Merry Christmas everyone!

Korea has a new president for the next five years: New York Times article

Ask A Korean! News: Violation of Rules 1, 2, and 3 of Fight Club

The Korean has not been talking much about it, but South Korean presidential election is actually just four days away. And whenever the presidential election is near, we have news like this -- suffice it to say that it involves a chainsaw and beating with a phone.

First, just a little bit of background. There are three major candicates in this contest: Lee Myeong-bak from Grand National Party (GNP), Jeong Dong-yeong from New Democratic Party (NDP), and independent candidate Lee Hoi-chang. A lot of Mr. Jeong's hopes rode on an investigation against Mr. M. Lee on a possible corruption charge. Unfortunately for Mr. Jeong, the national prosecutor's office of Korea (equivalent to Department of Justice in the U.S.) last week announced that Mr. Lee had no involvement in the corruption scheme.

Dismayed, Mr. Jeong mobilized his party to submit a bill to impeach the prosecutor in charge of that case, essentially arguing that there must have been some type of collusion between the prosecutor and Mr. Lee. However, the bill was pressed for time, given that it has to start before the presidential election. Uri Party did have the majority in the National Assembly (=Congress in the U.S., except there is only one house), but GNP minority was none to happy about the bill
, and vowed to stop it. And so follows the story....

(The Korean's note: the following is a direct translation from this article on Dong-A Ilbo, except for parenthetical comments. On the link, you can also see some awesome videos as well.)

Although roughly 100 of GNP Assemblymen, occupying the Main Chamber of the National Assembly, locked the door from inside, at approximately 5:20 p.m. roughly 100 of the NDP Assemblymen stormed the Main Chamber and took over the chairman's seat in 45 minutes.
....

At 5:20 p.m. this day, upon orders by Chairman Lim, deputies of National Assembly cut the steel wire that held the inside door knob with a chainsaw. As the Main Chamber doors opened, NDP Assemblymen rushed toward the chairman's seat occupied by GNP Assemblymen. (Steel wire! Chainsaw! Ladies and gentlemen, the National Assembly of Korea -- just as screwed up as U.S. Congress, but a whole lot more entertaining!)

NDP Asm. Seon Byeong-ryeol ran toward the podium and choked GNP Asm. Jeong Du-eon, and Asm. Jeong Bong-ju attempted to jump on the chairman's seat but pushed out by GNP Assemblymen's defense. (Defense! uh uh defense!) One NDP Assemblyman slapped Asm. Bak Gye-dong, causing him to fall off the podium. Asm. Bak chased after the NDP Assemblyman, but was blocked by NDP Assemblymen and failed to exact his revenge. (Way to protect your slap-back!)

NDP Assemblymen yelled "Come down you [expletive]," and GNP Assemblymen did not back down, responding "Apologize to the people." Both sides pushed and shoved, trying to occupy the chairman's seat. Asm. Seo Gap-wo was poked in the eye by Asm. Sim Jae-cheol during the pushing and shoving. (There is no holding back people!)

Around 5: 50, the defensive line began to crumble as Asm. Gang Gi-jeong hit Assemblymen Choe Gu-sik and Gim Yeong-suk, who were guarding the right side of the podium, several times with a phone, and as Asm. Jeong Bong-ju jumped on top of GNP Assemblymen. (The phone! The defense's only weakness -- how did he know? Also, note that Gim Yeong-suk is a woman. There truly is no holding back.)

Asm. Jeong Bong-ju was trying to push out Asm. Sim Jae-cheol, but was pushed by Asm. Sim's cane, which he carries to assist his walking. (The cripple did it! Get the cripple!) Despite Asm. Sim's resistance, Asm. Jeong pulled him out, and also pulled out Spokesman Na Gyeong-won, who was also guarding the chairman's seat.

Finally, NDP occupied the chairman's seat 45 minutes after the entrance to the Main Hall. At that time, as Minority Leader An Sang-su relayed the message by Chairman Lim to both parties' leaders, "Judiciary Committee shall deliberate on [the bill] until [Decenber] 17th," GNP Assemblymen retreated from the chairman's seat.

Asm. Cha Myeong-jin, who was guarding the podium, was carried to a nearby hospital's emergency room, as he hurt his back while being thrown down by NDP Assemblymen. However, NDP Spokesman Choe Jae-seong said "Asm. Cha fell because GDP Assemblymen pushed him" in a briefing shortly after the occupation of the chairman's seat.

In addition, GNP Asm. An Hong-jun was injured when Asm. Jeong Bong-ju bit his finger (Looks like Mr. Jeong was the top gun), and Asm. Ju Seong-yeong was treated at a hospital for chest injury. Asm. Gang Gi-jeong also received hospital treatment after suffering bruises on his neck. (Oh no! I had those two in my fantasy Korean Assemblymen Fight League!)

Previously on this day, Minority Leader An and other 100-odd GNP Assemblymen occupied the Main Hall and locked the door with a steel wire. They also piled on furniture in front of the door, blocking the entrance.

Majority Leader Gim Hyo-seok and other 100-odd NDP Assemblymen protested in front of the main entrance as they attempted to enter main hall since 2 p.m., when they decided to open the Assembly. By their side, GNP staffer heckled them by singing "na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, good bye~"

(Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.)

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Guide to Year-End Gift-Giving Period

Dear Korean,

My boss is Korean. He, along with his wife and family, owns many formal/bridal dress shops. They fluently speak Korean and are very religious and proud. My co-workers and I are having an extremely hard time coming up with a Christmas gift for him/his family. Any suggestions?

Laura

Dear Laura,

The Korean would like to note that your email arrived on Nov. 16, before Thanksgiving! For God’s sake, can people just wait until Thanksgiving to start thinking about gift giving? What’s the rush? Right about now is a good time to think about it, so the Korean waited until now.

(Of course, now is also a time where the Korean has a little bit of break from work as well.)

The Korean will go a little off-tangent here: The Korean does not take kindly to all this “Happy Holidays” thing. It’s not because the Korean is a psycho “Christian” who thinks “Merry Christmas” is the only possible year-end greeting. It’s because thanks to Christmas, which involves gift-giving, people are forced to dig up relatively obscure holidays (e.g. Chanukah) or make one up (e.g. Kwanzaa) in order to join in the commercialism without being involved with the Christian faith.

Truth is, virtually every culture (on the Northern Hemisphere) has a year-end celebration, and Christmas is just one of them. Why does every culture have a year-end celebration? It’s the winter solstice! The sun is the most vital source of life before the advent of electricity, so the shortest-sunlight-day was very significant. Koreans are not an exception either. Winter solstice for Koreans is called dongji, and Koreans celebrate it by having red bean porridge (patjuk), because the color red repels evil spirits that occupy the long night. So tracking the day’s length, Jesus happened to be born near winter solstice and resurrected near spring equinox – how convenient is that?

Just like dongji is a relatively obscure holiday for Koreans, so was Chanukah for Jews. The most important Jewish is NOT Chanukah – it’s Yom Kippur, in which a year’s worth of sin is atoned in one day. (Or as Jon Stewart puts it, “the best deal in all of religion.” Note that Yom Kippur generally falls around autumn equinox too.) Chanukah only gets the attention it currently gets because it happens to fall about the same time as Christmas – start getting them gifts!

The Korean is sick of learning the names of 25 different winter holidays, not because the Korean doesn’t care about other culture – quite the opposite is true – but because those holidays are relatively unimportant in any given culture, and are only dug out of obscurity so that we can step away from Christianity while buying into one true religion of America – Commercialism. This actually stops people from learning different cultures – the Korean would wager that Chanukah is the only Jewish holiday that many folks know, while Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah dwarf Chanukah in terms of their relative importance. So from now on, the Korean will call this holiday season thusly: the “Year-End Gift-Giving Period”.

Okay, tangent over. What is to be given to Koreans in the 2007 YEGGP? First of all, there is no set Korean gift for YEGGP. (In fact, there is no set Korean gift for ANY occasion, except maybe for a gold ring for a baby’s first birthday, seaweed soup on birthdays, and a large party on the 60^th birthday. Please stop asking the Korean questions like “What do Koreans give each other for birthday/Valentine’s Day/anniversary/etc.?”)

Actually, middle-aged Korean men are very difficult to give gifts to – even Koreans themselves (usually the children of these men) have a lot of trouble buying gifts. There is one universal hobby for all Korean men – drinking. So a very common gift for Korean men is fine wine or scotch, because Koreans simply love scotch. But Laura’s boss might be the devout Christian type who may not drink, so that might not be good. Golfing is a very common hobby for Korean Americans, so something golf-related is a solid gift as well. Other good generic gift ideas are usually good for Koreans as well – that may include sweaters, tie, gift cards, and so on.

Anyone have a better idea? Please tell the Korean. He still needs to do his Year-End Gift-Giving Period shopping for everyone.

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Ask A Korean! News: Slabs of LA Times Articles

How interesting that 3 of the top 5 emailed articles on LA Times today have something to do with immigration or Koreans! But that's what happened today.

First, a nice summary of all the craziness currently going on in Korean society (with a nice pic of a hot belly dancer): In South Korea, it feels like a scandal a day

Highly interesting article about a town in Alaska that has a cabbie per every 62 residents, a lot of the cabbies being Koreans: America's taxi capital: Bethel, Alaska

And finally, another blow against paranoid xenophobes, as a study confirms what all of us already knew: Immigrants' children grow fluent in English, study says

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com

Ask A Korean! News: Race Riots in France

Seems like there are more race riots in France, and apparently this time it's more violent than the riots in 2005. According to this New York Times article, police officers are being shot at by shotguns.

High unemployment rate in France is a huge contributor to the riots; French society's generally racist attitude is also a big factor. The Korean complains often about living as a minority in America, but let there be no mistake about it. The Korean sincerely believes that if you have to live as a minority somewhere, there is no better place than the good ol' U.S. of A.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Korean Language Lessons - Particle I (Classificational Particles)

See the past Korean language series here: Methodology Reading and Writing

WARNING: You should be able to see typed Korean language in order to fully read this post. If you are a Windows user, you can go to Microsoft's website and download the "East Asian Language Support". Ask your local computer nerd. Entice him with a woman and it will be easy. If you are a Mac user, enjoy your cute commercials.

MORE WARNING: The Korean never received formal education as to how to teach Korean to non-Korean speakers. Therefore, all the technical terminology that the Korean uses in this post (as well as in other Korean Language Series) are made up by the Korean. Additionally, the Korean will often be wrong about things. But hey, that’s the price you pay if you try to learn a foreign language from an amateur off a blog.

Dear Korean,

Why do Koreans add an "ah" sound to the end of a name? For example, "Hee Jin-ah," or “Kyung Min-ah”. I know that "si" is used like a Mr. or Miss, but why add the "ah?"

JR

Dear JR,

I bet you didn’t expect a Korean language lesson for your question, but the answer for your question has directly to do with one of the most important and difficult features in Korean language – particles.

The Korean must give this warning: Particles are pretty difficult. It is a very unique grammatical tool, and often adds the subtlest nuances in speech. The good news? The only two very tough things in Korean language are particles and verb conjugation. So once you master particles, you are halfway there.

There are three types of particles: classificational, conjunctional, and auxiliary. The first one is relatively easier to understand, so we will deal with particles in two parts. This part will be about classificational particles, and the next part will be about conjunctional and auxiliary particles.

Universal Grammar: How to Learn Any Foreign Language.

Given this is the first grammar lesson, it would be useful for the Korean to map out how exactly he will approach Korean grammar. In short, the Korean plans to teach Korean language along the lines of the universal grammar.

What is universal grammar? It’s what made Noam Chomsky famous. Chomsky theorized that all human languages, no matter how different they may appear, share the same essential features. Chomsky’s work is extremely abstract and theoretical, but for our practical purposes it suffices to say that there are only seven components to any human language. They are:

- Subject: Made up of noun phrases (S)
- Predicate: Made up of verb phrases, either active or stative (P)
- Object: Made up of noun phrases (O)
- Adjective phrases (AjP)
- Adverbial phrases (AvP)
- Conjunctions (C)
- Exclamations (E)

That’s it. Really, that’s it. Even the most complex sentence in any language in the world in any historical period can be broken down into these seven parts. For example, here is the first sentence of the Gettysburg Address, broken down into the parts:

AvP:[Four score and seven years ago] S:[our fathers] P:[brought forth] AvP:[on this continent] O:[a new nation,] AjP:[conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.]

For another example, here is the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, made by Korean leaders against the Japanese rule in 1919, broken down:

S:[吾等(오등)은] AvP:[玆(자)에] AjP:[我(아) 朝鮮(조선)의] O:[獨立國(독립국)임]C:[과] AjP:[朝鮮人(조선인)의] O:[自主民(자주민)임을] P:[宣言(선언)하노라.] (“We hereby declare that Korea is an independent nation and Korean people are sovereign people.”)

This is such a significant discovery that it bears repeating in caps: ALL HUMAN LANGUAGES ARE MADE UP OF THESE SEVEN PARTS OF SPEECH.

Then what makes languages different? The only difference is the way the seven parts are organized. So learning any grammar is basically about how the seven parts of language are marked and organized. This is where we are going to begin.

Classificational Particles: Man bites dog, in three different languages.

To understand the function of classificational particles, let’s start from what we know first, i.e. English. Consider the following two sentences.

- Dog bites man.
- Man bites dog.

English speakers don’t have to think very hard to know that they mean two different things. One sentence is newsworthy, and the other is not. But step back and think about it. “Dog” in the first sentence is the same as “dog” in the second sentence. So how do we know the first “dog” is the biter (i.e. subject), while the second “dog” is the bitee (i.e. object)? In other words, how does English language note the fact that the same word is used for different parts of speech?

Answer: English speakers know by the placement of the noun with respect to the verb. If a noun comes before the verb, it is the subject of the sentence. If a noun comes after the verb, it is the object of the sentence. In other words, English sentences are “order-sensitive.”

(Aside: The king of order-sensitive language is Chinese, where even certain adverbs like time and place have to be in a certain place, or the sentence doesn’t make sense. In English, it doesn’t matter if you say “I will meet you in the building at 9 a.m.” or “In the building I will meet you at 9 a.m.” But in Chinese, only “At 9 a.m. in the building I will meet you” is correct – if you translate it strictly, it’s more like “9 a.m. in building I meet you.”)

But consider the same two sentences in Latin, which is not an order-sensitive language.

- Canis hominem mordet. (Dog bites man.)
- Homo canem mordet. (Man bites dog.)

Here, both “canis” and “canem” mean “dog”, and “homo” and “hominem” mean “man.” Do you see how in Latin, the order of the word does not matter? It does not matter because the noun is conjugated to show whether it is a subject or an object. If a noun form ends in “-em”, it is the object. No conjugation, and it is the subject. So take the second sentence, and switch the word order around, and they still make perfect sense. “Homo canem mordet” and “canem homo mordet” mean the exact same thing.

(Aside No. 2: This is all directly from The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker. It’s the best book to read if you were ever curious about languages.)

Korean is essentially the same with Latin, but with this difference: Instead of conjugating the noun, Korean language adds a “particle” at the end of the noun to show which one of the seven parts of language it belongs to. So in Korean, just like Latin, the word order does not matter. Here are the same two sentences in Korean.

- 개가 사람을 물다. Gae-ga saram-eul mulda. (Dog bites man.)
- 사람이 개를 물다. Saram-i gae-reul mulda. (Man bites dog.)

Recognize the nouns first. “Gae” is “dog”, and “saram” is “man/person”. You can see that in the first sentence, the particle “ga”, attached to “gae” shows that “gae” is the subject; the particle “eul” attached to “saram” shows that “saram” is the object. So “gae-ga saram-eul mulda” and “saram-eul gae-ga mulda” mean the exact same thing, just like Latin.

Let’s go back to what we know. English has something pretty similar to particles: prepositions. Nouns in a sentence, except subjects and objects, need a preposition to explain what the noun is doing in the sentence. For example, consider the sentence: “She walked to the park”. This is different from “She walked the park.” – in fact, that sentence makes no sense, because there is no preposition telling us what “the park” is doing in that sentence. The “to” in front of “the park” tells us that “the park” is functioning as an adverb – it is describing the manner of the verb, i.e. “walk”.

English has a similar feature as Latin as well, because you can actually conjugate nouns in English. To show plurals, we generally conjugate the noun by adding “s” or “es”. “Cup” can be changed to “cups.” Noun is also conjugated to show possessives by adding “’s”. So a cup belonging to Mary is “Mary’s cup.” (You can also say that this is not really a conjugation, but a form of particles in English.)

In Korean, all the above-named functions—showing the function of a noun in a sentence or showing a certain feature of the noun—are done by particles. So remember: In correct Korean grammar, A NOUN CANNOT STAND ALONE WITHOUT A PARTICLE.

JR, here is the answer to your question before we go any further. Why do Korean people attach “ah” to people’s names? Because people’s names are nouns, and they cannot stand alone without a particle. “ah” or “ya” are called “Exclamatory Particles” – they attach to a noun to show that this noun is an exclamation. The full list of all classificational particles are in the later part of this post.

(Aside No. 3 – Interesting thing about the Korean language, because of the existence of particles: Often, Korean sentences would be complete without a subject, just like Spanish. This is because even without the subject, all the particles in the sentence make the functions of all parts really clear.)

Advanced Stuff: Read Only If You Are Hardcore

The Korean's Note: No matter how hard the Korean tried, it was really difficult to come up with a neat chart of particles like the Korean made with Korean pronunciation, mostly because each particle has different nuances, which would require too many example sentences, and also because there are a ton of adverbial particles compared to others. Honestly, if you came this far into learning Korean, the Korean recommends buying an actual Korean grammar book written by professionals. But for a quick reference, the list below would work. The Korean also welcomes questions, as always -- but don't expect him to do your homework.

Note on the Following List: The choice of many particles depends on whether the preceding noun ends in a batchim or not. For example, the particle to indicate that a noun is a subject is either “i” or “ga”. “i” is used with a noun that ends in batchim, and “ga” is used with a noun that ends without batchim. So if you want to say “I did it”, it’s nae-ga haetda. But if you want to say “Jane did it”, it’s jae-in-i haetda. If you see particles divided by a slash, assume that the first one is used for nouns that end in batchim, and the second is for ones that do not.

Complete List of All Classificational Particles

a. Subjective particle: 이/가. Attach these things to show that a noun is a subject of the sentence. See the “dog bites man” sentences above for an example.

b. Objective particle: 을/를. Attach these things to show that a noun is an object of the sentence. See the “dog bites man” sentences above for an example.

c. Adjective particle: 의. Attach it to make a possessive or an adjective out of a noun.
E.g. 메리의 컵 ( “Mary’s cup”)

d. Predicatory particle: 이다/다. Attach these things to a noun in order to form a predicate. This actually has the same function as “be” in English.
E.g. 내가 범인이다. (“I am the criminal.”)
Beomin means “criminal/perpetrator”, so ida attached at the end of beomin makes the noun into a predicate, which explains the subject. This particle is special because it conjugates like a verb. We will deal with verb conjugation in a later post.

e. Exclamatory particle: 아/야, 이여/여. These particles attach on a noun to turn the noun into an independent exclamatory phrase. See the question of the day for an example.

f. Adverbial particle: Adverbial particles are roughly equivalent to prepositions in English, because many prepositions make an adverbial phrase out of a noun. There are a lot of these, so be ready.

1. destination – 에 (place+), 에게, 한테 (person+). Shows that the attached noun is the destination of the object. These are similar to “on”, “to”, or “toward”.
e.g. 그가 너에게 연필을 주었다. (“He gave a pencil to you.”) 내가 공을 벽에 던졌다. (“I threw the ball on the wall.”)

2. aspiration – 에, 으로/로 (place+), 에게로, 한테로 (person+). Shows that the attached noun is the eventual destination of the subject. Similar to “toward”.
e.g. 컵이 바닥에 떨어졌다. (“Cup fell on the floor.”) 그녀가 그에게로 갔다. (“She went to him.”)

3. origination – 에서 (place+), 한테서, 에게서/게서 (person+), 으로부터/로부터 (place, person+). Shows that the attached noun is the starting place of something. These are similar to “from”.
e.g. 내가 연필을 그에게서 받았다. (“I received a pencil from him.”), 그는 낸터캣에서 왔다. (“He came from Nantucket.”)

4. transition – 으로/로. Shows the attached noun is the end product of a transformation. Similar to “to” or “into”
e.g. 밤이 낮으로 바뀌었다. (“Night turned into day.”)

5. means – 로, 으로서/로서. Shows that the attached noun is a means to an end. These are similar to “with”.
e.g. 그녀가 사과를 칼로 깎았다. (“She peeled an apple with a knife.”)

6. capacity – 로, 으로써/로써. Shows that the attached noun is operating in a certain capacity. Similar to “as”.
e.g. 그가 친구로써 말했다. (“He spoke as a friend.”)

7. cause – 으로/로. Shows that the attached noun is the cause of something. Similar to “because of"
e.g. 그는 감기로 고생했다. (“He suffered because of a cold.”)

8. companion – 와/과, 하고, 랑/이랑. Shows the attached noun is a companion of something. Similar to “with”
e.g. 그가 학교에 친구와 갔다. (“He went to school with a friend.”)

9. direct quote – 라고. Shows the attached noun is a direct quotation.
e.g. 그가 “가자”라고 말했다 (“He said ‘let’s go’.”)

10. indirect quote – 고. Shows the attached noun is an indirect quotation.
e.g. 그가 가자고 말했다. (“He said let’s go.”)

11. comparison – 와/과, 만큼, 보다, 처럼. Shows the attached noun is greater than, less than, or the same as another noun.
e.g. 그의 키는 나의 키보다 크다. (“His height is greater than my height.”)

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

"What's his name? I don't know, I can't read his neck."

Dear Korean,

I'm planning on getting a tattoo in Korean. I'm Korean so its legit, but I just want to know why most Koreans find tattoos so offensive. My mom is totally against it and will kill me if she finds out.

Lina

Dear Korean,

I recently earned my Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do. I am very proud of my accomplishment, and was also considering getting a tattoo to commemorate the years of perseverance and hard work it took to acheive that goal. I thought it would be fitting for the symbol to be in Korean, as I understand Tae Kwon Do originated in Korea. I don't, however, want to be one of those fools who has 'dumbass' tattooed on their body when they think it means 'indomitable spirit'!! What are your thoughts on this trend, and do you think it would be offensive or shocking to a person if Korean heritage? I don't mean to be a Korean 'wannabe', just proud of my accomplishment. The tattoo definitely won't be on my neck!!

C

Dear Lina and C,

This post about Prince Fielder's neck tattoo in Korean is really what made this blog take off (and not any of the Korean's erudite and well-reasoned observations on culture -- sad, but the Korean will take whatever he can get.) "Korean tattoo" is one of the most common Google search terms for this blog, along with "ask a korean", "korean men" and "korean porn."

First, a little bit about tattoos in Korea generally. Simply put, tattoos are just not a Korean thing to do. Traditionally (starting from 15th century or so), Korean people strictly followed this Confucian teaching: "Keep your body whole, for it is given to you by your father and mother." Even cutting hair or shaving was forbidden in an effort to keep your body whole. (Women put their hair in various decorative braids; men put their hair in a single knot that was tied at the top of their head, and wore a headgear that kept the knot in place.)

Korea was modernized eventually, but attitudes about making marks on one's body did not change much. (Except, of course, for plastic surgery lately.) Yet tattooing was in fact fairly common in a nearby country that all Koreans hate more than anyone else -- you guessed it, Japan. Organized criminals in Japan used extensive tattooing in order to mark the "families" to which they belonged, and organized criminals in Korea began to mimic such practices. As a result, until very recently, only people who had tattoos in Korea were thugs. Below is a picture of freshly arrested organized criminals in Korea.

So it really should not be surprising that Koreans have a very negative attitude toward tattooing. How negative is it? Being of a non-doctor tattooist is actually illegal in Korea, and carries roughly $3,000 of fine because tattooing is "unlicensed medical practice." (This law is not very often enforced, but it's in the book.) Excessive tattoos on a body is one of the ways to get out of the mandatory military service for men, along with torn ACL, missing index finger and schizophrenia, because excessive tattoos "create disharmony in the unit."

But like everything, attitude toward tattooing in Korea is changing recently. Henna tattoos are very available near any college campus, just like the U.S. It is not difficult at all to find tattooists in the middle of Seoul -- although they still mostly operate in the shadow. Fashionable tattoos are generally accepted among the young generation of Korea -- but don't expect older Korean folks to like you if you got sleeves.

What about Korean tattoos in the U.S.? Would a tattoo in Korean on a non-Korean person be offensive? In the Korean's opinion, probably not. For Koreans, non-Koreans operate in a separate plane of reality -- "our" rules don't apply to "them". After all, these foreign barbarians don't bow to their elders and keep their shoes on in a house -- who cares if they want to look like criminals? If anything, a tattoo in Korean would be mildly amusing to an average Korean, since Korean people don't expect non-Koreans to know anything about Korea. A Korean tattoo would signal your interest in Korean culture, however minimally, so it would not necessarily be a bad thing.

What does the Korean think about all this? That's a tough question. The Korean himself has no objection to tattoos in general. The Korean hates it when people get Asian letters just for the sake of their "exotic" appearance, because that's the precisely the type of attitude that keeps Asian Americans from feeling comfortable in America. But recently, like C, tattoos in Asian lettering often show a genuine attempt in understanding more about Asian culture -- the Korean welcomes that.

And then there's the "gut reaction" problem. Americans generally don't get a tattoo in plain English because plain words are not cryptic enough -- it's just not interesting. The gut reaction of an average American, if she saw the words "perseverance" tattooed on one's chest in Times New Roman font, would be that it looks silly. Well, the Korean can read Korean and Chinese, so tattoos in Korean and Chinese are not cryptic at all. So the Korean's gut reaction toward such tattoos are that they just look stupid. This is what the Korean wrote when he first saw Prince Fielder's neck tattoo: "It is as if some regular Korean dude was hanging out and drinking with Prince Fielder one night, then Fielder passes out, and the Korean dude picked up a marker and wrote it on his neck as a joke." The Korean can never shake that feeling whenever he sees a tattoo in Asian characters.

At any rate, what the hell do you care about what the Korean thinks? If you want a tattoo in Korean, go nuts. Just make sure it doesn't say "dumbass".

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Korean wishes everyone a happy Turkey Day. It's a crying shame that nowadays, Thanksgiving is getting buried over the 2-month prelude to Christmas. The Korean personally loathes the trend.

If you are like the Korean, Thanksgiving should be your favorite holiday. It's a holiday for immigrants. The Pilgrim's dinner with the Native Americans symbolize our ideals as a nation of immigrants: newcomers and the natives, on the same table, merrily enjoying themselves.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Ask A Korean! News: Transplants

Another series in the New York Times that the Korean has been following carefully is Relative Choices, a blog dedicated to the topic of adoption. At some point, Korea was the leading exporter of adoptees, mostly to the U.S., and that fact is strongly reflected in the blog. It's a nice window to look from the perspective from an unusual set of Korean Americans.

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Ask A Korean! News: Those Web-Addicted Koreans

This NY Times article was the second most emailed article of the day, so how can this not make the Korean blog? It's something that the Korean already knew, but might be interesting for those who did not know how advanced Korea is with respect to its Internet culture.

C'oup de Grace of the article? The pictures of pasty sun-deprived Korean kids, and the hysterical foblish at the end of it. Check it out.

The Korean has been busy, but with Thanksgiving coming up, there will be some posts forthcoming.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com

Korean Women -- Fixer-Uppers?

Dear Korean,

My father is an avid Korean drama/soap watcher. I've noticed that most of the young actors and actresses get nose jobs and double-eyelid surgery. What ever happened to keeping your unique Korean look -- the slanty eyes, flat nose, and rabbit cheeks? Did you guys lose pride in your physical characteristics? I understand the "Western"/Caucasian look has been a beauty standard for as long as they've influenced the world but still...

-- Viet Living in Korea Town (that's Garden Grove for you)


Dear Viet,

It's not just young actors and actresses -- it's everyone. The statistics about plastic surgery in Korea (particularly with respect to women) cannot be described by any other words than FUCKING ASTOUNDING. Consider the following:

- 76 percent (!) of Korean women in their 20s and 30s have undergone plastic surgery. Most of them were epicanthoplasty (i.e. the "double-eyelid surgery".) (So does this mean that 24 percent of Korean women are naturally hot? Something to think about.)

- 25 percent of Korean mothers who have daughters between the ages of 12 and 16 suggested plastic surgery to their daughters. (In the Korean's "Pantheon of Fucked-Up Statistics", this figure has to be the king -- or is it queen?-- slightly leading the figure that nearly 30 percent of South Africa is HIV-positive.)

- 27.4 percent of Korean college graduate job seekers (19 percent of men, 34.1 percent of women) thought they did not fare well in the interview because of their looks. 28.5 precent of job seekers have already undergone plastic surgery or have planned plastic surgery in order to perform better in the job market.

Personally, the Korean thinks the plastic surgery craze in Korea is a disgusting national disease. Nevertheless, the cause of this madness is fairly straightforward and understandable -- it's a blend of conformity, sexism, and a hyper-competitive society.

First, the ever-present Korean conformity. The Korean covered this topic long, long ago, back when it was only the Korean's friends sending in the questions for the blog. In the older post the Korean gave a quick-and-dirty answer, but this is really the true cause of the Korean conformist culture: that Korea went from pre-modern to post-modern, a process that took other countries about 150 years, in about 40 years.

Truth is, all pre-modern, agriculture-based socities are conformist. Such societies usually consist of tight-knit communities, whose members must all cooperate in order to earn a living. (Think of the Amish community for an American example.) Homogeneity is a natural outgrowth of such societies.

The Korean will say this point again and again until everyone understands this - ONLY 40 YEARS AGO, KOREA WAS POORER THAN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA. So although the miraculous economic growth took Korea to the forefront of modernity, Korea continues to drag its cultural baggage from the pre-modern, agricultural era.

Practically, this baggage-carrying resulting from compressed economic growth means that Korean people constantly care about what other people think about them. It doesn't help that Koreans tend to live very close to one another in massive cities, therefore never having a chance to get the hell away from everyone else.

So if a popular trend develops in Korea, Koreans follow that trend without thinking twice about it, because other people do it too. At times, this is a source of great national strength. When there is something that demands a truly national-scale cooperation, like the Olympics or the World Cup, there are no better people than Koreans to extract that cooperation. However, infuriatingly, a trend often makes many Koreans lemmings.

Unfortunately, the trend of beauty in Korea became this Westernized face, so people follow it without thinking twice about it. Once the beauty trend is established, every Korean starts demanding something that conforms that trend. What is an actor/actress to do? In order to become and stay popular, they all go through plastic surgery to conform the goddamn trend.

But this is not enough to explain the whole plastic surgery madness, especially regarding the general population. The second part of the trend is old school sexism. Simply put, Korean women get plastic surgery because they are being judged only on their looks. This is not all that different worldwide, so no further explanation would be necessary.

But what makes the sexism particularly devastating is that it operates within a hyper-competitive society. Right now, the unemployment rate among young Korean workers is around 12 percent -- and that's not counting those who are staying longer in colleges and graduate schools because the job market is too tough. And Korean resumes always have a place for you to affix your picture (something that is legally prohibited in the U.S.) Given that one's appearance is a large (often the only) factor in one's ability to find a job, what crazy person would not get plastic surgery?

Nonetheless, the Korean will maintain his stance - this plastic surgery craze, and the current standard of female beauty as a whole in Korea, are sickening. Eventually, Korea will get out of its conformist culture, and its standard of beauty will change accordingly. Until that day, enjoy the wonders of modern medical science, on display on AZN Network every night.
-EDIT 10/29/2009 6:43 p.m.- According to a survey by Chosun Ilbo, 90 percent of Korean women in their 20s and 30s said they would get plastic surgery to feel better about themselves.
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Ask A Korean! News: Position Open in Asia, Asians Need Not Apply

If there ever was a question about whether U.S. is more or less racist compared to the rest of the world, L.A. Times has a fantastic article that affirms the Korean's previously stated answer. The article is about China, but the situation is the same throughout Asia, definitely including Korea.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

"All o'Y'all Look Alike!!"

Dear Korean,

This is a question about something I've heard in various forms from a lot of non-Asian Americans. Simply put, people tend to say that "all Asians look alike." That's an obvious exaggeration, but I'm wondering whether you think East Asians really do look more alike than people of European descent. After all, most East Asians have dark eyes and dark hair of a similar texture, whereas Europeans have many different eye colors and hair colors/textures. (Of course, I'm not counting perms, dye, and contact lenses.) Asian body types also seem to be more uniform than European ones. Is it just American stupidity or do Asians really look more alike than other groups?

Andrew T.

Dear Andrew,

You do have a point: All East Asians have dark hair and dark eyes. But really, that's all. Outside of hair and eye color, there is a whole lot more variation in East Asians than you might think. The point is illustrated by Isabella Byrd Bishop, a British woman who traveled Korea in 19th century. She visited a Buddhist temple in Korea whose claim to fame was its statuettes of 500 disciples of Buddha, and this was her impression: "Among the infinite variety, one figure has deeply set eyes, an aquiline nose, and thin lips; another a pug nose, squinting eyes, and a broad grinning mouth; one is Mongolian, another Caucasian, and another approximates to the Negro type. Here is a stout, jolly fellow, with a leer and a broad grin suggestive of casks of porter and the archaic London drayman..."

In other words, all other bodily features of East Asians could be radically different. The skin complexion can go anywhere from very dark to very light, roughly going from a slightly light-skinned black person's complexion to completely pasty. The hair curls and texture range from very straight and fine to very curly and coarse, almost to the level of jewfro. Eye size, nose size, lip size, height, build, you name it; East Asians are hardly uniform. If you think all Asians are short and have slight build, the Korean has 25 sumo wrestlers who would prove otherwise by sitting on you.

This then begs the question: Why do people think all Asians look alike? "Because people are stupid" is never a good answer. The answer has to do with heuristics. (The Korean covered it once here. Read it if you'd like a more detailed explanation.) To recap quickly: heuristics is a mental shortcut. People engage in heuristics by extracting the most prominent information out of a certain situation; if people encounter a new situation that shares the same prominent information, they conclude that the new situation is the same as the previous situation. Heuristics is useful because it enables quick decision-making with little information.

So suppose you are a person who has never seen an Asian person. You meet your first Asian man in your life; not very well met, just a random encounter at a party or something. What would you remember about his looks? Unless he has stunningly good looks, the only prominent thing you would remember about his appearnce a few days later would be his dark hair and his general Asian-ish looks. Then you meet your second Asian guy -- and bingo, the second Asian guy has dark hair and general Asian-ish looks. They both look the same!

(This is, in fact, one of the mechanisms through which deja vu can happen. Even though you are in a new place, for example, it feels like you have been there before. It's because some time in the past, you only remembered certain features of a place, and this new place shares the same features.)

This process happens to any race of people who are considered "exotic". A lot of white people thought black people looked all the same, until discussing race became the powder keg that it is right now. Here's a confession: the Korean himself, for some years after he moved to the U.S., had the hardest time distinguishing Danny Glover and Morgan Freeman. They are both slim, distinguished-looking black men who have some gray hair -- at least, those were the only things that stuck in the Korean's head whenever he saw Mr. Glover or Mr. Freeman. So even though they look nothing like each other, the Korean's mind just jumped the gun, until he consciously tried to remember every single facial feature of the two men.

As you might have noticed, this process definitely works the other way around as well. Europeans are more of a mix, but they can be broadly divided into light-haired, fair-skinned types and dark-haired, swarthy types. So if you are a white person traveling in Asia, you will definitely hear comments like "You look just like [insert the representative movie star here.]" It's pretty flattering to hear, but just remember that such a statement is the same ilk as "All Asians look alike."

In that case, how can one distinguish different Asians by looks? (i.e. Korean, Japanese, Chinese, etc.?) Well, that's for another, highly interesting post.

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

The Korean is Featured on the Mexican!

A while back, the Korean sent a question to the Mexican, and he responded this Thursday. Check it out: http://www.ocweekly.com/columns/ask-a-mexican/ask-a-mexican/27908/ (It's the second question.)

Ask A Korean! News: Koreans Know How to Cheer

The Korean's favorite sports blog Deadspin (link on the right) put up something about Koreans, so how can the Korean not link it? Check it out.

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Culturalism: Racism of the 21st Century

Dear Korean,

At the time of the 1992 Watts riots, I heard a commentator on NPR say that one source of tension between Korean shopkeepers and blacks was that in Korean culture, a shopkeeper isn't expected to be chatty with customers. Is there any truth in this?

Andrew B.

Dear Andrew,

No, there is zero truth to it. Korean shopkeepers are not different from any other shopkeepers in the world. If anything, they tend to be friendly with the neighbors so that they can boost the sale. The Mama Hong case in Los Angeles that the Korean wrote about earlier would be a good example. (It's towards the end of the post.)

But the Korean wants to point out a larger problem suggested by your question: It's the impulse to explain minority people's behavior with a "cultural difference", real or imagined. For the sake of convenience, let's call this "culturalism".

Culturalism started in a benign way. It started as "multiculturalism", in which people are supposed to understand and accept the differences of other people from a different culture. For example, a multiculturalist would not recoil at the fact that Korean people eat rancid kimchi. Instead, a multiculturalist would ask and learn about the history and the significance of the food in Korean culture. Multicuturalist would make the link between kimchi and other rancid, fermented food that she loves, such as cheese. She might even try it out herself, suppressing the gag reflex.

What does a culturalist do in contrast? He sees that strange-looking people are eating strange-smelling food, and thinks to himself, "Well that's odd, but I guess it's their culture," and walks away without doing more. Essentially, culturalism is a lazy multiculturalism; culturalism sees the cultural difference, and stops there. (For a typical culturalist attitude, see this post.)

The "acceptance" in multiculturalism comes from the fact that the more you learn about a different culture, the more you realize that it is not too different from your own after all. A friend of the Korean, after having lived many years in Japan said this: "Japan is exactly like America, except just the opposite. If you understand that, you understood Japanese culture." The Korean could not agree more.

It seems like there is "acceptance" in culturalism as well, but it's more like neglect. Instead of understanding the fundamental similarities between a different culture and that of its own, culturalism simply throws on the label of "cultural difference" -- the label might as well be "exotic", "mystical" or "incomprehensible"-- and calls it a day.

Culturalism is at least better than some alternatives. In Europe, people want immigrants to entirely lose any hint of their home country and essentially become 100 percent French or Italian, only with different skin tones. (If you'd like, refer to this as "assimilationism".) No foreign food, no foreign garb, and definitely no foreign language. Some lawmakers in France, for example, tried to require Muslim girls to take off their headscarf when they attend public school, because the hijabs were un-French. Compared to that, culturalism at least leaves the minority people alone.

But culturalism is dangerous, in the exact same way racism is dangerous. Both culturalism and racism only look at a single character about an individual or a group, and purport to know something about that individual or a group. That knowledge, of course, is either false, misleading, or unrepresentative.

(In fact, because discussing race in America became such a stroll-through-a-minefield-leading-to-easy-social-suicide, "culture" became the new code word for talking about race. There is no more discussion about "what black people do." Instead, the discussion starts with "In urban culture" or "In hiphop culture".)

The most fundamental danger of culturalism should be plain: it continues ignorance under the guise of tolerance. This is exactly how Asian Americans continue to feel that they are forever foreign in the only country that they have known and lived. The moment a culturalist senses that he is speaking to a person from a different culture, the culturalist simply stops trying to understand that person, because the "cultural difference" gives a dead end to an understanding. The "shutting down" from the culturalist is what makes Asian Americans feel foreign -- all of a sudden, the common ground between the two has disappeared.

Another danger of culturalism is that the "culture" that culturalists have in mind may be completely distorted. This is because culturalists often rely on one or two minority persons' word for what minority culture is. But often the minority people themselves do not know the full extent of their own culture. The Korean has seen many cases of the following: A second-generation Korean American, who grew up in a small town with no other Koreans and very few Asians, attributes every quirk and oddity of her parents to the Korean culture. Invariably, such a person's perception of Korean culture is completely distorted, because she is unable to sort out what is attributable to Korean culture, and what is attributable to her own parents' personalities. (See this post for an example.)

So any non-minority person hearing about a different culture by a minority who doesn't have the full grasp of his own culture will end up having the same distorted view of that culture. The trouble gets worse because of the fact that there is no good way to verify even the strangest cultural differences, since minorities are by definition not too many, so asking another minority is difficult. (And that's the reason why the Korean started this blog.)

A related problem is that a culture has many different aspects, often self-conflicting. Furthermore, in the case of a conflict, a culturalist simply chooses the most foreign aspect and writes it off as "cultural difference," without trying to understand the aspect and make it un-foreign. For example, who defines black culture -- the articulateness and strength of Colin Powell or Condoleeza Rice, or thugged-out, pimp-smacking Tupac or 50 Cent? The Korean doesn't know, but he knows this much: When most people talk about "black culture", they sure as hell are not talking about being articulate.

Lastly, culturalism is harmful for minorities themselves, because it gives an excuse for them to cover up their own shortcomings. Why can rappers go on calling women bitches and hos? Because it's the hiphop culture! Korean shopkeepers in 1992 were not in tension with black folks because their culture made them to; they were because they were racists and they hated black people. But hey, Koreans could make some shit about cultural differences, and dumb white people would buy it, just like they buy an overpriced dish at an exotic Korean restaurant that tastes like vomit.

Managing this blog has been a daily struggle against culturalism. Every day, the Korean's inbox is flooded with people who ask typically culturalist questions. What in Korean culture makes my co-worker rude? What is it about Korean culture that makes my boyfriend act in a certain way? Please, stop and think for yourselves for a change. Stop looking for a quick "cultural" answer so that you can write the question off without getting the right answer. Realize that we are all humans, and in the end, we are all the same.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Announcement: The Korean has a job

Dear readers:

The Korean is trying out this newfangled thing called "having a job". This is a tough place with long hours, so updates will be farther between. The Korean is still working on a few drafts, so there will be updates, at some point.

Thank you all for reading!

Ask A Korean! News: Presidential Race and a Collective Fob Moment

This is somewhat old news, but this is the first time the Korean had heard it from a reliable insider source.

Couple of weeks ago on Sept. 14, Sen. Hillary Clinton visited Los Angeles Koreatown in order to host a fundraiser for her presidential campaign. She was not the first presidential candidate to host a fundraiser in Koreatown -- Sen. Sam Brownback and John Edwards already hosted one in Koreatown as well.

Nonetheless, Clinton was the biggest name politician who ever had a fundraiser in Koreatown, and the Korean Americans in LA were excited about the visit, since it shows the growth of the Korean community's political clout. The fundraiser was held at Oxford Palace Hotel in Koreatown, and roughly 100 Korean community leaders attended it.

The big moment came when Clinton entered the hall, whereupon all attendees respectfully stood up and applauded. But a genuine Korean moment happened when, very soon as Clinton was sitting down, the claps broke into a rhythm, and the hundred people gathered into a chant:

"Hil-Luh-Li! Hil-Luh-Li!"

If you get it at this point, you are a Korean. If you don't, just try saying to yourself a brisk "one-two-three, one-two-three", while clapping at "one" and "three". Remember, most Korean names are three syllables. So it is natural for Koreans at a political function to clap and chant the name of the candidate in that manner.

However, Clinton is not Korean, and she was clearly puzzled by this. So she leaned over to her interpreter, while maintaining her smile:
"What are they chanting?"
"Um, that's your name, Senator."
"That's not my name."

On the plus side, the dinner raised about $350,000 for her campaign, and it did show that Korean American community is growing as a leal poritical folce. ;)

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Announcement: New Rule

If you have a comment about a post, please comment. If it's response-worthy, the Korean will respond on the comment. But after one round of initial exchange and you want a further discussion on the topic, please email the Korean. If you weren't there initially, weigh in with your email.

This is because often, back-and-forth arguments degenerate into dumb screaming match. The writings are too short to explain anything of substance, and only invites more distortion of the initial argument. Nothing annoys the Korean more than two people who completely miss each other's points.

So the New Rule: If you want longer argument with me, argue with me over email. Any comment that attempts to do otherwise will deleted. Thanks for reading.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Korean Men

Dear Ladies,

According to Gustavo Arellano, the most common question for the Mexican is “Why do Mexicans swim with their clothes on?” Well, for the Korean, the most common question is this: “[Who/what/when/why/how] do Korean guys [like/dislike/act/feel] [in/about/with/for] girls?”

Most of those questions come with a ridiculously long background story – so the Korean knows what the email is going to be about if the sender is something like fluffypuppiesandkittens@yahoo.com and the email size is around 200KB. Some of those emails were answered on this space, some privately, and some not at all, because the Korean doesn’t even know where to begin with those.

Some of the emails are simply the result of Korean men being around non-Korean women, but many of the emails seem to be a direct result of the recent popularity of Korean dramas and the male actors in them. (For example, Kwon Sang-Wu in the picture.) Korean guys are now singled out as a category, and they seem to feature in amorous fantasies of many non-Korean women. The Korean compiled the most frequent questions and their answers below.

Do Korean guys go for non-Korean [white, black, Latina, South Asian, Southeast Asian, Martian] girls?

If there is only one thing to remember about Korean men, it’s this: they are men before they are Korean. Do you have breasts and a vagina? Then at least some Korean men would go for you. It’s relatively uncommon, but hey, interracial dating is always relatively uncommon.

The Korean cannot stress this point enough: KOREAN MEN ARE EXACTLY THE SAME AS ALL MEN. Korean dramas feed upon the fact that you womenfolks are always trying to find some men that do not exist in real world. Please just let it go. No man expects to find a woman who cooks like Rachel Ray and screws like Jenna Jameson. Same should go for your expectation on your man.

What qualities do Korean guys look for in a woman / What can I do to make this Korean guy like me?

The Korean covered this topic before: try cooking for him. But that advice usually works for all men. There is no love serum that especially works on Korean men. Just be yourself. The Korean Girlfriend’s advice? Give him a head. (She’s a keeper.)

Why do Korean guys want to get married so soon?

The Korean tangentially covered this as well. There is a huge pressure to be married by a certain age. Once that age is past, it’s as if Koreans are on fire sale. This is worse with Korean women, but men are definitely affected by this as well.

What does it mean if a Korean guy gives you [four leaf clover/hairpin/doll/other silly trinkets]?

There is no such thing as “ultra super special Korean guy-to-girl gift”, except possibly on certain days. (Described here.) Gift is no more than a gift. If it has an uber secret hidden message, he would probably tell you. Remember, girls are the ones who like to play detective games with clues and such. Guys never put in that much effort, except when they stop calling you back.

Why does my Korean boyfriend cannot share his feelings? Why does this Korean guy who seems to like me only talk to me on and off? Why am I in the middle of this Greek tragedy involving myself and a Korean guy?

Here’s the answer – I DON’T FUCKING KNOW. Stop flooding the Korean’s inbox with your 20-page sob story! If you want some genuine help, go read this instead. The Korean will say this one more time: Korean men are men before they are Korean. Whatever relationship problem you are having, 99 percent of it has to do with the fact that he is a man, and maybe 1 percent of it has to do with the fact that he is Korean. Before you send that email to the address on the bottom, please, please, PLEASE think through your situation, eliminate ALL possible non-cultural explanations first, and then ask if you have to.

After this post, if you still have a question about Korean men, it had better be good.

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com

-EDIT 3/20/2008 11:35 a.m.- SPECIAL ADVISORY TO LADIES FROM PHILIPPINES, VIETNAM, AND OTHER SOUTHEAST ASIAN COUNTRIES


The Korean recently noticed that many people from above countries (presumably women) are getting to this particular post through Googling for "Korean men". Your situation tends to be somewhat different from regular dating, so please read this carefully.If you are considering dating/marrying a Korean man, look out for the following:

1. Remember that majority of Koreans are racists. That means that they despise people whose skins are darker than them. Southeastern Asians are darker than Koreans. You do the math. It's safe to say that in many cases, your relationship will not be based on respect.

Even if your guy is not racist, his parents, relatives, and friends are going to be racist. That makes a long-term relationship or marriage extremely difficult. At some point, your guy will be forced to choose between you and everyone else he knows. Guess which one he is more likely to choose?

2. The same principle applies everywhere: Korean men are exactly the same as all men. And all men lie, beg, manipulate, and do other despicable things to have sex with women. Korean men are no different. The fact that they have less respect for you would make this more likely.

3. Are you going through some type of a broker? Be EXTREMELY careful about these services. Korean men who come to Southeast Asia through a marriage broker do so because NO KOREAN WOMAN WOULD MARRY HIM. There is a reason for that. Of course, some men are just unlucky -- Korean women tend not to marry divorced men or men living in rural areas as farmers. But many men are your classic, stuck-in-the-1960s type of Koreans whose hobbies include beating their wives.

4. Regardless of going through a broker or not, watch out for older Korean men (in 30s~40s as opposed to in early 20s), for the simple reason that older Korean men are more likely to be racist, manipulative, and disrespectful to women. Remember, there is a strong pressure for Koreans to get married in their early 30s at the latest. So if there is a single Korean who is older than, say, 33, either s/he went through some unusual circumstances, or something is wrong with that person.

5. Lastly, do not fall for the two classic mistakes that all women make about men at some point in their lifetime: "He is different from everyone" and "He will change for me." The first one is correct only about 20 percent of the time, and the second one is never correct.

Happy Chuseok!

Today is August 15 in lunar calendar, which makes it Chuseok in Korea. Chuseok is essentially a harvest festival, and the traditional food is songpyeon, a half-moon shaped rice cake with sweet stuffing inside.

For most Koreans, chuseok is remembered as a time for traffic jam, as most people in Seoul who are not from Seoul return to their hometown in their cars. The Korean's trip to the Korean Family's hometown, a breezy 1.5 hour drive in most cases, becames an epic 6 hour journey during chuseok.

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Billowy is Nice.

Dear Korean,

Why do so many Koreans smoke? I have been around Asians my whole life, and amongst the Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Filipino, and Koreans, the Koreans definately have the highest percentage of smokers.

Bewildered Half-JapAm

Dear Bewildered Jjokbari (derogatory term for Japanese),

It is absolutely true that Koreans smoke a lot. In the U.S., according to 1998 CDC survey, roughly a quarter of all American adults are smokers, with the number of men and women roughly similar. Asian Americans had the lowest percentage of smokers, with 13.7 percent.

About a quarter of all Korean adults in Korea are smokers as well. But the number is deceptive, because a whopping 44.1 percent of Korean adult males are smokers, while only 2.3 percent of Korean adult women smoke. There is no survey that the Korean could find that broke down smoking by more specific ethnicities in the U.S., but chances are percentages of Korean American males smoking would not be that much lower.

The smoking trend for Koreans abroad is really just a by-product of the smoking trend in the mothership. So the proper question is why Korean males smoke so much. First factor is simply this: Korea is still not that far out of the times when EVERYONE smoked. U.S. had times like that, all the way until 1970s or so. Then the cancerous effects of smoking got publicized, and Americans, at that time rich enough to care for their health, quit smoking in droves.

One must remember that caring for one's health is a very rich-country-thing to do. After all, who has time to care for one's health when everyone has to work every waking hour to feed his/her family? Korea only became rich in the recent years, and sure enough, in the last five years or so there has been a massive public campaign to stop smoking. Governmental efforts followed as well, putting more and more places under no-smoking ordinances. In the last five years, all male relatives of the Korean who used to smoke quit, including the two Korean Uncles who had been smoking for decades.

(The picture is a pack of This, the metaphysical cigarette that is one of the most popular in Korea. Notice the beautiful humor of subtle foblish.)

Another factor to consider is that Koreans spend a lot of time in extremely high-stress situations, and those situations tend to be suffered as a group. Smoking relieves stress, but even more importantly, chatting up while gathered to smoke relieves stress big time. Korean educational system is notoriously high-stress with cutthroat competition beginning from middle school -- the result is around 20 percent of high school students smoke.

After high school, the 2 to 3 years spent in the military is another high-stress situation suffered as a unit. After military, certain jobs operate as a stressful unit, encouraging smoking. (Surprisingly, such jobs include doctors, especially surgeons.) Almost all Korean smokers that the Korean knows picked up the habit during high school, military, or work, out of stress. Which leads the Korean to the thought that he has had, from the moment he landed at LAX -- boy, Americans have it so easy.

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

The Fastest in the East

Dear Korean,

안녕하십니까? Why are Koreans in a rush all the time? Like at elevators and subways, people get on before people get off... isn't that like Social Etiqutte 101? And Koreans (esp. men) eat fuckin' FAST! (I hear this has something to do with 군대.) I remember a lot of 유학생 back in the States would be running all over the place at grocery stores. Don't they know grocery shopping is supposed to be a leisurely experience? Are they in a hurry to get back to their apartments to study?

$imon
Seoul, Korea by way of Houston, TX

Dear $imon,

Although it has been getting better in the last decade or so, the social etiquette in Korea is still MIA at times. It's because still for many Koreans, (generally older people,) it is their first time living in a megapolis like Seoul. It doesn't occur to them that there are extra sets of etiquette required for a crowded living. But truthfully, it's not that big of a problem anymore -- it used to be really bad until the 80s.

If you are curious about what Korea used to be like, you should visit China. When the Korean visited China, the only way to keep people from blatantly cutting in any line was to close my fist, raise it, and stare down the would-be cutter. Unfortunately, that didn't work for spitting mucus and chicken bones on the street.

A related side story: a while back, the Korean visited Disneyland with his three friends. We were in a line for Star Wars, and we began to notice this one group of obviously-mainland-Chinese kids, probably around high school age or so. They used to be next to us on a folded line (so kinda far back,) but now they were just a few spots behind us. We observed, and their method was this: squeeze a small girl up front past other people, who establishes some space in the line, and the rest of the group (maybe 4 or 5) comes in to join the girl.

Upon seeing this, we decided to have some fun. Four of us stood so that we were forming an L, with the long side of the L facing that group. The space in the middle of the L was a delicious piece of cheese for those line-cutting rats. Sure enough, the small girl made a move, snuck in, and stood in the middle trying to act normal. At that point, the trap door snapped shut. The last guy who was at the tip of the long of the L moved in, forming a square; all of us stood a little closer, forming a tight little cage. The four of us were standing just close enough to that girl that if she wanted to get out, she would have to push one of us aside.

After the trap was complete, we were just talking to each other as if the girl in the middle didn't exist, trying to hold in laughs. Our mouse in the middle tried to look calm, but after spending about 15 minutes in that cage, she looked increasingly distressed, frantically glancing back over to her origial group. Eventually we opened the cage slightly, and the girl bolted back to her group. That group still made it right behind us, but didn't dare to pass us. Fun times.

(Lest there should be any misunderstanding: the Korean has absolutely nothing against Chinsese-Americans. The Korean likes mainland Chinese people too, but just thinks they could learn some manners. Apparently the Chinese government is putting on a massive public advertisement campaign to clean up their people's acts in anticipation of Beijing Olympics. Maybe things will be better after that.)

Back to the topic. Yes, it is totally true that Koreans do everything fast. Koreans walk fast, they talk fast, they eat fast. Koreans demand fast service, and get pissy if they don't get it. One of the biggest complaints of Koreans who travel abroad is "slow service." It took at least five years for the Korean Father to realize that in an American restaurant, you can only talk to your own waiter. ("How can you get anything," the Korean Father would retort, "if that waiter only comes around once in 20 minutes?)

Why? It's Richard Rorty's favorite answer - survival. People still don't realize how Korea could go from one of the poorest countries in the world (and the Korean is talking about sub-Saharan Africa, rampant-starvation-death kind of poor) to a legitimate economic power. Korea could do that, in part, because it valued speed and efficiency over everything else. The industries that really pulled Korea in the 70s and the 80s were international ship-building and construction, things that depend on large bids and huge projects that often become delayed for years on end. As a newcomer on the scene, the only way for Korean companies to win bids is to promise this: We will do what you want cheaper and faster than anyone else can.

Since then, doing things fast became a national motto for Koreans. You can still hear anecdotes of Jeong, Ju-young, the legendary founder of Hyundai group, personally went to construction sites abroad and slapped the foremen silly in order to keep the deadline. Finishing a big project faster than others is simple: You work when other people don't. So Korean people took working for 14 hours a day, six days a week for granted. The Daewoo group's unofficial motto was "When other people work 9 to 5, we work 5 to 9."

This culture of speed affected every part of the country. Restaurants are supposed to give blazing fast service because workers need to get back to work after 30 minutes of lunch and dinner break. People walk fast and drive like maniacs in order to get to their work on time. Even after Korea went past the industrial stage that requires speed above all, speed became a part of the culture.

This phenomenon is not limited to Korea -- it's really all over Asia, because the entire Asia is going through a crazy growth spurt that Korea went through. The Korean's favorite Chinese restaurant brings food out before the Korean even ordered. Okay, that's not true, but it seriously brings food out within 5 minutes of the order.

Recently -- within the past 15 years or so -- Koreans decided that they could not take the maddening speed anymore, and campaigned for a general slow-down of their lives. Such need was heightened when a series of construction disasters happened, such as a collapsed bridge in Seoul or gas main explosion in Daegu, all of them due to shoddy construction that occurred because the construction company was trying to keep the impossibly near deadline. (That bridge, named Seongsu Daegyo, was on the way to the Korean's middle school from the Korean's old home in Seoul, and the Korean himself saw the collapse.)

Nonetheless, once you get used it, you will realize it's kinda nice to have fast service so that you can be done eating early and get on with your life. So the Korean doesn't see Korea slowing down much after all.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com

p.s. Found a cartoon that really illustrated this point. This is a cartoon called "386c" by Hwang, Jung-hwan, carried on Dong-A Ilbo:

Title: Koreans Seen by a Chinese Scholar Who Lived in Korea

1st square - Q. What do you think the general trait of Koreans is? In "Fun Talks about Korea" by Kung Qing Dung, professor Beijing University.

2nd square - A. From the perspective of a Chinese person, the thought that they truly are impatient people comes to me several times a day. Seems like they could take it easy a little bit, but why are they in such a hurry? I felt that way in China as well, but felt it even stronger after I came to Korea.

3rd square - He's right, why can't we take it easy a little bit...

4th square - Let's hurry up and finish this. (Flip flip)

Twisted (Yet Delicious) Replacement for Birthday Cake

Dear Korean,

I am American and watch a fair amount of subtitled Korean movies and TV shows. In these shows, there is a big deal made about having seaweed soup on your birthday. What is this about, and also, what does seaweed soup taste like? Do you like it?

Suellen

Dear Suellen,

You're American? The Korean is American too! What a coincidence.

(Next time, just say you're white. The Korean will let it slide this one time.)

Eating seaweed sounds terrible to most non-Asians, because the image conjured up is the seaweed washed up on the beach, ruining the fun of a good swim. But let the Korean remind you that the image is no worse than yogurt (you toss the milk gone bad, not mix with fruit) or escargot (if you put salt to season it, would it shrivel up and die?)

Koreans generally eat three types of seaweed: miyeok (brown laver), gim (sloke), and parae (green laver). They are cooked differently. Gim is just like Japanese nori, i.e. the seaweed that wraps sushi rolls. Gim is flattened, dried, and roasted with sesame oil and salt. When done, it looks like a thin black sheet of paper. It is then cut into size, and eaten with rice. It makes a surprisingly good beer snack. Alternatively, gim can be eaten like fresh salad, tossed with soy sauce and sesame oil. Parae is less commonly eaten, and more of a local food. Usually it is cooked similarly to gim, but parae tends to have a thicker texture.

Miyeok is the only type that is made into soup, so the "seaweed soup" is really miyeokguk. (Guk means soup.) Miyeok can also be prepared like fresh salad like any other edible seaweed. In addition, miyeok can be prepared into either hot or cold soup. But the birthday soup, as it were, is the hot one. The cold soup is called miyeok-naengguk. The picture is what a typical miyeokguk looks like.

So why eat this particular thing on your birthday? It's really because seaweed soup is traditionally eaten by women after childbirth. Korean women who give birth traditionally eats seaweed soup for about three weeks straight.

Brown laver is particularly good for women who just gave birth because it has very rich in iron and iodine. Iron is what gives blood its red color. It's an essential ingredient for producing blood, something that a woman loses a lot during childbirth. (Which sounds like a load of fun.) Iodine is necessary to kick-start the production of hormones, which in turn produces breastmilk for the newborn. The broth is usually made out of beef or fish, which helps replace calcium and protein.

So, because it is associated with birth, seaweed soup is the thing to have on your birthday. It's a big deal because hey, wouldn't it be a big deal if you missed out on a birthday cake on your birthday?

What does it taste like? Soup is mostly about broth, and seaweed soup can be made out of just about any broth you can think of. (Including canned chicken broth!) The most common broth would be anchovy or beef, but any type of fish or shellfish generally works. Seaweed doesn't really add to the flavor of the broth. Usually minced garlic, soy sauce, and a dash of sesame oil is added to the broth. The texture of miyeok is somewhat like steamed cabbage, but less fiber-y. Wikipedia claims that because of the iodine content, miyeok tastes somewhat like olives, but the Korean loves both seaweed soup and olives and he never noticed the similarity.

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Response to the Open Letter

Reader Eric N. sent the Korean this nice email. At first the Korean had to think about putting it up, since the readers of this blog are generally not Koreans who live in Korea (or even if they are, they are knowledgeable about this type of things.) But hey, Eric N. put in a lot of work writing this, and it had many good points. So here it is. Italics in parentheses are the Korean's comments.

Hello,

I enjoyed your latest posting regarding the way non-Asians treat Asian Americans. Your points helped me realize that white people say and a lot of stupid things around Asians. As a caucasian guy who has been living in Korea for over four years, I also have some requests for Korean people. I am sure you have considered some of these points in the past, but I thought you might appreciate them as someone who has lived in both Korea and the U.S.

- When you see a white person on the street, do not yell, "Hello!" or "Where areyou from?" at the top of your lungs. Koreans do not talk to other strangers onthe street, so there is no need to single out the foreigner to practice English with. (The Korean himself is totally guilty on this one, back when he was living in Korea.)

- When foreigners speak Korean, do not say, "Your Korean is so good!" even whenthe phrase being uttered by the person is ridiculously simple. (To be fair, Koreans just don't expect anyone to learn any Korean. And they could be talking about your pronunciation.)

- Do not discuss the purity or superiority of the Korean race. It comes acrossas ignorant, exclusionist, and racist. (No argument here.)

- Talking about foreigners in their presence is extremely rude. It is clear that white people have more body hair, different eye colors, and different bodyshapes from Koreans. It is best to wait until whitey has left before dissecting his appearance. (Shit-talking in the face of someone is so much fun. It's probably the best thing about knowing a relatively obscure language. But yeah, it's pretty damn annoying if you understand the shit-talking. Happened to the Korean many times whenever he traveled to a Spanish-speaking country.)

- Do not tell every foreign guy you see that he is handsome and resembles a movie star. I know we all look alike, but most of us are nowhere near ashandsome as Brad Pitt. (Does this really happen or did you just break your spine trying to pat yourself on the back?)

- Stop fetishizing Ivy League schools and the American upper class. Your children can still be successful if they don't get into Harvard. (Indeed. The Korean is doing just fine after going to a state school.)

- Stop the systematic exclusion of mixed ethnicity Koreans. Koreans only accept them after they are succussful (e.g. Hines Ward and Daniel Henny). Even then, it comes across as if they believe their success comes from the 'Korean blood'. (The Korean will devote a post on this topic later, but yes, it's pretty disgusting.)

- Do not use phrases such as, "Koreans are the in the world." Most of the time, these claims border on laughably ridiculous and can easily be debunked. (The most overused phrase like this is probably "Koreans are the most inventive people in the world", based on hangeul, metal press, etc. The Korean knows, however, that Koreans are the best drinkers in the world. No one can dispute that.)

- Stop ruining Western food under the guise of fusion cuisine. Whipped cream does not belong on baked potatoes and kimchi does not belong in spaghetti. Also, hamburgers are not steak. Furthermore, stop price gouging on so-called luxury drinks such as Starbucks coffee. A cup of coffee should not cost $6. (But how will people know it's from America unless it tastes weird and exorbitantly expensive?)

- Do not hold a spoon like a shovel. This is not preschool. (Frankly, the Korean does not understand this part. Korean people do this?)

- Stop wearing t-shirts with pictures of white kids in big sunglasses. A picture of an emo kid or a Paris Hilton wannabe printed on a cheap t-shirt is not good fashion. (That must be the latest fashion in Seoul. Thank god the Korean is not there, or he might have gouged his own eyes out.)

- On that note, what is the deal with the ridiculous number of Koreans wearing shirts with incoherent English phrases? Most of the time, these are simply annoying. In some cases, they are downright offensive. New rule: You must beable to read the English on a t-shirt before wearing it. With the amount of time and money Koreans spend on English education, this should not be a problem. (Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for saying this. Now, if only the Korean can enforce the same rule upon non-Asians and their t-shirts/tattoos...)

- It seems that Koreans like to emulate the worst garbage that comes out of American pop culture. Paris Hilton is not the ideal woman, Nsync and the Backstreet Boys are not where music ends, Levi's are not the best jeans, and 'The Butterfly Effect' and 'Step Up' are not good movies. It is easy to mistakenly assume that Koreans are superficial when their tastes appear to be shallow. (Eh, the Korean will disagree on this one. If Korean people like them, so be it. Spam is considered gross in most parts of America, but people in Hawaii accepted it to be great food and made fantastic dishes out of it. It's all in the eye of the beholder. If a sugarmama who gives out free ass is not the ideal woman, who is?)

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.