Week 5 - Webtoons, K-sports, K-esports (August 30th)

[Crystal Hsia]

JOIN US FOR THE DISCUSSION SESSION ON TUESDAY, 8/30 AT 5PM PT:

☞ Step 1: Complete the required readings for Week 3. (You can either choose one or finish both!)

1. Dal Yong Jin, “Historiography of Korean Esports: Perspectives on Spectatorship,” in Global Esports: Transformation of Cultural Perceptions of Competitive Gaming, ed. Dal Yong Jin (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), 77-95.
2. Jaehyeon Jeong, “Webtoons Go Viral? The Globalization Processes of Korean Digital Comics,” Korea Journal 60 no. 1 (Spring 2020): 71-99.

 

​☞ Step2:  Watch the video from Prof. Jennifer Jung-Kim and post your sharing below. (We'd love to hear your aha moments of the materials!)

 

 

☞ Step3: Join us for the discussion session on Tuesday, 8/9 at 5pm PT

Zoom Info 

https://usc.zoom.us/j/93126858523?pwd=QmdscDBRV3NwSnVYTGlIMjdCdnBodz09

Meeting ID: 931 2685 8523 Passcode: 202208

 

 

[Kara Schwartz]

HI!

I have an idea that I ran by my social studies teacher who I work with in our Contemporary Asian Studies class. I would like to have the students research (and we will provide them with credible sources and/or how to retrieve credible sources) Korean Food, KPop, Korean Film and Kdrama. They will research and cite their sources. Then, they will create (using Imovie) we are an Apple school, a trailer for a cooking show, Korean Film, drama, or if they are so ambitious create their own meal from a Korean recipe and film it. They will present this to the class, and the class will ask questions. They will need to spend two class sessions researching and two creating.

More about the articles next.

Articles: I have two comments. 1. Esports is interesting in that not all students can physically participate in physical sports. There are some schools that have esports clubs in Maine. We do not have this.

2. The second article talked about the popularity of webtoons overseas. I am surprised my students have not tuned (sorry for the pun) into this yet. They love Manga and Anime from Japan, and they love Kpop and Kdrama. An Asian market just opened up here in Bangor Maine, and when I visit, I see my students buying chips from China and drinking BoBo Tea. But Webtoons is not taking off yet, and I say yet because now that I know what they are... I am going to notice this.

I am here and my curiousity is now awake https://www.webtoons.com/en/

[DupuyRoger]

My all-time favorite anime is Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's a Nickelodeon product, but if you look at all the animators and artists listed who contributed, they are mostly Korean names. Koreans are drawing and animating though I have yet to see local productions cross the oceans.  

[DupuyRoger]

So, I am thinking to create an opportunity for my students to share 1 value from their own culture that is worth sharing with the rest of the world. They would identify, explain and demonstrate this value via a short video presentation tool Adobe Spark. I would provide structure and an example from my own culture using the same tools. Each Adobe Spark video would be short (1-2 minutes). This is just me thinking out loud. Another cool method of delivery could be the Ignite/Pecha Kucha speech format. I'm open to other ideas and suggestions. In my context, again, the issue is that my students are visiting international students coming from not just South Korea, but from other countries in Asia, South America, the Middle East and Europe.

 

[KeaneJerrica]

Hey Kara! 

I really like your lesson plan idea. Giving students the opportunity to create is always powerful. I'm curious, do many of your students know how to create iMovies? If not, do you teach them? I've never thought about using that particular program, but it would be a really great tool to ulitize. 

[KeaneJerrica]

I like your ideas, Roger. Sharing of cultures and experiences always makes learning richer.

Courtney and I teach Ethnic Studies at the same school and we have been considering how to teach more about cultural and community wealth that students bring with them in every space they enter. I like the ideas shared in this post so far about having students explore their own cultural/community wealth and then have an opportunity to share those with the class.  I'm really looking forward to our discussiion today about implementing what I've learned in this course into action! 

[KeaneJerrica]

In the second article, the author analyzes the extent to which Japanese comics have "culture odorlessness" thus making them more accessible to wide audiences internationally. I agree with the argument that the author makes about the simiplicity of this explanation. Not to mention using the sense of smell, or lack thereof, to describe pop culture seems degrading in a way. It is important that we recognize the cultural wealth within media from diverse countries and to do otherwise is to demote the facsinating complexity of international pop culture like we have explored in this course. 

[GianellaSandy]

I agree with the author's point that the crowd or the audience are a vital part to a sport.  We all witnessed that world-wide when the pandemic led to empty stadiums when professional sports were being played.  Yes, people could watch at home, but there was no contaigous enthusiasm except from those who might be in the house at the time.  Large groups of people do tend to take on a personality of their own and many professional players spoke to missing the crowd's energy when playing to an empty stadium.

Another point, while esports has developed into a lucrative sport for some, it also has a dark side.  While I don't think the story of one particular Korean couple represents the entire country, neglect of their baby is a tragedy which could take place in almost any country in the West, including the US, Canada, and Great Britain.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/mar/05/korean-girl-starved-online-game

Many young people's "Job" is working their way up many levels of games for money.  Paid by other gamers to reach a certain level where the buyer then takes over.

[Kara Schwartz]

Hi Jerrica

Thank you! Yes most students know it since fir now we are an Apple school. The ones who do not know I show them.

Also, they will have to write a bit too and summarize what cultural items they learned or what they are trying to express about Korean culture in their trailer. 

 

[Kara Schwartz]

Hi Jerrica

Thank you! Yes most students know it since fir now we are an Apple school. The ones who do not know I show them.

Also, they will have to write a bit too and summarize what cultural items they learned or what they are trying to express about Korean culture in their trailer. 

 

[Courtney Caldwell]

Kara, I was also considering how Esports have created a space for students not interested in or unable to participate in physical sports to have some sort of outlet. I'm not sure if our school has a club, but I wouldn't be surprised about it. I have really noticed a rise in competitive gaming in recent years, whether it be playing or spectatorship. 

[GianellaSandy]

I don't view the popularity of Japanese Manga so much that it is not strongly associated with a particular ethnic group so much as I think many of the topics and lessons taught are universal to people all over the world.

[Courtney Caldwell]

This is a great idea - I like the idea of the use of technology but I also wonder how the tech tool is taught? Is it something easily accessible to students (free to utilize and user friendly?). I'm sure there's other methods, but just wondering how much training of the students is involved as we only have our students for one semester so even more so, time is of the essence!

[ZhangTina]

It was funny, but we had a department meeting yesterday and one of the other history teachers was asking about the concept of han, the concept of grievance, in Kdramas. One of the other teachers, who knew a little about Korean culture answerd and talked about how pervasive it was in Korean movies and brount up movies such as Parasite. However, he did not bring up the concept of heung (excitment), and I could add on to that a little with kpop and esports and webtoons. 

I loved the idea of oderlessness, and realized maybe that is one of the reasons that the charaters in the webtoons all had didfferent colord hair, so that they could be from anywhere! 

[Jeanine Alexander]

On my last post I confess my utter confusion with webtoons and K-esports. I love sports, baseball in particular, and have never been able to play any sort of esports! I realize I am very off the mark with what is popular right now and plan on trying to use some sort of webtoon or K-esport adaptation into my curriculum as a project. I think students would really enjoy completing a project in this format.

For Korean culture and the curriculum as a whole I plan to teach more about culture in my California History class, especially upon its impct within California. For US History, the interest in Korea and its impact, especially after the Korean war, will be a topic covered in class this year.

[Author]

Posts