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Home › Forums › Short Online Seminars › Two Koreas, Fall 2019 › Session 5 - November 12, South Korea Today
Maria Blake.
Len KriegerHere are some of my takeaways and things I found interesting from week 5's zoom session.
Thought it was awkward and a liability that some companies require mandatory corporate drinking.
SK lack of hard currency had to close account, but still owed money IMF loaned money ,but had demands really helped wall street American companies and they bought out SK companies. The SK people came together deposited money or what they had in an attempt to save the country. In 1997 there was paranoia because of imports trade wars between Japan and SK no Japanese beer had different combo of problems really bad
Mixed children of Korean treatment varies in schools and society. Discrimination can happen though in society due to hierarchy depending on where family is from if they are mixed. Men have to serve in Korean military even if half Korean.
Double eyelid surgery is to look a certain way, v-line shaping , remove freckles pimples. There is discrimination light skin vs dark skin. Korean people encourage and promote the idea of dressing up more, if you aren’t dressed well don’t get treated well
Pro gaming is an easy way to make money in Korea. Korea is way ahead of curve in screen addiction, Video gaming is huge business in korea superfast internet speeds 5g before the wes had it.
Billie JohnsonWow, I had no idea how much pressure is on these young stars. Between the intense training, fanatic fans, and societal pressures it's not a surprise that these unfortunate events have taken place. This young woman was subject to online bullying and already attempted suicide once before being successful. Do you know of any measures being put in place to help? Seems like the group dynamic is still relatively new when the US had NSYNC and Backstreet Boys were popular 20 years ago...we could go back even more than that.
Billie JohnsonIsn't it something how that issue crosses so many racial boundaries? I found this article with some alarming information:
I also found this article about skin bleaching in Africa which has so many harmful side effects but colorism is still huge today.
I know this isn't unique to Korea and Africa, but isn't it amazing how beauty standards are pushing people to take these drastic measures?
Billie JohnsonHonestly, when I have to get up and go to work every day I am in a state of shock initially. It is great that hours are being cut back, but I am curious if there is a worker shortage or something. I know there is a lot of talk about implementing a 4 day work week which would help local economies big time. We need to evolve in the US as well with flex schedules etc. I found it interesting that the perks of extra time were seen almost immediately such as:
However, the work still needs to be done so while there are mandates in place requiring people not work a certain amount of hours people are completing work offline. This isn't anything foreign to the lives of teachers. I think what really needs to be kept in the minds of employers is balance and that the workplace needs to evolve.
Maria BlakeThe article on “Gender, Globalization and Aesthetic Surgery in South Korea” brought up the critical issue of gender stereotypes that exist in South Korea due to the entrenched effects of patriarchal systems of beauty and women’s role in society. The article combined western ideologies with those of eastern origin in order to make an argument about the conditions of women currently in South Korea and the call for women to take up agency through their voice and movements. The latter subject is more elaborated in a different article, though, since this article focuses more on the reality of the cosmetic surgery in South Korea and the reasons for its existence and popularity among both women and men.
The western ideology that is interpreting the current practice of cosmetic surgery among people in South Korea consists in that of the Foucauldian perspective, which assumes that people are “subjects not of [themselves] but of discourses,” which in our case it will be that of the discourse of beauty, what the culture considers to be the acceptable and desirable norm of beauty, to which some people are pressured to conform to. The eastern ideology used to interpret the conformism in society is that of Neo-Confucian ethics, which does not leave space for individual difference, since according to this ideology, “unity of the whole is more important than the individuality of the one, producing beauty as a new requirement of decorum for women.” This kind of culture and discourse the author calls it “a misogynistic beauty culture.” The writer, also, speaks of this culture of beauty as one that depicts the norms for beauty that make a face “lucky,” “best,”, or “right.” Interestingly, the author spoke about the “right” face in terms of marriage and employment, including men in the practice, since although 30% of women were recorded as having done invasive cosmetic treatment between the ages of 20-50 years old, there were also 44% rise in male college students performing the same procedures.
Finally, although the emphasis in the article is on the practices of cosmetic surgery in South Korea, the author leaves the reader with a vision of transformative change that will happen when women begin to gain agency through their voice.
Maria BlakeJeon Bora is a photographer artist who embarked on a campaign called “escape the corset movement,” which allowed women in South Korea to gain a voice of their own so as to reclaim their life and happiness. Bora started this movement as a result of the detrimental effects that she realized were seeping through the fabric of the Korean culture and destroying the self-image and self-confidence of women pressured to conform to an ideal that is perfect leaving little room for constructive agency. The event had its revealing moments and anticipated outcome.
In particular, the photo exhibition plan involved women who were willing to change and transform their lives by committing themselves to become the example of a woman who refuses to conform to “the country’s standards of beauty and the social pressure to conform” and who is looking forward, thus, to discovering a new self, a new sense of identity that would help them feel happy with who “they really are, not how South Korean society wants them to look.” The women were asked to complete a questionnaire where they had to explain their mission statement, the reason they were embarking on this journey, that is. The artist was, then, willing to display their photos in a gallery for the public to visit and get informed. The hope was to transform not only the women’s lives by giving them agency through such an act, but also to give agency to the public and create a change with widespread effects. The portraits of those women were unconventional because they had their hair cut short and no makeup put on their faces for one portrait that would be paired up with a portrait of themselves before this change. These women experienced suffering in their transition from dependence on the norm to independence, but the ultimate benefits were worthwhile. The portraits displaying their pictures before and after with their mission statement were a declaration of their humanity and a call for other women to begin loving themselves for who they really were.
Finally, it is interesting how the artist who started this campaign said how being a judo athlete in the beginning, she escaped societal criticism due to her sport, which allowed her to have her hair short and no make up on her face. Nonetheless, when the author left the sport and entered college, she realized how intrusive such a societal ideology would be to the degree that it affected relations with her female friends, who criticized her looks and encouraged her to change her appearance so as to look more like the rest that fit into the general norm of beauty accepted in society. Bora says that she did not allow that to influence her, and as a result she was able to feel equal among boys, who liked to associate with her, unlike the other girls, who did not have the same kind of rapport with the boys in college. The article, additionally, provides examples of women who paid a price for escaping the corset by being assaulted, or losing their jobs. The general tone of the article is though positive.
Maria BlakeThis article shed light on an important issue in South Korean society that I was unfamiliar with and so would my students be. The issue is that of bullying that happens as a result of sexual harassment in school by male teachers and students, or at work and the public arena among politicians, directors, and journalists.
It is pretty shocking to hear that the #MeToo movement had to take shape as a result of secrets coming to the forefront about verbal, or physical, abuses perpetrated for years by public figures and even students. It was sad to read that the harassment at schools was used as a tool from teachers to gain control over their students’ actions since they could use their power to help a student gain access to college, or make it especially difficult for students to get access to in this “cut-throat environment of the South Korean education.” There was one specific case of “300 students and graduates who accused 18 teachers of inappropriate behavior.” I wonder what happened to them. How was the court system supporting the outcome of such cases?
Finally, my students would be interested to learn more about such issues of bullying, because it concerns their personal safety and those around them. As citizens they would have to demonstrate morals for the choices they make and the ways they influence others and help transform their own life and that of others through responsible and proactive citizenship. The #MeToo movement is a movement for respect and equality, rights and responsibilities, which are part and parcel of the role of a citizen in most countries, particularly, that of the U.S., where students would be participating as active members of society. Students are familiar with bullying, so such stories would help them empathize with others and be proactive.
Maria Blake“South Koreans Learn to Love the Other” article provided an interesting perspective on the topics of immigration and multiculturalism that are popular among scholarly circles and courses in the U.S. This subject would be interesting for my students because it refers to the ideal of diversity and how a different country, other than their own, is dealing with the same reality. There are some ideas discussed about government policies and role in support of diversity, which might elude the students’ interest, but that information among other facts is presented in terms of a problem-and-solution connection, so students can read the article in terms of identifying the relation of ideas to each other in this light.
The article, moreover, was interesting to me because it illumined a social reality in South Korea, which was unknown to me. Knowing more about this reality would help me teach literature and political realities in Korea more effectively. The problems of an “aging population and the hostility to world immigrants” are not problems in just South Korea, but also around the world, particularly, the problem with refugees due to the Syrian crisis that led many people to flee their homes in recent years and seek asylum mostly in Europe, the U.S. ,and other parts of the western world. Students can study the way South Korea deals with immigrants in comparison and contrast to that in the U.S. The article states that the government and South Korean people gradually changed their attitude towards foreigners, mostly because of the problem with the aging population, which pressured the people to conform to a new paradigm. The acts the government took to help the situation were several such as supporting media on multiculturalism, which led to the rise of the publication of articles on multiculturalism by three times more than the normal rate. Also, the support came in the manner of “tax breaks for parents,” “posters of multicultural families” in governmental places, the change of language officially in 2009 by the Ministry of Justice from the negative mixed-blood people, to multicultural people. Furthermore, it was the institution of the “Together-Day Festival” for celebrating multicultural people. Two other interesting changes were, first, how the president of South Korea, Mr. Lee, a foreign-born Korean, began addressing foreign brides as “daughters-in-law,” a more endearing term than just the term “foreign,” and second how teachers started getting training on how to deal with bullying in relation to mixed-race students that was assumingly non-existent before.
Finally, the author of the article suggests that the problems have been mostly eliminated despite the presence of criticism among academics and activists who are somehow skeptical about the influx of foreigners in South Korea, more than it used to be; from 536,000 in 2006, for example, to “2 million foreigners in 2016.” The fear is associated with assumptions that foreign people bring with them potential instances of “crime, job losses, and tax burden.” Nevertheless, the general understanding is that 60% of Koreans support multicultural society, and the president of Korea, Mr. Lee, corroborates the above by holding up to “the belief in [the possibility of ] transformation in a multicultural society.” South Koreans embrace progress through multiculturalism.
Maria BlakeGenny—
I would like to agree with you about the readings on modern South Korea and your insights about the popularity of K-Pop culture among the younger generation. With my Sophomore students, though they do not show to me what songs they listen to, some of them show their familiarity with the culture of Pop stars in South Korea, when particularly they buy lanyards with the symbols of K-Pop celebrities pictured on them. Last year, one Sophomore student of mine was unique in dressing just like a K-pop star. This became clearer to me now, after having read your post and learning more about the South Korean musical culture through this seminar. The readings, moreover, assigned during the week on South Korean history and culture bring another element about the culture of South Korea today that help students and us as educators see how critical social issues exist in any modern society, regardless of whether it is South Korea, China, Japan, or the U.S., which music usually brings to life with lyrics and musical rhythms that make the culture of each country unique and reflective of traditional values and aspirations. Thankful for your insights, which in fact made me look up this new model of music called K-pop I had little idea about, although the gangnam style song was something familiar to me before the workshop on the Two Koreas.
Maria BlakeDuane—
This short film did not make sense to me at first, but after seeing it twice it made more sense; it was possible for me to connect, that is, the missing dots between what the young girl does habitually with her art in the beginning, and when we see the girl as a high school student expressing a desire for an ideal of beauty that reflects what her parents had adopted by their example and embraced by a life lived according to it, even going to such extreme lengths of wearing this crafted ideal of beauty onto their faces. The young character has little hesitation in going about changing her face to be like her parents. What is scary about this short movie is that the beauty promoted in this dystopian society is artificial and robotic in its features and appearance, making the face look more unreal and lacking any human features and qualities that would endear the face and person in that face because of its sense of humanity. My natural reaction from watching the transformation of the human faces into artificial masks was horror and repulsion; it is ironic though how the screenwriter gives the impression that in the depicted society such facial features are considered expensive and ideal. The ultimate goal seems to be that the ideals of beauty engendered in modern society of South Korea are unnatural and should be interpreted with caution and a measure of critical insight because they can alienate the individual from the truth and an authentic existence and wellbeing.
Finally, this movie will work well in association with the readings included in this module. The resistance to the corset movement and the information about the cosmetic surgeries in South Korea highlight the real experiences of what the movie represents to the extreme. Students will get the point about standards of beauty that are extreme, and thus inhumane, and those that are standard and acceptable. Thank you for this unique and thought-provoking resource.
Maria BlakeBillie--
This was a shocking article that shook me from the innocuous belief that stars have it easy and are lucky to reach fame and popularity. Such articles are sad but they bring a sombering truth to the youth, who tend to think without consequences, or be overconfident disregarding human limitations and needs. Reading such articles can bring new critical insights and make youth wiser. It was suprising to learn though that such deaths were the result of bullying on female pop stars mostly, rather than male. In some cases, they were caused by pressures from a patriarchal system. Such ideas remind me of the articles we read in the module on South Korea.
Finally, the theme of suicide reminds me of the Japanese obsession with such ideas, particularly, during and after the WWII in literature written, and wonder whether there has been any influence from Japan on the subconscious of the South Korean people, when Korea was a colony of Japan before WWII, which explains perhaps such incidents. Samurai used to treat such acts as acts of honor. Japanese soldiers during WWII did similar acts to honor their Emperor instead of surrendering, an act of dishonor. Thank you for the insightful link.