my life… in korea
My new favorite song is DJ Doc’s I’m This Kind of Person.
I especially love that they make fun of other Kpop idol groups… and I especially especially love that they make fun of the boy bands who fake-play instruments while doing silly dance moves.
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I’ve been in Korea for 51 weeks, and for 51 weeks I’ve maneuvered my way out of ever having to use a squat toilet…
…until now…
It’s not that I’m against the squat toilet. Like most things in Korea, it’s efficient and it makes sense. I’ve just had this perpetual fear that I would lose my balance and become the little boy in Slumdog Millionaire (except my venture would most likely not yield any cash prizes).
But, thanks to Dr. Schulze’s Intestinal Formula 1, my trip to the gym this week put me in a situation with no choices. So, I broke down and squatted.
…and believe it or not, I didn’t fall in.
My only complaint would be that the trash can was very full and very close to my face… many people in Korea do not flush their used toilet paper… but that’s with all toilets, not just the squatters.
Last week while I was planning my trip back to America and trying to navigate three states in 12 days while also trying to see many friends, I felt a sudden dose of relief when my itinerary arrived at the date I would arrive back in Korea.
And then I realized… Korea is my new home.
This was a scary thought, and one I was not expecting. It took me about four years to consider Connecticut as home, and even that was pushing it. Before Connecticut there was New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and East Tennessee… none of them were what I would call home.
There is my actual hometown, but I haven’t lived there since I entered my university’s summer school program directly after high school graduation in an effort to get out as quickly as possible.
But Korea… it feels like home.
…at least for now.
Before I moved to Korea I immersed myself in Korean movies — at least as much as I could via Netflix (which doesn’t offer all that much). I remember watching the movies and feeling like I was in some bizarre dreamland.
The movies were very similar to Hollywood, but something was always off. Small things were different. The bathrooms, the restaurants, the unabashed listing of one’s faults. But watching Korean movies was wonderful. As Gwyneth Paltrow so breathlessly said in Shakespeare in Love, it was “a new world!”
Now, when I watch these movies I still get the same sensation of wonder; it still feels different, and yet, I realize that I’m living in that world. It feels like I’m watching a movie within a movie.
Of course, it could be that I’m just watching better movies…
Here’s some of my favorites:
My friend Na Ho after winning 1st place in his division
This weekend I went to my first bodybuilding competition. Some friends from my gym were entering and I wanted to support them, while also realizing that the chance I’ll befriend bodybuilders again is about as likely as Bristol and Levi living happily ever after.
It was interesting. I saw more muscles, more black bikinis, and more bronzer than I have in my entire life.
I’m also pretty sure this was the first time in my life I’ve ever been in a situation that invited pure superficial physical judging. I’ve been to women’s’ beauty pageants, and while it is similar, they at least try to mask the superficiality of it all by throwing in talent and question sessions. Here, it’s all about the body (and the bronzer).
Like most people, I judge people physically all the time, but like most people, I rarely admit to it; and I felt rather guilty getting to throw away years of emotional growth.
But maybe I should move more in this direction. Most of my break-ups occur because I don’t feel an intellectual connection. A relationship based on the size of one’s quads seems much more simple… at least if there’s an argument, you can just get out the tape measure.
And I should go easier on Bristol Palin. At least her fiance has been in Playgirl.
Here are some photos. You can view the full sets here and here.
Last week one of my Facebook friends posted an article by Al-Jazeera on Israel’s attempt to turn Jordan into the Palestinian homeland.
I was reading the article while sipping my coffee and enjoying labors of free speech when suddenly I was thrown back to Jack Ass Land when someone left an insanely ignorant and mis-guided message on my friend’s Facebook link about the Palestinians.
So, I responded with what an equally immature and crass comment, which I later deleted upon realizing my churlishness (thank you “Delete” button).
Over the years I’ve been able to systematically shut down most human emotion. However, I’ve been unsuccessful in two areas: HBO’s The Wire (I still cry when I think about how they did D’Angelo) and Israel/Palestine.
And this is why… from Tablet:
A newly revealed tape of Netanyahu in 2001, being interviewed while he thinks the cameras are off, shows him in a radically different light. In it, Netanyahu dismisses American foreign policy as easy to maneuver, boasts of having derailed the Oslo accords with political trickery, and suggests that the only way to deal with the Palestinians is to “beat them up, not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until it’s unbearable”
I’m not a fan of Netanyahu. I want peace, I think Obama wants peace… but I do not think Netanyahu wants peace. I don’t trust him. And now I’m feeling human emotion!
I’m going to go watch The Wire and cry for a moment.
General McChrystal may not have been the most politically savvy person in the lot, but at least he had a sense of humor.
In the infamous Rolling Stones article that cost McChrystal his job, it was mentioned that some of his team referred to themselves as Team America… Team America being the exhaustingly hilarious movie by South Park creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, that mocks everything from American imperialism to authoritarian dictators to Matt Damon.
The Team America in the movie Team America is a group of self-important white people who who bulldoze over everyone and everything (Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids) to “save” the world.
Today, Marc Ambinder posted a picture of the patches that McChrystal’s team had made up!
I’m jealous.
Here’s my favorite scene from Team America when UN Weapons Inspector, Hans Blix, visits Kim Jong Il. Hans Blix is HILARIOUS.
It has been an interesting week on the Korean peninsula… with many things happening related to the sinking of the South Korean ship, the Cheonan.
On July 9, the UN Security Council released a statement about the sinking, “condemn[ing]” the attack but not placing the blame on North Korea. So, no new sanctions on Kim Jong Il.
This statement comes out despite a seemingly exhaustive investigation by South Korea and many international partners that found that the Cheonan was sunk by a North Korean torpedo.
The North Koreans, who have steadfastly denied the attack, were ecstatic about the UN report, calling it a “great diplomatic victory.”
But then… today we get news that North Korea has released a new propaganda poster with a fist smashing a ship that is eerily similar to… the Cheonan! The poster says “Ready to crush any attack with a single blow!” (via JoongAng).
I realize this isn’t the first instance of duplicity on the part of North Korea, but given how hard they lobbied the UN to not be blamed for the ship’s sinking, this poster just seems to be in poor taste. It’s like OJ coming out with his If I Did It book one week after his acquittal (because doing it 10 years later is so much more classy).
Still, some folks in South Korea seem to be a bit skeptical about North Korea’s role. That’s understandable. It’s not like I believed everything George Bush said about the 9/11 attacks. It’s not like I believed what George Bush said about anything.
But hopefully, an international consensus will be reached at some point. Otherwise South Korea and America will continue to piss off everyone (everyone = China) with their planned military exercises in the Yellow Sea. (Btw/ what happens in a planned military exercise?)
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Map of where the Cheonan sank.
I just finished Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. I bought this precisely because I wanted a non-sensational account of life in North Korea. I didn’t want to read about nuclear weapons or labor camps.
In many respects, the handful of people Demick interviews do lead normal lives. They go to jobs they don’t necessarily like; the parents worry about their kids’ educations; and the kids struggle against the pressures of school, hormones, and parental expectations.
However, the differences are much more stark and unforgettable.
Most of the people interviewed ended up in Seoul by a string of chance events. They all loved North Korea, and had no long-planted seed to defect. But at the same time, almost all of them learned within minutes of crossing the Tumen River into China how different their lives would be.
When Dr. Kim defected into China, she came upon a bowl of rice sitting on the ground. She couldn’t believe it because “she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a bowl of pure white rice.” Then she heard the dog and realized that “dogs in China ate better than doctors in Korea.”
All of those interviewed lived through the famine of the 90′s that likely killed between 1.0 to 3.0 million people.
Everyone in the book dealt with starvation, and those that lived were ridden with guilt over what they had done to survive. Mi-ran, a schoolteacher, was never able to erase the images of her starving students and the reasons why she didn’t share her food with them. Mrs. Song, a doting wife & mother, never forgave herself for her son’s death (this on the heels of her husband’s death the previous year and her mother-in-law’s death two years prior).
Mi-ran later discovered that that the two sisters who remained in North Korea were snatched in the middle in the night and taken to labor camps because she had defected. And several of the mothers were never able to see their children again.
It goes on and on. And these are the lives of the “ordinary lives” in North Korea.
I highly recommend this book.
To celebrate the Fourth of July, some of us got together to act American (i.e., be really loud) by shooting fireworks off the roof.
We also ate hamburgers, chicken, potato salad, and beer! And to make it even more American, I was able to squeeze in a fantasy baseball trade!
But the Americanization was short lived as our attention quickly turned to the World Cup > then to our newly discovered dance club where they always seat us 2 feet from the incredibly loud speaker.
Here’s the video…
