Law and Economics of Korean Street Food

Dear Korean,

I am living in the southern part of South Korea. One of the things I love about Korea is the street vendors selling food. Do these street vendors get a license or do they just set up shop? Also the 'shops' tend to close in the summer. For instance, I love 붕어빵, but they only sell during the winter. Why? Meanwhile in Seoul the street meat people are out all year long, usually at night. Why do they wait to set up at night? Why isn't street meat seasonal?

Debbie

Long before the American hipsters turned the food truck into a fad, Asians have figured out the romance associated with eating on a mobile platform.

Typical street cart food setup in Korea.
(source)

But behind the delicious, delicious hunger-inducing facade, the legality and economics of street vendors in Korea are pretty complex. Conclusion first: technically, one must obtain a license--which comes with regular health inspections--to open up a street cart. But it is fair to say that the law is observed only in select parts of Korean cities. Street carts in areas with huge foot traffic, and those that sell alcohol tend to invite more scrutiny, because of the various potential public hazard (mass-scale food poisoning, drunken brawls) they pose. In areas with regulation, the street cart owners often form an association to conduct their businesses in an orderly manner. There is even a secondary market in which the license-holders buy and sell the government licenses.

Outside of those areas, however, anything goes. This is directly related to the character of street vending as a business. Street vending has very low entry barrier. At the lowest possible end, one only needs a floor mat and some home-made gimbab [김밥] to be a street vendor. Even a more sophisticated street food vendor rarely requires more than a truck carrying a makeshift kitchen which, in the grand scheme of business, is not a huge capital investment. In fact, there are many businesses that rent out the street-vending equipment, and provide the mass-produced, half-cooked food that the street vendors only have to heat up and serve. (Oh come on, don't act all surprised.) This serves to further lower the entry barrier into the street-vending business by lowering the cost, and by eliminating the need to learn whatever technical expertise necessary to cook up the food.

Because the entry barrier is low, street vending is an attractive option for numerous Koreans, many of whom are economically down-and-out. This makes the government reluctant to crack down on them very strongly. The local government will act if a street vendor creates any issue that causes complaints from the residents. But most vendors are wise enough to fly under the radar, and the locals are generally happy to pick up some 붕어빵--a fish-shaped pastry with sweet red bean filling--on the way home from work. (In fact, the people who file the most complaints against street vendors are other street vendors, who frequently use government regulation as another weapon in turf war.)

Why are some types of street food seasonal, and others available year-around? Much of it has to do with the fluctuating demand. The demand for chicken on a stick, for example, remains the same year-around. But certain types of street food--like 붕어빵, roasted chestnuts, roasted sweet potatoes--are strongly associated with autumn and winter. Because there is more demand for such food during a limited time frame, many street vendors jump into selling these cold-weather snacks to make a quick profit, and exit the business when the weather warms up.

A world with little to no regulation, in which entrepreneurs freely enter and exit to precisely meet the dynamic demand of the market? Maybe Korean street cart market is the dream of the laissez-faire capitalist.

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

Divided Sports Loyalty?

Dear Korean,

I am Chinese American, immigrated at 4 years old. I identify very much as an American and while I want China to do well in competition, I will generally root for the USA over China head to head. A Korean American friend of mine shared this article, which I thought was very interesting. It advocates that Korean immigrants, as immigrants and people assimilating into American culture, have an obligation to not root against their new home country. What do you think?

John L.

Given the recent duel between Team Seoul and Team Chicago in the Little League Word Series, TK figured this would be a good topic to address. As immigrants, where should our sports loyalty lie?

Give it up for the good-lookin' World Champions.
(source)

The article that John L. shared outlines a common perspective. An excerpt:

When we as Korean Americans don Korea shirts and wave Korean flags during Korea-USA games, we are not choosing a team, we are choosing a nation. We are very deliberately and purposely choosing to support a foreign nation against the one we call our home and protector. It’s true that issues of identity are more complex – many of us feel just as much at home in Seoul as we do in San Diego or Daegu as in Dallas, but there are times when we cannot conveniently declare that we are “citizens of the world”, or “both Korean and American.” There are hard choices to be made.

It is ironic and inconsistent for us to complain of being seen as “perpetual foreigners” and having to struggle to be accepted as Americans, and then turn and root against America when the choice comes. And we cannot be truthful to ourselves and say that Korea’s games against the US are only sport when we consider Korea’s games against Japan as so much more. Culture plays an enormous role in setting the framework for people’s understanding of the world around them.

During World War II Asian Americans proudly and publicly made efforts to support America, despite the outrageous Executive Order 9066. Many, facing discrimination, wore buttons that read: “I am an American.” Still others, like Colonel Young Oak Kim, wore America’s uniform and served abroad. The Asian American 442nd Infantry continues to be the most highly-decorated military unit in the history of the American armed forces.

Undoubtedly, many people take this view, as many people take sports quite seriously--as does TK. So what does he think about this case of "divided loyalty"?

(More after the jump)

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakroean@gmail.com.

First off, let me tell you just how big of a sports fan I am. Here are just some of the stupid things that I have done for the sake of sports.

- In my high school years, I was in a massive car accident that completely destroyed my car. The car was literally towed straight from the site of the accident to the junkyard. I did not have any externally visible injury, but I very well might have had severe internal injury and/or spinal cord damage. But I adamantly insisted that I was not injured at all, and nothing hurt, although I was in a great deal of pain. Why did I lie? Because that was the day when the Los Angeles Lakers played Game 7 of the Western Conference Final against the Portland Trail Blazers, and going to the hospital would have kept me away from the television.

Lakers came back from 13 points down at the start of the fourth quarter to win the game. An alley-oop from Kobe to Shaq, shown below, punctuated the comeback. Watching this lying down on the couch--I was in so much pain I could not sit up--I did a hard fist pump, which sent a searing sensation through my shoulder and arm. But I got to watch one of the greatest moments of Lakers history. I did not regret my decision at the time, and I still do not. (By the way, just in case you are worried: in the end, it turned out that I only had some whiplash and muscle shock.)

- My family and I were traveling in Alaska during a Labor Day weekend, when my dear California Golden Bears would open its football season against the University of Tennessee. We were on a guided tour, and we were scheduled to be in a long bus ride from Anchorage to Fairbanks when the game was on. (This was long before 4G coverage and mobile video, although even today they would not be available in the wilderness between Anchorage and Fairbanks.) 

I was desperate to watch the game. TKFather suggested that I listen the game over the radio. I did not have a radio with me on the trip, and we were staying at a hotel in the outskirts of Anchorage. According to the hotel staff, the nearest place that might sell a radio at 9 p.m. at night is Wal-Mart, which was 20 miles away. Apparently, Anchorage closes early and only Wal-Mart stays open past 9 p.m. 

Did I pay a $70 round trip cab fare to get to that damned Wal-Mart, just to buy a $15 radio that I will never use again for the rest of my life? Of course I did. Listening to the game (which Cal, led by DeSean Jackson, defeated Arian Foster and Tennessee in a 45-31 shootout,) I was alternately giving the play-by-play, singing the Cal fight song, and chanting and screaming incomprehensibly. In a bus full of tourists who couldn't care less.

- I spend so much money on sports that I probably need professional help. I own a jersey and/or a cap of every significant pro sports team from Los Angeles, including David Beckham's LA Galaxy jersey. (Who the hell buys an MLS jersey?) I own two Jeremy Lin jerseys. (It took all my willpower not to buy Lin's Houston one, but how could I not buy Lin's Lakers jersey?) I have so much Cal gear that my friends genuinely wondered whether I owned any piece of clothing that did not have the blue-and-gold logo. I have bought the annual Game Day Shirt for my college every year since I graduated (over ten years ago at this point,) and I plan to buy one again this year. I plan to buy them every year until I die. I don't care if that means I will end up with 50 t-shirts I will wear, at most, once in five years.

When the Lakers make their once-a-year trip to Washington D.C., I always go--although the Wizards bilk fans like me by charging $200 for a crappy seat. (The same seat for, say, a Warriors-Wizards game costs $35.) In fact, I also pay for my friend's ticket because no one else I know is willing to pay that much to watch a basketball game. Same is true when the Dodgers visit the Nationals. Right now, as of this moment TK is writing this post, he is in Chicago to watch the season opener for Cal football against Northwestern University. I did not just use a vacation day at work, pay for the plane ticket and get a rental car (which had to be an SUV, because it is pathetic to have a tailgate on the backside of a Ford Focus--who cares if it costs double?); I paid to overnight sausages from Top Dog, Berkeley's finest hot dog joint, just so I can have the complete Golden Bears tailgate experience. Will I lose my voice around third quarter of the game tomorrow? Absolutely.

*               *               *

All of the foregoing is to make a simple point:  what TK is about to say is not because he believes sports is trivial. This is not going to be a flip dismissal about the importance of sports loyalty, of the kind often given by people who do not understand the value of sports and dismiss it as grown-ups playing with a ball.

For TK understands why sports matter. We sports fans care so much because sports is the most perfect metaphor for life. No novelist, no poet in the history of humankind has created a body of work that even remotely approaches the emotional resonance of a single FIFA World Cup, much less sports in general. Each match is a work of art, reflective of the nuanced highs and lows of the life itself. By watching a game, we experience a birth and a death. We enter the world--the match--with hopes riding high, or perhaps with cynicism and dread. (The latter is a more typical for a Cal Bears fan.) We either achieve glorious immortality by defeating our foe, or experience hell--writ small--by losing in agony. By watching a hundred games, we live a hundred times. 

But it is important to realize that, while sports may be the most perfect metaphor of life, it is not life itself. The endlessly recurring metaphor is possible only because, in sports, we do not actually die in defeat, and we do not actually kill in victory. Sports is so life-like that a significant portion of sports fans substitute their own lives with the sports' representation of life, because often, the latter is much more attractive than the former. This is a mistake. It is one thing to deeply engage in a metaphor, quite another to let it consume reality. When certain lines are crossed, even the most rabid sports fan must be ready to snap out of it. As a Dodgers fan, I am ashamed to see that two Dodgers fans beat a Giants fan after a baseball game in 2011 such that he was brain damaged and permanently disabled. This is what happens when people substitute their lives with a mock-up of a life.

The article that John L. introduced hints that such substitution is starting to happen in the mind of the author of the piece. There is a gaping chasm between an allegiance to the team's name embroidered on the chest of an athlete, and an allegiance to the nation's name embroidered on the chest of your military uniform. Yet the author blithely jumps across that gap by comparing sports loyalty with the Asian American experience during World War II. Even for the most ardent sports fan, such equivocation cannot stand. It does not simply trivialize life by equating a ballgame with a situation in which countless human lives senselessly perish every day for no reason other than their nationality. It also destroys the beauty of sports as a metaphor for life, because sports does not simply represent the current reality, but the reality to which aspire--a world with sportsmanship and fair play. Recall that one of the worst violations of sports fan etiquette is to celebrate the opposing player's injury. But if we should treat our sports opponents as enemies on the battlefield, there is no reason why we should not call for more bean balls to the head, more chop blocks designed to break the knee. 

It is perfectly fine to enjoy sports nationalism, which is a far sight better than an actual war fueled by nationalism. It is also fine to come up with elaborate rules to determine your team, in case there is a possible conflict (as immigrants often do.) TK's personal rules are all over the place: in basketball, he will root for Team USA because basketball matters more in America, but in baseball he will root for Team Korea because he is annoyed that Team USA baseball never fields its best players. The game is not limited to the one unfolding on the pitch; at the end of the day, everyone who is watching sports is participating in a game of a highly elaborate metaphor. Enjoy the game, and don't let it get to your head.

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

50 Most Influential K-pop Artists: 10. Drunken Tiger

[Series Index]

We are finally in the top ten countdown! Because the top ten musicians usually show a huge spectrum of music that is not sufficiently covered by a single "representative song," TK added a "Further Listening" section at the bottom to give additional examples of the artist's work.

10. Drunken Tiger

Years of Activity: 1999-present 

Members:
Tiger JK - rap (1999-present)
DJ Shine - rap (1999-2004)
Roscoe Umali - rap (2000-2003)
Micki Eyez - rap (2000-2003)
DJ James Jhig - rap (2000-2003)

Discography:  
Year of the Tiger (1999)
The Great Birth [위대한 탄생] (2000)
The Legend of (2001)
Roots [뿌리] (2003)
One is not a Lonely Word (2004)
1945 Liberation [1945 해방] (2005)
Sky is the Limit (2007)
Feel Ghood Muzik (2009)
Let's Live (The Cure) [살자 (The Cure)] (2013)

Representative Song:  You Think You Know Hip Hop? [너희가 힙합을 아느냐] from Year of the Tiger

(Note:  Lines in blue is in English in the original song.)

너희가 힙합을 아느냐
You Think You Know Hip Hop?

[Vocal]
음악 같지 않은 음악을 이젠 모두 다 집어치워 버려야해
Music that is not worth being called "music" has to be all scrapped
우리가 너희들 모두의 귀를 확실하게 바꿔줄께 기다려
We will change all of your ears, just wait

[Rap]
하하 참으로 놀라와 진짜인 우리가 돌아와
Ha ha, truly a surprise, we are real and we have returned
조금씩 너희가 있는 곳에 서서히 올라가
Little by little, we will slowly climb up to where you are
거기 가짜 거기 있어봤자
You there, posers, no point standing there
진짜를 보여줄께 우리가 거기 닿자마자
We will show you what's real as soon as we get there
세상 이상 너무나도 괴상
World is strange, so very weird
너희가 최고라니 그건 너무 환상
You're supposed to be the best? That's too much of a fantasy
우리는 타이거 또한 차원의 차이가 너무 나는 바로 우린
We are Tiger; we are in a different dimension, we are
What! 드렁큰 타이거
What! Drunken Tiger

내 마음에 가득 차있는 나만의 슬픔
The sorrow that completely fills my heart
두 뺨에 타고 흐르는 내 눈물의 의미 너는 알고 있니
Do you know the meaning of my tears, streaming down my cheeks
그렇게 그렇게 힘들고 지쳐 외로워도
Although I'm tired, exhausted and lonely
너희들을 위해 진정한 힙합을 위한 너희들을 위해
For you, for you who stand for true hip hop
나는 꿋꿋이 버텨나가 그렇게 이겨나가
I stand tall, that's how I persevere
한 발 한 발 조금 더 용기를 내 영원한 힙합을 위해서
Step after step, summon a bit more courage for my eternal hip hop
나는 DJ Shine, 영원한 시인 (Number 1 Korean)
I am DJ Shine, the eternal poet (Number 1 Korean)

[Vocal]
눈을 감아 들어봐 온몸으로 느껴진 전율
Close your eyes and listen; the chills that travel down your whole body
주는대로 받아 먹는 건 이쯤에서 그만두어야 해
Time to stop feeding off of what is given to you

You and you W-A-C-K who? 
You and you W-A-C-K who?
You and you W-A-C-K who?
Come back home, see me tapping your boo 

[Rap]
하나 같이 꼭두각시
Everyone is a puppet
모두 같은 줄에 매달려서 춤을 추는 슬픈 삐에로
A sad marionette that dances, all hanging on the same strings
이대로 그냥 갈순 없어 슬픈 미래로
We can't just keep marching into this pathetic future
술 취한 호랑이 두 마리 We be coming from ghetto
Two drunken tigers, We be coming from ghetto
진실만 말하는 거리의 시인들
Poets of the streets who only speak the truth
하지만 너의 편견에 빠진 우리 아이들
But our children who is trapped in your bias
인생의 아픔 기쁨 모두 다 들어봐야 해
We gotta listen to all the life's pain and joy
가식으로 엉킨 세상 풀어줘야 해
We gotta untangle the word twisted with hypocrisy

나는 랩퍼 랩퍼
I'm a rapper, rapper
내가 지금까지 살아오고 살아왔던 얘기들을
The stories of how I have lived and lived until now
나는 랩으로 너희들에게 얘기하려 해
I wish to tell you with this rap
이젠 날 지켜주는 건 진정한 힙합의 무대
Now what protects me is the stage of true hip hop
그리고 언제나 밝은 웃음으로 날 반겨주는 사람과 사람들
And the people and the people who always greet me with bright smiles
이제부터 마이크로폰에 나의 영혼을 나의 열정을 남김없이 쏟으리
Now I will give all my soul and passion into the microphone
그리고 진정한 랩퍼가 되리
And I will be a true rapper

Put your hands up 
Put your hands up
All the players in the house put your hands up 
Put your hands up 
Put your hands up
All my Crown-sipping niggas put your hands up
Intoxicated Tiger dropping topics
Hypnotize in illogical melodic sonic, boom up your optic 
Sippin' gin without a tonic, under the disco light I rocked it
Why? It ain't no optical illusion, it's only logic

갑자기 나타나 반짝하고 빛나다가 사라져 버리는 그런 이들과 비교하지마
Don't compare us with some shiny flash that suddenly appears then disappears
우리에게 와 내 앞으로 와
Come to us, get in front of us
힙합을 사랑한다면 다같이 취해봐
If you love hip hop, let's all get drunk

[Vocal]
눈을 감아 들어봐 온몸으로 느껴진 전율
Close your eyes and listen; the chills that travel down your whole body
주는대로 받아 먹는 건 이쯤에서 그만두어야 해
Time to stop feeding off of what is given to you
음악 같지 않은 음악을 이젠 모두 다 집어치워 버려야해
Music that is not worth being called "music" has to be all scrapped
우리가 너희들 모두의 귀를 확실하게 바꿔줄께 기다려
We will change all of your ears, just wait

In 15 words or less:  Undisputed king Korean hip hop (they still call him Tiger you fucking haterz)

Maybe they should should be ranked higher because...  Made hip hop a mainstream genre. What more is necessary?

Maybe they should be ranked lower because...  At the end of the day, how big is hip hop (in its purest form) in Korea?

Why is this artist important?

Development of Korean hip hop is a fascinating story that deserves a closer chronicling. It is a modern case study of how an utterly foreign musical genre spread, took root, and eventually integrated itself into an essential part of the local pop music scene. This process, of course, did not happen by itself. Korean hip hop can be considered a forest, with many a skilled hand that planted, tended and lovingly nurtured each tree. And the credit to the tallest, most majestic tree goes to Tiger JK and Drunken Tiger.

The history of hip hop in Korea arguably dates back to 1989, when a mid-major singer named Hong Seo-beom [홍서범] included a rap track in his album. However, it would take a decade before Korean pop musicians to produce any music that the international audience would recognize as hip hop. The hip hop-esque music from the transitional period of 1990s is sometimes referred to as "rap dance," a genre that is still alive and well in Korea. "Rap dance" is chiefly a dance number, of which varying portions are dedicated to rapping. (This format can easily be seen in the contemporary K-pop idol music.) Although rap dance did much to introduce the Korean audience to hip hop, it still had some distance from hiphop proper, characterized by the rhyme and flow of mostly spoken words over rhythmic beats.

Drunken Tiger was the group that bridged that gap. Tiger JK grew up in Miami and Los Angeles; DJ Shine, New York and Los Angeles. Having cut their musical teeth during the hip hop's "golden age," the two Korean American youngsters were eager to flash their authenticity in the music scene that, in their view, peddled dance music with a false label of hip hop. The provocative title song said it all: "You Think You Know Hip Hop" [너희가 힙합을 아느냐].

Sure, the early attempts were often cringe-inducing in their cheesiness. Drunken Tiger's early emulation of American black culture frequently fell flat. It would take years, and many interceding talents such as Verbal Jint and Leessang, for Korean hip hop to completely overcome the language barrier and create a rhyme and flow in the Korean language--a critical development that finally allowed Korean hip hop to convey a new level of authentic emotion. 

But why does any of that matter? For a very long time, Drunken Tiger was the only K-pop hip hop artist who refused to compromise, releasing album after album filled only with rap rather than taking the easy path of rap dance. It is an overstatement to say that Drunken Tiger single-handedly made hip hop mainstream in Korea. But they did raise a forest from what seemed to be a hostile, infertile land--a feat that required no less fearlessness than any of their American counterparts.

Interesting trivia:  Tiger JK comes from a storied musical heritage. Tiger JK's father Seo Byeong-hu [서병후] is considered Korea's first pop music critic. The elder Seo founded Pops Koreana, Korea's first pop music magazine. He was also the Korea correspondent for the Billboard magazine. Tiger JK's mother Kim Seong-ae [김성애] was a leader of a band called the Wild Cats. Tiger JK then married Yoon Mirae [윤미래], the best female rapper in Korea's rap scene.

Further Listening:  Observe Drunken Tiger's evolution into incorporating parallel rhyming with both Korean and English by listening to Die Legend 2, from Feel Ghood Muzik.

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

What Makes a Good Korean Restaurant?

TK has been on a vacation for the last week, during which TK and TKWife made a giant circle driving around Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, and visited numerous national parks. Overall, it was an amazing experience. What was not amazing, however, was the one Korean restaurant that TKCouple visited, which inspired this Facebook update:

New blog concept: You tell me your favorite Korean restaurant in your town, and I will visit, eat, and tell you everything that's wrong with the food served there.
Inspired by a crappy Korean restaurant in middle America that I'm sitting in. Its walls are covered with awards from local papers, which makes me want to disband those papers.

As TK said in a comment to the update, he won't actually do this. He is a lover, not a fighter, and he certainly knows better than to mess with people's livelihood. However, there is still a teachable moment here. Many people--including many Koreans!--do not really know what separates good Korean restaurants from bad ones. These people simply do not have enough experience to form a frame of reference as to what elements good Korean restaurants have.

Don't just criticize; show the alternative. So TK will give the alternative. Here is a list of things that you should look for in a Korean restaurant in order to tell if it is a good one.

Geographic Location

In U.S.:  Let's be straight. Korean food is not yet at the place where, say, sushi is--that is to say, Korean food is not yet mainstream enough for one to expect a dependable taste for it, outside of the people who grew up eating it constantly. This necessarily means the ceiling for the quality of Korean food sold in areas sparsely populated by Koreans will be rather low. In the U.S., Koreans mostly live in Southern California, New York/North New Jersey and D.C./Maryland/Northern Virginia. (The next tier of Korean American population centers are Northern California, Atlanta, Chicago and Seattle, but the drop-off is significant after the top three.) The quality of Korean food tends to track that order.

In Korea:  Korea is surrounded by seas on three sides, with each side producing different types of fish. Korea's terrain also ranges from mountains to fertile and flat fields, each yielding different types of crops. In short, Korean food is highly diverse based on geography. Because everything in Korea tends to eventually flow to Seoul, the restaurants in Seoul tend to maintain a certain level of quality. But for the real deal, look for the restaurants that sell the food that is made from the local ingredients.

Freshly made soft tofu from Sokcho. This ended up in TK's stomach within minutes.

For example, tofu requires sea water to make. (Bet you did not know that.) Thus, the best tofu comes from Korea's eastern seaboard, in which soy beans grow and the sea water is readily available. Port cities, obviously, are the best places to have fish and seafood. Jeju Island is not only known for its seafood, but also for pork from its native black pigs. Since each locality in Korea loudly advertises its specialty food, it is hard to miss the local delicacy.

Two additional points: (1) in the City of Jeonju, every dish is good; (2) in Daegu, every dish is awful. Just trust me on this. Jeonju is the birthplace of bibimbap, one of the most iconic Korean dishes. In Daegu, locals say the best food available is McDonald's.

(More after the jump.)

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



Menu

Both in the U.S. and in Korea, this holds true: watch out for restaurants that sell too many different dishes, because every one of the dishes will be mediocre-to-bad. Unfortunately, this applies to vast majority of Korean restaurants in the U.S., because there simply is not enough demand to specialize in certain types of Korean food. In small towns of America, the menu often crosses the border to include Japanese/Chinese/Thai food, creating an unholy alliance of shittiness. Avoid this type of restaurant at all costs.

From the Oatmeal.
(source)

In Korea, restaurants with big menus tend to be in and around train stations and express bus terminals, where many different types of people pass through without particularly caring about the quality of the food available. Avoid these places as well.

The good Korean restaurants serve foods that are related to one another. For example, naengmyeon [냉면, cold buckwheat noodles] ought to be sold alongside with suyuk [수육, boiled meat], because naengmyeon's broth is made of meat. (In other words, do not eat naengmyeon at a place that does not also sell suyuk; it means that the restaurant is using canned broth.) Jokbal [족발, braised pig's trotter] is usually sold alongside bossam [보쌈, steamed/boiled pork with kimchi and cabbage] because they are both pork and they both involve boiling/steaming.

The very best Korean restaurants often serve just one item, like this:

Same tofu restaurant in Sokcho. The entire menu is on the wall:
soft tofu soup, for KRW 8,000 (~$8).

A restaurant has to be awfully confident in what it's selling if it intends to make a business by simply selling a single dish. If you see a Korean restaurant with just one item on the menu, stop by and eat. You will not be disappointed.

Food & Flavor

Majority of Korean food will be in some configuration of rice, kimchi, banchan [반찬, side dishes] and the main dish. Because rice, kimchi and banchan will form the backbone of a Korean meal, the way in which a Korean restaurant handles these elements is a great gauge of how good a Korean restaurant is.

Kimchi:  At this point, there might be a bit too much mystique surrounding kimchi in popular discourse, as if there can be no proper kimchi outside of the kitchen of some old Korean grandmother. Truth is, one can buy pretty decent kimchi from the store--as long as one pays for it. Therefore, kimchi is a decent yardstick to find out whether the restaurant in question has minimum competence. If a restaurant serves bad kimchi, it either does not know what it is doing with food, or does not care enough to buy good food--which includes good ingredients.

There are two major ways in which kimchi can be wrong:  too sweet, or too sour. If either or both is true with a restaurant kimchi, chances are the food will not be good either.

Sweetness is the cancer that is slowly killing Korean cuisine. This cancer is everywhere in Korean food in America, and frequently found in Seoul as well. Gratuitous addition of sugar and MSG (which is also sweet) is ruining the palate of those who did not grow up experiencing the traditional palate. Beyond the subtle sweetness naturally present in the ingredients, Korean food should not be sweet at all. This absolutely applies to kimchi: although napa cabbage and Korean red pepper both bear some natural sweetness, one should be able to tell immediately whether any sweetener was added.

Excessive sourness indicates that the kimchi was improperly made or kept. Kimchi that was properly fermented in the correct temperature has clean, crisp sourness. If fermented too quickly, the sourness becomes overpowering, destroying all the nuances of the dish. Fermentation accelerates if kimchi was kept at a warm place (not a good sign for hygiene) or kimchi has sugar in it. (Excess carbohydrates = hyperactive microbes. To avoid this result, some restaurants choose to add Sweet 'n Low to its kimchi to add sweetness without affecting the fermentation. Vile.)

Note that napa cabbage, which is the main ingredient for the most common type of kimchi, is a winter vegetable. The best Korean restaurants serve kimchi made with seasonal vegetables, not just with napa cabbage. (More on this below.) At least during the winter, cabbage kimchi ought to have a satisfying crunch when chewed, instead of fiber-y toughness. Good kimchi has a strong hint of seafood; cheap kimchi does not, because seafood and fish sauce can be expensive in large quantities.

Rice:  If kimchi tends to show the floor of a Korean restaurant's quality, rice tends to show the ceiling. Most restaurant rice is decidedly mediocre, largely because restaurants usually cook rice in one huge batch, which sits for hours in a giant, industrial-sized rice cooker.

Some restaurants place rice in a stainless steel rice bowl (pictured below) immediately after the rice cooks, and puts the bowl in a warmer. (The bowl has to be made of stainless steel in order to conduct the heat from the warmer--which is why the stainless steel rice bowls are commonly seen in Korean restaurants, but rarely in a Korean home.) Doing this improves the quality of the rice, but only somewhat.

The ubiquitous stainless steel rice bowl.
(source)

The very best Korean restaurants keep numerous small rice cookers, and cook small batches of rice. The rice is served in the traditional porcelain or brass ware--a sign that the rice did not spend any time in the warmer. Good rice is moist enough to have a shiny sheen. Each grain should be intact and visible. One must be able to feel the individual grain when one chews the rice.

To reiterate: good rice is pretty difficult to find in a restaurant. It simply takes too much effort to make each bowl of rice perfect. But this means the restaurant that does put in the effort to serve a good bowl of rice cares about the quality of food it puts out. Good kimchi means the minimum standards are kept; good rice means that you can look forward to the maximal quality.

Banchan:  Kimchi is the minimum; rice is the maximum. Banchan is everything in between.

The number of banchan may vary depending on the main dish. Some main dishes only require two or three. In other circumstances, there may be dozens of banchan dishes, like this:

(Source)

Having a table full of banchan is certainly more impressive than having just two or three. But don't be fooled: restauranteurs also know that big number impresses. They will attempt to impress the customers by having a huge number of banchan that may be old and stale or, worse, buy the banchan from a wholesaler and simply put them on plates. Quantity matters to some degree, but quality matters much more.

Good banchan uses local ingredients. Restaurant in a mountain town should have more vegetables; in a seaport town, more seafood. No matter where the restaurant is, the vegetable banchan has to include more than the three mainstays: bean sprouts, spinach and fern shoots. All things being equal, more seafood in banchan is good news, because seafood is more expensive. Foreign vegetables--like broccoli--have no place on a Korean table. (Don't argue with me about how broccoli might be local to the U.S. It's not Korean. End of discussion.)

Good banchan takes effort. Tossed salad and simple pickles (usually in soy sauce) do not take much effort. Cooked or fermented dishes with processed (e.g. dried, smoked) ingredients take significantly more effort and time to make. Good banchan does not disguise the ingredient. Be skeptical if all the banchan is slathered with soy sauce or gochujang [고추장, hot pepper paste]. This may be a sign that the ingredients are old and stale, and their true flavor needs to be hidden.

Good banchan is also seasonal. As discussed earlier, napa cabbage is a winter vegetable; ideally, one wants to see kimchi made with yeolmu [열무, radish stem] in the summer. Similarly, certain fish are the best in certain seasons. The most famous example may be jeoneo [전어, hickory shad], which is featured in an Korean old saying:  "autumn jeoneo makes the runaway daughter in law to return." The best Korean restaurants will serve different types of banchan each time you visit, depending on the season.

Flip these characters around, and you get the idea of what makes a bad banchan. Among the commonly seen banchan, the worst has to be potato salad, because it fails all of the criteria above: potatoes are commonly available everywhere (= not local,) it is usually covered in mayonnaise (doubly offensive on this point, since mayo is not Korean,) it requires very little effort and is definitely not seasonal. In TK's book, any Korean restaurant that serves potato salad as banchan goes down a few notches.

Main Dish, and Overall:  With any food with broth or reduced sauce (which starts from broth,) taste for MSG. Unfortunately, MSG is very difficult to detect when the food is hot and spicy--like many Korean dishes. The best, and perhaps the only, way to detect MSG is to have a lot of experience eating Korean food that is MSG-free. If any food tastes "too good," suspect MSG. Look for MSG's telltale chemical sweetness that tends to linger in your mouth after swallowing the food. MSG is easier to detect after the food cools down. Monitor if you feel extra thirsty after eating a Korean meal, because that may be a physiological response to MSG for certain people.

Watch out if the food has only "one speed." Korean food is about delicately balancing multitudes of flavors. Poorly made Korean food allows one or two flavors--usually spiciness or the savoriness from sesame oil--overpower the rest of the ingredients. Despite its reputation, Korean food should not be overly spicy to the point where no other flavor can be detected.

*              *              *

These are just some of the guidelines for discerning good Korean restaurants from bad ones. If you have any additional guidelines, please share in the comments--TK will include the good ones in the main post.

Be a judgmental Korean food eater! There is no need to be a jerk at the restaurant as you are eating, but there won't be better Korean food near you until you start caring about its quality and make affirmative choices to support good Korean restaurants. 맛있게 드세요!

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

Eating on a Train

Dear Korean,

Why do Korean eat hard boiled eggs in trains? Every time I took a train with my Korean wife, she always says that we should eat hard boiled eggs. But why? What is it with trains and hard boiled eggs?

Damien G.

Boiled eggs on a train is a tradition of sorts. Korea operated its first train line in 1899, and train has been the dominant mode of long distance travel in Korea all the way until the late 1970s. Trains are extremely popular even today, as the high-speed KTX (traveling at 190 mph) covers Seoul-Busan under three hours. 

Riding a certain mode of transportation for a century would inevitably engender some associated habits. In case of a train, the habit is to have boiled eggs and a soda--either cola or lemon-lime (known in Korea as 사이다 [saida]). Why boiled eggs? Why not? Especially when one considers the early days of train travel, boiled eggs make perfect sense as a snack on a moving train. They are delicious, filling, portable and not overly odorous. Plus, eggs come in their own casing. They are a far sight better than those black protein blocks that certain other train passengers eat.

Re-enactment of a snack vendor on a steam engine train. Boiled eggs are wrapped in red mesh sacks.
Near Seomjin-gang River, a restored steam engine train running on old tracks,
with old school trappings, is now a tourist attraction.
(source)

To be sure, boiled eggs are hardly the only popular snacks on a train trip. Gimbab [김밥], a rice roll, is a perennial favorite picnic food and also very popular on a train.

There are other associations of travel and food. The rest stops on Korea's freeways tend to (but does not always) have a uniform look, and the menus tend to be standardized as well. The mainstays of freeway rest stops are udon noodles, "hot bar" (fried fish cake on a stick,) and the walnut cookies (a bite-sized, walnut shaped pastry with sweet red bean filling and bits of walnut.) The rest stops that travel eastward from Seoul to the mountainous Gangwon-do Province also tend to serve pan-fried fingerling potatoes, as Gangwon-do is known for its delicious, chewy potatoes.

When TK took his first long road trip in the U.S.--from Los Angeles to Grand Canyon--he was incredibly disappointed at the West Coast freeway rest stops, which are nothing more than a bathroom in the desert flanked by a few dingy vending machines. The East Coast rest stops are marginally better, but they don't serve udon noodles. Pity, because rest stop udon is fantastic.

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

Things TK Noticed in Korea

As some of you may have noticed, TK has been in Korea for the last couple of weeks. One of the pleasures of visiting Korea is to observe the changes. Because Korea is such a fast-changing society, even one year in between the visits (as was the case with TK's) is enough to produce noticeable, interesting changes. Here are three things that TK noticed in his visit:

(1) Beer.   Good beer is mainstream. Good beer is mainstream! In Korea! In the land of horse piss beer! Yes, it is true, good beer is available in Korea to a degree that has never been seen before. As TK previously predicted, the microbrewery movement in Korea is finally taking off. Even the big boys--i.e. Hite and OB--improved their default beer and came out with more drinkable stuff. Microbreweries are now opening their own restaurants and pubs all over Seoul; it will be a matter of time before they spread to other large cities of Korea.

(2) Public Bathrooms.   Once upon a time--say, 10 years ago--using a public bathroom in Korea was a serious gamble. You had to avoid the dreaded "squat toilet" (and no, TK is not going to put up a picture here.) In about 90 percent of the times, there was no toilet paper. Cleanliness? Pfft, people tossed the dirty toilet paper into an open-faced trash can.

Not so any more. In no case was TK in any danger of not finding toilet paper in a public toilet. All of them were reasonably clean--even the ones in incredibly crowded subway stations. The bathrooms in the Gangnam station smelled less of urine than the elevator of the Penn Station subway stop in New York. This is true.

(3) Chinese people.   There are more Chinese folks in Korea than ever. Tourist districts of Seoul have huge banners in Chinese. Thanks to a new investment visa, Jeju Island has a massive increase in Chinese folks in the last few years, to the point that Koreans are joking about how they need to learn Chinese if they want to retire in the island.

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

Book giveaway winners!

First, the answers to the trivia:

1.  SM Entertainment is the management company of the pioneering female idol star, BoA.
2.  Shin Dae-cheol is the guitarist for the band Sinawi, whose bassist at one point was the legendary Seo Taiji.
3.  Kim Min-gi is the artist whose best known song is the Morning Dew.

Somehow, Question 2 tripped up a big number of entrants. The question asked for the name of the guitarist of the band, but many submitted "Sinawi" as the answer.

Many people still got all three questions correct, and sent terrific stories that made TK's heart all warm and fuzzy. TK picked the best three. Congratulations, Evan T., Michael L. and Larissa F.! You will receive an email from TK soon. For everyone, thank you so much for reading!

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

Book Giveaway Trivia Time!

Dear readers,

The good folks at Tuttle Publishing, one of the best publishers of books on Asia, have sponsored an exclusive book giveaway event for Ask a Korean! readers. The prize? K-Pop Now! by Mark James Russell, which the Korean previously reviewed here. For anyone who needs an introductory overview of the current K-pop phenomenon, it is a great introduction.

For the give away, TK has put together a trivia competition. The questions and answers are from this blog's series on 50 Most Influential K-Pop Artists, available here. TK will keep the competition upon until noon (Eastern Time) of Friday, July 11. Please submit the three correct answers, and a good story about how you came across the blog and why you keep reading it. The top three will receive the prize mailed, no matter where they live in the world.

Here are the questions. Please remember to add your own story in addition to the answers to the trivia. Buena suerte.

Trivia Questions!

1.  This pioneering idol singer debuted at age 14, after having learned Japanese by living in the house of an NHK news anchor as a child. What is the name of her management company?

2.  K-pop legend Seo Taiji began his career as the bassist for this heavy metal band. What was the name of the guitarist for the band?

3. This artist is likened to Bob Dylan, elegantly singing a theme of resistance against Korea's fascist regime during 1970. His best known song is called the Morning Dew. What is the name of this artist?

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

Sweet, Delicious Eff You

Dear Korean,

Reading this article, I was wondering whether the statement "The popular pumpkin toffees have become a shorthand for an insult in South Korea, where 'Go eat toffee' means a ruder version of 'get lost'" is true. Is there even a "tradition" to throw toffee? In my culture we throw sweets and candies as a sign of good luck and happiness.

Curious Reader

A bit of background first. As this blog (unfortunately) predicted, Korean national soccer team returned from the Brazil World Cup with a disappointing result of two losses and one draw.

Upon their return, they were greeted with a toffee shower:

Note the toffees on the floor.
(source)

So yes, it's true: throwing toffee is an insult. But why? That question becomes fairly easy to understand when one sees what a traditional Korean toffee looks like. It looks like this:

Sweet and delicious.
(source)

This is called 엿 [yeot] in Korean. "Toffee" is a solid translation, because that's what yeot is--it is a candy created by solidifying thin strands of syrup. The insult is to say 엿 먹어라, or "eat yeot." Hm, put this long, sticky thing into your mouth? Wonder what that could possibly mean?

(For those lacking in imagination, it means: "Eat a dick.")

Interestingly, this insult is more often delivered with words rather than with the actual candy. In the right context, gifting the candy is not an insult at all. For example, someone who is preparing for an exam often receives yeot as a gift, as an encouragement to "stick" the exam (=pass the exam.) But of course, there is no mistaking the intent behind the toffee shower that the the national team received.

Several of you also emailed to ask how the Korean felt about the way in which the players were received. His feeling is: they probably don't deserve it, but it is part of the job description. Certain players--Son Heung-min comes to mind--played their hearts out, and definitely did not deserve to be told to "fuck off." Ideally, one should be able to focus-fire the insult. If one threw the yeot only to those who deserved the most blame, striker Park Chu-young and goalie Jung Sung-ryong would be getting a cannonball of candies to their faces. 

(And Jung won't be able to catch a single one of them. Hey-oh!) 

But that's what sports stars are. They are not paid big money to put a ball through a goal or a hoop or into the end zone. They are paid to serve as the vessel into which we project our desire. In this instance, Korean people's desire was hardly unreasonable; it is not as if there was an expectation that the team would win the whole thing. The team was expected to play hard, and play competently. More than a few players on the team failed at this. And if all they receive in return is some candies thrown at their face, that is not a huge injustice.

-UPDATE: July 3, 2014-

1.  Renowned food blogger Joe McPherson, who blogs at Zenkimchi, lodged this objection:  "Yeot is more like a taffy than toffee." Truth be told, TK did not even realize there was a difference between taffy and toffee. Alrighty then.

2.  This post was featured on Deadspin, in which some of Deadspin's commenters questioned why the yeot showing in the photos taken at the airport does not look like the yeot photo in this post. The reason is actually pretty simple: in the era of commercialization, the traditional long yeot has been re-packaged into a bite-sized candy. The bite-size yeot is still quite enough to convey the insulting message, and has the bonus of being a better aerial projectile.

3.  Now, for the really fun part. Since this post went up, a number of Korean readers provided several alternate theories as to why "eat yeot" is an insult. The theory that TK presented in the post is the prevailing theory: that yeot looks like penis, and "eat yeot" means "eat a dick." But the alternate theories are plenty interesting in their own right, so here they are:

- Probably the most colorful theory is that "eat yeot" comes from a botched exam in 1969. In the middle school entrance exam of 1969 (yes, Korea used to have an entrance exam for middle schools,) there was a question about the appropriate coagulating agent in the yeot-making process. Because of a mistake, there were two possible answers, but the testing authorities only recognized one of the answers. The enraged parents of the students then mobbed the testing authorities, shoving a homemade yeot made with the alternate substance into the faces of the befuddled testing authorities, screaming: "Eat this yeot! Eat it!"

This event actually did happen, but it is almost certainly not the origin of the phrase "eat yeot" because there are examples of "eat yeot" usage that pre-dates 1969. But it's a fun story.

- One alternate theory says:  "eat yeot" means "shut up," because apparently there is a Western tradition in which the dead's mouth was filled with thick syrup to keep it closed. This is most likely a wild speculation.

- Another alternate theory says:  "eat yeot" is a bastardization of "eat yeom" [염 먹어라]. "Yeom" is a process by which Koreans prepare the dead body for the funeral. That is to say--the theory is that "eat yeot" really means "go die." TK does not think this is particularly compelling, because yeom is a process rather than a substance that actually goes into one's mouth.

- There is even a dispute as to whether "yeot" refers to a man's genitalia. One of the leading theories is that "eat yeot" is a slang term originating from Namsadangpae [남사당패], a famed circus/clown act in Korea that has survived for centuries. According to the Namsadangpae lingo, yeot actually refers to vagina rather than penis.

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

Korea was never a Part of China

Dear Korean,

I’m from Singapore and visited Korea for the first time last week. I went to the National and National Folk Museums in Seoul, and noticed that the Koreans talked mostly of their early relations with China as one of “international exchange” or “cultural exchange”, seemingly having forgotten that Korea was a vassal state of the Chinese empire and paid tribute to it in order to maintain autonomy. Will the Koreans never admit to having been part of China? 

Keith

Short answer: Koreans will never admit such a thing, because Korea has never been a part of China.

The confusion most comes from misunderstanding the term "vassal state." The concept of "vassal state" (alternately known as a "tributary state") does not really exist any more, nor has it truly existed in the history of the Western civilization. But it does vaguely sound like "colony" of the early 20th century vintage, which leads to the confusion that Korea was a part of China. That is simply not the case. "Vassal state" is a diplomatic concept that was unique to pre-modern Northeast Asia. The concept must be understood within that context, because it makes no sense outside of it.

(It must be noted that nationalistic Chinese and Japanese deliberately sow this confusion. By doing so, nationalistic Chinese exaggerate the reach of the Chinese Empire; nationalistic Japanese justifies Imperial Japan's invasion of Korea, by claiming that Korea was simply going from one colonial master to another.)

Depiction of Korean tributary envoys to China, by Kim Hong-do, circa late 18th century
(source)

Put yourself in pre-modern Northeast Asia for a moment. There is one nation in the center--China, or 中國 (literally, the "center country")--that has been clearly superior to all nations surrounding it in every aspect of civilization, including military, trade, arts, philosophy and science, for two thousand years. 

Stop there, and let two thousand years sink into your brain. Think hard about how long that time is. Think about how old your grandparents are, and think about how many more generations you have to travel upward to hit two thousand years. Think about how much of our current tradition we take for granted, and how old those traditions are. Americans love to talk about their democratic tradition, but the age of that tradition is barely more than ten percent of the Chinese empire's history. Americans look to Europe for a deeper tradition, but European tradition prior to the Renaissance--which began in the 14th century--was nothing to write home about. 

This exercise is necessary because we the modern people often get myopic, and think that beliefs of the past are dumb or absurd. Not so: if Chinese hegemony has been true for two thousand years, it is simply true to anyone living within those two thousand years in China or near China. It is like living next to the Roman Empire that never went away until the 20th century. In such a situation, it would actually be irrational to think anything other than that the world revolves around China.

In those two thousand years, Northeast Asia was a "sinosphere"--a vast region in which China acted as a center of gravity of every aspect of human civilization. Of course, other nations in the region, including Japan, Vietnam and Korea, developed their own civilization which was quite glorious in its own right. But every nation in the sinosphere shared roughly the same governing philosophy, religion, social structure and writing system, all of which ultimately originated from China.

In this sinosphere, the emperor of China naturally considered himself to be the ruler of the entire civilized world. To the Chinese empire, the entire world consisted of: (1) China, (2) civilized nations that are vassal states to China (i.e. having a diplomatic relation with China,) (3) civilized nations that are not yet vassal states to China ( i.e. having no diplomatic relation with China,) and (4) uncivilized barbarians. During the Qing Dynasty in the early 19th century, China even considered the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy and England to be China's vassal states.

Informed by Confucianism (the shared ideology in sinosphere,) there was a mutual obligation between China and its vassal states. China provided vassal states with governing legitimacy, military security and (relatively) free trade. Vassal states, in return, provided a pledge of loyalty, acceptance of the Chinese emperor as the ultimate governing authority and regular tributes.

(More after the jump.)

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

Now, for the important part. Vassal states pledge loyalty to the Chinese emperor and give regular tributes. That's it. Vassal state had no other formal obligation to China. Vassal states had its own king, and had its own manner of choosing its king. Vassal states had its own government, which independently governed its own country. Vassal state collected its own taxes and had its own military. Throughout its relation with China before the modern times, all of the foregoing was true for Korea as well. China never chose any king on Korea's behalf. China had no formal role in forming Korea's domestic policies. China had no authority over ordinary Koreans, and China's authority over Korea's royal family was symbolic rather than real.

One may ask: what about the tributes? Is that not a tax that Korea paid to China?

No. The word "tribute" evokes an image similar to "tax," but it does not mean what you think it means. Recall that the relationship between China and its vassal states (including Korea) was based on Confucianism, which provides for a hierarchy with mutual obligations. Casual observers often say Confucianism is hierarchical, while losing sight of the fact that under Confucianism, there are obligations that run both downward and upward within the hierarchy. Even as the subordinate recognizes the authority of the superior, the superior must play its part to earn the authority.

In the context of sinosphere, this meant that the Chinese empire repaid every tribute. In fact, this is how the tributary system worked in sinosphere: the vassal state sends the tributary gifts as a sign of respect for China's authority. Upon receiving the gifts, the Chinese emperor would send back his own gifts to the vassal state's ruler as a sign of appreciation. This is hardly a tax on Korea; it was a trade between Korea and China under a different name.

There are ample historical evidence to show that both Korea and China recognized, as a practical matter, that Korea's tribute was a trade rather than a tax. For example, in the early days of Joseon Dynasty, China's Ming Dynasty required that Joseon pay tribute once in three years. But Joseon Dynasty vigorously insisted that it would pay tribute three times a year, and did end up paying tribute three times a year, and eventually four times a year. This makes no sense if the tribute were a tax; nobody volunteers to pay more taxes. Joseon Dynasty wanted to pay more tribute because it turned a profit on the return gift. [1]

Often, Joseon paid tribute by plying horses to the Ming Dynasty, which constantly needed horses to fend off barbarian attacks. The royal records from the Joseon Dynasty show that Korea did not send its own horses. Rather, Joseon purchased the horses from the Jurchens and re-sold the horses to the Ming Dynasty for ten times the price. [2] Being China's vassal state was particularly lucrative to Korea because outside of the tribute-repayment trade, China did not allow any international trade since the Ming Dynasty. [3]

The modern parallel to this relationship is not the colonial holds that appeared in the late 19th and early 20th century. The modern institution that is the closest to the sinosphere's tributary system is the British Commonwealth. Did you know that Canada and Australia had a queen? A number of states within the British Commonwealth--including Canada and Australia--still consider the British queen to be their head of state. Governor-General of Canada, who is appointed by the British Queen, summons the Canadian Parliament; Governor-General of Australia, who is also appointed by the British Queen, has the authority to dismiss the Australian government. (And in 1975, this authority was actually exercised.) Based on the foregoing, one could perhaps make an argument that Canada and Australia were a part of the United Kingdom. But given that Canada and Australia have their own governments just like Korea throughout its history before the 20th century, few would take that person seriously.

-Notes-

[1] From 이덕일, <조선 최대 갑부, 역관>

[2] Same.

[3] It must be noted that some Korean historians are skeptical of the claim that the tributary system always resulted in Korea's financial profit. See, for example, 계승범, <조선시대 해외파병과 한중관계>. But even those scholars generally agree that Korea clearly benefited in the non-economic sense, in the form of China's military protection, importation of books, art pieces and luxury goods, emergency lines of credit during famine, etc.

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

World Cup Thoughts

Yes, the Korean realizes that he is far overdue for a post. In his defense, how can one write a lengthy post when there are so many excellent games to watch?!

I mean, just look at this amazing Van Persie goal. I could watch this all day.

Actually, forget that. I could watch THIS all day.

Every flying man deserves a cape.

Which brings us to Team Korea, which takes the pitch tomorrow against Russia. Unlike the Korean's other homeland--the United States, conquerer of the Black Stars--Team Korea belongs to the soft, soft "Group of Life." Other than Belgium (the "sudden juggernaut,") all three teams in the group--Korea, Russia and Algeria--seem to have a legitimate chance of advancing. On paper.

But don't be fooled by the paper. Haven't you learned anything from the papers like the New York Post? Or the papers that constituted credit default swaps which suddenly became a value-destroying black hole? Papers lie, and they lie about Team Korea's chances. This Korean team is one of the worst Team Koreas in recent memory. Everything about them is terrible. The defense is a never-ending horror show, the offense too young and too green. The team treats scoring chances like a nerdy teenager running into a supermodel. Instead of confidently approaching the object of desire, they blubber, kick about wildly and then explosively self-destruct.

You think the Korean is joking, but he emphatically is not. Just look at this chart of least favorite teams compiled by the New York Times. Obviously, Korea's least favorite team is Japan because obligatory. But Korea's second least favorite team? Team Korea. Our nationalism is not so great that we root for crap. When we see crap, we hate it, even if it ends up being self-hate.

So, that's Team Korea's World Cup chances in a nutshell. It would be lucky to salvage two losses and a draw, while giving up no more than two goals in either losses. (There is a real chance that Korea could lose 5-0 to Belgium. Mark my words.) Team Korea is that sick puppy that you picked up from the side of the road, that mangy one which would surely die in a couple of days. Like your parents said, don't get too attached. Just sit back, quietly mutter "Well, at least we made the Cup," and thank your lucky stars if you have another country that you may legitimately root for. In that spirit:  USA! USA! USA!

(Seriously though, I really want Korea to win. Just one game. Is that too much to ask?)

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

The Sewol Tragedy: Part III - The Fallout

[Series Index]

The capsized Sewol
(source)

One cannot get away from events in this age; the 24-hour news coverage and the Internet would not allow it. The Sewol disaster unfolded in real time in front of a horrified nation. When more than 300 lives--vast majority of them children--senselessly perish in an entirely preventable accident, it cannot help but affect the public. Similar reaction occurred in the United States, following the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in which dozens of young children died at the hands of a deranged shooter. 

But as horrific as it was, the Newtown shooting was over within an hour. Not so with the Sewol sinking. The ship sank for more an hour. The rescue effort subsequently unfolded for days, on live television. In the aftermath of the disaster, every last bit of incompetence from every corner of Korean society was magnified, amplified. It drove Koreans toward self-loathing, cynicism, and finally anger toward the political system.

What do You do When Everything Falls Apart?

The saying goes:  failure is an orphan, but success has a million parents. But in the Sewol disaster, the devastating failure had a million parents:  the captain who abandoned the ship, the ferry company that dangerously overstocked the ship, government that let deregulation run wild. Unfortunately, the failures did not stop when the ship sank. The hits continued to come from all directions: from the media, the government and the society as a whole.

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First, the media. Purely from the perspective of mental impact, perhaps the most devastating error was the media's early reports that everyone aboard the Sewol was rescued. The cause of this error is under investigation, but it appears fairly clear that the media reported an unconfirmed rumor in the race to break the news first. This misfire significantly impacted the manner in which Korean public processed the news. When Koreans first learned the news about the Sewol sinking on the morning of April 16--around 11 a.m., 30 minutes after the ship completely capsized--they took it as a mildly scary event with no true harm done. The complacency set by the encouraging news made the full scale of the true horror much more destructive. Instead of no casualty, there were more than 300 missing, most of them high school students.

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In the hours following the sinking, the media landscape in Korea was the lowest circle of hell in disaster porno. Because the Internet age came to Korea earlier than virtually any other country in the world, the issues that the Internet age created have affected Korea for longer, and more severely. The worst instincts for clickbaiting and sensationalism afflicted every part of the media, from tabloids to the more respected papers.

Newsis, an up-and-coming online newspaper infiltrated Danwon High School, and took a staged photo of a dead student by setting up an open notebook on the desk. Chosun Ilbo--the conservative newspaper that prides in its ability to steer Korean public opinion on any given issue--released an article discussing which insurance companies insured the Sewol, and what the expected payout was supposed to be while the ship was still sinking. Respected TV stations like SBS and jTBC harassed the freshly-rescued survivors for an interview. A reporter from SBS attempted to interview a six year old child, the rest of whose family perished in the ship. On a live television, a reporter from jTBC asked a rescued Danwon High School student if he knew his friends died, which caused the student to crumble in tears.

Second, the government. Much like the media, the government tortured the families of those aboard the Sewol as well as Korean public with a false promise: the possibility that there may be survivors in the capsized ship thanks to the supposed "air pockets." With a benefit of the hindsight, this promise was most likely illusory. Yet, if those in Korean government who were responsible for the rescue genuinely believed the possibility of air pockets, they moved far too slowly to capitalize on the opportunity.

Korea's Coast Guard did not have enough resources to rescue people from a capsizing ship, but other disaster-response authorities did. The Sewol's passenger made the first emergency call to the Coast Guard at 8:52 a.m. But the Coast Guard did not inform the Ministry of Public Security and Administration--which had more sophisticated rescue ships and helicopters to deploy--until 9:30 a.m. In fact, the Ministry first learned the accident from the television news rather than its subordinate. It was not until 9:31 a.m. until the Blue House was notified. By then, the ship was three minutes away from the point at which no escape was possible.

Further, the initial report to the government said nothing to indicate that a massive disaster was unfolding; it simply said that the Sewol was sinking, and the rescue was in progress. Incredibly, even after 5 p.m.--half a day after the ship sank--it appears that President Park Geun-hye did not have a clear idea of what exactly happened. During her visit to the rescue central, the President asked why the students could not be saved if they were wearing life jackets--implying that, in her understanding, the Sewol's passengers were floating in the sea rather than trapped inside the ship.

President Park Geun-hye at the disaster central.
(source)

The President was hardly alone in not having a clear sense of exactly what happened. Until 4:30 p.m.--again, half a day after the ship sank--the rescue central could not even figure out exactly how many people were on board on the Sewol, and how many were rescued. At 2 p.m., the rescue central announced that 368 were rescued, only to halve the number at 4:30 p.m. to 164 rescued. (The final tally of rescued passengers is 174.) When the Blue House was criticized for not having adequate information about the disaster, a senior Blue House official gave a tone-deaf response that the Blue House was not the "control tower" for disasters. While technically correct, this type of response could not help but give off the impression that the government was abdicating its duty to keep people safe.

Allegations of graft and corruption also emerged even as the rescue was progressing. There were allegations that the Coast Guard prevented the Navy divers from entering the water, such that the Coast Guard's private contractor (called Undine Marine Industry) could send its divers first. This led to suspicion that the Coast Guard delayed the rescue effort for the sake of taking care of its contractor. Because the government initially represented that there might be survivors in the overturned ship, it could not avoid the severe criticism that they were wasting precious time to play favorites.

Third, the society. Nearly as soon as the news broke, the Internet trolls in Korea's cyberspace were out in full force. Within minutes after the Sewol sinking was reported on the Internet, the vilest comments imaginable began appearing on the news story. (Here is a selection of them. I will not translate.) When the picture of Park Ji-yeong (the heroic 22-year-old crew member who drowned after saving dozens of children) appeared on the news, scores of god-awful lewd comments appeared below. It came to a point where Naver, Korea's largest search engine, put up a notice urging its users to not add comments injuring the victims' dignity. The media packaged those trolling comments into another round of clickbait news stories, fueling further outrage.

The situation was only slightly better offline. (Actually, it is not clear if it is better or worse that people were willing to say the same crap publicly.) Jo Gwang-jak, a pastor and the vice president of the conservative Christian Council of Korea said: "The low-income kids should have gone to a cheaper destination for their school trip. Why were they on a boat to Jeju and have this happen?" (Jo later resigned after much criticism.) Kim Si-gon, the head of new reporting at KBS, suggested that the sinking of the Sewol was not a big deal because more people die from traffic accidents. The enraged families of the Sewol victims protested in front of the KBS overnight, demanding apology. (Kim later resigned.)

Families of the Sewol victims protesting in front of KBS.
Each one is holding a picture of the deceased, which is used in a Korean style funeral.
(source)

Insensitivity was only one part of the way in which Korean society turned into a monster in the face of the disaster. Soon after the news broke, Facebook and other social networking sites were flooded with photo captures of text messages and instant messages, supposedly sent by Danwon High School who were still trapped inside the ship alive. Families of the students desperately latched onto them. But they were all fake. When arrested, the fabricators of the messages said they were hoping to drive up the subscribers to their social networking site accounts so that they may later sell them.

There is an even more brazen case of celebrity-seeking. One woman, who claimed to be a rescue diver, gave a live interview with a TV station to claim that another diver heard survivors from inside the ship, but the government is letting them die by not allowing regular divers join the rescue effort. This was a lie, as she was not at all a rescue diver. (In fact, it was revealed later that the woman has a long history of lying to gain celebrity. In another instance, she claimed that she was a cousin of T-ara's Hwayoung to take pictures with idol groups.)

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Major disaster like the Sewol sinking has not struck Korea in a decade, or two decades depending on how one qualifies a "major disaster" that is comparable to the Sewol sinking. In 2003, 192 people died in a subway fire in Daegu, but the fire was a result of an arson. To find a death-by-thousand-cuts disaster like the Sewol sinking, one may have to go back to 1995 when a department store in Seoul that illegally modified its structure collapsed, killing more than 500. By 2014, Koreans were gaining confidence that the bad old days were behind them.

The Sewol tragedy shattered that confidence. Every major institution of Korean society--the government, the media, the church, the civil society--failed to properly function in some form or another. This total failure stunned Koreans. Without any institution in which to place their trust, Korean public first recoiled in self-loathing: what were we doing, letting hundreds of young children die on an illegally modified ship? Then followed cynicism and despair: perhaps nothing can be done, because something ingrained deep inside Korea's culture that inevitably drew them toward disaster. The depression was widespread and palpable: consumer spending in Korea in the later part of April dropped like a rock, similar to the way in which Americans responded to the 9/11 terrorism.

Next came the indignation against those responsible of preventing this disaster. Why couldn't the Coast Guard save a single person from inside the ship? Why couldn't the Ministry of Public Security put together the disaster response team more quickly? And why couldn't the president figure out what was going on for more than half a day?

President Park's Katrina Moment

President Park Geun-hye had only been elected a year ago, in a solid victory after the hotly contested presidential election. Throughout the presidential campaign, the fact that she was the daughter of the late president and dictator Park Chung-hee hampered her numbers. One of the turning points of the presidential campaign was when Park courageously recognized that the reign of her father--who ruled the country for 16 years after taking power by rolling into Seoul with tanks--violated the spirit of Korea's constitution and delayed the advent of democracy in Korea. This historic apologia by Park Geun-hye played a key role in her election, as it allayed the voter's fears that Korea was not about to travel backward toward her father's dictatorship.

In its first year, however, the Park administration began assuming a dictatorial posture that was not unlike her father's. As soon as she was elected, it was uncovered that Korea's spy agency and the military were engaged in a massive operation to sway the election by adding Internet comments and sending out tweets over Twitter, amplifying the Park campaign's message. When the Supreme Prosecutor's Office began prosecuting the head of the spy agency, the Ministry of Justice ordered an audit over the SPO--which caused the Prosecutor General to resign rather than suffer the indignity.

Contrary to her campaign promise, Park began taking first steps to privitize Korea's railways. When the railway union went into a strike in protest, Park sent thousands of policemen to arrest the union leaders based on an arrest warrant that the court later quashed. When the police got the wind that the union leaders fled their offices and escaped to the building next door--which belonged to a liberal newspaper--the police took a battering ram the newspaper's offices and ransacked the premises.

The Sewol tragedy struck as the public confidence in the Park administration was on the decline. The tragedy, standing alone, was enough of a damage to the administration; one of Park's major campaign promises was to enhance public safety. Park even changed the name of the Ministry of Public Administration and Security to Ministry of Security and Public Administration, to emphasize the government's responsibility for public safety. But any support that Park garnered by leveraging the public safety angle went underwater with the Sewol.

Still, the Park administration could have handled the crisis better. But it did not. Instead, it turned toward its dictatorial instinct, treating the angered people as its enemy rather than the people whom the president was elected to represent.

The first sign of trouble occurred five days into the search process. The family of the Sewol victims, gathered in a gym in Jindo that served as a makeshift shelter for the families, became restless in anger. Someone suggested visiting the President at Blue House; immediately, a crowd of 300 formed. But they were stopped as soon as they stepped outside of the gym; a hundred policemen were waiting for them. As it turned out, the government had planted plainclothes police inside the gym to conduct surveillance on the families. The families tried to rent a bus to go up to Seoul, but the government already told all the bus companies in the area to stonewall the families. Desperate, the families began walking toward Seoul in the middle of the night, trying to cover 200 miles on foot. Nearly a thousand policemen forcibly stopped them at the bridge connecting the Jindo Island and the mainland. Even after this episode, the families of the Sewol victims came under constant surveillance by plainclothes policemen for signs of trouble.

The government also cracked down on criticism of the rescue effort, while tightening its control over the media. Daegu Metropolitan Office of Education censured an area public school teacher who criticized the president on Facebook. Program directors at television station who complained that the news was not sufficiently critical of the President were suspended. (Recall that, in Korea, the government indirectly controls two of the three network TV stations.) In fact, the government directly ordered KBS to avoid criticizing the Coast Guard and the rescue effort.

Needless to say, this is a terrible response by the Park administration. Beyond the obvious creepiness and infringement of the fundamental freedom of movement, press and speech, the Park administration's actions neatly overlapped with the malfeasance of the Sewol's captain that served as a proximate cause of the disaster: stay where you are, don't cause trouble, so that we may escape out of this jam first. Inspired by this overlap, dozens of demonstrations emerged across Korea to protest the government reaction. For the most part, the protesters marched silently, only holding up a sign that said: "Stay Put."

Silent protesters march in the Sewol's aftermath.
(source)

To her credit, President Park responded strongly. She sacked the Prime Minister (who is akin to Vice President in the U.S.,) and abolished the Coast Guard, which is to be replaced with a newer and hopefully more competent agency. Korea's Supreme Prosecutor's Office charged the Sewol's captain with murder, and is currently trying to arrest Yoo Byeong-eon, the ultimate owner of the ferry company that operated the Sewol. But Park's numbers--which was as high as 61 percent prior to the accident--continued to sink. Her choice of new Prime Minister, Ahn Dae-hee, did not even last a week before withdrawing his nomination based on the allegations that he unethically wielded his influence as a former Supreme Court Justice to steer inordinate number of cases to his law practice.

All of this amounts to a real political consequence for the president and her conservative party. In less than a week, Korea is facing local elections where Koreans elect mayors, provincial governors, etc. What should have been a conservative landslide across the board is now up in the air, with the crown jewel of Seoul mayoralty now solidly in the hands of the current, progressive mayor Park Won-soon. Even beyond the local elections, it is likely that this disaster will be the lasting image of Park Geun-hye's presidency. It is her Katrina moment.

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