Category: Korea

The Character 的

Today during my Korean class, our instructor was introducing everyone to Korea’s use of Chinese characters, or 한자. It was a welcome respite since I usually don’t understand about half of what the instructor is saying. Chinese characters, on the other hand, I feel much more comfortable with. At one point in the discussion our instructor introduced us to the character for 적(的) which we first found use for in a vocabulary word for this week 인상(印象). When you put the two together you can say that something was impressive, or left an impression (as you can in Japanese and Chinese with this same word).

Our instructor then made the most remarkable claim, “This character was invented by the Koreans, and doesn’t exist in any other language.” That is an interesting thing to say about a character which is the most frequently used character in the Chinese language. In Japanese, it is also very often used, especially in the creation of adjectives.
Continue reading The Character 的

Another Salvo: Kim Hee-sun’s Father

The accusations of the national betrayal and collaboration of relatives in South Korea’s politics continue with “confirmation” that the father of Uri party Kim Hee-sun’s father was a special operative working for the police in Japanese controlled Manchukuo (see older stories on this via Google News). The Uri party has been most aggressive in favoring a government investigation into collaboration in the colonial period. The anti-Uri Chosun Ilbo has, at least in the English edition which is all I can read at this point, been leading the way in reporting these charges in a Korea which is charged with emotions about its difficult history as a colony of Japan.

The claims of legitimacy by linking oneself to Korea’s independence movement (Kim Hee-sun apparently claimed to be the “daughter of the independence movement”) and the taint of treason that comes with being connected in any way to those who cooperated or worked for the Japanese colonial administration are powerful currency in the politics of the ROK. Only in the last few years, however, has this really bubbled to the surface in mainstream political discourse. Again, I can’t wait to get my Korean up to a level where I can plunge into looking more closely at the history of treason in the aftermath of the colonial period.

Koreans in Korean Textbooks

My 2nd year Korean textbook has this flattering view of Korea in its “culture” segment:

Koreans, especially women, are very sensitive to fashion. With seasonal changes, Koreans change their clothes (and shoes, in the case of women), conforming to the most fashionable trends. In the workplace too, men and women like to dress in a more or less uniform way. The quest for fashion and the wearing of similar formal attire are ubiquitous in Korean cities, perhaps because of Korean’ culture of uniformity and formalism.

Although diluted to a certain extent by the American culture of diversity and pragmatism, Koreans still place a considerable value on traditional uniformity and formalism in social interactions. In general, a Korean’s mind is tied to his/her immediate family, organization, and community. Koreans are very much concerned about how others are behaving and what others think about their behavior.1

Am I the only one who finds this description, designed to introduce foreigners to Korean culture deeply problematic? These kinds of generalizations, which I was only happy to make when I first started studying Japanese and Chinese years ago now totally disgust me and I find them totally unhelpful. As evidence, the picture shows a bunch of Koreans walking down the street in business suits. Exactly how is this different than any business sector in Asia, New York, London, or anywhere else? And can anyone tell me a culture where we can not find people “conforming to the most fashionable trends”? I’m also amused by the use of the term diluted by American culture.

1. Cho, Young-mee et al Integrated Korean: Intermediate One (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001) p. 49.

South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Law

I have been watching the development of South Korea’s fascinating “Truth and Reconciliation Law” very closely. The leading Uri party is digging up old skeletons by looking at the pro-Japan collaborators during the colonial period. This is especially interesting to me given my interest in the uses of treason in East Asia. In addition to a genuine desire to look into the dark aspects of the colonial period and point a few fingers, there are very powerful political motivations at work. Also, this law has actually caused some tension in ROK’s relations with Japan.

The most recent news is that the Uri Party have completed their final draft of the law. While I’m getting plenty of information on this through Korea’s English language media, I can’t wait until I can read more about this in Korean…unfortunately my language studies progress only slowly…

Korean on a Macintosh

I made a little How-to website for people wanting to input Korean on a Macintosh (OS X). I was motivated to create this after our Korean teacher gave us a handout on how to add support for Korean input on Windows XP and I noticed a few mac users in my class feeling left out.

Korean on a Macintosh – Adding Korean input support, tips on input, and how to add hanja.

History Channel: North Korea Documentary

I’m in the middle of watching two horrible documentaries on North Korea on the history channel. It is a commercial break now but we have just been told that “the story goes that” Kim Jong Il murdered his brother while they swam together in a river as a child. While described as a “story” the very next statement made by some former CIA guy they interviewed was basically that murdering his own brother had a “psychological impact” on Kim which helped set the tone for his murderous career. This of course sets the tone for the remainder of the second documentary, entitled, “The Real Dr. Evil.”

While filmed in the dramatic “unsolved mysteries” or “inside report” kind of documentary style to help accentuate the eeeevvviiilll of North Korea and Kim Jong Il, it is as if someone ran an “IMPORT SCRIPT” command on the old South Korean anti-communist education system. I’m not suggesting that Kim Jong Il is a warm and fuzzy loving guy, but these dramatized shows (also very popular in Japan) accomplish nothing but to set up the DPRK as the demons they are portrayed as in old Korean textbooks.

Update: I finished watching the show. Well, I’m all fired up now to despise that cold blooded Dr. Evil Kim Jong Il and his “precious” nuclear weapons. I wonder what it must be like for these interviewees in such documentaries to have things they say get woven into these shows and whether they feel like their “main point” is getting through. In the case of one of the few “scholarly” types interviewed, Selig Harrison, who is the author of Korean Endgame and is a DPRK expert with very moderate positions currently at the Center for International Policy I am not sure he did. I found a nice article written by him for the Nation in which he reviews several recent books on Korea, including works by Cumings and Armstrong.