Muninn

I am beginning to see a pattern in the opinion columns of Michael Breen. I talked a little bit about his problematic portrayal of Koreans in a previous posting. In today’s Friday issue of the Korea Times, in a warm and fuzzy column entitled, “Why Streets of Seoul Are Safe” he tells us why he felt comfortable leaving his wife alone on the streets of Seoul in the middle of the previous night.

There are several reasons, he says. One seems to me a quite plausible factor: the dense population of a place like Seoul means that there are “always witnesses,” making it more difficult to conceal crime completely, thus acting as a kind of constant deterrent against crime. He also claims that the Korean press does not play up stories of crime as much as our own media, which if true might also help explain why the public feels more safe. However, one of his “overriding” factors is:

“…that Koreans are raised to think hierarchically and, contrary to the popular expatriate theory that people bump into you in the street because they see you as a non-person, Koreans instinctively consider people to be either above, below or equal to them. If you think like that, it is much more difficult to get aggressive with someone you consider a superior. Put the other way, if you see all people as equal to you, you’d have less compunction about mugging or assaulting them.”

Is it just me, or this just a completely bizarre claim? Well let us put aside the discussion of whether or not the “hierarchical” thinking of Koreans really could create this sort of effect against crime. Since he identifies this with Confucian ethics, wouldn’t it be simpler to claim that the Koreans, if they are still just brain washed Confucians as he seems to think they are, have been raised to follow moral principles that dissuade them from committing acts of crime? Apparently, it isn’t the passages of the Analects, Mencius or in the commentaries of Zhu Xi exhorting them to act in a morally responsible manner but those which emphasize their hierarchical relationships with each other that count more for Breen.

The pattern I see emerging in his writing is the habit of portraying Koreans as being stuck in some feudal Confucian mindset. All of the ills of Korean society can be blamed on its Oriental despotism and Confucian hierarchy. All the virtues of Korean society can be attributed to those same Confucian values and hierarchical thinking. Oh quaint land of the morning calm Korea, how we love it and how we hate it for its mysterious oriental ways. Breen’s fans, both Koreans and non-Koreans alike can say, “Wow, he doesn’t always criticize Korea, but he really comes through with his love for Korea by showing us how its feudal mindset actually helps produce an ordered and productive society.” I believe, however, that anyone who thinks a little bit more about it will see how condescending this whole approach is.

Culture matters, to be sure, and the values and education of this society have an important impact. Breen might even be able to make a reasonable claim about the relevance of culture on the level of street crime, when carefully combined with other factors. However, his particular brand of pop-psychology is demeaning to Koreans and unhelpful for foreigners who want to better understand the environment they are in. It is truly sad that Andrei Lankov’s historical articles in his series “The Dawn of Modern Korea” should share the same page with Breen.

I mentioned some interesting anecdotes my favorite teacher told us in class recently in my last posting. Another thing she brought up was what she saw as a huge change in Korea’s singing culture. As with previous and future postings from my time here in Korea, I must apologize if I write anything which is either common knowledge or obviously mistaken. I simply don’t have a strong enough knowledge base related to Korea yet to be sufficiently selective or critical about some of what I hear and experience.

When my teacher started talking about how much Koreans love singing, I remember that, while at Harvard, I had to endure one of those “national virtue” lectures in Korean class that, after years of Chinese and Japanese language classes, I’m really getting sick of. Back in that earlier class, we were told that the Korean race, the Korean 민족, had a unique love for singing. More than any people in the world, the Koreans love to get together and sing songs and have a deep appreciation for music. I was worried my teacher here was about to give us a dose of the same.

Now, I know absolutely nothing about this subject, but yesterday my teacher told us something, which if true, is a much more interesting side to this “Koreans love singing” story. She says that she thinks the Korean “noraebang” or karaoke box, was introduced to Korea in 1988 or 1989. She claims that before this time there was “Karaoke” in hotels and in some bars and such but not karaoke boxes of the kind we find in Japan, Taiwan, China, Korea and around the world today. She says that after their introduction, they spread like wildfire all across the country and the habit/culture of noraebang in the social life of Koreans expanded just as quickly.

She then talked nostalgically about how the appearance of noraebang changed Korean singing culture. I admired the way she refrained from elevating her description of this pre-noraebang age to some kind of “authentic” and pure past as compared to some inferior and cold modern present, but she clearly did feel a sense of loss. She claimed that before the rise of noraebang culture, it was very common for large groups of students, friends, etc. to go to restaurants and sing together there. She says they often banged their spoons on the table so much so that it was a very common sight to see bent spoons and dented tables everywhere in Korea. After the rapid introduction of noraebang culture, however, she says that the habits of singing together in groups, especially in restaurants but also at personal house parties, etc. slowly began to change and become more restricted to the noraebang. She also claimed this also had a strong negative economic effect on the restaurant business. She believes, for example, that a rapid decline in the number of restaurants in the Sillim area close to Seoul National University is connected to this shift in habits of socialization.

There are unfortunately a lot of aspects of Korean society and socializing that I will never get to experience. I loath smoke to the point it makes me nauseous and I don’t drink alcohol at all. I’m simply not willing to compromise on either of these points so I have basically excused myself from a large range of social activities in Korea. I can only frequent larger restaurants or chains that follow the non-smoking regulations, and only study or meet friends in large chain coffee shops which are non-smoking. Everyday I spend in Korea, however, I look around me and realize that there are many worlds of culture, activity and socialization which I will never really experience or fully understand.

Update: I totally missed Antti’s recent posting on this topic which tells us much more useful information about the introduction of Noraebang to Korea in 1991.

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.