Jeju-eo Project Update

About six months ago, I introduced my self-directed research project about Jeju-eo, the endangered variety of Korean spoken on Jeju Island. Since then, I've been happily busy with the linguistic documentation work which I received a small Fulbright grant to do.

In January, I met with a professor of Jeju National University to get his insight and some inside information on what language activism looks like on the autonomous island province of Korea. Then, nothing happened for a while.

This is me giving my presentation on Jeju-eo at the Fulbright Spring Conference 2014. Even without anything concrete to show, I went way over time! But people gave me very positive feedback, at least! Photo taken by Katelyn.

It was not until April, during the Fulbright Spring Conference, that I actually had the opportunity to do any fieldwork! After giving a presentation of my research at the conference itself (which was a bit lacking, in my opinion, since I didn't have any actual data to show yet), I spent an entire afternoon with five native Jeju Islanders who helped me make recordings.

The fieldwork was fun but a bit nerve-wracking, at least for the first part. Through a friend of a friend, I met an elderly couple who live in a rural area outside of Jeju City. They are known to be very involved in the local language activism community, so fortunately, they were very willing to talk about Jeju-eo with a complete stranger, and told me many stories. For example, they explained why Jeju-eo sounded so clipped (shortened words make communication across long distances easier when wind is constantly blowing over the island) and highlighted the main differences between Standard Korean and Jeju-eo.

The nerve-wracking part was that I felt way out of my depth in terms of language ability. These people spoke no English, so all of our communication was done in Korean. It was tough for me to explain exactly how I needed them to elicit the words I wanted to record. Also, there was a lot of ambient noise in the recordings, because we were meeting in their house, which meant that they offered snacks and were busy eating them the entire time. Also, the background noise of refrigerators, clocks, and a farm have probably ended up in these recordings.

The friendly and hospitable first group of consultants. They welcomed me to come back any time in the future!

My second group of consultants were much easier to work with, since they were a mother and a daughter, and the daughter happened to be an English teacher. Again, I was connected through a friend of a friend, and again, even though I was just this random kid with a microphone, they were enthusiastic about helping and showed a great deal of generosity.

Because the linguistic barriers were no longer an issue, the second recording session went much more smoothly, and we worked for over an hour to collect over one hundred words, including many that are unique to Jeju-eo. These are the recordings that I have been putting into the Jeju-eo Online Talking Dictionary.

Ah, yes, the dictionary. The big project. I can freely admit that the lexicographical process is much more of a mountain than the molehill I expected it to be. Although I returned from Jeju Island happy and ready to dive right into the splicing, transcribing, annotating, and uploading work required to build up the dictionary from nothing, well, all of that work took a lot more time than I'd planned for. Weeks went by, and then months, and still I never got close to finishing. Then the semester got busy, and I had to put my project on hold.

Back when I did online lexicography in college, it was as part of a team. Despite my experience -- or perhaps beacuse of it? -- I underestimated my ability to do all the work on my own!

Finally, in early June, the deadline for my final report drew nearer, and I realized that it was now or never. I spent hours upon hours one weekend churning out data, giving myself just enough to work with for a few key observations in my report, and finished the eight thousand-word paper just before the deadline! This wasn't the worst I've ever procrastinated, but -- whew! -- It certainly was a wake-up call to the kind of work I might be doing in grad school. Note to self: no full-time jobs when you're doing full-time research, too. :)

Anyway, what I have to show for my work now is a modest online dictionary of Jeju-eo that you can browse at your leisure here. It's not complete by any means, and it's also imperfect. (This is mostly due to my imperfect translations and transcriptions. I do need help with the Korean, so if you know anyone who's willing to lend a hand or an ear, let me know!) But, as my friend Coby put it, "Something now exists that didn't exist before because of your work. That's awesome!"

In other news, I learned that a Fulbright Junior Researcher for the 2014-2015 grant year is going to be doing a similar project! Actually, let's be real here: her project is essentially exactly the same as mine. But she will have full funding for a year's worth of research and dictionary-making, and she will also be based on Jeju Island, so she can develop better connections and do more in-depth fieldwork. I've already been in touch with her, and I'm excited about the prospect of collaborating.

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.

Fulbright Spring Conference 2014

Just a few photos from Fulbright's Spring Conference held at the beginning of this month. Hard to believe April is almost over, now that I think about it... Anyway, the conference was nice. Good to see my friends again. The programming was long and pretty tedious since a lot of it I'd heard before (last year), but if I'm honest with myself, you can never learn too much or prepare too well. Satisfaction with one's current performance is mostly a lack of desire to keep growing and improving, and that leads to complacency. So I took notes. Said notes are in my office at school, so I'll type them up later. But without further ado, here are some of the aforementioned photos!

Spring Conference peer-led workshops. I led one that was a panel discussions for first-years wondering about what doing a second-year is like.

Spring Conference is when the Fulbright researchers present the contents of their research projects, so we also had discussion small groups with them. The cool researchers held their small groups outside!

I went to my friend Adam's small group. He's been studying street dance and performance art in Korea, so our "discussion" mostly revolved around him teaching us some basic hip hop moves. Ha! All the other small groups may have been more professional, but ours was more fun.

And this was the view from our hotel on Jeju Island. Gorgeous. Perfect weather. I want to go back!

On Friday night, there was a fundraising game night that involved an "ice cream pie" contest. Contestants had to search for a missing gummy bear inside a dish of ice cream... using just their faces.

It got pretty messy pretty quick. Entertaining, though.

Our winners! Or did everyone lose?

Saturday night, we had a special dinner of Jeju's specialty, black pork. We ate a ton! I'm really going to miss Korean barbecue when I leave. (Actually, I think I'm going to go back to being vegetarian in the States...)

Saturday night was a fun event at a local club called Monkey Beach: "Fulbright Prom", organized by some Fulbrighters as a fundraiser and a party just for us. I never went to my high school's prom, actually, so it was kind of funny for me to go. L to R: me, Ashley, Amy, and Anna.

Seogwipo's Monkey Beach is so legit! It was huge, for one, and had game rooms, arcade rooms, karaoke rooms, a stage, and even a waterslide! I had a really great time.

Having a great time at Fulbright Prom! L to R: Cait, Patrick, Katelyn, Jennifer

The club's actual waterslide! It was ridiculous and amazing!

Jake and me. Hm... I've got to stop making it a habit to put my arm around the shoulders of people taller than me.

Our fearless Program Coordinator, Andrew, and Executive Assistant, Liam. Props to them for putting together a great conference!

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!