The Korea wave has hit Taiwan too. In case there was any doubt, here is an advertisement for “Korean-style” plastic surgery available in Taipei’s Ximen area.
Not only is the plastic surgery Korean style, but you can even look like Bae Yong-jun, known in Japan as “Yong-sama”! Check out their “before” and “after” pictures in this advertisement.
They might even give you some Yong-sama glasses to complete the effect! Read more about their products at their phone-number-website.
Interesting article here by a graduate student who, for some reason, is in the military and training to be shipped to Iraq as part of the American occupation. I think we should all read material like this (which you can find all over the place if you look for it) to be reminded that US military forces offer no exception to the kinds of rules, training, and perceptions soldiers get, in this case even before even being put on the ground, in a situation where there is an active insurgency.
Here are some examples of the advice he has been getting from more experienced soldiers he has come across:
You can’t tell which Iraqis are going to try to kill you, so you should act on any doubt or suspicion you have by cutting down anyone who makes you nervous. Act on hunches; pull the trigger. It may turn out to be the wrong choice, but it’s a wrong choice that you’ll live through.
An NCO explained to a class that the ragheads won’t understand what you tell them, and you won’t understand that little gobbledy-gook that they talk, so the best way to get them on the ground to search them is to kick ’em in the balls or butt-stroke ’em in the face. That they’ll understand.
While there are important and highly relevant differences in the scale of violence, I have read very similar statements to these being made by Japanese soldiers in occupied China, German occupation soldiers in wartime Europe, and in the example most relevant for Americans, of course, made by troops in Vietnam. Again, highly important differences in scale and thankfully there are other forms of violence (rape, large massacres) which are far less prevalent in this conflict, but it is important to remember that an occupied people will come into contact with this day-to-day level of violence and racism by the troops in their midsts, and depending on a number of factors, it can produce powerful and long-lasting memories.
Siris has done a wonderful job with the best History Carnival yet. Lots of great links to blog postings related to history on the web written in the past few weeks.
I read this editorial over at the English version of Hankyoreh:
One out of every four men who married in farming and fishing regions last year married a foreign woman. 90 percent of those women are from China, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Korea has been solving the problem of difficult work others hate to do with foreign labor, and now it is having Asian women take the place of Korean women in farming and fishing communities that Korean women want to avoid.Experts say that Korea is already no longer a homogeneous society, and that is has already essentially become a immigrant nation. As of last year foreign workers topped 420,000 and foreign wives numbered more than 50,000. Naturally there is a continuous rise in the number of children who have mothers or fathers from China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Mongolia, Russia, the US, and Japan. Given the fact Korea has a low birth rate and is aging and how international interaction is on the rise, the trend is going to accelerate. The problem is that our understanding of the situation and our society’s preparedness lags far behind that trend.
Just as has been the case with foreign labor, marriage to foreigners has run into various problems. Many hasty-arranged marriages done with the assistance of professional agencies end in divorce. They say that applications for divorce by marriages involving spouses from China and Vietnam recently almost doubled. Domestic violence against foreign wives is becoming a problem. There are also problems involving the language development and social adjustment of children whose mothers lack proficient Korean language skills.
It is time our country formulate real plans as a multi-ethnic society. To begin with, there needs to be better oversight of the international marriage agencies. Foreign spouses need to be given help in adjusting socially, through Korean language and cultural education. There needs to be counseling for the problems faced by international families. Most importantly we need to have open hearts that accept them as members of Korean society.
I’m back from Taiwan and continuing my Korean language studies in Seoul. Did some reading, met some friends, and visited Jiufen.
Since she hasn’t blogged it herself, I’ll share a few things Sayaka has told me about living in Taiwan. She often visits a Korean restaurant near Taiwan Normal University. In many Korean restaurants you get free side dishes, including Kimchi. However, where Sayaka goes and a number of places I have been outside of Korea, they list these side dishes as “Kimchi” on the menu and charge money for it. Recently however, Sayaka visited the restaurant with a Korean and he asked, in Korean for Kimchi. The side dishes emerged and, of course, there was no charge for it…
One of the delightful things about Taiwan is its social and linguistic complexity. It isn’t unusual to be speaking with someone in Chinese and have them throw in some Taiwanese dialect (Minnanhua) or switch in and out of the dialect when they are speaking to someone else who understands it. It is fascinating also to see the different occasions and contexts in which each are or can be used. Here are two anecdotes along these lines:
Continue reading Some More Taiwan Stories
I recently blogged an enjoyable chat with an elderly Korean gentleman that I had outside the national library in Seoul and shared some of his stories about life in colonial Korea and during the turbulent years that followed.
Today Sayaka and I are spending a leisurely afternoon reading in a Taipei coffee shop (chain) called QK咖啡. Although their motto is “ranQueen ranKing” which seems to explain the Q and the K in their name, we noticed the elderly Taiwanese couple sitting next to us talking about the name. The same couple had earlier taken notice of the fact that Sayaka and I were often using Japanese with each other. When they pointed the “QK” out to each other and read it out loud, our eyes met and I told them, in Chinese, that I just realized that the name is actually quite interesting. When you pronounce “QK” together you also get the Japanese word 休憩 or “kyûkei” which means “to rest” or “to take a break.” Since it isn’t unusual at all to see Japanese words in the names of Taiwanese stores and restaurants (For example, Sayaka lives very close to a coffee shop called 黒潮 (the Japan Current), which has the Japanese pronunciation for these characters, “Kuroshio” written next to it), we believe it simply can’t be a coincidence that the title of the coffee shop ends up a play on a Japanese word (the whole store name read in Japanese also makes a nice alliterative Kyûkei Kôhii, as it does in Chinese, QK Kafei).
Having thus broken the ice, the Taiwanese couple asked Sayaka if she was Japanese and started to speak to us in absolutely fluent Japanese. We complimented their Japanese and they said that they had both spoken Japanese as children through until they graduated from junior high school. If they graduated from junior high school in 1945, which at least the husband claimed to have, that would now make them about 75 years old. With this as an opening, we asked them all sorts of questions about their lives back during this time. As in my other encounters of this sort, they had lots of fascinating stories.
Continue reading Some Coffee Shop Oral History
Some of my friends complain that my wordy weblog isn’t particularly useful to read when trying to find out what I’m doing or to figure out quickly where exactly I am in the world (I’m in Taiwan this weekend, back in Seoul next Tuesday). While for longer stays I update my address on the contact page, I have created a special page here on this weblog which keeps a running tab (including shorter trips) on exactly where I happen to be at this time:
This link will also be accessible from the list of links on the right of this blog.
I did a little sightseeing yesterday, joining two friends on a trip to the Seodaemun Prison History Hall (서대문형무소 역사관) near Dongnimmun (독립문) station and inside the Independence Park. The museum is dedicated to recording Japanese torture and cruelty towards the “patriotic ancestors” of the independence movement. The prison in question, built by the Japanese just prior to annexation, continued to be used well into the postwar period, but it is now overwhelmingly used as a symbol of colonial atrocities and you will find no mention of its postwar legacy. I think many of my observations about the place have been shared by others, including some of the comments made by an Adam Bohnet here.
Technorati Tags: Korea
Wow. Marmot’s Hole just blogged about some pictures drawn by children on display in a subway station. See the pictures here, with a second set of photos here. If these pics go down for any reason, contact me and I’ll mirror them.
I am almost inclined to believe this is some kind of prank, especially since the poster, someone named “Gord” appears to have completely bought the Japanese right-wing nationalist narrative of the colonial period in Korea. Perhaps his love for comics eventually led him to spend a little too much time with the illustrated books by Japanese fascist writer Kobayashi Yoshinori.
However, the pics seem to be legit. I find it so hard to imagine organizing an entire group of children/teenagers to produce such a huge collection of artwork showing such amazing hatred for Japan. Another posting on the website says they come from this junior high school. Notice the much more watered down selection of pictures from the collection the school chose to include on the school website here. They include only “positive” images of patriotism. There are some articles online about this in Korean which I haven’t read but those of you who can might want to check out here, and here.
There simply can be no better follow up on my posting yesterday where I mention the large numbers of children at the prison museum that I argued cultivates a blanket hatred for Japan.
These pictures are absolutely amazing, and will regrettably feed the arguments of right-wing Japanese who wish to portray, wrongly, Koreans and Chinese as all rabidly irrational nationalists who spew nothing but violent threats and lies about the past. This serves neither the purpose of encouraging a productive and careful consideration of the tragic legacy of war and imperialism in East Asia, nor serves the future of grass roots level relations between the peoples of this region. Neither do, however, the pictures in question and the people and institutions which instigate the emotions that motivated these students.
UPDATE: Ok, some of you have read the comments and I’m starting to get bizarre emails as well. Apparently my English above, designed to show my shock at the pictures, was too difficult and a number of readers think I am claiming that the pictures are a fabrication when I say “I am almost inclined to believe.” For the record, I think the pictures are real. Zheesh…
UPDATE: I just got an email from someone nice enough to send me a link to an article discussing Korean reactions to the pictures. He notes that the general majority seemed to have an adverse reaction to the pictures.
Check out the 10th History Carnival, a collection of links to articles related to history in the blogging world.
I found most interesting a connected series of postings at Chapati Mystery related to empire: 1. Canned Food, 2. The E Word, 3. The Case of the Americans, 4. Absent-Minded Imperialism and the Doughnut Effect, 5. Black Legends, and 6. Back to the Colony.