing to do while I have the opportunity. But I can't help but question: why would it look cool? Why do I want to do what all young Koreans do? Does changing my hair play into a kind of pervasive insecurity that Asians have over the way they look naturally? Does it reinforce the power of the US's (cross-)cultural hegemony?

Furthermore, I've thought about the message I send to my Korean students with my appearance. Perhaps they were surprised last September when the American English teacher they'd heard they were going to get turned out to be Asian (the assumption being, of course, that all Americans are white). But even after the novelty of an Asian-American English teacher wore off, I think I still managed to have an indirect influence on them. My co-teacher told me flat-out that, from what she could observe, my students felt more comfortable around me because I physically resembled them. That, in addition to my weird insistence on eating lunch with them and talking to them in between classes -- something the white Canadian English teacher who preceded me never did -- puts me more in the position of friend and possible role model than of aloof, classroom authority figure.

Thus, when I think about the complexities surrounding my identities as Asian and American and my role as a teacher, I realize that what I choose to do with my face, hair, and clothes says a lot to my students, maybe more than I've noticed or have cared to think. I don't have to just tell my students that they are already beautiful people no matter how they look, I can show them how to have black hair and rock it. It's similar to how, rather than simply tell my students that exercise is important, I can also run into them while working out at the school gym and show them how to do it. For my students' sake, perhaps it's better to represent the natural me and not give in to whatever the Mainstream Monster dictates is cool or beautiful.

Okay, I'll stop there. Let me just add that vanity is not even the issue here, although it is my decided lack of vanity -- plus lack of disposable income -- that persuaded me eventually to get a simple ($15) haircut instead of a ($100) perm-and-dye job today at a hip salon just a few minutes down the street called Ekihair.

Speaking of Tina Cohen-Chang... (from Glee Wikia)

Oh, yes, and the part of this story that is Koreal Life is the fact that I called ahead to place my appointment and chatted briefly with my hairdresser in what little Korean I know, and although I didn't understand every word, I managed to get my point across. For example, while listening absent-mindedly to the music playing in the salon, I realized so my shock that it was not PSY's original Gangnam Style being aired, but the Glee cover instead. I tried to explain this to my hairdresser, who had assumed that it was Hyun-a. (I thought: can't she tell that Jenna Ushkowitz's singing has an unmistakable American accent?) Eventually, I whipped out my phone to show her the video of Glee's performance of Gangnam Style and pointed out Tina, saying that she was an 입양한인 (Korean person adopted abroad).

In the end, although my hair turned out looking very average and not K-pop-star-awesome, I appreciated the chance to practice speaking Korean and use vocabulary and grammar that I've learned recently.

Second, the leaky faucet. I realized as soon as I called the landlord that I didn't know how to say "The faucet is leaking" in Korean, so I quickly looked it up. (싱크대 수도꼭지가 조금 물 새하고 있어요.) As I type this, he is in the kitchen fixing it up. I'm proud to say that all of our interactions have gone smoothly, despite them being in Korean. I think back to seven months ago, when I first arrived in Korea, and I realize that I wouldn't even have had the guts to call a landlord then, let alone the language skills to explain my problems, and do it politely on top of that. But now, I can. Hurrah!