Author: Peter

bookmark_borderPost-247: [My Korean Essay] Methods for Speaking Korean Well

Posted on by Peter
I wrote this essay in mid-November 2014. It received a good grade but has some minor grammar mistakes.

An English translation follows.

한국어를 잘 할 수 있는 방법
어학당에서 공부하는 학생들은 많이 공부하는데도 교실 밖에서 한국어를 잘 못 하는 편입니다. 우리는 한국어를 잘 할 수 있는 방법에 대해 많이 궁금합니다. 지금부터 이야기와 취미로 한국어를 잘 할 수 있는 방법에 대해서 설명을 하겠습니다.

첫째, 우리는 한국인 친구나 한국어를 공부하는 외국인과 사귀어서 한국말로 많이 이야디를 해야 한다고 합니다. 한국에 있는 어학당 학생들 중에 한국인 친구가 없는 학생이 많은 것 같습니다. 그래서, 교실이나 숙제를 할 때 밖에는 한국말을 별로 쓰지 않은 것 같습니다. 따라서, 한국어가 “과목”이라고 생각하는 편입니다. 그런 생각은 한국말을 잘 하고 싶은 학생에게 위험한 것입니다. 예를 들면, 한국에서 영어교육 도 이런 문제가 있습니다. 학생이 영어문법을 많이 공부하기는 하지만 고등학교를 졸업까지도 영어로 이야기를 해본적이 별로 없다고 합니다. 뭐니 뭐니 해도, 다른 사람과 이야기하는 것이 제일 중요한 언어를 배우기는 이유라고 할 수 있습니다. 그러므로, 수업 밖에서도 연습을 하도록 한국말로 많이 이야기해야 합니다.

다 음으 로, 취미 생활과 관계가 있는 방법으로 한국말을 연습해야 됩니다. 사람들이 취미가 달라서 많은 방법이 있을 수 있습니다. 예로, 미국에서 온 저는 역사에 관심이 많습니다. 그래서, 한국어로 미국역사에 대한 초등학생 책을 사서 날마다 읽습니다. 다른 취미가 있다면 다른 방법을 이용할 수 있습니다. 특히, 한국 드라마에 관심이 많은 여자학생들은 드라마를 보면서 한국어를 연습합니다. 이런 방법을 이용하면 즐겁게 취미 생활을 하고 한국어도 연습할 수 있습니다.

요약하면, 한국어를 잘 하고 싶으면 이야기른 늘녀야 하고 “한국말로 할 수 있는” 취미린 발전시켜야 한다고 생각합니다.

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Original handwritten essay (after many drafts).

Here is a translation into English of the above Korean original (both written by me:)
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Methods For How to Speak Korean Well
Students of Korean, even those who study a lot, tend to be unable to speak very well outside of the classroom. We are very curious about ways we can speak Korean well. Here I will explain about how to improve in Korean with conversation and hobbies.

Firstly, we need to befriend Koreans or other students of the Korean language and speak with them in Korean a lot. Among students of Korean in Korea, it seems there are many who have no Korean friends. Therefore, outside of the classroom or time doing assignments, it seems they speak almost no Korean. Accordingly, there is a tendency to think of Korean as “a subject”. This kind of idea is dangerous for people who want to learn Korean. An example of the same kind of problem is in English education in Korea. Students study English grammar a lot, but even by the time they graduate from high school, they have almost never used English to speak to someone. When all is said and done, we can say that speaking to other people is the most important reason why we learn a language.  This being the case, we need to be sure to practice outside the class by speaking in Korean a lot.

Additionally, we should use methods connected to our hobbies to practice Korean. Everybody has different hobbies, so many methods are possible. For instance, I am from the USA and I am interested in history, so I bought a Korean-language American history book for elementary school students and I read it every day. If a person has other hobbies, other methods are possible. Particularly, the female students who are highly interested in “Korean dramas” [Korean TV soap operas popular in East Asia in the 2000s and 2010s] can practice Korean while watching them. Using this kind of method, we can enjoy our hobbies and also practice Korean.

In summary, those who want to speak Korean well should increase the amount they speak in Korean and also develop “hobbies that can be done in Korean”.

bookmark_borderPost-246: Here Comes Bodo Ramelow (Or, Reminiscences of German Politics)

Posted on by Peter
A German state will have a “(neo-)Communist” leader for the first time since the fall of Communist rule twenty-five years ago, I read today.

The state will be Thuringia (Thüringen), formerly belonging to East Germany.

The leader will be somebody called Bodo Ramelow (born 1956). Here he is:

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Bodo Ramelow, Politician

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I know what you’re thinking. “He doesn’t look much like a Communist.”

Or, maybe you’re thinking “Bodo Ramelow sounds like a pro wrestler’s name.”

I agree with both sentiments.

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The interesting thing is that good ol’ Bodo is a product of the West. He was born, raised, and educated in West Germany, I read. He moved to East Germany after right the fall of the wall and immediately got involved with the revived SED (the Communist ruling party of East Germany through 1989) which was then calling itself “the Party for Democratic Socialism” (PDS) and which now calls itself “die Linke” (The Left).

Bodo will take the helm as “Minister President” of Thuriginia following that state’s election in fall 2014. Here are the results, with my attempt to transliterate onto U.S. politics:

  • [91 seats allocated, based on a mixed system of proportional voting and U.S.-style “most votes wins” contests:]
  • 34 won by the CDU (Christian Democratic Party, akin to moderate U.S. Republicans) [37% of seats]
  • 28 won by Die Linke (successor of the East German Communist Party) [31% of seats]
  • 12 won by the SPD (Social Democrats, akin to the left-wing of the U.S. Democrats) [13%]
  • 11 won the AfD (a new party, “Alternative for Germany”, similar to the U.S. Tea Party circa 2010) [12%]
  • 6 won by the Green Party [7%]
  • 0 seats were won by the Free Democratic Party (akin to the free-market wing of the Republican Party)
  • 9.7% of voters voted for parties that won no seats (including the FDP) due to the “5%-threshold rule”. (Most of the usual FDP voters voted for the new AfD party this time.)

A coalition government is to be formed unless one party gets a majority, and that never happens in Germany. Any group of parties, if their combined seats constitute a majority of the legislature, can form a government. If you count these up, you’ll see that the Linke [31% of seats] and SPD [13%] and Greens [7%] have a 51% majority, so they can exclude the CDU and AfD. The thing is, the Linke “neo-Communists” are a majority of this ruling coalition, so it’s only fair that their guy, Bodo, becomes the formal leader.

Communists and Anti-Communists in Berlin
I was in Berlin, Germany for most of 2007. I remember noticing how much the continued presence within German politics of the “neo-Communist” (die Linke) annoyed certain factions in Germany. The party’s remains strong in the east, where older people’s votes keep it a significant force.

This all reminds me of the high energy of street politics in Germany. Radicals were kinetically active in a way I never saw in the U.S. or anywhere else. Stickers, leaflets, posters, and graffiti were everywhere. It meant that people took this stuff seriously. A lot of it was clever. “Political subculture people” were also easy to spot by their manners of dress, manners of carrying themselves, places they’d hang around, and even haircuts.

I still have, somewhere, a booklet-manifesto somebody who called himself a professor handed me. It was in German, and expounded his theories on why we need Marxism now more than ever, from what I could gather. He was standing on a street corner but as street-corner people go, he seemed normal. We talked a short while. He realized after a short exchange that I was not a German native speaker. I lied and told him I was from Denmark, which he seemed to accept. I ended up walking away with not only his cream-colored booklet containing his Marxist manifesto, but also an equal-sized cream-colored booklet on Buddhism. I think he’d written both. I think his name was something like Rolf.

Anyway, this stuff made life interesting.

I made a habit of studying any political graffiti or suchlike that I found in Berlin. I recall one leaflet, produced I expect by right-wing radicals, that said something very close to “Zwei Jahrzehnte Nach Mauerfall, Kommunisten noch überall!” (“Two decades after the fall of the wall, Communists still rule us!”). This cleverly rhymes in German. It was in reference to the fact that the “neo-Communist” Party (to which the above-pictured Bodo Ramelow belongs) was then in coalition with the SPD ruling Berlin. Accompanied was a cartoon picture of a man smashing a red star with a sledgehammer. This kind of thing was a common sight in Berlin, though far-left material of the same kind was more common to see.

Update, 11/22: Another part of this above-mentioned anti-communist leaflet comes back to me. In smaller letters, it urged the reader as follows: “Politischer Kampf den Roten Banden” ([Let’s wage] a political struggle against the red thugs). It then identified several communist groups by name (including the political party now called “die Linke”) around the red-star being smashed by the heroic-looking cartoon man.

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bookmark_borderPost-245: On the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Posted on by Peter
As I was writing about “November 11th, 1918” (post-242), another anniversary was being commemorated. The 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I think historians of the future ought to use the two (11-11-1918 to circa 11-11-1989) as  bookends, to fence off a coherent era of history. It is convenient, or poetic, or something special anyway, that the period is exactly seventy-one years to the day. Those seventy-one years were an era of wild political-ideological struggle, unseen, really, before or since.

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  • November 11th, 1918 : WWI ends as the armistice goes into effect at 11 AM. That war really brought down the old aristocratic order in Europe. As a result, politics was “opened up” very widely, perhaps more widely than it has ever been, before or since. Formerly-fringe “radicals” proliferated everywhere.

  • 1918 through the 1960s: A lot of stuff happens, in a lot of directions. As the smoke clears, Soviet-model Communism is arguably the biggest winner of the decades of political struggle after 1918. Certainly the biggest if looked at in relative terms; from zero communist states on the map in 1917 to something like half the world in the 1960s.
  • November 9th and 10th, 1989: The Berlin Wall Falls. The East German Communist government allows free border crossing and anti-communist radicals quickly take to smashing up the wall. The same was happening everywhere across the Soviet bloc in these months, but the symbolism too profound to not focus on Berlin. Breached late in the day on the 9th, free movement persisted on the 10th. As the sun rose on November 11th, still no crackdown. It must’ve been clear to everyone by, say, lunchtime (11 AM?) on the 11th that “Soviet-model Communism” was finished as an ideology and force in the world. The East German Communist state had gone out with a whimper. (The ex-Soviet bloc faced dreary years ahead. Ukraine: In 2013 [before the coup and ongoing civil war] Ukraine’s economy was, incredibly, still only two-thirds its 1989 size. See post-194).


November 11th, 1918 to November 11th, 1989: The Era of Ideological Struggle.

I don’t remember any of it.

bookmark_borderPost-244: Mao Zedong the Praiseworthy

Posted on by Peter
Suh Teacher was discussing a particular Korean word, “훌륭하다”. This word means “excellent; stately; honorable; respectable; commendable; admirable; praiseworthy.” Listening were the students of our class, 15 in all — thirteen from China, one Chinese-Malaysian, and me. To make sure students understood how to use the word, Suh Teacher asked, “Okay, then, for whom can we use this word? Examples?” It was an open question to the room.
Very quickly came a girl’s exclamation: “Mao Zedong!” (something like “Mao Dzhuh-doong” in Korean, which follows Chinese pronunciation, I suppose). The class did what it often does, which is to laugh in unison. (When these spontaneous eruptions happen, it always seems as if they’d been planned. It hadn’t been “planned”; there is just a Chinese Consensus in the room.) (The concept of “Chinese Consensus” has occurred to me before in classes, so I’ll capitalize it here so as to dignify it with an implied existence.)

I wondered why they were laughing.
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Chairman Mao “the Praiseworthy”
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My impression, from the many Chinese whom I’ve met while studying Korean, is that they really do like that man. At the same time, maybe most are aware enough to know that Chairman Mao, revered back in China down to the present day as he may be, is something of an enemy figure to South Koreans, certainly to older ones. He sent a million men to try to quash the existence of the Republic of Korea in 1950, after all. Hence the awkward laugh. This is my best explanation.

As the Chinese Consensus’ laugh was ebbing past its peak, something completely unexpected happened.

My favorite of the thirteen Chinese, J.G., a male about 20 years old, a voracious coffee drinker and always in good humor, exclaimed “아니요!” (“No!”). It was the first thing anyone had said since Mao was suggested as an “admirable, praiseworthy” figure a moment earlier. J.G. was animated. Along with his “No!”, he  did some kind of motion akin to humorously slamming the desk. It’s not clear to me to what extent he was joking. But he then — and this really was shocking to me — apparently suggested an alternative “admirable figure” in the person of Chiang Kai-Shek, the founder of Taiwan, arch anti-Communist, arch-enemy of Mao Zedong.

The teacher asked if this is who he’d meant. “대만을 만든 사람?” (“The person who ‘made’ Taiwan?”). “Yes”, J.G. said. There was no counter-reaction. The Consensus disintegrated into disorganized giggles and confusion. The teacher moved on.

bookmark_borderPost-243: “The Great Pumpkin Will Appear!”

Posted on by Peter
I had the opportunity to see the Charlie Brown Halloween special I’d seen as a young boy.

Linus evangelizes on behalf of the Great Pumpkin, a supernatural being he believes in. He is convinced that the Great Pumpkin will appear on Halloween Night in the pumpkin patch, and plans an all-night vigil. He tries to get others to join him. No one is convinced. Charlie Brown’s little sister Sally finally gets involved, but she is completely uninterested in the metaphysics of the Great Pumpkin. Rather, she wants to spend time alone with Linus, whom she likes. The attraction is not reciprocal, but Linus gladly takes her on as another disciple of the Great Pumpkin.

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Linus and Charlie Brown

Charles Schulz (the creator of the Charlie Brown universe) wrote and directed the Halloween special in 1966. It first aired on TV in October ’66. Schulz was born in 1922 in Minnesota and was raised in the Lutheran Church. He remained an active Christian till his death.

At one point, Schulz has Linus write a letter to the Great Pumpkin saying:“Everyone tells me you are a fake, but I believe in you. P.S., If you really are fake, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.” 

Night comes; the Great Pumpkin doesn’t show up; Sally gets annoyed and storms off; Linus stays loyal and remains at his post. The next thing we know it’s 4 AM, and — shivering and having fallen asleep still at his vigil post — Linus is dragged inside and put to bed.

On the morning of November 1st, the show ends with this exchange:

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Charlie Brown: [Dejectedly] Well, another Halloween has come and gone.
Linus: [More Dejectedly] Yes, Charlie Brown.
Charlie Brown: I don’t understand it. I went trick-or-treating and all I got was a bag full of rocks. I suppose you spent all night in the pumpkin patch.
Linus: [Nods]
Charlie Brown: And the Great Pumpkin never showed up?
Linus: Nope.
Charlie Brown: Well, don’t take it too hard, Linus. I’ve done many stupid things in my life, too.
Linus: [Shocked] [Turns angry] “Stupid”? What do you mean, “stupid”? [Flails arms in frustrated anger] Just wait till next year, Charlie Brown! You’ll see. Next year at this same time, I’ll find a pumpkin patch that’s real sincere. I’ll sit in that pumpkin patch until the Great Pumpkin appears. [Finger in the air, as pontificating] He’ll rise out of that pumpkin patch and fly through the air with bags of toys. The Great Pumpkin will appear! I’ll be waiting for him. I’ll be sitting there in that pumpkin patch and I’ll see the Great Pumpkin. Wait and see, Charlie Brown! I’ll see the Great Pumpkin! [End of Show]

We can see this as a satire on any kinds of religionists who talk about (imminent) End Times scenarios, to include (in my view) anyone who talks about the book of Revelation. The show being from 1966, it actually predates the rise of the more bizarre End of Days cults that seem to have proliferated hugely in the late 1960s and 1970s.

At the same time, Linus is a sympathetic character throughout (despite his show-ending diatribe). Watching the show, we want the Great Pumpkin to be real. Linus as a tragic hero. When Snoopy pops up in the shadows, for a split second, we, along with Linus and Sally looking on, want to believe it is the Great Pumpkin itself.

And alas, was Linus’ Halloween (an all-night vigil) really any worse spent than Charlie Brown’s own, who tried to have his fun but ended up with a bag full of rocks?

bookmark_borderPost-242: November 11th, 1918

Posted on by Peter
As I write, it is November 11th. It was on this day in 1918 that the fighting ended in what we now call “World War One” (famously, they arranged the ceasefire to begin at 11 AM). This is why the USA’s Veteran’s Day is November 11th.

One of my great-grandfathers was in the U.S. Army at that time, but he never left the USA. I wrote about what I’ve learned of his experience in post-224 (“My Great-Grandfather’s Piece of World War I“). He was at Camp Devens, MA. Here is a picture of one of the companies garrisoned (not his) at Camp Devens in 1918:

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Part of the company photograph of the “43rd Company”, Camp Devens Depot Brigade (151st)

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I had the good fortune to visit the Camp Devens museum while on a visit to Connecticut in August 2014. The museum is on the former site of the once-enormous Camp (later Fort) Devens. The museum keepers were friendly and chatted at long length. The base was built from nothing in 1917, and has now returned to a state of idleness.
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Full photograph, labeled “43rd Co. 151st Depot Brigade Camp Devens Mass. 1918” [photograph for sale here]

Flash back to early morning Eastern USA time (i.e., 11 AM European Time), Nov. 11th, 1918. How would my great-grandfather, then-21-year-old Earle Hazen, have greeted the news that the war was over? On one hand, his experience in helping run bustling Camp Devens must’ve been exhilarating in its own way, like the CCC of the 1930s. Young men tend to thrive on outdoor exertion. Plus, he was stationed at home so didn’t see the mass battlefield death, the definite downside to war. On the other hand, life has to move on, so he must’ve been excited to get out.

Within two years of the armistice, Earle Hazen was married and within three years, my grandmother was born.

bookmark_borderPost-241: Eating Shrimp Burgers at Lotteria (Or, the Shrimp Burger War)

Posted on by Peter
Since time immemorial, as far as I know, Lotteria has been “the only game in town” for shrimp burger fans,

But, lo, McDonald’s has announced its own shrimp burger to South Korea, and Lotteria, worried, held a “buy one shrimp burger, get one free” in the last week of October to rally the faithful. I carefully investigated.

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A Lotteria in Incheon, South Korea. The sign says:
“Shrimp Burger 1+1” (buy one get one free) / From the 28th to the 30th / From 2 to 10 PM

That’s the Lotteria I found. In I went. This Lotteria, like many others, is multi-storey. You can see the second level of seating above. The inside of the ground floor was interesting in several ways:
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I’d like to make two comments about the above scene:

(1) All in the Family (of Companies). The naive foreigner likely wouldn’t guess it, but this “Natuur” brand ice cream and Lotteria are owned by the same parent mega-company (or chaebol, 제벌, based on the Japanese zaibatsu), namely Lotte Group. I learned this from my friend B.W. Cho who now  works for Lotte Group. Any time two businesses are inexplicably collaborating, it’ll mean they are under the same chaebol.

Korean society is dominated by these chaebol mega-companies. The biggest is Samsung. They say that Samsung alone constitutes 20% of the South Korean economy. This shocks Westerners and I think it’s fair to say that it seems “dirty” to us, almost what we’d expect in a dystopian sci-fi world. A few mega-companies control everything? Come on.

(2) Not-in-Kansas-Anymore Grammar. Part-2 here may seem cliche, because it is. But I think it’s worth pointing out: We have very little English in the above scene, but even so we get an awkward attempted semi-pun (“In-Joy Lotteria”). Then on the ice cream freezer we see another grammar error, “Pure, Nature, Freshness” (should be “Natural”; arguably “Fresh”). Oh well. No big deal and proof and testament that this is no Western franchise, anyway. Lotteria began in Japan and South Korea in the 1970s and has since spread across East Asia (though McDonald’s is still king).

Then I read the wrapper:

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Lotteria Shrimp Burger.

CAUTION: This product can be spoiled it should be eaten as quickly as possible.
As quickly as possible! Oh, my. It sounds intimidating, doesn’t it, like it’s a James-Bond-style timebomb.

I did eat them pretty promptly in one sense, in fact earlier than the rules allowed for: The event was supposed to start on October 28th at 2 PM, but I managed to get mine on the 28th at 1:50 PM. Two shrimp burgers for 3,300 South Korean Won, which is about $3.00 USD. It’s not the greatest deal in history but I hadn’t had a shrimp burger in a long time. The two shrimp burgers did the job they were made for well enough. I seldom eat at these kids of places, but when I do I like Lotteria for its shrimp burger (though more usually I order whatever is rock-bottom cheapest, which is usually what they call the “bulgogi burger”).

Many foreigners in Korea say they dislike Lotteria which has always puzzled me. In fact, I’d never heard of “Lotteria” before coming to Asia. Does unfamiliarity breed contempt? Does the strange English (as above) put people off? Do they just feel McDonald’s is their natural place? They say it’s the taste. I don’t see a difference.

Oh, one more thing: The name. “Lotteria” It took me a long time to figure out how to pronounce it. It is pronounced flatly, without accent (that is, it is not “loh-teh-REE-ah”, the style that would fit the Spanish tongue). The name comes from its parent company, Lotte Group. Its original meaning was “Lotte Cafeteria”, shortened to “Lotteria”. This I also know from B.W. Cho, who as a new worker for the company had to pass a test about company culture and history.

bookmark_borderPost-240: “First World, Third World” Travel Essay

Posted on by Peter
From my experience in international travel since 2007 (I left the USA for the first time on Jan. 1, 2007), I’m led to believe that no other rich country on this planet is anywhere near as unpleasant to fly in as the USA. The only airport I’ve ever been in that was less pleasant than the USA’s airports tend to be today must be Manila, designated the “World’s Worst Airport”. (If you go through it for any length of time you will see why. I did.)

I discovered a stinging and incisive travel essay that captures the feeling of air travel in the USA today. Who among us can’t echo most everything the essay says (those who have traveled by air in the USA in recent years)? The writer writes specifically about New York City, a place I’ve been in and out of several times lately. His social commentary about NYC in the quoted excerpts below I can also agree with.

I find it to be good, engaging writing, which can be hard for travel writing to achieve. Here:

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First World, Third World: A Travel Essay
By Peter  Van Buren

You travel a bit, and you wonder what happened. […]

Read the Essay

To the Airport
The subway might be faster, but the segment I’d use for part of the journey was first opened in 1904 and is a hodge-podge of patches and repairs today. The girders holding up the street have been painted by generations of workers over the last hundred years such that when a chip appears, it is deep and noticeable, a sort of archaeological find. Theodore Roosevelt was president when the first coat of paint was applied.

The subway isn’t really an option anyway. Public transportation to the airport, one of America’s busiest, is limited to a single bus that runs irregularly, with limited space for the luggage of the poor souls who need to check something, and drops off at stops at the airport equally convenient to no one. The bus isn’t yours anyway; it is designed for persons commuting out of the areas it passes through headed to work at the airport, staffing your Cinnabon. Some smiles there that don’t reach eyes. At least remember to say thanks.

On your way you pass through their crumbling neighborhoods where the open businesses are often check cashing places, we buy gold cubbies and pawn shops. Some fast food places, who pay minimum wage in the neighborhood while exporting profits to midtown banks. You can actually see over the roofs into Manhattan where the money goes, and where the morning newspaper has an article on “affordable” condos priced at over two million dollars.

At the Airport
The airport, originally built in 1939 (Franklin Roosevelt was President and WWII was just starting for the Greatest Generation) and randomly added to over since, is chaotic at best. At security, foreign tourists look around for validation as they are yelled at to remove their shoes. It all seems inexplicable to many from Third World places the U.S. can’t bully into following America’s security theatre script. The floor we walk on in our socks is still a bit sticky from some spill. Everyone holds their hands over their head inside the scanner, a position of submission prisoners assume. The analogy is only slightly an analogy. But people either believe in it for their freedom as they are told, or just put up with it to avoid the bullying that follows displays of even quiet resistance. Be glad you are allowed to fly at all and have not been put without your knowledge on the No-Fly list for some Josef K. offense.

Everyone on the plane, which departs late without explanation offered to you, is sorted into class. Those with the right credit card, or those who paid more, are treated one way, right down to a silly scrap of red carpet at check-in that to be fair does seem to validate something to some of them, judging by the smiles and the glances back into the lines. The other people are pushed onto the plane in a scrum of unintelligible “groups” to struggle against one another for the limited resources of space to sit, or to store giant amounts of luggage they are forced to carry to avoid usurious fees. The fee has nothing much to do with the airline’s biggest cost, fuel, as the weight is the same in or under the plane. The fee just is there. It’s a kind of modern icon, in other places called disingenuously a “convenience fee,” a fee you pay to buy something else.

On the plane everyone speaks in a bully’s (that word again) passive-aggressive verbiage. Sit down or we won’t take off, and it’ll be your fault, and God help you if the other flyers turn on you. You can’t congregate near the restrooms, even though there is only a tiny space anyway, because supposedly 13 years ago that’s what the 9/11 hijackers did. You are not passengers, or customers. You are all potential terrorists and will be treated as such. Here’s half a Diet Coke as a reward for being compliant.


[Note: Section headings added by me] [Full Essay]

Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during the Iraqi reconstruction in his first book, “We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People”. A TomDispatch regular, he writes about current events at his blog, We Meant Well. His latest book is “Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent”.

There are certain people in the USA who might view his commentary as “anti-American” (but as he was in federal service [U.S. State Department] for 24 years, he can’t be all that anti-American). The people waving away this commentary as “anti-American” will likely have never been abroad; will likely have never seen anything else; will likely have never realized that the other rich countries of the world seem able to do a lot of things a lot better than the USA can, at this late date. Why? I ask.

The author’s first words above: “You travel a bit, and you wonder what happened.”  People say that the USA is the most powerful and richest country in the history of the world, and it has been so for something approaching a century. What happened?

bookmark_borderPost-239: [My Korean Essay] Mistakes by Foreigners in Korea

Posted on by Peter
Our teacher’s usual whirlwind style whirled on as she handed out papers filled with small boxes, and let me try to approximate by using the written word what her speaking style feels like to listen to by which I mean lots of words without many breaks and accordingly you can hardly keep the logical flow of what’s going on and thus it gets confusing whereupon despite the strain you may feel somehow you’ve got to keep up since walking out and leaving the room is not possible and so when all is said and done you’ve got to figure something out. See what I mean? Hah. (If you read it quickly you can get some idea of what the class tends to feel like to me). But I digress.

There I was with my two sheets of paper full of boxes on them, puzzled. Han Teacher starts talking something about mistakes foreigners make in Korea, but as it sounds a bit to me like the previous paragraph may sound to you, I figure out what’s going on more through logical deduction than true understanding of the fine points of the instructions. We were to write about our own experiences making (humorous) mistakes in Korea.

In each box, there could only be one Korean character, or a space, so we were limited to a certain number of characters, 400 to be precise (closer to 300 if counting spaces). It was implied that we had to more-or-less fill in all the boxes and be done with it. Not less, not more.

Here is my essay in Korean (after corrections) and then a translation into English.

한국에서 했던 실수에 대한 글
한국에 있는 외국인들은 실수가 많다고 합니다. 저도 실수를 해본 적있습니다. 여기에 제가 했던 실수에 대해 성명하겠습니다.

먼저, 미국에서는 우리가 보통 집에 들어가면 신발을 벗지 않습니다. 하지만 한국에서는 한국인들이 항상 신발을 벗는 것 같습니다. 그래서 저는 실수를 했습니다.  제가 신발을 벗지않고 집에 들어갔습니다. 저는 한국인들은 왜 이렇게 신발에 대해서 조심하라고 궁금했습니다.

다 른 실수도 했습니다. 이전에 한국말을 잘 못했습니다. 문법을 잘 몰라서 재미있는 실수를 했습니다. 저는 “발표를 잘 할거예요” (영어로: “You will do well”) 말하고싶었지만, 저는 한국 문법을  잘 몰랐기때문에  “잘 거예요!”라고  이야기했습니다 (영어로: “You will sleep”!). 이런  재미있는 실수를 하고 지금까지 그 실수를 기억합니다.


A translation into English is below:

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An Essay About Mistakes Made in Korea
It is said that foreigners who are in Korea make many mistakes. I, too, have the experience of making mistakes. I will explain about mistakes I have made.

Firstly, in the USA we usually don’t take off our shoes when going into a house. However, in Korea it seems to me that Koreans always take off their shoes and so I have made this mistake. I didn’t take off my shoes when I entered a house. I wondered why Koreans care so much about taking off shoes all the time like that.

There is another mistake I have made. In the past, I didn’t know Korean well. As I didn’t know Korean grammar well, I made certain funny grammar mistakes. I tried to say to another student, “Tomorrow you will do well [on your presentation]” (“내일 잘 할거예요”) but because I didn’t yet know grammar well, I actually said “Tomorrow you will sleep”! (“내일잘 거예요”). This was a funny mistake so even now I remember that one.

Postscript: “You will do well” and “You will sleep” sound very similar. Trust me on this. The other student didn’t know Korean well, either, of course, and responded with a vigorous “Yes, I will sleep!!” (네, 잘 거예요!”). How about that! It’s a good thing no Koreans were around.

bookmark_borderPost-238: Back to Sailing the Seven Seas

Posted on by Peter

I am led to post the song in #13 again, “Sail the Seven Seas”, also called “Rocking Chair” by “Jack the Lad” from England.

I do like this song. In many ways it is a very traditional English folk song, but below you will hear a 1970s rock kind of style (thus “folk rock”).

The song’s narrator is an old man, looking back wistfully on his own life. He compares it to his own grandfather’s life. The narration of the song weaves in and out between the present day and two sorts of memory: (1) The narrator speaking in the present day (as an old man); (2a) Entering the narrator’s memory of his own life (life review); (2b) Entering the narrator’s memory of his grandfather’s life.

Although recorded forty years ago, its message is relevant to really any time. The category to which I assign it is “Purpose of Life“. Why? Listen and read the lyrics, below. You’ll see. (According to Google, in 2013-2014, these lyrics can be found nowhere but here. Transcribed by me).
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When I was teaching English more regularly, I tried to get my most advanced students to think in this sort of way. I once told one group that every essay is, can be, should be, important, no matter how trivial it may seem.

I told them this: “Every essay you will ever write is really an answer the same question,‘Why are humans on this planet?‘” I admit this may sound…uh, pretentious, but it  helped some of them. Understand, the standard attitude was all essays were “punitive”, mini-punishments to  endure. Write as boringly as possible; in an inane “cookie cutter” style; “run out the clock”. This re-conceptualization was appealing to the bright kids. The “Purpose of Life” is an open question, which is why it is exciting: They (we) have the power in hand to make of it what they (we) want.
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Painting by James Williamson

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“Wanderer in the Fog” by Caspar Friedrich [1818]

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Recording of “Seven Seas” (Rocking Chair):

“The Seven Seas” (Rocking Chair) Lyrics
By Jack the Lad / 1975

Sitting by the fire
In an old rocking chair
Like my grandaddy taught me to do
Listening intently
To the words he had to tell me
Because in my mind
I knew they were true
He said he’d sailed the seven seas
In ships, with tall masted sails
And he’d ridden, from London to Leeds
In one day-!

[Lyrics Continue]

[Get up!]

I took a walk  to pass the time
I discovered many things
Things that I had to force myself to do
Like study and find a job
Take a wife, feed my kids
And I did them, as I thought they were new

But I never sailed the seven seas
In ships, with tall masted sails
I never rode from London to Leeds
In one day~!

As I’ve walked, there passed the time
I’ve collected many assets
Folks say that I’m “successful as can be”
But my grandaddy died
Without a penny to his name
He was a damn sight more successful than me

Because he’d sailed the seven seas
In ships, with tall masted sails
He’d ridden from London to Leeds
In one day

[Fiddle]

And now I’m sitting by the fire
In that old rocking chair
And I’m dreaming of the time around now
I’m searching for a yarn
To tell my own grandson
And I’m wishing to God that time would face about

So I could sail the seven seas
In ships with tall masted sails
And ride from London to Leeds

Sail the seven seas
In ships, with tall masted sails
And ride from London to Leeds
In one — day~!


(Jack the Lad was a 1970s group composed of Rod Clements, Simon Cowe, Ray Laidlaw, Billy Mitchell, Phil Murray, Ian ‘Walter’ Fairbairn.)

bookmark_borderPost-237: [Scene from Korean Class] Famous Person from Kenya: Obama

Posted on by Peter
The tedium of our Korean reading class was broken for a spell on Tuesday September 30th.

I will, below, do my utmost to reliably re-create (in translation) the dialogue, as it happened:

Cast of Characters
Nine Students Present (born between 1985 and 1994): Seven Chinese [two absent during the below episode], one Singaporean, one Russian (Siberian ancestry) [absent], three White-Americans. (Those absent this lesson have a habit of disappearing during reading class.) Two of the present Chinese and one American (not me) are featured in this episode.

  • [Featured Students]
  • D.D. : Chinese Female (from somewhere around Shanghai) born circa 1992
  • J.R. : Chinese Female (from near Xian) born circa 1991
  • L.A. : American Male (from Texas) born 1985

One Korean Teacher (born 1987, I’m told): She is from Gyeongsang Province, the region that produced the generals who ruled South Korea from 1961 through the early 1990s. (Sidebar: I am proud to say that I was the one who figured out her region of origin. It so happened that her Seoul Accent veneer at times slipped away when she got annoyed at students, and Gyeongsang shone through. I later asked her if she was from that province, and she confirmed it). A graduate of Ewha University, the number-one women’s university in South Korea. She teaches our class reading.

We sat in a kind of modified semi-circle, with the teacher at the center, and the white board behind her.

Episode 1: In Which the “Obama Origin” Question is Discussed (Yet Again)
One of our reading passages dealt with Kenya. It talked about safaris; wild animals; coffee. The main comprehension questions were knocked out without much difficulty. Then this:

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Translated from Korean by me. Transcribed from my memory shortly after it happened. Grammar mistakes by students omitted.

Teacher: Alright, class. How about famous people from Kenya? Do we know anyone famous from Kenya?
D.D. (Chinese): Obama! Obama is, uhh —
Teacher: Ah, Obama. [quizzically] Was he born in Kenya? [Pause] Where was Obama born?
[Indistinct noises as people whisper things or make inaudible comments]
D.D. (Chinese): Isn’t he from Kenya?
J.R. (Chinese): [eagerly] No, it’s Indonesia! He has–
Others: Huh? / Yes! / No, no. / What? / But…! / [etc.]
Teacher: Let’s ask the American students. How about you, L: Where is Obama from?
L. (American): He was born in the USA.
Teacher: Right, okay, but Obama’s parents were born in Kenya, right?
L.: Actually, his mother was born in the USA and his father was born in Kenya.
Teacher: Oh, is that right? [Wide eyed]. Really? So it’s not both parents. Huh.
[Murmurs of agreement from others]
L.: [Chuckling] Some Americans who don’t like Obama say that he was born in Kenya.
Teacher: I see...
[Silence]

And so it happened. Our prestigious-university-educated teacher apparently believed that Obama was the son of two Kenyans. As  I told L. later, this was remarkable: She is highly intelligent, as she was accepted to Ewha (requiring test scores in the top 5% or so) but intellectual curiosity is something else all together. All these years of Obama in the news, and our teacher has apparently been under a misapprehension about this most basic of facts. This means that (1) our teacher is either particularly intellectually incurious [from her unimaginative teaching style, I’d say “yes” to this] or (2) “Obama as the son of two Kenyans” is a widespread belief among Koreans even at this late date.

Obama, in his heyday, was hugely popular across the world, both in 2008 and to a lesser extent in 2012, and South Korean was on board too. They were polled about their own preference in 2012, and South Koreans favored Obama over Romney by 7-to-1 according to a BBC poll in October 2012 (of those with any opinion. (Specifically: 57% Obama, 8% Romney, 35% No Preference.)

The experience I relate above leads me to wonder, tangentially: How much have Obama’s many fans across the world ever really known about him? I don’t know. I’m not foolish enough to try to draw any conclusions from one incident but anecdotally, I can expand it to all the Asian students in the class on that day. My impression is that five of the six East-Asians present in our class that day were at least a bit mixed up about it. Only the Singaporean, P.G., born 1988, seemed to know about Obama’s origin correctly. (There are a few Singaporeans who study here, and I am impressed by them. There is also currently one Chinese-Malaysian I know of.)

bookmark_borderPost-236: Speedy Gonzales (1962)

Posted on by Peter
“Speedy Gonzales” is a song I heard for the first time fifty-two years after it was released. I heard it on satellite radio in my uncle’s car in Connecticut, August 2014. It is based on the old cartoon of the same name.It is a lively and fun song. It would also never, ever, be allowed by today’s “gatekeepers of acceptable discourse” in the USA. No way would a major pop singer be allowed to release anything like this today. There are still plenty of acceptable cultural targets of mockery, but this one would today be verboten.

Lyrics below:
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Speedy Gonzales (1962) By Pat Boone

It was a moonlit night in old Mexico
I walked alone, between some old adobe haciendas.
Suddenly, I heard the plaintive cry of a young Mexican girl….

La-la-la! La-la-la-la-la-la-la-laaa! etc.

You better come home, Speedy Gonzales
Away from Tannery Row
Stop all of your drinkin’
With that floozie named Flo

Come on home to your adobe
And slap some mud on the wall
The roof is leakin’ like a strainer
There’s loads of roaches in the hall

La-la-la-la!

Speedy Gonzales (Speedy Gonzales)
Why don’t you come home?
Speedy Gonzales (Speedy Gonzales)
How come you leave me all alone?

Hey, Rosito, I hafta go shopping downtown for my “mudder”
She needs some tortillas and chili “paypers”

Your doggy’s gonna have a puppy
And we’re runnin’ outta coke
No enchiladas in the icebox
And the television’s broke

I saw some lipstick on your sweatshirt
I smelled some perfume in your ear
Well, if you’re gonna keep on messin’
Don’t bring your business back-a-here

Speedy Gonzales (Speedy Gonzales)
Why don’t you come home?
Speedy Gonzales (Speedy Gonzales)
How come you leave me all alone?

Hey, Rosita come quick! Down at the cantina
They’re giving green stamps with tequila!!

(Speedy Gonzalez, 1962)

bookmark_borderPost-235: [My Korean Essay] Cultural Differences in Alcohol

Posted on by Peter
At the end of the day Thursday, it came down to this, with five minutes left: “Write something about cultural differences between countries.” I like these kinds of assignments because they are “open”. This is what I came up with:

Korean Original, Written by Me [수업에서 쓴 글]
나라마다 문화가 다릅니다. 예를 들면, 한국에서는 많은 사람들이 자주 술을 마시지만 이슬람교의 나라에서 법으로 술을 마시면 안 됩니다. 기독교 국가에서는 술을 마셔도 되지만 보통 서양인들 중에서 자주 술을 마시는 사람이 적습니다.

Translation into English
Every nation’s culture is different. One example is that in Korea, lots of people drink alcohol frequently, but in Islamic countries drinking alcohol is not allowed by law. In Christian countries, people may drink alcohol, but in general there are few Westerners who frequently drink.

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Comment on My Argument:
Forgive my inexact argumentation. Writing anything coherent in this language, in three minutes, is hard enough!

 What I meant is this:
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Regular alcohol consumption, while it exists in the USA, is culturally discouraged, whereas in Korea it is rather culturally encouraged and in Korea regular drinking is common. The Korea Times reported a few years ago that72% of Korean men drink alcohol every day. Another report says that 9.5 million bottles of beer and 9 million bottles of soju (an awful drink similar to vodka) are consumed every day, in a country of only forty-some-million adults.

Comment on Mistakes / Teacher’s Corrections:
I’ve reached the point where I can crank out something like this consistently, steadily, but slowly, and inevitably with mistakes. In this case, Han Teacher corrected two mistakes. One was a small grammar point [마시도–>마셔도]; the other one was replacing the phrasing I used for “in Christian countries” [그리스도의 나라 –> 기독교 국가]. I was curious about why she suggested that other phrase. This may be a case of “it just sounds right”. Then I asked Ol’ Mr. Google: My phrase only appears on nine [9] pages; her phrase, 179,000! That’s why she’s the teacher. (She is active and fun in class but has a tendency to speak too quickly for me to follow at times. She has told us several times that she likes drinking alcohol, but now that she’s married with a baby she seldom does anymore. This is the kind of sidetrack that an American teacher would be much less willing to go down in front of students [see above].)

bookmark_borderPost-234: Asian Games 2014

Posted on by Peter
Thursday, September 18th 9:30 PM
Sauntering down the street in Incheon, I hear a raucous noise emanating from across the way. Food and drink. Seafood. Oh, okay. Wait. I’ve walked along here dozens of times. This restaurant has never been like that. On a Thursday? I detoured a few steps to peer in. Wouldn’t you have done the same? Yes; packed. Hmm. A mystery, but not for long: THAILAND. On one jacket; and another; on all their jackets. Mystery solved. They were athletes and coaches.
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And so began the “Asian Games” for me (I’d never heard of them, either; a kind of Asia-only Olympics) and are being held in Incheon, South Korea, the very city I am in as I write these words.

It is, actually, exciting to have 10,000 athletes from across Asia show up along with a substantial number of fans and hangers-on. Suddenly Incheon feels multicultural. There seems to be a rule that athletes must wear their team jackets anywhere they go. I was able to thus identify others on Friday night, and more on Sunday. Two with BANGLADESH emblazoned on their jackets were trying to finagle a taxi driver into going where they want to go,

The tickets are very cheap, at under $10 for most events, so I hope I can go to one or more. Interestingly, one of the sports at the Asian Games is baseball. One I was thinking about seeing — this is not a joke — was Pakistan versus Hong Kong. Yes, they have fielded baseball teams. China has also fielded a baseball team. These kinds of teams will all be clobbered by Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Other big news is that the North Korean delegation is here and is competing. Oh, and today I learned that Palestine has an official team (even without an official country) while Israel has been banned from the Games for decades.

bookmark_borderPost-233: Scotland Defeats Secession / Or, Another Notch in 1,600-Year Intra-British Rivalry

Posted on by Peter
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Result of Scotland Referendum on Secession from the UK, September 18 2014 [Source]

Scotland defeated secession; turnout was near 90% in most districts; unsurprisingly, the strongest “union” areas were those that voted most highly for the Conservative Party (maps of 2011 results).

I’m still trying to figure it out. Although nobody in the British press would ever discuss this without a hysterical tone, I still want to know how much “blood and soil” feeling actually animated the secessionists. Of the 45% who voted for independence, a lot of reasons were floating around but the “blood and soil” thing, it must’ve been high on the list. Would we imagine 45% of Scots were zealous supporters of the political program of Scottish National Party?

I’m actually thinking this: Both sides had very big undercurrents of “blood and soil feeling” animating their campaigns, all else notwithstanding, but conflicting visions thereof.

The British Isles’ 1,600-years-running Celtic vs. Germanic rivalry may be the key to understanding it.

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Germanic tribes invaded a weakened, post-Roman Britain in the 400s AD. (Famously, one tribe, called the Angles, lent its name to what became “England”.) The local Celts were pushed out of most of what became England, but held out strongly in the highlands of Scotland and Wales, and a kind of “meta-cultural Cold War” set in, thawing for centuries. The conflict has taken many different permutations. The whole Catholic vs. Protestant affair is a big, easily-identifiable one (my impression is that strongly-identified Protestants in Scotland will be strong unionists [as much as White American Southerners are Republican today] and Scotland’s Catholics more heavily secessionists, though Scotland is only 15% Catholic). Maybe the Scottish independence movement of recent years has represented an expression of the Celtic spirit. Maybe Scots voting for left-wing parties like Labour and the SNP [combined for 77% of the vote in 2011] may be also be a proxy for that kind of ethnic identity, as it was so long in the USA (and still is).

So to the extent it was an emotion-based vote, it may have been something like this: “Do you see Scotland as being best fit in the Anglo-Germanic World, or in the Celtic World?”

Some might accuse me of fanciful, romantic thinking; as if anything that happened 1,500 years ago could still matter! Hey, there are other examples, easy to see, and if you bother to look you’ll see them all over, in fact. One example: the eastern/northern border of the Roman Empire 2,000 years go aligns almost precisely to the Latin-Germanic linguistic/cultural boundary today.

Previous posts about Scotland:
#228 Scottish Independence
#229 Scotland’s Secession Vote / Reminiscences of a Scottish Friend
#232 Secession, In Principle

bookmark_borderPost-232: Secession, In Principle

Posted on by Peter
For many complex reasons, a lot of Scots will vote “Yes” and a lot’ll vote “No” on secession tomorrow (Sept. 18th). (See previously: post-228, Scottish Independence, and post-229, Scotland’s Secession and Reminiscences of a Scottish Friend.)

I am led to step back from the passions of this particular secession crisis and think about the principle at hand.

Imagine that you support secession, in principle. “If a group of people within a specific region of a larger state wants independence, it is their sacred right to pursue and achieve it.” Something like that. (Or, more eloquently, “[I]n the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.”)

It is tempting to support this principle. Americans honor the words of 1776, which seem to endorse it, 1861-65 notwithstanding. The problem is, things get very complicated, very quickly. “Where does it end?”

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Say Scotland secedes from the UK. Then, a few years later, a group of disgruntled Western Scots have had enough of the tyrants in Edinburgh and whip up a new secession movement. Lacking the will to use force, Edinburgh allows them to go. A free and independent West Scotland is born, takes its seat in the UN, and so on. So Scotland splits in two. Soon, the Scottish Highlanders, likewise, decide that the lowland Scots are a gang of mismanaging bureaucrats and they, too, secede. “Scotland” has become three independent nations. And so on.

What would be the acceptable number of “nation states” within the territory of today’s Scotland?

More plausibly, should Spain split into six minor states, as its various (active) secessionists want?

Here is a map I find at the Daily Mail, a British tabloid newspaper that vociferously opposes Scottish secession. (I haven’t looked at all their newspapers, but it seems the Guardian supports Scottish secession, perhaps simply because the ruling SNP is seen as far left; this strikes me as petty.)
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They compare it to this map of Europe in the mid-1300s (not long after “Braveheart” was set [see post-228]:
Picture

If secession is allowed, encouraged, and essentially unrestrained, wouldn’t an area wind up, in the end, under the late Holy Roman Empire model (a loose, pathetically loose, union of hundreds of statelets in Central Europe)?

Imagine if the current EU, with its 28 states and 500 million people, devolved into, say, 1,000 totally-independent statelets of each around 500,000 people, all under the EU banner and the system more-or-less as it is today. Would this be bad? It would certainly make Europe much weaker. The belief now, of course, especially in Europe, is that we Westerners are past the point of needing a strong state, anyway. What are you, a fascist? Until you do need one. Then “fascists” might come back in vogue. It may, then, be too late. One after another, the statelets of this hypothetical Europe fall, by force of arms or otherwise, to a rising power from the south or east, that doesn’t put with all that.

bookmark_borderPost-231: [My Korean Essay] The Internet’s Pros and Cons

Posted on by Peter
Here is an essay I wrote in Korean class (with the teacher’s corrections). My English translation is below.

(Note: In these kinds of essay I write in Korean, I consciously try to copy the writing style of a Korean student of 7th-9th grades, of whom I’ve taught many and of whose essays (in English) I’ve read very many. I figure that copying their style can smooth things over as I attempt to write in a language that is notoriously difficult for us. / In other words, if a student wrote the below in English, I would have certain criticisms of it, but… / I put myself at your mercy!)

인터넷의 장점/단점[2014년9월]
인터넷을 사용하는 사람이 재미있게 시간을 지낼 수 있지만  단점도 있습니다.

첫 번째, 인터넷의 단점에 대해서  이야기하고 싶습니다. 인터넷에 뉴스, 게임, SNS, 등 정말 많습니다. 그래서 사람이 컴퓨터를 켜자마자 여러 웹사이트를 확인 하려면 시간이 많이 필요합니다. 날마다 인터넷을 많이 사용하는 사람은 친구를 직접 만날 수 없습니다. 인터넷을 하기만 하는  사람 중에 성격이 나쁜 산밤이 있습니다.

그렇지만 인터넷에 대해서 좋은 점도 있어서 여기부터 장점에 대해서  이야하고 싶습니다. 인터넷에서는 게임을 즐겁게 할 수 있습니다. 예를 들면 스타크래프트를 하고 싶으면 인터넷이 필요합니다. 게임 외에로 뉴스를 아주 쉽게  볼 수 있습니다. 또  페이스북이나 카카오톡을 하기 위해서 인터넷을 자주 사용합니다.

인터넷이 없으면 우리 생활은 많이 불편해질 겁니다. 그렇지만, 인터넷은 장점도 있고 단점도 있기 때문에 잘 사용해야 합니다. [끝]


English Translation:

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Internet Pros and Cons [Written: September 2014; translated from Korean original]
People who use the Internet can spend their days enjoyably, but there are also some drawbacks.

Firstly, I want to discuss a negative thing about the Internet. On the Internet, there are really a lot of news sites, games, and “social networking sites” [acronym in Korean: SNS]. Therefore, as soon as a person turns on the computer, he or she checks various websites and this take up a lot of time. Those who use the Internet very frequently won’t have the chance to meet friends face to face. Among those who are always on the Internet, many have bad personalities.

Nevertheless, there are also good points about the Internet and now I want to discuss one. On the Internet, we can enjoy playing games. For example, if a person wants to play “Starcraft”, he will need the Internet. Besides games, it is also very easy to read the news. In order to use Facebook or Kakao Talk [a Korean instant messenger program] we also use the Internet frequently.

Without the Internet, our daily lives will be (sic) much less comfortable. Be that as it may, because the Internet has both pros and cons, we should use it wisely. [End of Essay]


And the originals:
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bookmark_borderPost-230: American Imprisoned in North Korea was an Illegal English Teacher

Posted on by Peter
One of the Americans currently in North Korea was found guilty this week. His name is Matthew Miller.
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Matthew Miller, American sentenced to prison in North Korea for spying.

I first heard the name Matthew Miller in April 2014 (when I was in the USA). I remember the official North Korean press release being terse and cryptic…
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Of course, NK official press releases are, usually, terse and cryptic. (But not always. They rev up the engines and soar to the heights of bombast when discoursing on the subject of the perfidious, nefarious eternal enemy, Yankee Imperialism. Flowery language is also used to mock the “South Korean puppet government” [they often use quotation marks around “government”]. See for yourself; all the NK official daily press releases are here in English: KCNA. [The site is blocked under the anti-sedition law in South Korea. I don’t blame them; if you’re gonna have an anti-sedition law, that site’d have to be the first to be banned].)

I now read the following from NKNews.org:

Matthew Miller grew up in the Californian town of Bakersfield, the son of petroleum engineers, and first visited Korea four years ago to stay with a brother stationed with the US Air Force where he found work teaching English.

Miller is reported to be 24 years old. If he was working as a paid English teacher at age 20, he was almost certainly illegal. A prerequisite for even the most basic, bottom-of-the-barrel English-teaching job in South Korea is a college degree. If he didn’t have one, he could never have gotten a work visa (they are strict about his). He was illegal.

Some of the newspapers and TV news in South Korea occasionally run stories vilifying “illegal English teachers” as a menace to Korean society. I wonder what they would do if they figure out Miller was…one of those?

bookmark_borderPost-229: Scotland’s Secession Vote / Reminiscences of a Scottish Friend

Posted on by Peter
(This follows on from post-228: “Scottish Independence”).

Three days till the Scotland vote on secession from the UK.

I’ve known one true Scotsman in my life (and it’s no fallacy). Back in the interesting years of 2011-2012. I knew one who worked in a nearby institute to mine. His name was R.W. and he was truly interesting to talk to, even down to his dramatic last day in Korea, when fortune would have it that I was with him almost to the end.

I’ve lost contact with R.W., but all the same I’m quite sure of two things:

  • He’ll support union,
  • He’ll have had frequent arguments against secessionists about this issue, often involving alcohol.


This is the kind of thinker R.W. was: I imagine him reflecting on the “Scotland secession referendum” by going on about it being a sign of the UK’s long-running decline: The UK was the “global superpower” in 1914. By 2014, a short century later, it’s lost it all and reached a point of such weakness that the UK itself may dissolve.

Here are some pictures of “pro-secession” rallies (“Yes”) supporters (also more R.W. reminiscences below):

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Pro-Secession Demonstration, Glasgow, September 14th, 2014 [Source]

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As I put pen to paper here (so to speak), more comes back to me. I do remember that R.W. addressed the secession issue directly, once, after I brought it up. He spoke negatively about the left-wing Scottish National Party and its leader, whom he may have called a “communist”.
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(The “oddest/cleverest demonstration sign” award goes to the boy in the middle, below:)
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R.W. spoke with a classy “British” accent (nothing of the thick Scottish accent), and was a “Tory” supporter, a fact for which he was mocked by M.G., a coworker from England. According to M.G., himself quite left-wing, the Tory Party had almost no supporters in Scotland. [M.G. has this very year married his longtime girlfriend E.R. back in the UK..]

Sunday also had pro-Union demonstrations. Here is one in Edinburgh, led by the Protestant Orange Order:
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Pro-Union “Orange Order” Rally, September 13, 2014 [Source]

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Americans who know the Orange Order will remember it from Northern Ireland. It is a Protestant fraternal order, whose marches in Belfast and so on have often “incited” riots by Irish-Catholics.

Speaking of Northern Ireland, another article today says that police fear street fighting during and after the vote so much that they are deploying heavily. This is inevitably reminiscent of decades past in Northern Ireland, though also of the hallowed tradition of British soccer rioting. (Much of the soccer rioting was ‘nationalistic’, split along ethnic/religion lines, I’m told: Most famously Glasgow’s Rangers [Protestant] vs. Celtic [Catholic] football clubs.)
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There is an American in my Korean class, L., from Texas. I asked him about the Scotland secession vote. He apparently hadn’t heard of it, which surprised me. He then started talking about the possibility of Texas secession. He says some people in Texas talk seriously about it but he is not for it at all “unless things got really bad with the USA”.

Maybe this is why the Scotland secession vote interests me: It may be a possibility down the road (again) in the USA.

bookmark_borderPost-228: Scottish Independence

Posted on by Peter
It seems that Scottish independence may be at hand, and in time for the 20th anniversary of the filming of “Braveheart”.

As I have no reason to support or oppose it, I look on next week’s vote with indifference but also curiosity.

On first thought, we might think that the “hard core of secessionism” would be “right-wing nationalist feeling”. We might think that the vote is a sign that “blood and soil patriotic sentiment” is still alive among Europeans (despite its being mostly faux-pas for many decades now).
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From what I understand,though, the Scottish National Party (SNP), behind secession, is  a social democratic party, leading us to reject the above hypothesis.

What, then?
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The most pro-Scottish-Independence movie ever made (filmed in mid and late 1994 and released in spring 1995)

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The SNP is on the left, even of British politics, I understand, and completely rejects “blood and soil” thinking. Its policies are actively against that strand of political thought.

Right. So then. These 40%+ (or maybe over 50%) who are expected to vote “Yes” in the SNP’s secession referendum: What is their motivation? Pro-social-democratic politics? Huh? Then why not just stay in the UK?
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As I keep thinking about it, I come up with this: Might people vote for a party for reasons completely at odds with what that party believes? I think many do this in the USA. In other words, maybe lots of Scots were influenced by “Braveheart“, after all, to be implicit “Scottish nationalists” today yet they exist in a climate, today, in which “blood and soil nationalism” in the West is culturally relegated to something like the place devil worship would’ve had in the Middle Ages. The left-wing SNP and its drive for secession/independence allows people to express implicit “blood and soil” feeling without….stepping outside the bounds of social respectability.

About “Braveheart” specifically. I wondered how many of the voters in Scotland were young enough at the time to have been influenced by it as youth. This is what I come up with: Around 1.6 million of Scottish voters (37% of the voting pool)* were born after 1972, which means they were between ages 0 and 23 when Braveheart came out, young enough to have been profoundly moved/influenced by the movie during their youth if they saw it when it came out, or later on VHS, DVD, TV, etc., while still youth. Of course, some may never have seen it. Some would’ve seen it only much later, as full adults, so it may have made less of an impression. Others will not even be Scottish by ancestry (maybe of English ancestry living in Scotland [see here], and those of non-European ancestry outright). Of the hypothetical Scots who saw Braveheart in their youth and may have been influenced towards “implicit Scottish nationalism”, alas we’re probably only talking about one or two out of ten voters. This still may be enough to swing the referendum’s outcome, though.


(* – I calculate this as follows: Scotland has 5.3 million people, of whom around 1 million are under 18 or non-citizens. Of the 4.3 million voters, the average age is 41.5, meaning around 2.6 million on each side of that age. From the younger half, deduct the 1.0 million who are under-18 and foreigners, equals 1.6 million age 18-41.5).

(Note: There is a follow-on post to this one in post-229, “Scotland’s Secession Vote / Reminiscences of a Scottish Friend”).