The 5th Asian History Carnival is now available for viewing over at the World History Blog. Thanks a lot to Miland for putting these links together! Are you interested in hosting a future Asian history carnival? Find out more about the carnival here and email jonathan[ at ]froginawell.net if you are interested.
Fighting the Korean Internet Again
Does anyone have an ID/Password at the Korean newspaper Hankyoreh (or the means to create one easily for me?) who might be willing to share their access with me? If so, I would be most grateful if I might use it to access their web page (you can email me via the contact link above).
I don’t know when this happened but I can’t view archived articles anymore without logging in (I assume it is behind a simple registration like NYT instead of paid access). However, as always, I have to fight the twin problems of the Korean internet: 1) I’m not Korean. 2) I don’t use Windows and Internet Explorer.
Being a foreigner and using a Macintosh is pretty much suicidal for internet use in Korea. I had to wait 1 full week for Naver.com to inspect my Norwegian passport photo (which they required me to upload) and make sure that it matches my registration info. I was thrilled that I could register at all as many places require me to have a Korean citizenship/residence number, but having to wait this long is ridiculous.
Now, yet again, I have to go through this horrible process with Hankyoreh, though I had hoped it wouldn’t take a full week for my registration to come through. Today ended in complete failure and frustration though. When I tried to register through the special “foreigner” registration page at Hankyoreh, and after choosing “Other European Country” (since Norway wasn’t important enough to get listed) I gave them my Norwegian passport picture for upload and was all ready to go. Then the 2nd problem arose: Horrible programming. For some reason, no matter what I put in my birth year, either my real date of birth or any other number from 1-2006, it tells me that I haven’t entered my birth year. This is classic Javascript validation gone bad.
I really hate it when lazy programmers do Javascript validation or other web scripting and then only test it on Windows with Internet Explorer…
In this case, they slapped some crap together, as they often do, and wow – it worked in Internet Explorer on Windows – so that means it will work for everyone, right? I will happily spread the word that Korea is a place where the internet and technology is making great strides…as soon as web programmers and designers can master absolutely basic programming skills and create standards-compliant web sites. Like so many other websites I have struggled with around the world, this lack of quality on large scale commercial sites is really unacceptable. It might as well be 1995 all over again.
In this particular case, the Javascript Console in Firefox shows more than 30 errors for the registration page…I’m lucky the year of birth was the only thing that didn’t work…
Today at a rice porridge restaurant near my apartment Sayaka and I overheard some interesting code-switching going on at the table next to us. A woman was struggling to feed her three children, two of which were being less than cooperative. Sometimes she would speak full sentences in Chinese, but with an accent that at first made me think she was a non-native speaker. I later concluded she was just speaking a dialect close enough to standard Mandarin for us to understand but not of the variety I was most familiar with. She seemed to slur her words in an interesting way and pronounced some syllables differently.
As the meal progressed she began code-switching with her children. One child was significantly older than the others and the mother seemed to speak to her mostly in Korean. However, a number of things such as her pronunciation and the occasional and almost random use of honorifics when speaking to her children indicated that she was less than native in Korean. With her two younger children she freely mixed Chinese and Korean, sometimes speaking several sentences in a row in Korean, then switching to Chinese, especially when barking frustrated commands to her restless children (why didn’t the father join them for their Sunday lunch? She sure could have used the help with the kids). She also freely mixed both languages in the same sentence, such as when she tried to convince her youngest that the spoonful of smoking rice porridge headed for his mouth was not hot, “不热了，먹어요, 不热了，먹어!” The youngest child always responded in Chinese, but perhaps due to his young age struggled with some of the initial consonants, turning Chinese initial consonants like c-, zh-, ch-, q- into t-, d-, t-, t-, respectfully, in a most adorable manner.
One possible background story for this family is that the mother is married to a Korean husband, learning Korean after coming here and starting a family with her new husband. Their marriage would be one of the many “invisible” international marriages in a country which has a fast growing number of Korean males marrying foreigners, especially Chinese and Vietnamese women. As I have mentioned in early postings, given my own background, I feel an intense feeling of identification with these children, no matter what their own unique mix of languages and identities might be. I hope the kids I saw today will be able to keep their Chinese as they grow up in Korea and that the social and educational environment for my young fellow hybrids will allow them to develop to their full potential.
After a trip to South Korea’s National Museum this afternoon, a friend of mine took us to a rather unusual new addition to Seoul’s night live. Only a few days ago a restaurant near Yŏngŭngp’o Market station called Hanbando (하반도 평양식 극장식당, ph. 2636-3550) opened with a North Korean theme to it. The interior walls are painted with the blue “united Korea” flag symbol and is painted landscapes from North and South Korea.
What makes this place special is the fact that is jointly run by South Koreans and North Korean defectors, who make up much of the staff. Waitresses were dressed in characteristically North Korean black and white traditional dress and the climax of the evening came with an on-stage performance by several North Korean dancers and singers. As someone from the management explained to us when we came in, “They once sang for their country, now they are singing for themselves.” They performed various North Korean songs, some of which seemed to be familiar to the audience. The several dozen visitors who were there tonight were mostly middle aged or older but included at least one three generational family complete with grandmother and toddler.
The Performers were led by Kim Hye-yŏng who is apparently well-known in both South Korea and increasingly in Japan since she defected to the South some seven years ago (More here and here which mentions the restaurant). During the performance my friends enjoyed some North Korean “Schizandra liquor” (오미자술) complete with its “Made in DPR Korea” tag. More than anything about Hanbando, what I find interesting was the complex mix of messages the restaurant gave to its visitors.
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