Joining the club, and bearing the flag (whether you like it or not)

Posted here, an idealized image of a Korean "talent" ( a singer or actor, or, just wonder celeb) with an admonition below telling us "No Korean Wave".

As I am sure most of you DON'T know, there is a "Korean Wave" going through Asia. As of late, it has seen resistance in China and Japan. It seems that the market for Korean love ballads, slapstick comedies and post-op movie stars is about saturated.

In and of itself, this is not so interesting, especially for an American, who is accustomed to going around the world and being the receptacle for everyone's love/angst for the supposed representatives of my culture, or, what's worse, me.

The interesting part is the reaction of Koreans. While some have been stoic, maintaining that the Korean Wave must continue, despite all the recent negativity (anyone heard that in the US press?), other people have expressed sadness, anger and complete befuddlement. It has been wildly reported in the press here, and most people are shocked to hear that this cultural export can possibly produce almost as much antipathy as it does sympathy.

If my darkest desires come true, two positives that might come out of this. One, the broader Korean public might come to understand how fun, freaky and disturbing it is to see random, nonsensical English printed on clothing and signs all over a foreign country. A Korean friend who recently went to China observed Chinese people donning meaningless jumbles of Hangeul on clothing and only commented "I had a very strange feeling". The second area of light is that, one day, Koreans may come to see that all the crap that comes out of a country does not necessarily represent each individual of that country.

In the meantime, the next time I hear someone ranting about the cross-country consipiracy to rig the Olympics for Anton Ohno's (check out the death threats) benefit, Oprah's plastic K-girl crusade or the stereotypes in that one James Bond movie, I will know what to say:

HANRYU GEUMJI!!!! (한류금지!)

Self-Immolation

"Self-immolation is not only the act of setting yourself on fire, but also of sacrificing yourself this way. Though self-immolations are quite rare, they are almost always carried out in public, to point out your discontent with a current (political) situation and how sure you are about your point of view. Most self-immolations in modern history happened between 1963 and 1979. Here's a list of the most memorable and important ones:

• June 11, 1963: Thich Quang Duc (66), a buddhist monk, burnt himself in Saigon to protest against the persecution of Buddhists in Vietnam at that time. Though violence against oneself is strongly discouraged in buddhism his act was followed by a few other monks.
• Between 1965 and 1970, the Americans Norman Morrison (in front of the Pentagon), Roger Allen LaPorte (22, in front of the United Nations building in New York City) and George Winne Jr. (20, in his dorm room at the University of California, San Diego) burnt themselves in order to protest against the Vietnam War.
• January 16, 1969: Czech philosophy student Jan Palach (20) burnt himself on Wenceslas Square in the center of Prague to protest against the dictatorship of the USSR.
• February 25, 1969: Jan Zajíc (18) immolated himself only one month later near to the spot where Palach died.
• August 18, 1976: Pastor Oskar Brüsewitz (47) burnt himself in Halle, Germany to protest against the political situation in East Germany.
• Mai 23, 1989: German hacker Karl Koch (23), famous because of the so-called KGB Hack burnt himself in a forest near Hannover. Reasons for this are unknown, as well as whether it really happened without external influence.
• Following the imprisonment of Abdullah Öcalan on November 15, 1999 there was a wave of self-immolations among Kurds.

Though self-immolation is a very painful and slow process it is sometimes also used to commit suicide without any form of political protest (suicide itself is always a protest)."

Source:

diesterne. self-immolation. 28 Feb 2005. 31 Oct 2005.
http://everything2.com.

You may be sorry you gave me access to your blog.

I am positive Mr. Bedell could add some true weight to the social origins of SI, and it's importance in Korean culture.

What I want to see is the korean characters for it. A little project for you.

Bring it, SI. Come on.

SI

bring the self-immolation already. . . . the natives are restless. . .

Endangered Languages

So, to explain something I am thinking of doing, next year or the year after next, I have attached an explainer from the school I would like to attend, in London, called SOAS. Don't know if they will have me, but if they do, and I come up with the cash, should work out ok.

Anyway, below is a sort of intro to the topic, which should explain it better than I would.

BACKGROUND

It is widely agreed that about half of the 6,500 languages spoken in the world today are endangered to some degree. Due to the impact of urbanisation, the spread of global communications, migration, government policies, and people’s negative evaluations of their languages and traditions, an increasing number of languages are no longer being learnt by children.
Today 96% of the worlds population speaks just 4% of the languages, meaning that the vast bulk of languages have small and diminishing speech communities. If nothing is done, most of these languages will become extinct within this century.
The Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project (HRELP) has been established to study, document and archive aspects of the world’s linguistic heritage. Sponsored bythe Lisbet Rausing Charitable Fund, HRELP comprises three elements:
• A documentation programme, which awards grants annually through an international panel for research and documentation worldwide (ELDP)
• An archive programme, which provides a digital record of languages for the future(ELAR)

Resigned to Being a Resident of Seoul

Ok, today is the beginning of me giving up. For one, I am, at least temporarily giving up fighting the fact that I actually do live in Seoul. I have spent the last three years viewing it as a place I just stop by to work, but now I am submitting to its power over me and calling my self a long-termer. Hopefully this will last only until February, but it has its ways of bringing me back.
Also, I am giving up on my fight against starting a blog.....Have thought about it before and resisted. Blogs piss me off, and I usually cannot stand reading them (even the "good" ones). Now, thinking of all the emails that I would love to send and never do, at least not to everyone I want, I decided to make this and you all can come by and check it when you are wondering what I am up to. Supposedly.
So, we shall see if this really works. I have a little time this weekend, so maybe it will take off, maybe it will die.
Since I refuse to write anymore tonight, I leave you with some lemurs, which are always good to start a new thing off on the right path, and a komodo dragon, which is always good for finishing things.
tijax