Glow-in-the-Dark Koreans

Dear Korean,

My boyfriend is half Korean and we’ve visited some of his relatives. On one occasion, there was a great deal of soju drinking and one of his cousins (who is 100% Korean) turned purple. As I was about to administer CPR, my boyfriend stopped me and told me that it was just Asian glow and that it happens to some Asians when they drink. Why does drinking cause Asian glow? Secondly, as it turns out, I LOVE soju. What are some good brands of soju that can be found in the States?

Crissy from Cleveland

“Once you go Asian, you’ll never do Caucasian”

Dear Crissy from Cleveland,

Glad you enjoyed yourself. Soju really is great. It's 21% so it goes down smoother than most other liquors; it fucks you up so fast because you just keep on drinking it. It is somewhat like watered-down vodka, so you can mix it just like you would mix vodka (although soju traditionalists would be aghast at the idea.)

Soju is such a staple for Korean drinkers that they always come up with new and different types every few months. So it's hard to pick out what the best type is. The most "classic" type would be "cham iseul" from Jinro company. "Ipsaeju" is good if you like your liquor slighly sweet. Lately, the most popular type is "chum-churum".

(The picture is not the Korean's fridge, but it's not a bad depiction of what he would like.)

As to the cause of Asian glow, Wikipedia does a better job explaining the scientific bases than an amateur like the Korean can. (Link here.) If the big words confuse you, this is an easy way to understand it. Basically, many Asians lack the capacity to process a certain portion of alcohol, which manifests itself in reddened face. Although the Wikipedia article describes a lot of scary symptoms like "dizziness, nausea, headaches, an increased pulse, occasional extreme drowsiness, and occasional skin swelling and itchiness", most of these things are just symptoms of drunkenness. Generally, how red an Asian gets has no relation to how drunk he is.

(Here is a shout-out to Margaret Cho, in the form of one of her jokes: "Being an Asian is tough, because you could be at a party, and this ditzy girl could come up to you and ask, 'oh, are you sunburned?' And I have to say, 'No, I'm fucked up.'")

Asian glow is not the only physical thing that manifests predominantly with Asians. Many Asians are lactose intolerant, condemned to paying extra for Lactaid milk, or having the shits all day for having a bowl of cereal. The Korean himself has both Asian glow and lactose intolerance -- another reason why the Korean is a such a representative Asian, deserving to write columns like this.

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

Now THAT's a stupid question

Dear Korean,

I find it strange that you use the star with the circle around it, which is the symbology on North Korea's flag. Isn't your heritage from South Korea?

Chaz


Dear Korean,

What does the orange star represent?

Sae

Dear Chaz and Sae,

The Korean must praise your astute observations. Yes, the Korean is indeed from South Korea. Yet he always had a yearning for a system of government that causes rampant starvation. So he secretly declares his allegiance to North Korea on the blog, just like the Illuminati makes its presence known through the Seeing Eye on a dollar bill.

The design is just one of the default things from blogger.com. It means nothing.

For those of you who sent smarter questions, a real post will come soon. I promise.

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

The Korean is Liberated

The Korean's exam is finally over. Updates will come soon.

Ask A Korean! News: America, Make It Yours.

(Screw it, here is the post. No one cares about old news anyway.)

-EDIT- Check out this week's Mexcian. There are some real doozies.

This is a bit old, but the demise of the immigration bill was disappointing to the Korean, so we will talk about it a little here. If you have no idea what this is about, here is an LA Times article.

In order to get a typical attitude of a person who opposed the bill, let us bring out an old friend, TexasFred, who wrote this steaming pile of crap about the Korean folks who drowned in Trinity River near Dallas because a 911 operator hung up on them multiple times:

Call me hard-hearted, but if you come to MY nation and spend over 20 years of YOUR life here, making money, enjoying the fruits of this land and ALL it has to offer and you don’t have the motivation to learn to speak English, or you don’t entertain the idea that after all that time you SHOULD become an American, to hell with you, I don’t care WHAT happens to you, you’re nothing but a leech on MY nation."

The Korean wanted to destroy that above sentence for some time, and now is as good a time as any.

The Korean’s point is simple: What makes America YOUR country, TexasFred?

Generally, if something is yours, you have worked for it. A car is yours if you paid for it. Same goes for anything that we own. What did you pay to get your American citizenship? Let me guess – you paid NOTHING. No effort was made on your part to make America “your” country. You were just lucky. Your mother was in America when you were born.

You paid taxes? Don’t be stupid. You didn’t pay taxes to get born, did you? IRS can do a lot of things, but it can’t come after you while you’re sitting your mother’s womb. Plus, if paying taxes were a valid criterion for citizenship, all illegal immigrants would get an amnesty right now. They pay taxes when they receive their pay, and they also pay sales tax when they buy anything. Heck, if taxes were enough, the amount of tax paid by Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motors would be enough to turn every single Korean national into an American citizen.

On the other hand, immigrants always pay in order to make America theirs. They put up money, labor, and often their own lives (as we can see from the increasing number of Hispanics in the military in exchange for American citizenship.) Even the people who jump the border put more work to make it to America than you ever did. So how is your claim of ownership possibly better than an immigrant’s?

You may object this way (actually the Korean is certain that you do not have the wherewithal to make an objection like this, but he is being nice here): “It’s not ‘my’ country like ‘my’ car. It’s ‘my’ country like ‘my’ parents – an accidental inheritance to be sure, but there is a spiritual connection between me and the country in which I live.”

Nope. Make that argument if you are intent on giving America back to Native Americans. The “spiritual connection to the land” idea is shaky to begin with -- Koreans do this all the time, talking about how Korea deserves a bigger land mass because older Korean kingdoms occupied northeastern China for about 1000 years. Well, what about the other 1000 years when China occupied the same land? But even if one accepts the idea, the longest that any American (except Native Americans) has ever lived in this country is about 3 centuries, which is not nearly enough for anyone to seriously make a claim on the land. Most people in the world can claim their heritage in the same land for at least a millennium and a half, and a lot of those people don’t have their own country. (Take for example Kurds, Basques, Chechens, and Tibetans, not to mention Native Americans.)

Still another objection might be that immigrants might fundamentally change the “American culture”. So let’s look at American culture. Most of American music—jazz, rock and roll, R&B, and hip-hop—does not exist without immigrants (albeit forced) from Africa. The representative American foods such as hamburger, French fries and pizza are from Germany, Belgium, and Italy. The point is simple – what is left of American culture if we take away the immigrant influence? On the flip side, if something as wonderful as jazz and burger is waiting for us in the future by virtue of immigrant influence (like salsa and galbi, perhaps?), how is that not a reason to welcome more immigrants?

In fact, rejection of immigrants offends one of the core values of America: free market, and by corollary, free competition. Here is a really simple way of getting rid of all illegal immigrants—work harder than them! The Korean would love to see immigration opponents put their money where their mouth is, and line up to take all the jobs that immigrants tend to do. Nothing would be more delightful than Lou Dobbs climbing a tree to pick an orange, or being dragged through two years of bullshit lawsuit as a hapless drycleaner. Do you not like Mexicans mowing lawns? Do the same thing cheaper and better than Mexicans, and they will go away. Do you not like Asians dominating the engineering and medical fields? Maybe you should have done better during high school. You are no better than the little brat who takes the ball and goes home just because he keeps on losing, except the ball is not yours to begin with.

The proposed immigration bill isn’t bad because it does too much; it’s bad because it doesn’t do nearly enough. America belongs to those who recognize the country as the blessing and treasure that it is. If people are not committed to making America better, they don't belong in America. So here is the Korean’s proposal for immigration and citizenship policy.

It starts simple. All children born in U.S. or into American parents get a provisional citizenship until age 18. Their status won’t change much from as it is right now. At the age of 18, every child as well as everyone in the world is eligible for the citizenship test, which asks basic questions about American history, geography, and civics. Anyone who passes will receive a full citizenship for two years. Full citizenship entails the same rights as the current American citizenship.

Anyone who fails to pass, or any full citizenship holder who commits a felony, receives a basic citizenship. Basic citizenship is similar to what illegal immigrants go through right now. Basic citizenship holders may stay in the U.S., and must pay taxes. (That’s right, illegal immigrants pay taxes too.) Basic citizens are generally eligible for full citizenship every time there is a citizenship exam. But they cannot receive any higher education, nor can they receive any medical insurance, publicly or privately. Constitutional rights are not quite suspended, but they operate at a lower level. For example, basic citizens can be searched for any reason whatsoever. They can also be detained for an extended period of time without being told the reason for detention. Medical care is of course not provided in detention. If you die while being locked up, too bad. (Check out the link. It’s really something.)

But here is the beauty of the Korean's proposal -- ANYONE in the world can come to America and immediately obtain basic citizenship, and they are eligible for the full citizenship exam just as much as anyone who is born in the U.S. Competition can sort out the rest. Full citizenship Americans will be the best and the brightest, and the basic citizenship Americans will be there to tend the gardens and flip burgers.

The proposal is still rough around the edges, but you get the idea. Do you want to call America YOUR country? You better earn it, pal. If you don’t know who John Roberts is or the fact that the President can’t cut taxes under the Constitution, (just a couple of things that all immigrants who take the citizenship exam know, and so many xenophobic "Americans" don't,) you probably don’t deserve to “come to MY nation and spend over 20 years of YOUR life here, making money, enjoying the fruits of this land and ALL it has to offer[.]” Idiot.

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

A Quickie Post

Okay fine, the Korean doesn't really want to study right now. Here's a short one.

Dear Korean,

My mom was telling me about the way that Koreans describe an ugly woman as a "호박꽃," but she didn't know where it originated from. Could you possibly find out how it came about? She hates the metaphor because she thinks it's contradictory to describe any flower as ugly. She also had me take a picture of one in our backyard to show people that it's really a beautiful flower.

Zucchini flower fan

Dear Zucchini flower fan,

Your mother is right: zucchini flowers are pretty (like the one in the picture you sent), and it would make no sense to use the word to describe ugly women. Truth is hobak-kot (that's what the hangeul in the question says) is not a zucchini flower at all.

The correct euphemism is neulgeun hobak, rather than hobak-kot. The word hobak is somewhat confusing because it means both pumpkin and zucchini. (Often Korean people use the term ae-hobak for zucchini to distinguish the two.)

For the euphemism, the correct meaning is pumpkin, not zucchini. The word neulgeun means "old". So now the euphemism makes sense -- ugly women are like old pumpkins, because old pumpkins are fat, bumpy, and wrinkled.

By the way, the euphemism is the same in Japanese as well, which contributed to a subtlety that was understood by few in Memoirs of a Geisha. A friend of the main character Sayuri is called "Pumpkin". That doesn't mean that she was cute, as Americans might understand it. (Al Bundy always calls his daughter Kelly "pumpkin" in the sitcom Married with Children, which always cracks the Korean up.) Basically Sayuri's friend was called "Ugly" her whole life, which makes her actions after the war a little more understandable.

How did we get to hobak-kot from neulgeun hobak? First, the neulgeun part is often dropped, and calling an ugly woman hobak is enough to convey your less-than-good intent. But calling someone a hobak straight up is a little too mean. So the euphemism is softened up a bit into hobak-kot, the "pumpkin flower," since women are associated with flowers. So the euphemism is not really a knock against the actual pumpkin flower -- it's just a derivation from calling someone a "pumpkin".

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

The Korean is on a break

The Korean needs to take a very important exam in the coming weeks, and his attentions are necessarily diverted to that direction. The Korean did work out a draft in the meantime, but this one will definitely piss off a lot of people. Publishing the draft is not a problem, but the Korean does not have enough time to address the shitstorm that will surely follow the post.

If you are new to the blog, welcome, and please enjoy the archives. If you are waiting on a new post, please bear with me. Thanks for coming, as you always do.