Korea | Muninn

Korean Student Protest Culture: A Few Stories

We have three different teachers teaching my class Korean each week and each have their designated days. With the right encouragement, one of my teachers loves to tell us stories about her stormy university life in the 1980s and make observations about Korean society. From a strict pedagogical standpoint one might make objections to her use of class time but I find her anecdotes incredibly entertaining and educational. Her approach is in stark contrast to one of my other teachers who is so concerned about bringing up controversial issues that discussion of “politics and anything about Korea” is banned in class presentations.

This week, my favorite teacher told us a few stories about student protest life and threw in a few stereotypes of some of the universities here. She never said anything about her own involvement and always described things in the third person but the level of detail gave me the impression of her having been quite active.

She described how students emerge from high school with little or no political consciousness. When they enter university and join social or athletic “circles” they soon find themselves reading Marx and “socialist” texts. She said that even students who wanted to study hard and stay out of the political activities would be under heavy pressure to get involved or be seen as socially irresponsible.

She talked nostalgically about the days when the SNU campus was patrolled by fully armed riot police. She described how student leaders would write the location and time for large protests on their hands then, as they passed other students on campus they would quickly show the palm of their hand to the student and then hide it again, wiping the ink off their hands if apprehended by the authorities. She said this kind of thing made [them/her?] feel like spies. When the students assembled in a public place, she claimed, they would pretend to just be roaming about or shopping. Then, at the appropriate signal, usually a first attack against the police or other target, the students would all rush forward. She said there was also often a kind of gender division in which women would break up larger stones into an appropriate size for the men to carry to the “front lines.” As she told these stories, I was particularly curious what might have been going through the minds of the Chinese students in the class. Where they shocked and horrified? Secretly filled with admiration? Or completely apathetic and detached? I just couldn’t tell.

She talked about some of the stereotypes of various schools she had heard. First, on the character of their males as judged by their dating behavior: Seoul National University: “If during the date the woman says, ‘I’m cold!’ The man would warm himself and say, ‘Me too!'” Yonsei: The man would give the woman his coat. Koryeo: The man would respond, “Why don’t you run around a bit to warm up?”

She then told us a bit about her stereotypes of the university student protesters based on ideology. Seoul National University: These students, the elitist cream of the crop in Korea she called “opportunistic socialists” who would all happily protest during their student years and then take government or corporate jobs when they emerged from university life. Yonsei: Non-committed “liberalists” Koryeo: Apparently is known for having many students from outside of Seoul and their protesters were apparently stereotyped as the most ideologically hard-line “Communists” Seongkyunkwan (I’m not 100% this was the university, but some university in Seoul starting with S and it wasn’t Sogang, it had more syllables): She said something about the campus of this university being really small and cramped and that the protests here supposedly got really violent with the police in very close quarters. She said their student protesters were called 깡패 or something, which in my dictionary is defined as a hooligan, a gangster, or a ruffian. Incidently, the dictionary also lists 깡패국가 as the word for “a rogue state.”

If I could improve my Korean enough, I would love to try to get my teacher to agree to an interview or a kind of oral history of her memories from this time.

My Class

I’m really happy with my class here, fourteen of us in all. They are almost all very young students in or fresh out of college but they are fun group. We have one Indonesian, married to a Dutchman and studying art, French and Korean at various universities to avoid the “boring” women’s expat organizations. There is a Korean-American who actually just entered my department at Harvard for the coming fall as an Americanist historian. We have three young Chinese students: one from Hebei (from the Hui minority), one from the northeast (she is proud of her father’s Manchurian ethnicity), and one from Nanjing. We have three very fun Mongolians whose Korean is difficult for me to understand but who provide some 70% of the energy and enthusiasm for our class. There are also five Japanese students, two from Yokohama (which is, of course, the most awesome city in Japan), two from Kyûshû, and one from Gunma.

These include one Korean-Japanese student who was born and raised in Japan but has Korean citizenship. Unlike many zainichi I know, I was surprised to hear from her that she didn’t learn that she was Korean-Japanese until she was in high school! She had always wondered why the dolls on display in her house were different from others in the neighborhood but otherwise always thought she was just a perfectly normal Japanese. Her last name is a give away Korean name (but her mother’s sounds very Japanese, despite both parents being 2nd generation zainichi). Her parents spoke only Japanese, cooked and ate only Japanese food, and abandoned certain Korean holidays and other customs. Then in high school she first learned about her Korean citizenship when she went to get her fingerprints taken and heard more soon after as her grandmother got very old and suddenly told her stories about coming to Japan when she was young. After graduating from college, she suddenly discovered what consequences her zainichi status had as she experienced various difficulties in looking for a job and at her company. Interestingly though, this student has no interest in her Korean past, in the Korean language, in Korean culture, or in ever living or having anything to do with Korea. I asked, “Why did you come then?” She explained that she wanted to go abroad after quitting her job, and having Korean citizenship meant that coming to Korea was the easiest option for her. Like many zainichi though, she is very reluctant to go through the process that will get her Japanese citizenship.

What I especially like about this class though is the particularly warm friendships there are between some of the Chinese and Japanese students, something which I really love to see. With the exception of me (who has the triple distinction of being our resident white boy, the older student/아저시, and undoubtedly the worst Korean speaker) everyone has strong enough Korean to be able to have a wide variety of fast and fun conversations with all their classmates. I think this really helps overcome some of the cliquish splits that might develop.

Kimchi Sundubu

In my humble opinion, one of the most delicious dishes on the planet is kimchi sundubu. Sundubu, a spicy tofu soup-like dish comes in many varieties but since I’m not a big fan of seafood, I prefer it when it is served without clams or other seafood in it. I have found that restaurants offering more than one variety and serving “kimchi sundubu,” will, in addition to adding kimchi to the soup, often give you a few scraps of beef in the dish instead of clams.

I’m not sure how the best kimchi sundubu is made but the combination of the spicy red pepper soup, onions, copious amounts of nicely saturated tofu, kimchi, egg, and a side bowl of rice is to me the absolute perfect meal and usually goes for a price of 5000-8000 won here in Korea ($6-9 or so) and around the same price at Korean restaurants in the US. The side bowl of rice is great for dipping in the soup to give it a nice spicy flavor, or you might just dump the whole bowl in the soup while you eat.

While there is also often an egg in the sundubu when you get it, some restaurants just have a basket of raw eggs on the table. When they serve the sundubu in its stone pot, it is usually still boiling. You simply crack your egg into the soup and within a few minutes, the egg white is almost indistinguishable from the tofu. It occurred to me recently that this practice might seem strange to some foreigners, but since I long ago got used to eating raw eggs in Japan with my gyûdon, either cracked on top of the dish or mixed in a side dish with soy sauce (which isn’t even partially boiled in the process) it seems perfectly normal to me now.

Soccer Game

I was just about to go to bed when suddenly the entire neighborhood erupted with wild cheering. The sounds of joyous voices poured in through the window from all around. “Oh,” I thought to myself, “It must be the world cup and Korea has just scored.” But wait a second, haven’t all the newspapers been eagerly awaiting Korea’s first game to come later this week?

I turned on the television just in time to catch the replay of the goal that was scored and created such joy all around me. Australia had just scored a goal against Japan…

닌자 거북

My summer language program is moving along here in Seoul. Although I’m in level 4 of 6, my Korean still sucks. This is especially true for my listening ability, which is so bad I’m almost about to give up hope on it and concentrate on reading. I still struggle to understand anyone in a daily conversation and I can’t answer an overwhelming majority of any questions on any of our listening exercises. Today’s “cute” homework was to make a list of what “image” I get in response to various animal pictures. I had to look up a few of them, including “turtle.”

My electronic English-Korean dictionary, which uses Si-sa Elite (시사 엘리트 영한사전), provided me with what I guess is the correct word, 거북, in its first numbered entry under “turtle.” Entry number 2 explained that turtle could mean turtle meat, such as that which is used in soup. Entry number 3 was “=turtleneck.” Entry number 4 was some kind of computer term.

I was amazed to find the following as the 5th and final entry for “turtle” in my dictionary:

5. (때때로 T-) 닌자 거북이[어린이 영화•만화 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle에 나오는 거북. 방사능에 의한 돌연변이로 태어남].

5. (Occasionally with a capital T) A Ninja Turtle (The turtles which appear in the children’s movie/comic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. [They are] born with mutations due to radiation.)

Apparently TMNT has made enough of a cultural impact to get into the dictionary under the entry for the animal. I think they need to make the “Turtle” in TMNT plural though…

The Kimchi Museum and An Older Kimchi War

Yesterday I made a visit to the Kimchi Museum in Seoul, or as it is officially known the Kimchi Field Museum (Korean site has much more content). To get there, take Line 2 of the subway to the COEX shopping center at Samsŏng station. Walk through the mall and take the escalators down a floor to the museum’s entrance.

The museum is actually quite small, but nicely done, and you can get a reasonably good feel for it through their online exhibition page. All the signs are available in both Korean and relatively decent English, and many displays have small Japanese translations as well. The history of kimchi, displays of common types of kimchi, a discussion of their ingredients, etc. are among the highlights. One long narrow passage, which we might call the “hall of propaganda” has cartoons on all of its walls extolling the endless virtues of kimchi for one’s health. We rushed perhaps a little too fast through this section but were trying to outrun an army of older Japanese tourists who were being guided through the museum behind us.

In the last room there is a kimchi tasting room (the “field work” part of the museum?) and a number of computers set up where you can view, in Korean, Japanese, or English, movies showing you how to prepare kimchi from all regions of north and south Korea.

On one wall of the computer room there were two interesting articles posted from Western newspapers. One of them was particularly interesting article by Calvin Sims from the New York Times February 5, 2000 edition. Here is the opening:

Kimchi, as the cabbage is known, has been a staple of the Korean diet for centuries, and in recent years has become an increasingly popular and lucrative export — particularly to the Japanese market. But now, the Korean kimchi industry is seething because Japanese foodmakers are increasingly marketing their own copycat kimchi (pronounced KIM-chee) — and worse, calling it kimchi.

The Koreans have even brought their complaint to international food regulators, accusing the Japanese of subverting the value of authentic kimchi. A favorable ruling for the Koreans could force Japanese makers of kimchi to call it something else.

Japan has countered that Korea has no monopoly on the term kimchi, any more than Mexico can lay claim to tacos or India to curry. But that argument does not fly with the Koreans.

“What the Japanese are selling is nothing more than cabbage sprinkled with seasonings and artificial flavorings,” said Robert Kim, assistant manager for the overseas sales team here at the Doosan Corporation, a South Korean food manufacturer that operates the world’s largest kimchi factory. “This debate is not just about protecting our market share. We are trying to preserve our national heritage.”

Apparently some 90% of kimchi exports at the time were going to Japan and a map in the museum showed clearly that the stats for Japan were huge in comparison to all other nations. Unlike the more recent Chinese kimchi scare in Korea, according to the article what was seen as especially frustrating to the Koreans was the specific ways that kimchi were made:

In a reversal of the traditional pattern in which Korean manufacturers often copied popular Japanese products at lower cost, competitors in Japan, using cheaper and less time-consuming production methods, are homing in on South Korea’s biggest kimchi export market.

Many Japanese producers skip the fermentation and add artificial sour flavoring using citric acid and gum. The Japanese sometimes use rice paste to give their kimchi a gluey consistency similar to that found naturally in the Korean version.

Critics of the Japanese kimchi say it lacks the depth of flavor and health benefits of its Korean counterpart and that Japanese cabbage contains more water and is not as crispy.

The South Korean government has petitioned the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Codex Alimentarius commission to establish an international standard that would require products using the name kimchi to be fermented according to the Korean tradition.

In negotiations with representatives from South Korea and Japan, the Codex commission is drafting a kimchi standard that is scheduled to be ratified next year by the 150 member countries of the organization, which sets codes for food processing to ensure minimal health standards.

So far, neither the Japanese nor the Koreans seem satisfied with Codex’s draft standard. It defines kimchi as a “fermented” product but permits the use of citric, acetic and lactic acids, none of which are used in the traditional kimchi process.

Though I really don’t know what methods were used in its production, it is true that I have often been left unsatisfied with the cheaper supermarket kimchi I have found in Japan when I lived there. It had less of a garlic taste, felt less “meatier” and so on. However, higher quality stuff can always be found at higher prices. I have to admit that, to some extent, I’m sympathetic to the following kind of argument raised in the article by the Japan Pickle Producers Association as the article continues:

“Should the same standard be applied to curry?” said Toshio Ogawa, an adviser to the Japan Pickle Producers Association, which represents several Japanese kimchi makers. “Everyone knows that curry was invented in India, but the curry that Indians eat is quite different from the curry that Japanese eat.”

On the other hand, at least part of the problem here isn’t about Japan taking Kimchi, throwing in some natto and calling it kimchi. Instead, there is at least something to be said for the idea that a product of significantly less quality is being produced. I think it is certainly reasonable to establish, at the private level, some kind of international standard, and let products which meet that standard carry some kind of mark on them. However, just because there is a rich tradition behind kimchi, there shouldn’t be any kind of legal monopoly over the name “kimchi.” I don’t know how this developed since the article was published in 2000 but the existence of other dangerous precedents of this kind are not comforting. Don’t we have enough problems with intellectual property rights run wild?

Update: One of the other precedents for this kind of national monopolies of a kind of food I had never heard of: Feta Cheese. For more on this read an interesting post by Kerim on the subject.

Michael Breen’s Orientalism

Michael Breen is a journalist and a writer who has published, among other things, a book entitled The Koreans. I haven’t read it. Something about the presumptuous tone of its subtitle “Who they are, what they want, and where their future lies,” I think, prevented it from making it onto my Korea reading list. The phrase is filled with obnoxious assumptions.

Breen also publishes opinion pieces in the Korea Times. In an otherwise fairly unobjectionable article discussing problems with a new international school in Seoul, Breen drops this bombshell on his readers:

I hate to put this in writing but I can think of no example in Korea of a committee of multiple interests working together toward a common goal, unless a foreigner is in charge. My point here is not racist. It is cultural. Confucian thinking does not permit equality. Even friends, as one friend pointed out to me recently, call each other “hyung” (older brother). Thus, in Korea, a group endeavor involving different interests and viewpoints only works when one person is clearly in charge. In this case, the chairman is in charge and the other members, including MOCIE and Seoul City representatives, retreat into passivity.

This sort of comment is quite irresponsible. The Koreans, he is essentially claiming, are “culturally” incapable of politics. After all, what is politics, if not the coming together of a people with multiple, and usually conflicting interests, to work towards a common goal? While it is also remarkable that someone who has published a book on “The Koreans” has only recently learned that friends call each other “hyung” or “older brother” we can assume this was a rhetorical move. It is his portrayal of the static, if not feudal “Korean Confucian” that resembles so many like it in the past century of scholarship and writing about Asia. I have recently become fascinated by Western accounts of China, Japan, and Korea and it makes great easy summer reading. I find this paragraph by Breen just barely less insulting than many of the passages found in those books.

You can read more in this incomplete series of entries I posted over at Frog in a Well:

Early Western Perceptions of Koreans: Part I
Early Western Perceptions of Koreans: Part II
Early Western Perceptions of Koreans: Part III
Early Western Perceptions of Koreans: Part IV
Early Western Perceptions of Koreans: Part V

I obviously don’t share Mr. Breen’s long years of experience working in a Korean business environment but I find it ludicrous to suggest that Koreans are not, without the benevolent leadership of a foreigner, able to work towards a common goal in a committee of conflicting interests. We need look no further than the fact that, for all its problems, South Korea does have a highly developed civil society and extensive political and educational institutions. I strongly suspect that many of these institutions developed without the aid of bitter foreigners like Mr. Breen. That aspects of Confucian culture promote or preserve undesirably excessive hierarchical orders is not terribly controversial (though it has also a long and complex legacy of virtuous and stubborn protest which can and has been co-opted by many Korean protesters), nor is the idea that this has at least some kind of influence on development of democratic institutions, but you cannot simply throw about accusations like: Koreans=Confucians=Only Productive in stable Master/Slave relationship.

Race in Korea

In the aftermath of orals I have been trying to catch up on some blog reading and reading messages from H-Japan and the Korean Studies email lists. There was an interesting article in the North Korean press recently blasting the idea of a multiracial or multicultural Korea which got a lot of discussion online, including a post by Antti and a full translation of the article by Robert from the Marmot’s Hole. I was interested enough to make the Korean article my “assignment” for my one on one Korean reading class a few weeks ago. It was my first reading of a North Korean text and thus was interesting both for content and the language it used.

On the Korean Studies list discussion of this I especially enjoyed some responses to this article by Pak Noja which discussed some of the origins and evolution of ideas about race in Korea. Kenneth Quinones at Akita International University, whose essay on the Kabo reforms was on my orals list, also jumped into the discussion. After contributing his own thoughts on race in Korea (his full message is online here) he added a personal anecdote which reminds us how complicated the issue of race can get even for the United States:

Recently my daughter gave birth at a US Army hospital (the father is reluctantly en route to Iraq for his 2nd tour) to our first grandchild, a daugher. A nurse entered to gather information for the Washington State birth certificate and asked, “How can I describe your child’s race?” My daughter answered honesty, “Well my mother is Korean, my father half Irish and half Hispanic, and the baby’s father is of Dutch ancestry. Can you say, “Other?” The nurse responded, “Oh my – we should have the category ‘other’ but we don’t. I’ll just record ‘caucasian.'” In short, the importance of race persists in the USA, as in many other places including North Korea.

Treacherous Acts of Naming By The South Korean Puppets

As often as I can, I check the DPRK’s Korean Central News Service for a bit of news from the other side. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to learn about things like the “disgusting farce” of the “traitorous acts” reported today:

Pyongyang, April 22 (KCNA) — A spokesman for the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland issued a statement on Friday to denounce the pro-U.S. ultra-right organizations in south Korea for staging such a ridiculous farce as giving bosses of the U.S. ruling machines in south Korea including the U.S. ambassador Korean names. The south Korea-U.S. “Alliance Friendship Society” in March named U.S. Ambassador in Seoul Vershbow “Pak Po U” in the hope that he would be an eternal friend who regards south-Korea U.S. alliance as a jewel.

The former U.S. 8th army commander in south Korea who finished his service on April 11 was named “Kim Han Su” in the hope that he would always defend “south Korea-U.S. alliance”, the U.S. 7th air force commander “Kim Ung Bi” in the meaning that he is a hero flying in the sky, Laporte, U.S. forces commander in south Korea who went back home in February, “Ra Po Thae” in the hope that he would play a role of a jewel in the south Korea-U.S. alliance.

The statement noted that this disgusting farce cannot be construed otherwise than despicable rowdyism staged by pro-U.S. flunkeyists and mentally deranged guys keen to prolong their dirty remaining days by clinging to the coattails of the aggressors, utterly indifferent to the misfortune the Koreans have undergone. Such traitorous acts to serve the U.S. will bring nothing but a catastrophic war disaster to the Korean nation, the statement notes, warning that south Korea can never be safe nor the Korean nation live in peace as long as pro-U.S. traitorous group such as the GNP and the “friendship society” are at large.

Here are two articles from South Korea on the naming. Seriously, though, I think giving Vershbow a name with “treasure friend” (寶友) isn’t all that strange, but I have to say it does near the realm of the farcical when you give someone the name close to being “protector of Korea” (“korea protect” 韓守). Also, according to the Joongang Daily, General Campbell seems to be under the impression that they named him the protector of Korean freedom: “What a tremendous honor to have the Korean name that means great defender of freedom on the Korean Peninsula.” If you wanted to squeeze the name for all its worth, the most you could get was that he was the protector of Korean gold or metal (金).

Korean Websites

As most foreigners who have been to Korea know, it is infuriatingly difficult to use a lot of Korean websites or order products online unless you have a Korean citizen’s registration number. The fact that unless you are using Internet Explorer and Windows many useful websites hardly function doesn’t help either, but the registration number is far more disruptive. Even the most simple tasks can been damn near impossible. This is a shame – it is a big fat slap in the face to all foreigners who want to do anything in the Korean online world, even if they master the Korean language.

I am told that even if you have an official Alien registration number, which has the same number of digits as the Korean citizen’s number, you still have problems. Read more at this article over at Korea Focus, written by a professor at Hanyang University and Hanoemo (The Korean-Speaking Foreigners Club). As it says:

Each year, the thousands of foreigners who come to Korea to learn the Korean language receive an ARN. In addition, tens of thousands of other people, including foreign company employees, teachers, and workers, come to Korea each year – all of whom receive an ARN. The number assigned to them remains theirs even after they return home from Korea. Most foreigners who have lived in Korea for an extended period of time will probably continue to maintain an interest in or seek to do some work that is related to Korea. It is my firm belief that these people can play a crucial role in helping to further invigorate the Korean economy and improve Korea’s image abroad. It is like sending out thousands of supporting Korean ambassadors around the world every year.

However, this golden opportunity to promote Korea will be lost to some extent if these individuals are not provided with the chance to participate in Korean media and culture. With hallyu (the Korean wave) sweeping across Asia, Korea should take advantage of every opportunity to assure the continuation of this phenomenon. Attention needs to be focused on the sheer disregard with which Korean corporations and the Korean media treat those motivated to come here to work and to learn about this country. (For those who would like to express their support for a law forcing organizations to accept the ARN, please sign the online petition found at: http://www.petitiononline.com/korea/petition.html.

I signed the petition and I hope you will to. Until this situation changes (and perhaps it has since this article was published or since I was in Korea), foreigners in Korea or interested in Korea will be left in an online ghetto.