Ask a Korean! News: Interesting Statistics about Prostitution in Korea

This article was interesting:

According to a survey conducted with men who completed the John School program for being arrested for sex purchase in 2006, a typical John is in his 30s, college-graduate, working as an office worker earning $1,800~2,400 a month, and purchased sex at a massage parlor after drinking.

In the Ministry of Justice survey conducted on the 5th, among the 1289 men who responded to the survey, those in their 30s were most numerous, with 645 (50%). They were mostly college graduate (774, 60%) and high school graduate (363, 28.2%).

Among occupations, the most numerous was office workers, with 438 among 1272 who answered (34.4%). 324 of the 1290 (25.1%) who answered said they earn between $1810~2400 a month.

Average number of sex purchase was 15.8, slightly higher compared to the 2005 survey, which was 11.1 times. Most common answer was "2 or 3 times", with 290 out of 1221 (23.8%) who answered, but there were 34 (2.8%) who replied "over 100 times."

For a question that asked for multiple answers for the place of sex purchase, over half of the 1290 who answered (765, or 59.1%) selected massage parlor, 703 (54.5%) selected red light districts, and 577 (44.7%) selected entertainment bars. [The Korean's note: Korean word for the "entertainment bar" is 유흥주점, which is a legalistic term for what is better known as "room salon".] For a question that asked for three main reasons for sex purcahse, 798 out of 1293 (61.7%) selected "drinking".

Via Dong-A Ilbo.

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

Ask a Korean! News: Mr. Jeff Meyers, Winner of Hate The Korean Contest

The Korean's writing about expats reached a wider audience a few weeks ago, via Korea Herald. Whenever the wider audience is reached, however, the haterthon inevitably begins. After about two week's worth of hate mail, the Korean is proud to announce that Mr. Jeff Meyers, apparently from Australia, is the winner of the Hate The Korean contest!

Below is the winning piece:

From: Jeff Meyers ([email redacted]@yahoo.com.au)
To: askakorean@hotmail.com

Re: Your Korean Herald article

You are right when you say our "deeply held beliefs" do not apply to Korea . We believe people in all countries should not be rude , ignorant , smelly ,arrogant racists . In all countries around the world 95% of people are not .However , in Korea it is the opposite . 5% of people are wonderful and 95% are scum . Ask anyone , particularly in the service industry , outside Korea , who are the worst people to deal with ,and , most of the time,the answer is " no question , Koreans!"

Yes , our beliefs do not apply to this place , and , quite frankly us "lazy expats" couldn't give a fuck wot you say or wot you think , your opinions are irrelevant to us .

You just go back to living in your little dog box apartments , deluding yourselves how fantastic you all are and for the same price of one of your dog boxes , we will live like kings in our countries . HA!

There were indeed many worthy contestants, but no one could quite match Mr. Jeff Meyers' broadside allegations, made-up statistics, awkwardly interposing levels of swear words, and awful spelling and punctuations.

The Korean congratulates you Mr. Meyers. Now go shove it up your ass.

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

Excellent article about how there can be racism without racist individuals.

Apparently, 44% Koreans who start in "good colleges" drop out. (Please note that the headline is incorrect: the Korean's alma mater is most certainly NOT in the Ivy League. It belongs to Pac-10, and plays far better football.)

The article does not say how the dropout rate breaks down among Korean students studying abroad since colleges, Korean students studying abroad since between middle school and high school, and Korean Americans - which would have been the most useful data, particularly because this data goes so much against the Korean's own experience.

At any rate, that's a lot of disappointed Korean mothers.

For what it's worth, Jose Calderon is really, really sorry about that whole eye thing.

Actress Choe Jinsil, 40, Found Dead at Her House in Apparent Suicide

Choi Jinsil, perhaps the most successful Korean actress ever, was found dead in her house in an apparent suicide. She apparently hung herself, and was discovered by her brother Choi Jinyoung, himself an actor.

I am in utter shock, and so is the entire Korea, evidenced by the fact that the news of her death is posted higher in all Korean online newspaper than such important news as the news of North Korean preparing to fire another missile, or the news of U.S. Senate passing the bailout plan.

Here is my tribute to Choi Jinsil, hastily written.

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Choi debuted in 1988 as a 20 year old fresh face, and was an instant hit. Every drama, every movie, and every commercial she appeared was turned into gold. By the mid 90s, she fetched $100,000 per each commercial she appeared -- an incredible sum, given that at that point the highest paid professional athletes in Korea would be paid around $100,000 a year. She was so popular that a female voice actress who could mimic her voice for the purpose of radio commercials earned more than any other voice actress in Korea.

But to truly appreciate her career, one needs to see the general arc of Korean actresses' careers. Pretty faces are dime a dozen in Korea. Some of them can even act. But as they get older and lose their natural beauty, they generally cannot reinvent their persona into a longer career. This is true in Hollywood, but the decline in Korea is significantly worse, especially when there are relatively few dramas or movies where women are anything more than pretty ornaments.

But not Choi Jinsil. She was like Madonna in a way -- she may have started her career as a pretty young thing, but she transformed into a serious artist through her career. And the true reason why she was a hit above and beyond anyone began to show: she had spontaneous energy which was channeled into a very sincere acting. Her characters were always hopeful, and never discouraged no matter what the circumstances. Choi's brand of unrelenting hope was never melodramatic or phony, as Korean dramas often are, because she projected positivity with such conviction and sincerity.

Yet the low points of her personal life were as low as the high points of her career were high. In 1994 her manager was murdered by her driver, and she took the witness stand in a highly publicized trial. She married a star baseball player in 2000, only to separate in 2002 and officially divorced in 2004 following episodes of domestic violence; she had to pay her husband in exchange for his relinquishing custody of their two children. Adding insult to injury, she was sued for $3 million by the company that hired her as a spokeswoman, on the basis that her mismanagement of private life caused damage to the value of the company. Her career was left for dead.

Despite all this, she plugged on. Her acting now added a dimension of tenacity for life, which resonated with the unglamourous yet unrelenting spirit of Korean ajummas. Gradually, her star rose again. She became an inspiration for divorced women, who were not seen kindly in the Korean society although they were increasing in number. She dared to change her children last name into her own, drawing the ire of traditionalists.

She possessed beauty that is so rarely seen on television: the female beauty that does not rely on youth or make up. The type of beauty we would find in our mothers and grandmothers, perhaps. The inner glow of hope that survived all the years of hardship.

And that is why I am particularly saddened. I had really wished to see this woman happy, finally living her life trouble-free. I wanted to continue playing the roles of Korean everywoman well into her golden ages, perhaps as Julie Andrews does for Americans now. In the current media culture that glorifies early death, the beauty of fine aging is underappreciated. But if any woman in Korea could show that the beauty of aging into her 60s, 70s and beyond, in my mind, it was going to be Choi Jinsil.

Instead, it appears that her actual will to live was quite apart from all the characters that she had played. To this, I can only express sorrow and regret.

p.s. I am aware of other issues associated with this tragedy, such as the recent string of celebrity suicides in Korea and the vicious gossips on the Internet that sometimes claim lives. But I will deal with them another time. Right now I'm just not in the mood to rationally analyze those things -- I don't even feel like writing in third person, lest what I wrote would not sound serious.

Good article on New York Times about New York's own history of tainted milk and the parallels with what is going with China now.

Although this is not the main point of the article, the Korean will highlight this portion:

In the end, New York milk was cleaned up. It took stronger food laws, better policing, the advent of pasteurization and the passage of the Food and Drug Act in 1906, 50 years after the worst of swill milk. Above all, it took decades, not months or years. China faces many more food scandals — to add to recent alarms like pesticide-laced dumplings and lard made from sewage — before it reaches the point where its citizens can routinely trust what they eat.

The Korean highlights this to show that social progress is achieved slowly, even when the problem is as dire as tainted milk killing babies, and everyone knows about the problem. Similarly, it will take some decades before China and Korea fix even the most prominent social problems that afflict them. (Like bad driving in Korea, for example.)