If I'd read Jae's entry for today first, disaster might have been averted. Jae is a Korean who has studied in the US and has returned home. Breathlessly, she narrates the mundane detail of daily life.

Today's entry on shopping in a big store seems to bear out all those allegations I've been reading about Korean manners:

UGH...those ajummas need to learn manners... I was stuck between their carts so many times and they don't care... I was jammed and all that... What about ajussis or even guys around my age? They don't care if I were a little girl, an ajumma, a young woman, or an old lady around your grandma's age... They just push their carts toward you and they cut in lines... It was just a big, big, big mess and chaos there!!! Okay, pushing, jamming, cutting in lines...I can accept that. Why do ajummas pick up YOUR stuff from YOUR cart and touch them...and hold them...and make comments about what YOU're going to buy? I mean, they're so rude...and I was at the cashier and these 2-3 ajummas wouldn't care if I was almost done putting my stuff at the cashier or not... In fact, I was so busy trying to put all the stuff we got (and thanks mom for getting SOOOOOOO much stuff...that I had a hard time pushing the cart around) and these ajummas wouldn't put them back in our cart. I mean, we're about to pay for them and it's OUR stuff!!! Of course, they don't even ask you if they could take a look at those things that they're holding at the moment. By the time we got out of the store trying to get to the parking lot, my face turned completely red, my mouth grumbling, shaking my head. Of course, mom knew I was annoyed as hell... When we got into her car, she was asking me..."Are you angry?" I was like, "No, just annoyed, because I can't stand those rude ajummas and ajussis... I don't think I want to live here just because I don't want to grocery shop at such places...with such rude people!!!" She was just laughing and saying..."It's because you're not used to shopping here...I didn't even think it was that crowded at all this morning."

Haloscan

It seemed a good idea at the time. Haloscan commenting has been added to this blog, with the unexpected result that all previous comments have been lost. If anyone knows how to retrieve them, please share it. I apologise to everyone who's taken the trouble to comment in the past.

I realise now I shouldn't have taken the lazy option of an automatic installation. It's possible to run haloscan side by side with blogger, as Antti Leppänen does on his excellent blog Hunjangûi karûch'im. Now why hadn't I bothered to ask myself why he did that?

hiatus

I won't be posting for a week or so, as I'm off to France (part of Abroad).

I've been silting up with unposted comments, trying to get my facts straight before I post. Mindful of the reproach that people read blogs as much for stories as for facts, here's some reading to be going on with.

Cathartidae describes going into KFC and not finding a seat. I keep coming across this sort of story, and have no way of knowing whether it tells us more about Korea or about the teller. Are these rudenesses there because one's looking for them, or are they endemic? Andi's story about the loan of the umbrella (scroll down to "Mourning for me?" on 17 Aug, because I can't link directly) is a refreshing counter to this sort of thing.

Oranckay considers the sins of the fathers. (By the way, the novelist he mentions there, Yi Mun-yol, has an excellent book The Poet available in English translation. It explores, among other things, the nature of poetic responsibility. The Poet grows up under the cloud of his grandfather's defection.)

Through a fresh pair of eyes

Andi's unabashedly upbeat post "Mourning for me?" on 17 August compares two rainy days: the day she started composing the post, and her third day in Korea, a year ago now, when she went empty-handed looking for a temple in a park. A lot has happened in between, punctuated by the two epiphanies she describes so vividly. And she wonders about the nature of seeing.

When does a place become familiar? Can we mark the transition between the wondered unknown and the commonly overlooked? Today, with the question of mourning in my heart and a rainy summer day, I felt as if I were just arriving again, able to see some of the things I had stopped seeing. The color of the sky when it is cloudy. The smell of the dojang this evening, the feel of the vinyl-like floor. The chill of the air-conditioned office when my clothes are wet. The city's ugly concrete, its neon, its awnings, the daily rise and fall of the market, the squirming modernity under the heel of a country-side way that internet, handphones, cars, and the IMF can't destroy, though they can change it. To see all of this for even a moment--to see it as I saw it when I first came, really absorbing it, really seeing it rather than allowing my eye to skim while my head is full of wool--is to find the point between the familiar and the unfamiliar. Both of those require some idea of what should be seen, some comparison between a place not here and here.

I'm sorry I can't link to it directly. Something about my firewall setting means that very occasionally I can't access javascript, and Andi's is one of the blogs that happens to. So I can't access comments or trackbacks on her blog. Were I not such a technological ignoramus, I'd have sorted it out by now.

And on the subject of comments, someone told me they had a problem posting theirs here. I'm very sorry about that. It's great to have comments. You don't have to be a blogger subscriber to leave your comments - just select the "post anonymously" option lurking way under the brash blogger log-in stuff. Although it will summarily entitle you "Anonymous" you don't actually have to be anonymous if you don't want to: you can always leave your name, email and homepage details in the body of the comments if you like. The comments box accepts html.

Whose history is it anyway?

Background

The Korean peninsula lies between the rock of Japan and the hard place of China. Communist North Korea may or may not have the bomb. DPRK is pathologically secretive. Attempting to flee the country is a crime. Seasoned Korea-watchers suggest that the rule of Kim Jung-il will eventually collapse. There are unsubstantiated reports of civil unrest. There has been a famine in DPRK since 1995. Substantial aid has been given by UN World Food Program, RoK, and others seeking to establish diplomatic ties. Similarly, aid was forthcoming after the Ryongchon train disaster earlier this year.

If the régime collapses, there will be a rush to fill the vacuum. There may be political as well as humanitarian reasons for food aid, which staves off political crisis and its uncontrollable consequences.

South Korea’s constitution is committed to reunification (Arts 3 and 4). Since Kim Dae-Jung’s much-criticised overtures to the North (for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000), hopes have grown of a rapprochement, despite its cost. Even critics support eventual re-unification. In theory, anyway.


Koguryo

This requires a longer essay than I can manage in the time available.

The complex of Koguryo tombs was declared a World Heritage Site in July. In fact - officially two sites, as the complex lies in both China and North Korea.

Given the history of invasion, conquest, oppression and colonisation, Koreans are sensitive about their past. They are proud of their origins. So when China first of all deletes some ancient history from the Korean section of its Foreign Ministry website, and then deletes all of Korean history prior to 1948, Koreans are outraged, and worried. Chinese express bafflement at the criticism.

In an interesting twist, China's former Prime Minister Zhou Enlai is reported as saying

We cannot distort history. It’s absurd to say that the land west of the Tumen River and the Yalu River has been Chinese territory or that Korea has been China’s tributary from early times.

Thanks to the Marmot, whose most recent coverage of the story is here and here. The comments accompanying those posts are telling, even (or perhaps especially) when they are at their least courteous.

Capital gains

Oh, and in case anyone was thinking of speculating in property around Yongi-Kongju, the government already thought of that a month ago, declaring the area an overheated speculation zone. Property transactions will be restricted through strict government monitoring, and capital gains taxes levied on the actual sales price.
Korea Times, 12 July 2004

Seoul

"Seoul" means "capital" in Korean. With a population of more than 10 million, it’s one of the largest cities in the world. Despite opposition, the Korean government has
confirmed plans to relocate the seat of government to Yongi-Kongju 100 miles to the south.

The government cites the heavy concentration of population as the main reason for the move:

Forty-six percent of Korea's population is concentrated in the Seoul Metropolitan Area. Compared with the population of other countries - Japan, 32%; Great Britain, 12%; France, 19% - Korea's population concentration is by far the severest and indicates the urgency of addressing the issue of population concentration in the Seoul Metropolitan Area. This heavy concentration has been a great barrier to achieving balanced regional development and national reconciliation by widening the gap between the Seoul Metropolitan Area and other regions. In addition, the Seoul Metropolitan Area is faced with many socio-economic problems, such as high housing costs and land prices, traffic congestion, environmental pollution.

Update: More information on the move in today's Guardian, which also has some good links to other sites about Korea. I still can't find a proper map, though. There's a very general one at the foot of this government page.

Abroad

Reading Incestuous Amplification’s farewell post (hat tip to Big Ho) after his six and a half years in Korea led me to thinking about how I have sidled up to Korean culture in the last few months and presumed to comment on it. I came via some translated poems, and stayed to watch obliquely through the endoscope of a muddled internet ban.

It must seem outrageous. I’m not Korean, haven’t been to Korea, don’t even speak Korean. Good grief, I haven’t even met any Koreans. I should apologise for the presumption and desist forthwith.

Hang on, though. Is it so pointless, so unforgivable? Most people share these disqualifications. Wherever we live, most of the world’s population live abroad. Almost everyone has views on abroad; people pontificate; people vote, even without much hard fact to base it on. So how can we become more informed about a foreign country? (I’m taking it as given that we should.)

In my case, it’s not just Korea but most countries round the world about which I’m ashamed to say I’m profoundly ignorant. Even as a traveller, it’s possible to learn very little. Media reports, history and travel books, personal anecdotes, and the stuff of imagination in art, film, music, literature – who knows what shapes our understanding? Politics and religion (are the two ever far apart?) lurk beneath the surface of a lot of what passes for information. Can any source be unbiased? Every message signifies about the messenger. And the same message sounds different, depending on who’s listening.

The internet is a particularly seductive medium. Having happened across one blog by an expat American in Korea, just as my interest had been whetted by literature, I was captivated to read more. Well, of course you know – blogs have links, and you follow links to links (which is how I found Andi’s blog in the first place) and before you know where you are you’re deep in shit or shinja. Both are illuminating in their different ways.

But all of them* – the Americans, the Canadians, the Australians, the Finn – have a foreigner’s perspective. Some, like Robert Koehler and Jeff Harrison have been in Korea for years. Some are married to Koreans. Others come for a short time, working in the hagwons. Some are with USFK. They bring different prejudices – Republican, Democrat, liberal, Catholic, Presbyterian, Buddhist, atheist. Some have learned Korean, some are more sympathetic than others. Whatever. They see Korea perhaps as I might, through western eyes.

Western, egalitarian, anti-authoritarian – I have plenty of prejudices too. Ignorance is a pretty serious one. The worst will be those I have no inkling of. (Ahh, those unknown unknowns.)

And no qualifications in media studies or anthroplogy.

So what am I saying? An apologia rather than an apology. I claim no expertise, just an interest in finding out more, and trying to understand. Will try to write about it as long as the pain of confessing ignorance doesn’t get too tedious.

And if I get it wrong, which I'm bound to, please use the comment box. No point in parading my representative global ignorance if it goes unchallenged.

*(except for the two Koreans I’ve come across blogging in English, and one Korean inveterate commenter-on-blogs who doesn’t have his own)

Cultural gestures

The internet blocking is melting away. Last I heard by email a couple of days ago, TypePad is accessible some places but not all, and LiveJournal still isn't accessible even by proxy. Blogspot and others are back to normal. This despite the fact that the offending material is still out there and as easy to get hold of as ever. Perhaps it's just that the critical moment has passed. Public passions have turned to other things - the outrage over China's rewriting of Korean history, perhaps.

Meanwhile, a very interesting article by Andrew Ward in the weekend's Financial Times about the Korean pop star BoA, whose popularity in Japan is perhaps playing a part in healing the rift between the two nations.

Nowhere is the success of Korean culture more surprising than in Japan. The two countries are separated at the narrowest point by just 200km of ocean but relations remain tormented by centuries of conflict and rivalry. Most recently, Japan invaded Korea in 1910 and brutally occupied the peninsula until its defeat in the second world war. Dissenters were tortured in prison camps and thousands of women were forced into sex slavery for Japanese soldiers. In perhaps the most bizarre act of oppression, stakes were driven into the summits of sacred Korean mountains to destroy the country's spirit. Nearly 60 years later, many Koreans maintain a bitter hatred for their former colonial master.

During the occupation, Japan did all it could to suppress Korean culture. Koreans were forbidden to speak or write their own language and were even required to take Japanese names. The damage has been incalculable. It is only since the beginning of this year that it has been legal to sell Japanese music, films, computer games and comics in Korea. A bit of internet censorship that inconveniences a few expat bloggers seems mere bureaucratic routine by comparison. Especially when compared with other parts of the world, China and Iran, for example.

Apologies and outrage

Kevin at Big Hominid reports today (5 August) that

I'm able to access Typepad/Blogs.com blogs from this local PC-bahng. As before, please take this news with a grain of salt: accessibility probably isn't universal. But keep your hopes up.

Also through Kevin, who additionally reports he can access MuNu without proxy, I learn of this apology (28 July) by BRD at Anticipatory Retaliation and a whole blog domain I never knew existed:

Apologies
As you may know, all of Munuvania is currently being censored by the South Korean government (check out Big Hominid for the latest on government censorship - he also got tagged in a Newsweek article). It just dawned on me that the ban on the mu.nu domain is probably a direct result of my posting the video of the South Korean hostage being beheaded.

As someone who's a brand new arrival in mu.nu, I feel like quite the ass for getting my new homeland banned in an entire country.

So, all and sundry affected by this turn of events, please accept my abject apologies for this turn of events.

Which is gracious of him, but surely not necessary, unless there is a touch of sarcasm there I didn't quite catch. In a comment on that post, the Big Ho opines:

I suspected that your posting had something to do with the MuNu ban, but unlike the SK govt, I thought you did the right thing. No sweat. I can see you through proxies

Um. Pragmatism over principle is quite understandable in the circs, and from my distant armchair I can hardly criticise them for that. Should BRD feel the need to apologise? When there are things like this happening?
(Via Marmot, whose take on it is more measured than mine. He points out that the beheading parody was heavily criticised, and apologised for, whereas I'm amazed that anyone could have thought it appropriate at all, especially so soon.)