Hunjangûi karûch'im

Material Asia: Objects, Technologies and Rethinking Success (Conference)

2011-01-15T06:17:00.003+02:00

The following conference has been announced. More information on contacts etc. to be added soon. Here's a link to the announcement in the homepage of the Society for East Asian Anthropology.

Material Asia: Objects, Technologies and Rethinking Success
August 1-5, 2011
Jeonju, Korea

A Joint Conference of the Society for East Asian Anthropology (SEAA/AAA) and the Korean Society for Cultural Anthropology

Abstracts for papers due: March 1, 2011
Registration opens: April 1, 2011

The conference assumes a broad awareness of the social effect of things in contemporary East Asian life and human responses to new technological and material possibilities: commodifications of all manner of life experiences from cultural performances and tourism to body parts, the transfer of technologies, the robotics industry and employment of robots in everyday life, expanded transnational markets in labor and brides, and the market-driven production of ideally productive, intelligent, and beautiful people. Consumption, including the literal consumption of food has assumed unprecedented forms. Local and regional responses and critiques of these possibilities are varied and often complex.

Participants are encouraged to submit proposals for sessions of 3 to 5 papers and priority will be given to those sessions that bring together presenters working in different parts of the region around a common topic.

Old titles from Korea Development Institute available as pdf

2010-03-03T09:36:00.002+02:00

I was happy to find old titles by Korea Development Institute (KDI) that have been out of print since long available as pdf files from the Institute homepage. As none of these titles is available in any Finnish library, this is very valuable indeed.

• Jones: Public Enterprise and Economic Development: the Korean case. KDI 1975.(14 MB)

• Mason et al: The Economic and Social Modernization of the Republic of Korea. Studies of the Modernization of the Republic of Korea : 1945-1975. Harvard East Asian Monographs 92, 1980. (32 MB)

• Jones and Sakong: Government, Business, and Entrepreneurship in Economic Development: The Korean Case. Studies of the Modernization of the Republic of Korea 1945-1975. Harvard East Asian Monographs 91, 1980. (25 MB)

And for those who are more comfortable with Korean and extensive use of Chinese characters, the Korean translation of the previous title:
• 존스, 司空共著: 經濟開發과 政府 및 企業家의 役割 (KDI 1981)

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Koreaneconomy ∙ academic ∙ Koreanstudies ∙ businesskeepers

Ticket diplomacy

2010-02-08T13:20:00.007+02:00

Iltalehti reports that Russia had been given the biggest number of parking tickets in Helsinki with 154. South Korea came second with 54 tickets. Russia did not pay a single ticket in 2009, South Korea paid one. However, South Korea greatly exceeds Russia in the amount of tickets per diplomat; Russia got only about 3 three per diplomat, while South Korea got nine.

The director of parking control in Helsinki Marjo Jumpponen says:

In my opinion it's immoral not to pay parking fines. That gives a bad reputation to the whole country, while they should show an example to others.

I'm happy to be back in the university after more than two years.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Korea-Finland

New set of old photographs in Flickr

2010-01-25T12:47:00.006+02:00

Until yesterday, it had been one year since I've added anything to this site. This time I added some photographs taken in various restaurants in Korea, mainly about 10 years ago when I was conducting dissertation fieldwork in Seoul. The most recent ones in the Flickr set, added already earlier, are from my latest visit to Korea in December 2006 - January 2007.

• 식당 • Restaurants set at Flickr
• Set as slideshow

서울 신림2동 1999년6월5일 • Seoul, Sillim 2-dong, June 5, 1999

왼쪽부터 주인 아주머니의 언니, 아들, 친구, 주인 아주머니. 서울 신림2동 1999년3월25일 • Seoul, Sillim 2-dong, March 25, 1999

추어탕집의 부부. 남자는 "풍"이라고 하는 병을 앓았기 때문이 일을 별로 할 수가 없어 실제 주인과 운영자는 여자였다. 폐업을 2000-2001년 사이에 했다. 서울 신림2동, 1999년11월6일 • Seoul, Sillim 2-dong, Nov 6, 1999

• 식당 • Restaurants set at Flickr
• Set as slideshow

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: restaurants ∙ photography ∙ businesskeepers ∙ people ∙ work ∙

Call for papers: NAJAKS 2010: Bridging Japan and Korea

2010-01-24T15:40:00.006+02:00

• Call for Papers (NAJAKS website)

The 8th NAJAKS Conference: Bridging Japan and Korea

August 19 -21, 2010
Helsinki, Finland

Japan and Korea have long historical relations of interaction and entanglement. However, recent history has been overshadowed by the Japanese colonial rule of Korea (1910-1945), Korea’s partition (1948) and the Korean War (1950-1953). It is only in the post-Cold War context that the attempts at the reconciliation of political, historical and cultural issues on various levels – governmental, semi-governmental, academic, civil, popular and grass-roots – have become possible in Japan and Korea. The political, social, cultural as well as other issues related to Japan and Korea are by no means peripheral or particular on the world map. On the contrary, they raise a number of critical questions concerning, for example, modernity, colonialism, post-colonialism, militarism, the nation-state, the Cold War and the post-Cold War era. The histories of Japan and Korea are entangled in complex and ironical manners not only within East Asia but also in the larger modern world order. Therefore, the studies on Japanese and Korean experiences, their interrelation, tension, conflict and attempts at reconciliation provide a vantage point to examine critical issues that are relevant for broader subjects as well.

We invite abstracts from scholars in various stages of their career and students, among others. The presentation topic does not have to be exactly on the theme. Broadly related topics are also welcomed.

Keynote Speaker is Professor Seungsook Moon, Vassar College, USA.

There is no conference fee, however, participants are responsible for their own travel costs and accommodation.

The conference consists of six sections and conveners are indicated below with e-mail addresses:

1. Social and political sciences (Antti Leppänen, antti.leppanen[a]gmail.com)
2. Cultural studies and anthropology (Mikako Iwatake, mikako.iwatake[a]helsinki.fi)
3 History (Mikako Iwatake)
4. Literature (Miika Pölkki, miika.polkki[a]helsinki.fi)
5. Linguistics (Jeong-Yong Kim, jeong-yong.kim[a]helsinki.fi)
6. Teaching Japanese and Korean languages (Jeong-Yong Kim)

Please send an abstract (500-800 words) with a brief biography or CV (maximum 1 page) in an e-mail attachment to the convener by March 10th, 2010. We will inform applicants about our decision around March 20th, 2010.

For further information, please contact Mikako Iwatake, University of Helsinki.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: academic ∙ Koreanstudies

New Flickr sets

2009-02-01T17:30:00.004+02:00

I have added three new photograph sets to my Flickr photostream, one being a collection of neighborhood grocery stores ("supermarkets") and the two others walks in Busan in late December 2006.

동네슈퍼 Neighborhood store
Collection of pics of inside and outside of neighborhood grocery stores from 1998 to 2006.

This photograph: 서울 신린2동, 1998년12월28일 • Sillim 2-dong, Seoul, Dec 28, 1998
• Set in detail
• Set as slideshow

부산 산책 2006.12.29 Busan walk
Walk in downtown Busan, beginning from the railway station, in Choryang-dong, Yeongju-dong and Bosu-dong.

This photograph: 부산 영주동 • Yeongju-dong in Busan
• Set in detail
• Set as slideshow

부산 산책 2006.12.30 Busan Walk
Walk in downtown Busan in Gondongeo Market, Nambumin-dong, Chojang-dong, Jagalchi Market, and Bosu-dong bookshop quarters.

This photograph: man tries to sell ssiregi at a restaurant but is refused.
• Set in detail
• Set as slideshow

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: photography ∙ cities ∙ urbanspace ∙ marketplaces ∙ self-employment

Homepage of the Finnish Anthropological Society opened

2009-01-07T10:46:00.003+02:00

The Finnish Anthropological Society, which has had its homepage housed for a long time under the auspices of the Dept of Social and Cultural Anthopology of the University of Helsinki, has finally its own homepage and domain at www.antropologinenseura.fi (here also in English). (There is a chance that I end up being the webmaster...)

And there is also a chance that this blog wakes up from its dormancy. Let's see.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: anthropology ∙ academic

spam of the week

2008-08-12T14:27:00.002+03:00

Normally I don't bother to open spam mails (who does), but the recent phenomenon of Finnish-language spam messages intrigued me so much that I opened one that arrived today. The sender field is appropriately forged as helpdesk(a)helsinki.fi as to look like something from the U. of Helsinki, but unfortunately the level of Finnish in the text is unlikely to attract those who otherwise might err to send their passwords by mail.

Hyvä Helsinki Internet Asiakas,

Meidän tutkimuksessa roskapostin valitukset osoittaa, että Helsingin webmail-osoite on vaarantunut ja se oli käytetty lähettää spam-viestejä Helsinki webmail-järjestelmään. Käyttäjänimesi tulee poistaa, jos ei noudata tähän viestiin täyttämällä tämä lomake ja sen on lähetettävä takaisin meille.

HELSINKI ASIAKASPALVELU LASKUTUS LOMAKE.

Etunimi:
Lähi Nimi:
Sukunimi:
E-mail osoite:
Sähköposti salasana:
Asuin Osoite:

Kunnioittavasti,
helsinki@consultant.com

Finland has not been ignored by spammers and phishers but Finnish language has, until now. Those logging in at webmail.nfrance.com still have a long way to go from machine-translated or otherwise crappily-translated messages, but don't give up. At least kunnioittavasti ("respectfully") is correct.
Or, perhaps, this is a spoof spam, fake spam, done by someone just for the heck of it.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: technicalities

Tribute to Professor Roger Janelli at Folkore Forum

2008-03-19T12:33:00.003+02:00

Professor Roger L. Janelli, scholar of folklore and anthropology of Korea, retired last year from Indiana University at Bloomington after 32 years. Folklore Forum, "a space for the free exchange of ideas on the cutting edge of folklore, folklife and ethnomusicology," honors Professor Janelli with a special online issue Folklore of East Asia (link to the archive page).

I have been very fortunate to get to know Professor Janelli early in my scholarly career, and I have benefited from his friendly advice a lot, not to say about one particular reference for a scholarship.

Here are choices from the articles with some links:

Elizabeth A. Burbach. "From the Editor-in-Chief."

Kyoim Yun. "From the Guest Editor."

ARTICLES

Adam Bronson. "Japanese Folklore Studies and History: Pre-War and Post-War Inflections."

Patricia Ann Hardwick. "‘Neither Fish nor Fowl’: Constructing Peranakan Identity in Colonial and Post-Colonial Singapore."

Hilary Finchum-Sung. "Performing the ‘Traditional’ in the South Korean Musical World."

Mack Hagood. "Liminal States: Life as an Indie Musician on Taiwan."

Sue-Je Lee Gage. "Conversation with Roger L. Janelli."

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: anthropology ∙ academic ∙ Koreanstudies

pieces of Finnish-North Korean diplomatic history

2008-02-13T09:13:00.002+02:00

The undiplomatic endeavors of North Korean diplomats have been noted in these pages before, as in the more recent case of anti-inspectorial struggle of diplomatic pouch carriers in a Finnish train one year ago. (For later developments in the case, see here and here.)
There were more severe cases in the 1970s and early 1980s, involving diplomats based here and resulting to expulsions, first for selling alcohol and drugs, and later for attempted bribery. Keijo Korhonen, a long-time official in the Foreign Ministry, professor in Political History and a short-time Foreign Minister, gives an account of the first case in his memoirs Sattumakorpraali (Accidental Lance Corporal) :

The president gave me his personal support when as a fresh Minister of Foreign Affairs in October 1976 I had to expel the ambassador of the Democratic Republic of Korea and three of his diplomats. "Prompt expulsion" was [President] Kekkonen's order. I had one North Korean stay in Finland so that the Finnish diplomat in Pyongyang would not get in trouble.
According to the police report, in their lack of money the North Koreans had been selling alcohol, morphine, heroin, and hash, which was not quite according to the letter and spirit of the Vienna Convention about diplomatic relationships. The embassy had bought 3300 bottles of vodka from Alko [the state retail] in 1976; in the garage they had a sales stock of 600-700 bottles of Russian vodka and 180,000 cigarettes. A shop manager and a radio shop owner had received alcohol for their services; a drug dealer electrician had gotten offers from them; car drivers and plumbers had been paid with alcohol. According to my suggestion, the Government made the affair public. It was so outrageous that not even the Soviet embassy had the nerve to rush to help the loyal member of the Socialist family of nations. (p. 91, translation AL)

What is actually not so flattering for Finns in this case is that it shows how alcohol has been a passable medium of exchange. In a radio program aired sometime in the 1990s about the exploits of the North Koreans in the early stages of Finno-Korean diplomatic relationships it was mentioned how the North Koreans at first used money to pay for services, but as they became short of currency and understood the usability of alcohol, they increasingly resorted to it.

In 1983, when the Finnish parliamentarian Johannes Virolainen was the chair of IPU (International Parliamentary Union), the DPRK amassador Ju Jae Han attempted to prevent the organizing of a IPU convention in Seoul by bringing him an envelope containing USD 5000. Virolainen took the money to the Foreign Ministry, and His Excellency was shown the way to the train station or airport, not sure which one.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: DPRK ∙ Korea-Finland ∙ food/alcohol

노래방에서 in karaoke (noraebang)

2007-08-20T12:31:00.000+03:00

박 사장님은 잘 놀고 남들도 즐겁게 할 줄 안다. 2001년9월15일.
Mr Pak knows how to have fun and make others have it too. Sept 15, 2001.

Nan'gok rescanned

2007-08-15T16:36:00.000+03:00

This late summer I've undertaken a rather big scanning project, supposedly taking place alongside writing a conference presentation, of my Korea photographs from 1999 and from my later visits. Among them are photos taken of Nan'gok, a hillside neighborhood in Sillim 7-dong, southern Seoul, which was leveled in 2003 to make room for an apartment block area. I have had the same photographs in display also before, but these are scanned from negatives and not from paper prints, so the picture quality is supposed to be much better. (Clicking the pictures below will open a 1024 pixel wide version of the photograph at Flickr.)

• Some pieces of Flickr photo set 난곡 2000년 Nan'gok, Seoul in 2000. Photographed on March 24, 2000.

In pictures above and below, the ongoing apartment house construction on the top of the hill in Sillim 10-dong is visible.

Alternatively, see the pictures as a slideshow.

• Nan'gok in September 2001: only some of the houses had been demolished, but most of the people had already left. Photographed on September 14, 2001.

• The 2001 pictures as a slideshow

• 난곡 2002 Nan'gok. Photographed on June 13, 2002.

이 슬라이드를 스캔하다 보니 아이들이 있더군. 2002년6월13일. Only after scannin this slide I saw the two children in it. June 13, 2002.

호남 상회. 같은 가게의 2000년의 사진도 참조. 2002년6월13일. Honam sanghoe. A disproportionally large part of the population in this kind of neighborhoods are from the southwestern Chôlla (Jeolla) province, known also as Honam, so such a name for a shop is no surprise. See the same shop in 2000. June 13, 2002.

"살림이 있으니 6월20일전에는 아무도 들어가지 마세요." 2002년6월13일. "People live here, so please do not enter before June 20." June 13, 2002.

서신 쌀, 연탄. 2002년6월13일. Rice and coal briquet shop. June 13, 2002.

2002년 여름에 남아 있는 마지막 주민들은 세입자들이었다. 집주인이 아니라 세 들어서 살기 때문에 보상금이 많이 안 나왔기 때문에 갈 곳이 잘 없었다. "난곡세입자다모임"이라는 단체를 만들고 자기 권리를 찾으려고 애를 썼었지만 결국 그대로 떠날 수밖에 없었다.2002년6월13일. In the summer of 2002, there were only renting tenants left in the area. They were unhappy with the meager compensation they had been rewarded, as it was unsufficient to find decent accommodation elsewhere. This is the office of the association they had formed. June 13, 2002.

난곡세입자다모임의 최 대표. 카메라를 갖고 있는 나한테 사진을 부탁하였다. 2002년6월13일. The head of the renters' association, Mr Ch'oe (Choi). June 13, 2002.

세입자다모임의 사무실에서 점심식사. 2002년6월13일. Lunch in the office of the renters' association. June 13, 2002.

공가 철거 결사 반대. 난곡세입자다모임이 걸었던 현수막. 결사까지 반대했다고 했었지만 결국은 철거를 막지는 못 했다.2002년6월13일. "Resisting the demolition with our lives" says the banner raised by the Nan'gok renters' association. June 13, 2002.

Nan'gok in December 2006:

• all my Nan'gok pictures in Flickr (tag: 난곡)

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Sillim/Gwanak ∙ neighborhood ∙ photography ∙ urbanspace ∙ stratification

Pop art meets Korean painting

2007-08-15T11:26:00.001+03:00

Mirae kyônch'al No Bo-gap sônsaeng sang (未來警察勞保甲先生象)

Hankyoreh presents a selection of paintings by Son Dong-hyeon, with contemporary popular culture motives done in traditional Korean style. Besides "Future policeman No Bo-gap" (see picture), there is for example Kwemul Kollûm sônsaeng sang and Uju chônsa Yoda sônsaeng sang among others.

For more serious topics in the same vain, painting contemporary motives in traditional ink style, see Hwamado (火魔圖, fire devil picture) paintings by Jung Jae ho. The hwama (火魔) of the paintings are fighter planes.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: art ∙ culturalhistory ∙ literature/movies

Jeong Ho-seung: Ulappa (정호승: 허허바다)

2007-07-26T11:49:00.000+03:00

허허바다
- 정 호 승

찾아가보니 찾아온 곳 없네
돌아와보니 돌아온 곳 없네
다시 떠나가보니 떠나온 곳 없네
살아도 산 것이 없고
죽어도 죽은 것이 없네
해미가 깔린 새벽녘
태풍이 지나간 허허바다에
겨자씨 한 알 떠 있네

Ulappa
- Jeong Ho-seung (Chông Ho-sûng)

Menin käymään, muttei ollut missä käydä
Palasin, muttei ollut minne palata
Lähdin taas, muttei ollut mistä lähteä
Eläessäkään ei ole elämää
eikä kuoltuakaan kuolemaa
Usvaisena aamuna
myrskyn jälkeen ulapalla
yksi sinapinsiemen

This is a translation of Jeong Ho-Seung's Hôhôbada, inspired by Kevin's (the Bighominid) post about Jang Sa-ik's use of the poem as song lyrics. Once again, cannot but say that it looks better in Finnish than in English (see Kevin's post) just as my rendering of Kim Chi'ha's Road to Seoul, but I also have to admit that I don't have much English-language poetic sense...

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: literature/movies

neighborhoodly relations

2007-06-18T15:04:00.000+03:00

[Expletive] don't leave [expletive ]your care here [expletive]. I pass this place every morning at 6.30. [...] Sillim-dong, April 21, 1999. (c) AL
This photograph reminds me that despite all the talk I've been told about the good neighborhood life, the neighborly relations have points of strain as well.

Update, August 16, 2007
Attentive commentors have paid attention to what what I had failed to notice, that actually the expletives had been added by another person to what had originally been a fairly neutral note asking not to park in that place. One line of the note is hidden below the windscreen wiper, but the last line seems to read musûn muryehan chisiyeyo ("what is this impolite act" or whatever). Or perhaps the same person who originally put up the note added the expletives later, when the note didn't produce a desired outcome?

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: neighborhood ∙ urbanspace ∙ Sillim/Gwanak

Conference: "Crossing National and Disciplinary Boundaries in Korean and Japanese Studies"

2007-06-14T12:31:00.000+03:00

Seems like a very interesting conference on June 21 in Korea University (from the Korean Studies mailing list):

"Crossing National and Disciplinary Boundaries in Korean and Japanese
Studies"
what: recent scholarship in Korean and Japanese Studies that
transgress established boundaries in interesting ways.
when: Thursday, June 21, 2007
where: Centennial Hall, Korea University
sponsors: Asiatic Research Center Korea University and The National
Research Council for Economics, Humanities, and Social Sciences
conference organizer: Henry Em, Korea University

*Program*

(10:00 - 10:45)
Opening Remarks: Choi Jang Jip, Director, Asea munje yon'guso
Welcome: Han Sung-Joo, President, Korea University
Keynote Address: Kim Uchang, Professor Emeritus, Korea University. "Crossing Boundaries: Dangers, Fears, Historical Truths"

Session I: Imperial Ideology and Colonial Korea
(10:45 - 12:30)
chair: Henry Em, Associate Professor, Dept. of Korean History, Korea University
presenters:
Helen Lee, Assistant Professor, Dept. of African and Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Florida: "Dying as Daughter of the Empire"
Jun Uchida, Assistant Professor, Dept. of History, Stanford University: "Between Fascism and Colonialism: Japan's Naisen Ittai Policy and Mass Mobilization in Wartime Korea"
discussants:
Roger Janelli, Professor Emeritus, Folklore and Ethnomusicology, East Asian Languages & Cultures, Indiana University
Jung, Keun-Sik, Professor, Dept. of Sociology, Seoul National University

Session II: Korean Narratives and the Hegemony of the West
(14:00 - 16:30)
chair: Kwon Heok-Tae, Department of Japanese Studies, Sungkonghoe University
presenters:
Henry Em, Associate Professor, Dept. of Korean History, Korea University: "Sovereignty and Modern Korean Historiography"
Theodore Hughes, Assistant Professor, Dept. of East Asian Lang. & Cultures, Columbia University: "Death, Target, Virtuality: Cold War Memories of North Koreans and the Korean War"
Youngju Ryu, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Asian Lang. & Cultures, University of Michigan (from July): "Refractory Fictions: Countering the "Novel" in Modern Korea"
discussants: Han, Suk Jung, Professor, Dept. of Sociology, Dong-A University
Cho Chulwon, Professor, Dept. of English Lang. & Literature, and Director, American Studies Institute, Seoul National University
Jin-kyung Lee, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Literature, University of California San Diego

Session III: Colonialism, Modernity, and Memory
(16:15 - 18:30)
chair: Roger Janelli, Professor Emeritus, Folklore and Ethnomusicology, East Asian Languages & Cultures, Indiana University
presenters:
Jun Yoo, Assistant Professor, Dept. of History, University of Hawaii: "The New Woman and the Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea"
Alexis Dudden, Associate Professor, Dept. of History, and Director of the Program in Humanitarian Studies, University of Connecticut (from July): "Modern History. Old Islands."
discussants:
Jung, Tae-Hern, Professor, Dept. of Korean History, Korea University
Kwon Heok-Tae, Department of Japanese Studies, Sungkonghoe University

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: academic ∙ Koreanstudies ∙ Koreanhistory

IASS Round table: La litterature coréenne

2007-06-11T14:46:00.000+03:00

The 9th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies is held in Helsinki and Imatra on June 11-17. My office mate from the Dept of Religious Studies is involved in the arrangements - that's how I became aware of it, actually. Browsing the conference program (pdf), I found out something that must be taking place for the first time in this country: a session on Korean literature. The only problem is that it appears to be entirely in French, a language for which the two years of study decades ago in high school will not be of much help.

10.30–13.00 Round table: La litterature coréenne (Chair Chie-Sou Kim), U40 room 5
Kim, Chie-Sou: Mythe contemporain dans le roman de LEE Cheong-Jan
Song, Ki-Jeong: La Communication entre les vivants et les morts - Etude sur L’Invité de WHANG Suk-Yong
Choi, Yong-Ho: The Azaleas
Liu, HyoSook: L’analyse de l’espace théatral à travers Le Cordon ombilical d’Oh Tae-Seok

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: academic ∙ literature/movies

Busan panoramas

2007-06-08T14:42:00.000+03:00

Busan is a photogenic place - at least as far as using the panorama function of digital cameras is concerned - with its hills and the sea, and houses that are more colorful than in Seoul.

Ever since I visited Korea during the latter half of last December and early January I've been thinking of putting up some of my gratuitious use of the aforementioned camera function. The small photos below are from Flickr, and the adjoining links to a larger file of the same picture stored at Imageshack.

Busan (Dec 29, 2006)
• Link to a large picture at Imageshack (2702x700, 890K)

Busan downtown and Yeongdo (Dec 29, 2006)
• Link to a large picture at Imageshack (2491x700, 890K)

Busan fishing harbor (Dec 30, 2006)
• Link to a large picture at Imageshack (4594x700, 911K)

• Link to a large picture at Imageshack (2654x700, 836K)

부산 자갈치의 국밥집 A rice soup restaurant in Jagalchi, Busan; see also the blog header (Dec 30, 2006)
• A large file at Imageshack (2025x700, 475K)

Yeongdo, Busan (Dec 30, 2006)
• Large file at Imageshack (3770X700, 774K)

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: photography ∙ cities ∙ urbanspace

Youtube says: you have nothing

2007-06-01T15:44:00.000+03:00

Visited my Youtube account after a long time.
A look at my profile was not too encouraging:

You have nothing in your video log.

User info continues:

You have no favorites.

Further:

You have no subscribers.

And finally:

You have no Friends.

What is one to do?

Find some solace in Ain't Got No/I Got Life by Nina Simone in... Youtube.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: music

paeksu paksa

2007-05-31T15:15:00.000+03:00

So little to say after so much has been done (see the two previous posts), so I'll listen to Lee Sang-eun via Youtube instead.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: music

defending

2007-05-14T19:32:00.001+03:00

Defending my thesis on Friday, May 11. From the left, the opponent prof. Nancy Abelmann from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Custos or the officiator, prof. Jukka Siikala from the Dept. Social and Cultural Anthropology at the U. of Helsinki, and to the right the defendant giving his opening address, or Lectio Precursoria. (Click for a bigger pic to open in a new window.)

They say it all went well, even though things look so different from the perspective of the defendant.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: academic ∙ anthropology

dissertation defense

2007-05-11T08:36:00.000+03:00

Today I have the public defense of my dissertation, in case someone's been wondering why I haven't been making much notes here lately. Just wondering whether I've prepared myself well enough.

핀란드에서의 ucc - 유러비전 / Eurovision UCC from Finland

2007-05-02T10:24:00.000+03:00

유러비젼 가요제 앞두고 있는 가운데 세계시민들은 핀란드에 대해서 관심을 모으고 있습니다. 최근에 유튜브에서 핀란드를 알리는 데 마르꾸라는 분이 활약하고 있습니다. 마르꾸의 짧으면서고 정확한 핀란드 소개를 들으시고 우리나라 ucc 콘텐츠와 기술의 우수성을 느껴 보십시오.

이 링크에서 마르꾸 씨의 더 많은 비디오를 찾을 수 있습니다.

Kim Pyong Il's on-the-spot guidance

2007-04-27T07:38:00.001+03:00

Aidan Foster-Carter left a note on the Korean Studies List about a set of photographs of the DPRK ambassador to Poland, Kim Pyong Il, visiting some kind of a solidarity cultural event. I guess having such pictures available on the North Korean leader's half brother makes news in Pyongyangology. Once again it's interesting to note the remarkable physical likeness of Kim Pyong Il to his father.

Kim Pyong Il was the DPRK ambassador to Finland in the mid-1990s until the embassy was closed, and Mr Kim was assigned to Poland. There were all kinds of rumors about Kim Jong Il having sent Kim Pyong Il abroad in order to avoid power struggle with his allegedly more capable half brother, but who knows. I also get the feeling that he was sent away for looking too similar to his father... A Pyongyangological factoid on Kim Pyong Il: KCNA, the DPRK news agency based in Tokyo, does not give a single hit for a Korean-language search on Kim Pyong Il. Neither does any of Google hits on his name go to DPRK-affiliated sites.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: DPRK

Kim Chi-ha's "Road to Seoul", translation

2007-04-26T16:08:00.000+03:00

In the final lecture of my course, I used Kim Chi-ha's famous poem "Road to Seoul" from the 1970 collection Hwangt'o (Yellow earth) to illustrate how the rural migration, urbanization and societal change in general were represented at the time.

김지하-서울길 간다 울지 마라 간다 흰 고개 검은 고개 목마른 고개 넘어 팍팍한 서울길 몸팔러 간다	Kim Chi-ha: Tie Souliin Menen älkää itkekö, menen yli valkoisen, mustan, janoisen solan raskasta tietä Souliin itseäni myymään
언제야 돌아오리란 언제야 웃음으로 돌아오리란 댕기풀 안스러운 약속도 없이 간다 울지 마라 간다 모질고 모진 세상에 살아도 분꽃이 잊힐까 밀 냄새가 잊힐까 사뭇사뭇 못 잊을 것을 꿈꾸다 눈물 젖어 돌아올 것을	Lupaustakaan antamatta siitä palaanko joskus palaanko joskus nauraen Menen älkää itkekö, menen Vaikka maailma olisi kuinka julma unohdanko kukat, vehnän tuoksun koskaan ei unohdu unista kyyneltyneenä, paluu
간다 울지 마라 간다 하늘도 시름겨운 목마른 고개 넘어 팍팍한 서울길 몸팔러 간다	Menen älkää itkekö, menen yli taivaankin murehtiman janoisen solan raskasta tietä Souliin itseäni myymään

This is a difficult poem, and for some lines I just had to cut corners, especially 댕기풀 안스러운 약속도 없이. But otherwise, it looks nice and should convey what Kim meant it to. Kim Chi-ha has been translated to English, "The Road to Seoul" included. I can't find the whole translation of that poem online, but from the excerpts I gather that line repeated twice, 몸팔러 간다, has been rendered as I'm going to sell my body. Maybe I'm partial, but doesn't the Finnish itseäni myymään sound much more true to the original?

Other translations in this blog:
• 처음처럼 / 용혜원 Kuin ensi kertaa / Yong Hye-won
• 山中問答 in the post Hunjang in the mountains, via Korean-language translation
• Yom Sang-jin in Finnish (from Taebaek sanmaek)

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: literature/movies ∙ Korea-Finland ∙ Koreanlanguage ∙ Seoul ∙ culturalhistory

dissertation

2007-04-25T14:29:00.000+03:00

From E-thesis - Electronic Publications at the University of Helsinki:

Full-text will be available 01.05.2007
The permanent address of the publication is http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-10-3900-3
Title: Neighborhood Shopkeepers in Contemporary South Korea: Household, Work, and Locality
Author: Leppänen, Antti
Contributor: University of Helsinki, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Date: 2007-05-11
Level: Doctoral dissertation (monograph)
Abstract: This is an ethnographic study [...]

The printed book will be available next week.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: academic ∙ anthropology ∙ books ∙ Koreanstudies ∙ businesskeepers

Hankyoreh and Chosun fonts available

2007-04-19T06:53:00.000+03:00

Found out that Hankyoreh has made its own font available for download at the newspaper site in late 2005. Here's the direct link to the zip file (0.8mb). Below is a capture from my word processor. The Hankyoreh font looks quite nice and should be pleasing for the eye to read - not insignificant for us who've learned the characters as adults. The specific trait is that the character blocks break the square pattern. For example, in the syllables 레 and 체 as seen below, the consonant is smaller in height than the vowel.

Chosun Ilbo has followed suit and also put its own font available for download. The direct link to the zip file is here (6.9 mb).

Below is a capture, from this site, comparing the two fonts. Chosun's one is less original, a variation of the Myôngje font, and as I mentioned above, Hankyoreh font appears to be good to read on paper, but as a lot of my reading of Korean is done online, I may not end up using it much, and other fonts, especially Gullim (or Gulim) are better when writing a document with a word processor.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: technicalities ∙ Koreanlanguage

cover photograph

2007-04-17T09:38:00.000+03:00

This is the cover photograph of an academic dissertation on keepers of small neighborhood businesses in Korea that will be published on April 30 and publicly defended on May 11. More about those later; I chose this pic because I did not want to have the mosts obvious choice of a street scene with shops and signboards (takes the focus to shops and out of people) or a pic of a shop front (same reason); this is a real person about whom the work is about. Moreover, her face is not visible. I got quite a many photos of real people in the work, but I chose all of them so that they are not recognizable.
What I'm a bit worried about is how clearly this will come out in print, as it's full of details, so to say.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: academic ∙ books ∙ photography

exhibition: "Ecstatic Architecture" by Jung Jae Ho

2007-04-12T08:06:00.000+03:00

ECSTATIC ARCHITECTURE

황 홀 의 건 축

Jung, Jae Ho/정 재 호

2007. 4.18 - 5.1

관훈갤러리 / Kwanhoon Gallery

The style for this announcement copied from Jung Jae Ho's blog entry on this topic.

• 관훈갤러리/Kwanhoon Gallery, located near the Anguk station on line 3 (orange line) in Seoul; see the link for directions.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: art ∙ urbanspace ∙ housing

Daily NK interviews with DPRK women traders

2007-04-11T23:42:00.000+03:00

Daily NK has a very interesting article based on interviews with six North Korean women who have crossed the border to China and settled there. These women once again attest that in North Korea it's women who maintain the livelihood of their husbands and children by trading (changsa), as the rationing system has not functioned properly since the 1990's famine years, and salaries don't carry long in buying foods. So women have been packing their bags and gone out to do all kinds of businesses.

[...]
김영순 씨는 "식량난 이전 시기에는 대체로 남자들이 생계를 책임졌다. 김일성이 한때 여성간부들을 많이 등용하라는 교시도 내리긴 했지만, 여자 간부의 급수에 맞춰 남자의 직급도 올려주는 등 가정의 구조가 남자 위주로 돌아갔다. 그러나 고난의 행군 이후 여자들 90% 이상이 가정을 책임지게 되면서 남자들을 (불필요하다는 의미의) 낮전등, 불편이, 멍멍이라고 부르고 있다"고 설명했다.

여성들이 처음 장마당에서 할 수 있는 것은 먹는 장사가 대부분이었다. 그러나 돈이 모이고 장사 방법에 눈이 트이면서 달리기(지역을 이동하며 물건을 중계 또는 판매하는 행위)와 장마당 장사에도 뛰어 들었다.

안 씨는 "처음부터 장사를 시작하지 못한 여자들도 나중에는 다 장사에 뛰어들었다. 써비차(화물차)나 열차를 타고 다니며 달리기 장사에 나섰다. 여자들은 날마다 50kg짜리 배낭을 두개 세 개 들고 다닌다. 열차에 많은 사람이 타다보니 떨어져 죽는 경우도 많았다. 그러면서도 장사를 계속했다"고 덧붙였다.
[...]

Perhaps more about this when time allows.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: DPRK ∙ businesskeepers ∙ self-employment

not understanding my own talk

2007-04-11T07:41:00.000+03:00

I've always thought that the level of my speaking of Korean is higher than my understanding of it. Recently I got a sort of confirmation for this, as I couldn't understand clearly what I was saying in a video snippet that my wife filmed of our visit to a restaurant kept by our acquaintances in Icheon, Gyeonggi-do. Ok, the video was a bit noisy as a local customer had become so inspired by a far-away visitor with whom she could communicate so as to sing him a song.

Icheon, Dec 22, 2006

Im Kwon-taek's "Beyond the Years" opens on April 12

2007-04-05T14:20:00.000+03:00

Beyond the Years (Chônnyônhak, "thousand years' crane") Im Kwon-taek's sequel to Sopyonje (1993), in production for several years, opens on April 12. It is Im's 100th movie, and it is told that Chungmuro (a street in Seoul where many of the movie companies are located) is full of good vibes now that the film is finally finished despite initial difficulties, and Im's younger colleagues have been giving tributes to him, such as the film trailer above, which was edited by director Chông Yun-ch'ôl.

The female lead doing the role of Song-hwa is none else than Oh Jeong-hae (O Jông-hae) - how could it be otherwise when it's a Sopyonje sequel, and the male lead (role of Tong-ho) is Cho Chae-hyôn (Jo Jae-hyun), who has been prominent in earlier Kim Ki-duk films and was also eaten up for dinner in Ch'ônyûdûrûi chônyôksiksa ("girl's dinner", original English title "Girls' Night Out").

Cho Chae-hyeon as Tong-ho and Oh Jeong-hae as Song-hwa
The original cast for the role of Tong-ho was Kim Yông-min, a stage rather than movie actor. With the news that the lead would not be a top name, the main investor balked, and so did the production company. When this became known in Chungmuro it created a lot of movement to raise finances for Im's movie, but another new company had already picked the tab, and Im could resume his work. The new male lead was Cho, who was given the role when he offered to do any role in the movie when hearing that the production was having difficulties. And yes, also Kim Myeong-gon, who did the adoptive father's role in Sopyonje, was also cast for Beyond the Years, but Kim become meanwhile the minister of culture, so that part had to be recast as well.

• Interview in Twitch: Im Kwon-Taek Talks 천년학 (Thousand Year Crane).

The Korean title of the movie, Ch'ônnyônhak (thousand years' crane) is the name of the Sopyonje main theme, conducted by Kim Ki-ch'ôl. Can't tell if that title for the new film was chosen to emphasize the continuity from Sopyonje; the story line of "Beyond the Years" depicts the time of the events in the end of Sopyonje, when Tong-ho, who had earlier had escaped the miserable conditions of wandering performers that their adoptive father inflicted upon them, and, returning to the Jeolla (Chôlla) province as a buyer of medicinal herbs, also goes around asking about Song-hwa, whom he grew up with calling her "older sister" (nuna). This time, their relation evolves into a love story. Tong-ho follows the tracks of Song-hwa and finds her, but in the manner of good melodrama, things don't go so easily.

(The scene at the end of Sopyonje, when Tong-ho has found Song-hwa, who had been blinded by her adoptive father so that she wouldn't lost the "sadness" (wônhan) of her voice, and asks her to sing a song, is a guaranteed tear-jerker. Tong-ho plays the puk drum and Song-hwa sings; their voices fade off and the Ch'ônnyônhak theme comes instead, screen showing only the teary-eyed faces of the two performers. (The scene in Sopyonje soundtrack; mp3, 7:44, 10.9 mb) We watched the dvd with my wife late last year; I knew I wouldn't be able to watch the scene unemotionially, so I pretended I needed to do something else, like doing the dishes, so I ended up hearing my wife's sobbing to the kitchen.)

Update, April 20, 2007
• Review of "Beyond the Years" in Ohmynews (Korean)

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: music ∙ literature/movies ∙ art

chatterbox

2007-04-02T17:33:00.000+03:00

I just learned that a former student of mine from a couple of Korean studies courses participates in the Minyôdûrûi suda program. Oh well.

The ad placed on the program homepage. I thought the standard for boys is 187 and not 185.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: media

The World Congress for Korean Studies 2007

2007-03-29T16:56:00.000+03:00

Via the Korean Studies list, a following announcement arrived:

Call for Papers and Participation

The World Congress for Korean Studies 2007
- Korea in the World: Democracy, Peace, Prosperity and Culture -

The World Congress for Korean Studies 2007 by the Korean Political Science Association will be held in Busan, South Korea, from 23 to 25 August. The main theme for the Congress is "Korea in the World: Democracy, Peace, Prosperity and Culture."

The congress will provide a forum to discuss the latest developments in and around Korea covering a variety of fields of study; research on the issues of leadership, state governance, gender politics, foreign policy, and inter-Korean relations; studies on Korean economy ranging from the issues of economic viability to debates on social fairness; discussion on cultural aspects of Korean society dealing with art, literature, linguistics, and the phenomenon of Hallyu; papers written on Korean history from ancient times to current affairs; sociological investigation of, for example, the problem of aging and low-fertility rate, exodus of young students, and subjects related to migrant workers, etc.
[...]
Expected to be the largest ever academic gathering of Korean specialists in the world, the Congress will provide all participants with an invaluable opportunity to expose themselves to and exchange information and ideas with scholars coming from different parts of the world with wide range of academic disciplines. An added value of the Congress can be found in its location: Busan, Korea.
[...]
We welcome submission of papers, full-panel and roundtable proposals for any of the areas mentioned above and other related fields. We also encourage graduate students' participation in the Congress.

Deadline for the submission of a paper and panel proposal: May 15, 2007.
• Papers for presentation can be written either in English or in Korean. Please indicate whether you wish to participate in an English panel or a Korean Panel.
• Due for papers is Aug. 1.
Registration fee: US $150
• US $100 for early registration before May 15;
• KPSA members exempt.
Accommodation & meals: to be borne by the KPSA (Please see below)
• The KPSA will guarantee accommodation for those who register before June 15.
• The KPSA will cover 3 nights (Aug. 22-24) of accommodation and 9 meals (supper on 22nd - lunch on 25th at the designated restaurant).
• We will try to accommodate late applicants as well, but room assignment is not guaranteed.
• Participants will be lodged in Sea Cloud Hotel near the Congress site. Newly built and majestically standing on Hawoondae beach, the hotel offers breath-taking ocean view from every room.
Transportation including air & incidentals: to be borne by participants
• Partial or full financial assistance for airfare and registration to scholars from developing countries may be given upon request and on the competitive basis.

* For further information concerning the conference and the application process for participation, please contact the Program Director at kpsa2007[]gmail.com.

A Korean-language announcement of the conference can be found at the association homepage. There is yet no English-language announcement available online.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: academic ∙ Koreanstudies

restaurant panoramas

2007-03-28T11:11:00.000+03:00

Getting good results with the panorama function of a camera in a restaurant full of customers is difficult due to the constant movement of people, and one should be happy to be able to attach the shots so that no-one's head is of double size or that none has two pairs of shoulders.

• The first one is a grilled fish restaurant on an alley in Dongdaemun market alongside six or seven similar places. This one must benefit from its auspicious location as the first one in the row, and that fact was, if I remember correctly, one decisive factor in choosing this very place. Ethnographical remark on the gender division of labor in the restaurant: the wife of the proprietor couple was responsible for the kitchen work inside with the kitchen hand, the husband grilled the fish outside the door. (Photograph taken on Dec. 21, 2006)

Link to a large-size photograph (737 kb, 3302x700px)

• The second one is one of the numerous chicken places in one alley at Dongdaemun marketplace, and not even the only place named something like Wônjo Halmae ("original granny's"). It has this homepage ("wonjodark"!) - Chin Ok-hwa halmae wônjo tak han mari. I appears that this is the most famous and most popular among the chicken restaurant competitors, and typically for Korea, had attracted imitators throughout the years; it had a note posted outside the door saying "we do not operate branches." Despite of the sophistication of the homepage, the restaurant is very down-to-earth. It was a memorable Christmas eve dinner, at least for its difference to how we usually eat on that day. (Photograph taken on Dec. 24, 2006).

Link to a large-size photograph (540 kb, 2646x700 px)

• This kukpap place in the vicinity of the Jagalchi fish market in Busan was a pleasant place to sit down after strolling up and down the hills and alleys in the city for the whole day. This was taken on the same occasion as the current blog header photograph. If one's looking for Korean marketplace "authenticity", this place is it, and the kukpap, rice and diverse stuff in broth was good.
(Photograph taken on Dec. 30, 2006)

Link to a large-size photograph (475 kb, 2025x700 px)

Another scene from my visit to this place: a man came to sell siraegi, radish leaves that this restaurant uses in the rice soup, in quite an aggressive manner. The restaurateur woman refused, and the man asked for a glass of soju which the woman gave him, apparently in order to be able to send him away. In the second picture, the siraegi peddler has drunk the soju and continues his route. (Photographs taken on Dec. 30, 2006)

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: photography ∙ restaurants ∙ marketplaces ∙ food/alcohol

Khrushchev jokes

2007-03-27T10:32:00.000+03:00

Markku Jokisipilä from the Dept. of Political History at the U. of Turku sums up the best bits of a student paper on the topic of general secretary Khrushchev in the light of Soviet jokes. This one is not bad (my translation from Finnish):

Kruschev was visiting an art exhibition with his aides and bodyguards. "What the hell is this green circle with yellow dots all over" asked the general secretary.
"Comrade Khrushchev, this painting depicts our heroic agricultural workers toiling to fill the norm of producing two million tons of grain."
"I see. What about this black triangle with red stripes?"
"It shows our heroic industrial workers at work."
"What is this fat ass with ears then?"
"Comrade Khrushchev, it's not a painting, it's a mirror."

And in Korean:
흐루쇼프 총비서꼐서 보조관과 경비원들과 함께 미술전시회에 다녀보셨다.
"이 곳곳에 노란 점이 있는 녹색 동구라미가 뭐지"라고 총비서께서 물어보셨다.
"총비서 동지, 그것은 2백만 톤의 곡식 생산목표를 달성하기 위해서 노력하는 우리 영웅적인 농업노동자들입니다."
"그렇군. 이 빨간 줄이 있는 검정 세모는?"
"우리 영웅적인 공장노동자들의 열심히 일하는 모습입니다."
"그러면, 이 귀가 달린 뚱뚱한 엉둥이 또 뭔데?"
"총비서 동지, 그것은 그림이 아니라 거울입니다."

Finnish foreign ministry replies to DPRK

2007-03-23T17:06:00.001+02:00

Boat operating between Helsinki and Stockholm; it was reported that the DPRK couriers travelled through Finland because they wanted to take one of these.

The Finnish Foreign Ministry has sent a reply to the diplomatic note sent by the DPRK embassy in Stockholm over the train incident in Kouvola, Finland, in which Finnish authorities forcibly removed two North Korean diplomatic couriers from the after they had refused two show their tickets and prove their diplomatic status in a violent manner.

Earlier notes:
• DPRK embassy: Finland violated human rights of the diplomatic couriers (Feb 25, 2007)
• North Korean diplomatic couriers fight with Finnish police (Feb 18, 2007)

The Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat says in the article linked above that the note was sent already last week. The reply states that according to the Vienna accord, diplomatic couriers needs to carry a document proving the status, which the North Koreans were lacking.

(Update: I did not detect anything on the issue in the print edition of the paper over the weekend, so it's unlikely there's going to be much more about this in the news.)

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: DPRK ∙ Korea-Finland

장모님의 메주

2007-03-23T08:41:00.000+02:00

진해, 2006년12월

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: food/alcohol ∙ photography

Lordi to perform in Seoul

2007-03-22T17:09:00.000+02:00

Forget Kwemul ("monster", The Host) in movie theaters, for the rubber monster suit rockers Lordi are coming to Korea to play a gig in Melon-AX in Seoul on April 6.

These dudes won the Eurovision Song Contest last year.
Update, March 23, 2007
I'm sorry to announce that the gig has been cancelled due to "circumstances of the organizer."

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: music ∙ Korea-Finland

Yankee revue troupe in Seoul, 1930

2007-03-22T14:41:00.000+02:00

Yankee Revue troupe's masquerade street parade
Chosun Ilbo, April 20, 1930. Drawing and text: Sôgyông(夕影) An Sôk-yông
Published in Modôn ppoi Kyôngsônhûl kônilda: Manmun manhwaro ponûn kûndaeûi ôlgul ("Modern boy strolling in Seoul: faces of modernity in illustrated newspaper columns") by Sin Myông-jik. (Hyônsilmunhwayôn'gu, 2003)

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: culturalhistory

new book: Modern Korean Society: Its Development and Prospect

2007-03-20T09:44:00.000+02:00

A new book Modern Korean Society: Its Development and Prospect (eds. Kim, Hyuk-Rae and Bok Song) has been published by the Institute of East Asian Studies at University of California, Berkeley. The publisher's page does not contain info on the authors, but fortunately one of the editors, prof. Kim, sent a note to the Korean Studies list:

1. The Contour of Modern Korean Society (Hyuk-Rae Kim)
2. Regionalism and National Networks (Yong-Hak Kim)
3. The Korean Stratification System: Continuity and Change (Hagen Koo)
4. Inequality and Class Reproduction in Everyday Life (Wang-Bae Kim and Bok Song)
5. Economic Governance: Its Historical Development and Future Prospects (Hyuk-Rae Kim)
6. From Take-off to Drop-off?: Postwar Economic Development and Industrialization (Karl J. Fields)
7. Family, Gender, and Sexual Inequality (Seung-Kyung Kim)
8. Population Changes and Urbanization (Kye-Choon Ahn)
9. Social Grievances and Social Protests against the Oppressive State (Dong-No Kim)
10. The Making of Civil Society in Historical Perspective (Hyuk-Rae Kim)
11. Division, War, and Reunification (Bruce Cumings)

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: books ∙ academic ∙ Koreanstudies

culturizing apartment buildings

2007-03-16T15:04:00.000+02:00

Seoul Administration Court (?, Haengjông pôbwôn) has made a decision that allows an apartment block to change its name after substantial outer renovations had been made on the buildings. The residents in the "Lotte Nakch'ôn Apartments" in Dongjak-gu had requested the Dongjak-gu authorities that their residences be renamed and registered as "Lotte Castle", but they were refused for the reason that legislation allowing that was not in force yet.

Still, the court ruled that there is no legal reason to refuse the name change, as more than three fourths of the residents backed the change, the construction company had consented as well, and the outer renovation was sufficient for the change of housing brand. The decision quoted the residents' motive for the name change as "changing the name of the apartment [block] to a beautiful one in order to have a cultured (munhwajôk) image."

Nakch'ôn - the previous name of the apartment block - is not that colloquial everyday Korean, and for me it doesn't really sound that notorious, giving the idea of something to do with heaven (ch'ôn 天) perhaps. Ok, there are two meaning in the online Standard Korean Dictionary:
1) 낙천01 (落薦)
「명」후보자의 추천이나 천거에서 떨어짐. ¶삼촌의 낙천 소식에 가장 가슴 아파한 사람은 할아버지셨다.§
「참」공천02(公薦). So that means "failing to get appointed."

2) 낙천02 (樂天)
「명」세상과 인생을 즐겁고 좋은 것으로 여김. ¶자네의 그 낙천은 아무도 못 따를걸.≪황순원, 신들의 주사위≫§「반」염세01(厭世). "Thinking that world and life are good."

Perhaps, if Chinese Characters were still in common use, nakch'ôn when written as 樂天 would appear as cultured as "castle", whether written in Roman characters or in Han'gûl. But I guess in order to compete with apartment brands such as "Royal Duke," 樂天 or 낙천 just won't do.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: housing ∙ Koreansociety ∙ Koreanlanguage ∙ consumption ∙ modernization

books

2007-03-16T10:18:00.000+02:00

A bookshop keeper couple from the second-hand bookshop quarter in Busan

We were already getting worried because the 40 kilos of books we sent before leaving Korea surface mail already on January 4 had not arrived. Today the two parcels came - all the way to my office, which is very rare indeed considering the level and price of services in this country. It pays to have such parcels delivered to the office address instead of home; my experience is that customs officials let parcels to my university address through, while things addressed to home need to be checked.

I don't think I've ever been on such an indiscriminate book shopping spree like when I was there, and that has shown in my card bills. I asked for tips about books worth buying from here and there, and didn't think much. In Seoul, we stayed in a yeogwan only one block away from Kyobo bookstore.

Now, I should only find somewhere the time to read all that.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: books ∙ academic

시간강사의 고민

2007-03-12T13:45:00.000+02:00

인기관목이라 할 수 없는 강의를 하는 나같은 시간강사는 강의가 시작하기 전에 항상 학생들이 들으러 올까 하는 고민이 있다. 사람들이 안 왔기 때문에 강의가 중단된 적은 한 번밖에 없지만 늘 처음으로 강단에 올라가기 전에 걱정이 있다고 부인할 수가 없다. 이번에는 잘 됐다: 아홉-열 명이 나왔다. 강단에서 서기 부끄럽지도 않고 글을 고치느라 너무 바쁘지도 않을 정도다. 비록 박사논문 원고를 책으로 만드는 아주 바쁜 일도 해야 하겠지만 나로서는 만족스러운 강의가 될 것 같아.

• 한국 도시인류학 (핀란드어)

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: academic ∙ anthropology ∙ urbanspace ∙ cities

Korean history in 142 words (of Finnish)

2007-03-07T15:54:00.000+02:00

The following is an introduction of Korean history, written for the upcoming exhibition "Korean Home" (Korealainen koti) in the Museum of Cultures in Helsinki. I wasn't involved in any of the preparations of the exhibition, and I only promised to check the approximate accuracy of the exhibition texts and Korean terms, but the introductory text piece of Korean history was too lacking not to hint that I'd rather write it myself. About 150 words was the maximum, this is 142:

Korean niemimaalle syntyi ajanlaskun ensimmäisillä vuosisadoilla kolme valtiota, Silla, Paekche ja Koguryŏ. Silla-valtio yhdisti niemimaan 600-luvulla, ja sitä seurasivat Koryŏ- ja Chosŏn-dynastiat. Korean historian ominaispiirteenä oli etenkin Chosŏn-kaudella tiivis kuuluvuus Itä-Aasian Kiina-keskeiseen valtiolliseen ja opilliseen korkeakulttuuriin, jonka rinnalla eli omaleimainen kansankulttuuri. Vuosiksi 1910–1945 Korea joutui Japanin siirtomaaksi. Toisen maailmansodan jälkeen perustettujen Yhdysvaltojen ja Neuvostoliiton miehitysvyöhykkeiden jaon seurauksena 38. leveyspiirin eteläpuoliselle alueelle perustettiin vuonna 1948 Korean tasavalta (Etelä-Korea) ja pohjoispuolelle Korean demokraattinen kansantasavalta (Pohjois-Korea). Pohjois-Korean hyökkäyksestä alkanut Korean sota käytiin vuosina 1950–1953 Pohjois-Korean ja Kiinan joukkojen ja Etelä-Korean ja Yhdysvaltojen johtamien YK-joukkojen välillä. Sodan aselepolinja vakiintui Koreoiden rajaksi. Menneinä vuosikymmeninä kiivas Koreoiden aatteellinen ja taloudellinen kilpailu ja ideologinen vastakkainasettelu ovat 1990-loppupuolelta lähtien lieventyneet Etelä-Korean vaurastuttua ja demokratisoiduttua, kylmän sodan päätyttyä ja Pohjois-Korean jouduttua pahoihin taloudellisiin vaikeuksiin. Korean sodan jäljiltä on kuitenkin yhä voimassa vain aselepo, eivätkä Koreat tunnusta toistensa valtiollista asemaa.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Koreanhistory ∙ Korea-Finland

우리나라도

2007-03-06T10:48:00.000+02:00

핀란드-한국 닮은 꼴:


외국에서 나에 대해서 어떻게 생각하고 있을까?		- 핀란드가 뭐지? - 나라인가? - 어딘데?

그림: 가리 수어말라이넨, 1960-70년대쯤

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Korea-Finland ∙ art

Finnish "omakotitalo" and native concepts

2007-03-02T09:32:00.000+02:00

Ever since I learned that Korean residents in Finland use the Finnish word omakotitalo (detached house) instead of any Korean corresponding term (chut'aek, tandok chut'aek), I've taken that as indication of Koreans' attachment of marking and expressing social stratifications through forms and ownership of housing. Since the korean word chut'aek doesn't carry the connotations of middle-class security and attainment of a house of one's own that the corresponding Finnish word does, the latter is used instead, as if talking about becoming an owner of an esteemed and spacious apartment house in Korea. Now, early this week I got to know that also Italians in Finland resort to the word omakotitalo, which has gotten me thinking that it is actually us Finns who invest so much meaning and cultural value to the idea of "own home house" (literal translation of omakotitalo) and to becoming an occupant and owner of one. Foreign residents here only adopt the use of a word and a concept they have sensed to be very significant; they haven't necessarily borrowed a Finnish term and fitted it to their own conceptual and categorical palette, but adopted and fitted a part of our native thinking to their own.

In matters of contemporary society, Sweden is a place where equivalents of modern phenomena in Finland can also be found, and I thought that the Swedish term for detached house, egnahemshus, corresponding to the Finnish equivalent word by word, is one of those as well. As I had no Swedish speakers of Swedish language to consult, I resorted to The Search Engine, which to my surprise gave less than 400 hits to sites in Sweden but over 30 000 to sites in Finland. Only then it occurred to me that the word is actually a Finnish coinage, a translation loan for Swedish-speaking Finns. Now, does the Sweden-Swedish villa arouse similar sentiments among Swedes as the Finnish and Finland-Swedish concepts on this side of the Gulf of Bothnia.

There is a recent novel on the topic, Juoksuhaudantie ("Trench Street"; review in English) by Kari Hotakainen, which sold hugely and won all the prices it could get. From the review: "When Matti [Virtanen]’s wife leaves him, taking their daughter with her, he thinks he can save the family by buying a detached house – the type of house owned by men who make no concessions in their marriage." Matti Virtanen is the most typical Finnish name one can imagine; to transfer the idea of the novel closer to the topics of this blog, image a Kim Chôl-su trying his utmost to have his family acquire a decent apartment house instead of the chônse (key money) place that they're living now, facing a nagging, unsatisfied wife who's been hinting of marital consequences if nothing happens, and the mounting hagwôn bills of the daughter.

Now that I think, Hotakainen's book has been in my shelf since last year. For the reasons of not having read it despite all the critical acclaim and general popularity, perhaps there's some uneasyness for not being able to correspond to this "own home house" pattern...

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: housing ∙ Korea-Finland ∙ stratification

garment samples from DPRK

2007-02-27T09:42:00.000+02:00

I've never meant to closely follow DPRK issues in this blog, but lately it seems to have become a habit, as there have been things worthy of interest lately, involving Finland and North Korea (the train fracas between NK diplomats and Finnish authorites and the subsequent NK complaint over the incident). Another much smaller recent issue is about a Finnish company L-Fashion Group having bought a garment sample from North Korea, which was briefly mentioned in a report Vaatteita etelästä (pdf, "clothes from the south"), which deals with the social and environmental responsibility of companies. The report was introduced in article by a monthly magazine Voima titled Luhta brändää Pohjois-Korean? ("Luhta branding North Korea?).

Ordering samples from North Korea is cited by Voima as an example of companies' lack of social responsibility and disinterest towards human rights and working conditions. In it, the magazine is correct. An interesting thing is that it has taken some time for Voima to find out that DPRK is indeed a dictatorship which is, among other things, not welcoming towards factory inspections. Some five years ago, Voima published a DPRK travel report by a juche-enthusiastic Finnish communist (see Kominform maintained by him), in which nothing but praise towards the country was heaped. The original article by the visitor, back the available online, stated that the footage on starving North Korean children must have been manufactured in Hollywood; understandably, that passage had been edited from the published article, cannot tell if by the author or by Voima. In the same page the mag accused Kim Dae-jung of buying arms with his Nobel price money. Say what you will about KDJ's Nobel price, but back then this was Voima's attitude towards people who had risked their lives in struggle for democracy back then. This has left a particularly unwashable stain in the magazine's progressiveness.

About the garment samples from North Korea, the representative of L-Fashion Group wouldn't answer to any questions on the possible subcontractors there. I have no idea about the state of garment industry in North Korea, and I have neither heard anything about sourcing in garment manufacturing, except for Kaesong...

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: DPRK ∙ Korea-Finland ∙ media

DPRK embassy: Finland violated human rights of the diplomatic couriers

2007-02-25T15:05:00.000+02:00

The affair of the North Korean diplomatic couriers forcibly removed from train in Kouvola, Finland after violently resisting cooperation with authorites continues as a tragicomedy. The DPRK embassy in Stockholm haa submitted a diplomatic note to the embassy of Finland, accusing Finland of violation of human rights when dealing with the couriers. The daily Helsingin Sanomat had a longish story on the case today, with comments from a representative of the DPRK embassy in Stockholm. As for the reason for taking a train from St Petersburg to Helsinki in order to carry mail to Stockholm, the representative told that the two men wanted to experience the famous ferries that operate between Helsinki and Stockholm.

I'll return to the article tommorow.

Update:
• Helsingin Sanomat has translated quite a lot into English, but there is still more to come about the incident: North Korea files official complaint over Kouvola train incident.
• YLE (the national broadcasting corporation) has the outlines of the Helsingin Sanomat story in English: North Korea Issues Diplomatic Note to Finland.
• Time has made available an article from Nov 1, 1976 on the activities of DPRK diplomats which led to twelve embassy staffers expelled from Nordic countries: Smuggling Diplomats.

[...]
International politics had nothing to do with the abrupt action by the Scandinavian governments. What had happened was that North Koreans in all three countries* had been caught red-handed in a massive smuggling racket involving liquor, cigarettes and dope —apparently instigated by the financially hard-pressed government of President Kim II Sung. Officials in Norway estimated that their branch of the Kim gang had smuggled into the country at least 4,000 bottles of booze (mostly Polish vodka) and 140,000 cigarettes, which were then given surreptitiously to Norwegian wholesalers for distribution on the black market. In Denmark, the illegal goodies impounded so far included 400 bottles of liquor, 4.5 million cigarettes and 147 kilos of hashish, which police confiscated two weeks ago from two Danes who had just bought the drug from North Korean embassy staffers.
[...]

Update, March 5, 2007:
• B.R. Myers' article "The Obsessions of Kim Jong Il" in The New York Times (May 19, 2003) is one that I should have referred to right from the start, and his notion of the "glorification of spontaneous violence" in North Korea was somewhere in the back of my mind. (Link to the article.) Myers notes:

The Soviets considered the spontaneity of the common people, especially their tendency to violence, to be a dangerous force unless tempered with political consciousness. In North Korea, the people's spontaneity is seen as one of the country's greatest strengths.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: DPRK ∙ Korea-Finland

sesame oil shop auntie 기름집 아주머니

2007-02-21T12:41:00.000+02:00


보면 기분이 좋아지는 사진.	(c) AL 2006

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: photography ∙ Sillim/Gwanak ∙ people

"Gossip, Markets, and Gender" - new book by my colleague

2007-02-20T11:15:00.000+02:00

My anthro dept colleague has published a book based on her doctoral dissertation; here's the info from the University of Wisconsin Press site:

Gossip, Markets, and Gender
How Dialogue Constructs Moral Value in Post-Socialist Kilimanjaro
Tuulikki Pietilä

Women in Africa and the Diaspora, Aili Mari Tripp and Stanlie James, Series Editors

"Explores important political and economic implications of gossip and markets. It will be very valuable to those interested in African gender and economies."–Gracia Clark, Indiana University, Bloomington

"All traders are thieves, especially women traders," people often assured social anthropologist Tuulikki Pietilä during her field work in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, in the mid-1990s. Equally common were stories about businessmen who had "bought a spirit" for their enrichment. Pietilä places these and similar comments in the context of the liberalization of the Tanzanian economy that began in the 1980s, when many men and women found themselves newly enmeshed in the burgeoning market economy. Even as emerging private markets strengthened the position of enterprising people, economic resources did not automatically lead to heightened social position. Instead, social recognition remained tied to a complex cultural negotiation through stories and gossip in markets, bars, and neighborhoods.

With its rich ethnographic detail, Gossip, Markets, and Gender shows how gossip and the responses to it form an ongoing dialogue through which the moral reputations of trading women and businessmen, and cultural ideas about moral value and gender, are constructed and rethought. By combining a sociolinguistic study of talk, storytelling, and conversation with analysis of gender, the political economy of trading, and the moral economy of personhood, Pietilä reveals a new perspective on the globalization of the market economy and its meaning and impact on the local level.

"A strong, theoretically informed ethnography, Gossip, Markets, and Gender successfully reveals the force of persuasive rhetoric and casual talk in a changing moral economy. At the heart of the matter is a moral dialogue about upward mobility, reputation, and value in the context of postsocialist liberalization and new attitudes toward making money."
–Richard Werbner, University of Manchester

Tuulikki Pietilä is lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Helsinki. She is the author of numerous articles and essays on trade and gender issues in postcolonial Africa.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: books ∙ anthropology ∙ women-men ∙ marketplaces

North Korean diplomatic couriers fight with Finnish police

2007-02-18T09:11:00.000+02:00

Two North Korean diplomats carrying post from Russia to Sweden via Finland were taken into custody by the Finnish police in Kouvola on Tuesday after they refused to show their train tickets and to comply to customs inspection. After refusing to show their tickets to the train inspector, they used violence to fend off the custom officials, and they fought also against the police who were called into the scene. They had diplomatic passports, but they were not accredited in Finland.
The daily Iltasanomat reported today (no link, this is Finland) that police had had to spray gas into the train compartment to subdue the two men. They were taken to the police station in Kouvola. It took a few hours for the Finnish foreign ministry to find out that they were in fact diplomats carrying diplomatic post, especially as staff from the North Korean embassy in Stockholm had come to Helsinki to meet the men, so police was instructed to treat them as diplomats, and in the end the couriers were escorted to the first available train from Kouvola to Helsinki. Kouvola police is investigating the case as "violent obstruction of authorities" or whatever the term might be in English, but as is quite obvious, the investigation is not expected to progress well.

Well, this is of course embarrassing for the tiny number of Koreans living here, especially as the major daily newspaper referred to the fighting diplomats mainly as "Koreans" and not as "North Koreans," but perhaps we can see some sprouts of unification in the men's attitude towards police, as it is quite similar to that shown by some of their Southern brethren when making their views and opinions known.

Update, Feb 20, 2007.
Two reports are available in English:
• YLE broadcasting corporation: North Korean Diplomats in Scuffle with Finnish Officials on Train
• Helsingin Sanomat daily: North Korean diplomatic couriers removed from train after scuffle

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: DPRK ∙ Korea-Finland

The sad fragrance of wild rose: Jang Sa-ik

2007-02-15T13:45:00.000+02:00

Jang Sa-ik's most recent album Sarami kûriwôsô, came out last December, quite suitably so that I could purchase it while in Korea, and without thinking twice. Hankyoreh has recently had a three-part series of Jang, the Korean singer whose distinctive style isn't quite traditional music but neither modern folk or kayo: part one, part two, and part three.

It's now 10 years since Jang, now 59, published his first album. He was born in Chungcheon, oldest of seven children. His father grew pigs for sale, and was also a renowned changgo drum player. During the last years of elementary school he began to sing - or better, shout - by himself, going out to the woods to sing from the top of his lungs, from which his vocal power developed, and due to abstinence from alcohol and cigarettes, he has also been able to maintain it well. He graduated from a commercial high school in Seoul, and went to work after finishing military service. (Interestingly, there doesn't seem to be any closer details about his wage work in the articles.) He did not show any specific singing talents as young, but did sing throughout all the years, becoming more serious during high school and going to a singing school for three years, "as I thought that it'd live well if I knew how to sing." He was fired from this unnamed job in the mid-70s, and started making a living by doing all kinds of jobs.

During those years, he was losing his contact with singing and music, but his playing of t'aepy'ôngso (see picture on the right) kept the music in him. In the early 90s he was awarded the first price for the instrument in a couple of competitions. He did not sing yet one stage but during gatherings after events (twip'uri), from which he gathered fame, and met pianist Im Tong-ch'ang, which really started his career as a singer. Music critic Kang Hôn recounts a concert from 1996 to which he had booked then unknown Jang, accompanied by Im. Kang was nervous about how Jang would be received, standing alone on a wide stage with a pianist. Jang performed a 10-minute rendering of Hanûl kanûn kil ("Road to heaven") (mp3, 9.7M), after which there was a one-second silence followed by roof-raising applause and cheer. "It was not just a habitual response but a cheer that only an overflowing emotion can raise."

(The response of Finnish audience to the opera singer Kim Woo-kyung's Korean folk song that he did as a concert encore was similar; the opera numbers he did in the ordinary program were received well, but from the folk song, the kind of which the audience must not had heard before, they sensed a wholly different, more moving emotion.)

The title of this note, "sad fragrance of wild rose" comes from his perhaps most renown song Tchillekkot ("Wild rose"), in which he sings about crying all night long for the sadness of the wild rose fragrance. The Hankyoreh reporter asked what has been so sad about it. It had been after a difficult winter '92-93, when Jang had been without a proper job, just parking cars in a relative's car repair.

"That winter went by and spring came. Back then I was living an apartment in Jamsil. One day in May, when leaving the apartment block I felt the fragrance of [tchillekkot] wild rose. I could see only red changmi roses, but the fragrance was different. I looked more closely, and saw the white petals of a shyly blossoming wild rose. It reminded me of my childhood. In the spring we used to eat the white rose petals from the field. The elders said it'll kill insects. The white wild rose cornered behind the red flowers looked so beautiful to me. And I felt the rose was like me: could't stand straight and reach its proper form, but needed to mind others all the time. I felt sad because it seemed so similar to my situation. Just so sad.
And I burst into tears. But after letting out my sadness I felt refreshed. Wiping away my sadness, I felt that it was transformed into joy."

Below, Jang sings Tchillekkot in a concert in 2004:

Jang Sa-ik: Tchillekkot ("Wild rose")
(Tchillekkot as mp3, 5.2M; see this link for more of his songs.)

And here, Jang sings Abôji ("Father"), accompanied only by a guitarist.

Jang Sa-ik: Abôji ("Father")

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: music ∙ people

오마이 독자 여러분 어서오시라

2007-02-14T13:28:00.000+02:00

오마이뉴스를 통해서 들어오시는 분들은 반갑습니다. 물론 송 기자님은 제 블로그를 자세히 알리고자 하는 의도는 없었지만 이 블로그를 좀 더 정확하게 소개하도록 하겠습니다. "정치, 외교" 주제를 가끔씩 다루긴 다루지만 이 블로그를 만들었을 때부터 "인류학자답게" 주로 한국인들의 일상생활, 사회문제, 계급-계층구조와 의식, 사회문화개념, 그리고 저의 연구주제와 가까운 자영업자들 등 중심으로 노트를 적어 왔습니다. "좌파적" 시각을 완전히 부인할 수는 없지만 특히 자영업자들에 대해서 쓸 때 그들의 가치관을 많이 반영하기 때문에 블로그의 내용도 좌파적 시각에서 멀어지게 됩니다. 물론 한국 정치, 정당들 중에 민주노동당에 대해서 제일 많이 썼지만 대부분 비판적 태도를 가졌습니다. 정치적으로 반대쪽에 있어서가 아니라 그 당이 제가 바라는 방향으로 발전되고 있지 않기 때문입니다.

제가 블로그해 왔던 주제들은 아마 가장 손쉽게 모든 노트가 주제별로 나뉘져 있는 del.icio.us/hunjang에서 볼 수 있을 겁니다. 아, 그리고 오마이뉴스를 말하자면 몇년 전에 저의 인터뷰가 영어로 그곳에서 나온 적이 있습니다.

또 놀러 오시길 바랍니다.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: blogging ∙ media

Finns smoke as much as Koreans

2007-02-09T09:03:00.000+02:00

Even though it might be easy to get the impression that Koreans smoke much more than Finns, a closer look at available stats shows that both smoke approximately as much, but in Finland, as may be expected, the gender equality is much better in this regard: women have the right not to face social pressure when smoking in public any more than men. In 2005, 22% of Finns smoked - 26 percent of men and 18 percent of women. In Korea, counting the approximate average between the 44% smoking rate of adult men and 2.3% of women, the Korean figure is perhaps one point higher than that of Finland. In Korea, a huge drop in smoking has taken place after tobacco prises were hiked in 2004, when 58% of men smoked - so huge that it's difficult to believe (but a welcome drop anyway, if true).

In Finland, men's smoking rate has diminished from 36% in 1979 to 26% in 2005, but women have bravely maintained their figure in 17-20%. Among people between 15 and 24 years of age, we've achieved gender equality: 20% of both men and women smoke in 2005. Not that I'd advocate such gender equality in Korea in which women start smoking as much as men: I'd rather have men smoke as little as women - rather than over third of women smoking in public, I'd have 2-3% of men smoking in toilets because of social pressures. (Sure, that'll present other problems and inconveniences...) I'm not sure if smoking has started to be associated with lower income strata with less education, which definitely has taken place over here (even though in our anthro dept that's not the case - but very few of us would belong to any high-income strata anyway...) Considering this report by Hankyoreh in a series of health inequality, however, according to which smoking among the highly educated and clerical workers has decreased more than among the low-educated strata, it is conceivable that it is on its way becoming a status and class marker - and not a marker of proper manhood, for example.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Korea-Finland ∙ women-men ∙ Koreansociety ∙ food/alcohol

KDLP goes Venezuela to learn about revolution

2007-02-02T15:40:00.000+02:00

Taking a look at the Korean Democratic Labor Party's (DLP) homepage, there's a photo of the Venezuelan president Chavez. Not surprised about that, as there haven't been leaders whom the far left can regard as revolutionaries for some time. It turns out

Venezuelan revolution study group: Chavez against USA, 2006

that in order to initiate exchange with the Venezuelan ruling party, DLP has sent a negotiation and a study group to the country, invited and paid (except for plane tickets) by the Venezuelan government. A writer of the DLP periodical Chinbo Chôngch'i (Progressive Politics) is accompanying the visiting group, and he will write a series for the magazine with the title "Going to the land of revolution, Venezuela." Not that I have much expectations for DLP anyway any more, but this is just one step down the slope. (For views on Chavez by a progressive US journalist and blogger Marc Cooper, see here, here, here, and here.) If the DLP team learns something about ruling a country by decree, they might also write an article in Chinbo Chôngch'i about the difference between the powers that have been granted to Chavez in Venezuela and the Yusin "revitalization" rule of Park Chung-hee in the 1970s South Korea.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Koreanpolitics

스키

2007-02-02T12:00:00.000+02:00

3년전에 찍은 비디오이지만 올해 드디어 스키를 탈 수 있게 된 반가움을 표현하기 위해서 올린다.

Hanchongnyon leader interview in Daily NK

2007-01-26T11:44:00.000+02:00

Daily NK has an interesting interview of Mr Ryu Sang-min, the head of Chonnam National University student union and a strong candidate for the next chairperson of Hanchongnyon. These views - taking unconditionally side with the DPRK government - are nothing new, but it is nice to see them in such a condensed form. The hasty translation is mine. (Update: some expressions have been corrected for better English, following Robert's translation snippets at The Marmot's Hole.)

You used the expression "nuclear-owning people" (haekpoyu minjok). What do you mean by that? (The interviewer refers to what Ryu said in a "New Year's Joint Struggle Proclamation.")
- North Korean nuclear [weapons] must be seen from the perspective of our nation (minjok). The possession of nuclear weapons in not aimed at the South. It's clear that nuclear weapons are not used against the same people. North's nuclear weapons are the consequence of the 62 years of USA's sanctions and attempts to overthrow their system and government. North Korea developed nuclear weapons for self-defense. It's because of USA that has attempted to crush the dignity and self-determination of North Korea. The nuclear weapons prevent war for our whole nation (uriminjok, "our nation", "our people", "our race"). North Korea's ability to prevent war keeps peace in the Korean peninsula and lets us live free from worry.

Your opinion of the North Korean Military First policy (sôn'gun chôngch'i) is very positive.
- Because of the Military First policy the peace in the Korean peninsula can be protected and the danger of war prevented. Because of North Korea's strong war deterrent, USA and other foreign powers (oese) can't mess with the Korean peninsula so easily. When in 2003 USA was going to attack Iraq it was said that it was because of weapons of mass destruction, but actually they were able to attack because there were no such weapons. If there was no military first [policy], it's possible that the Korean peninsula would face what happened in Iraq.
The role of military first is big in preventing USA's frantic plans of toppling North Korea['s government] and establishing a pro-American government.

Aren't you presenting purely the North Korean view?
- This is about preventing the dangers faced by the Korean peninsula, not about following the Northern system and politics unconditionally. Media is condemning us by claiming that we act on the orders of North Korea. We are concerned because the terminology [concerning military first policy] is used in a negative sense.

Why do you emphasize the struggle against Grand National Party?
- The presidential election takes place in 2007, and the fate of the nation depends on who gets elected. Bellicose statements such as "the problem of North Korean nuclear weapons must be solved even if there's a danger of war" prevent the unification and peace of the Korean peninsula. Therefore, we have declared struggle against Grand National Party [GNP] in the presidential election.
This year's election is not simply a contest of policies and pledges but a war (chônjaeng) between the forces of peaceful unification (p'yônghwat'ongil seryôk) and the fascist forces of the past (kwagô p'asyoseryôk). Since GNP has lost two presidential elections they'll fight hard to take the power. GNP's schemes uncompatible with the June 15 era must be stopped.

Do you see GNP aiming to return to the dictatorship of the past?
- GNP, regarding North Korea as enemy and the June 15 declaration as national discrace is an anti-masses(panminjung), anti-unification force.

What do you think about the serious breaches of human rights in North Korea?
- I can't understand the talk about North Korean human rights problems. USA is pointing out human rights problems in North Korea, but USA's breaches of human rights are more serious. How many people in the big land mass of USA are able to live and hold up human rights?
There are several North Korean human rights organizations in our country as well, but the violations of human rights in South Korea are also very severe. The Southern part is no different in regard to human rights. Human rights are a question of the system of the society. People in North Korea must feel it in order to have a problem, it's not something to be defined by outsiders.

Isn't the North Korean human rights situation too horrible to be compared with South Korea?
- Where's the proof? North Korean refugees say there are human rights problems, but they can't be believed. US human rights organizations' covert operations (kongjak) make North Korean refugees tell lies. USA gives all kinds of funds to human rights organizations and has them operate along the Chinese border and scheme "unwilling" escapes from North Korea. We must listen to the opinions of people living in North Korea and not the refugees. I went to the Kumgang Mountains and met North Koreans (Pukhan tongp'o) there. I didn't hear them say that there are human rights problems [in North Korea].

So do you mean that there are no human rights problems in North Korea?
- We must correct our perspective on human rights problems. People living in North Korea are proud of the Military First policy, and if they think that it's ok to have less to eat and wear in order to defend that policy, then the consequently arising problems can't be regarded as human rights problems.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: DPRK ∙ minjok ∙ Koreanpolitics

Spam from ROK embassy in US

2007-01-24T12:54:00.000+02:00

Every now and then I receive mail from Korus, the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in the United States, from an address under the domain dynamic-korea.com. It's not surprising that a person involved in Korea-related research ends up in such e-mail lists; the annoying and almost unforgivable (and detrimental to the aims of those mailings) is the fact that when I've tried to get myself removed from the mailing lists and have the mailings cancelled (especially as events in the USA have little relevance for me), all the contact e-mail addresses given in the messages or in the homepage(feedback@dynamic-korea.com, webmaster@dynamic-korea.com) bounce. Perhaps I should file a complaint to the Korea Information Security Agency (www.spamcop.or.kr).

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: blogging ∙ technicalities

Trying out Flickr (some panoramas)

2007-01-19T11:31:00.000+02:00

Seems that I'll have to find another web photo service to upload my vast number of panorama shots I took in Korea. For example this panorama shot of the western part of Jinhae, with the original size of 8571 x 1625, doesn't look that impressive when it is reduced to 1024 pixels in width in Flickr.

Jinhae panorama
Originally uploaded by Anttinen.
Update: click this link to see a 3692x700 pixel (624K) version of the picture.

(Update: click this link to see a 2511x700 pixel (624K) version of the picture.)
These two are from Sillim 6-dong marketplace in Seoul. This location belongs to the area to be developed as "New Town" (my note from April 2006). According to the official announcement of the Gwanak-gu administration (to which Sillim belongs), the construction is supposed to begin this month (January 2007), so these pics just may end having some historical value, but it wouldn't be the first time a development project is delayed.
Neighborhoods like this are photogenic, mainly because of the ideas of "humaneness" or "human flavor" that people like me have learned to associate with this kind of sceneries as compared to apartment block areas. (I'll have a post coming of what it looks like in Nan'gok now that the apartment block construction is finished; here are my pics of what it looked like there in 2000 and in 2001-2002.)

(Update: click this link to see a 3093x700 pixel (421K) version of the picture.)
Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: photography ∙ Sillim/Gwanak ∙ neighborhood ∙ marketplaces

한국 갔다 와서 (피 똥 오줌)

2007-01-18T11:11:00.000+02:00

The title is in Korean because I could not think how that can be put as neatly in English. ("After visiting Korea"?) During the three-week visit, I was healthy only for one week; first it was the piece of rice cake (ttôk) that I left on the motel room table and did not put in the fridge that made me sick. I recovered from that quickly only to catch a nasty cold which continued for the rest of the visit and even after returning, giving me recurrent strokes of fever among other things. Because my fever was as high as 39.3 on the evening of the second day back in Finland, I went to see a doctor, who sent me for further examination as the blood test showed a very high infection level (CRP?), over 200. The longer I sat in the hospital corridor after seeing a doctor and giving new blood samples the more miserable the state of public health care looked like and the better the idea of escaping the place altogether appeared. I checked in at 1 pm, and at 8pm a doctor came to inform me that the infection level had gone down so much that I could go home, on the condition that I return the next day to give new samples. He also noticed that no urine and feces tests (the parenthesized part of the title refers to this) had been taken even though they were clearly marked in my papers. I felt like cursing no voi perkele. The three visits to that hospital during the week hardly contributed to my recovery, which in the end took place without antibiotics (which was a good thing in itself, of course).

• As for the visit to Korea, most of the time - quite naturally - we spent among my wife's family in Jinhae, Changwon, and Busan. (People whom I meet after a long time tell that it shows in my accent. Heck, it might even show in the way I speak Finnish.) Even though my parents-in-law's house is not, how shall I put it, up to contemporary standards (and it can be felt especially in the winter), I couldn't have perhaps spent a better time. For example my wife's younger sister's (ch'ôje daughters are at an age in which they wrap an imobu around their fingers at their will.

Western Jinhae, photographed from Jehwang hill. (Click for a bigger pic to open in a new window.) The old center of Jinhae is even more westwards from here, but recent developments in areas closer to Busan have rendered this part of town almost as underdeveloped, and shifted the commercial weight and population towards east. Also the present position of City Hall reflects this.

• I was happy to meet the people among whom I conducted research after a long time, and as far as I can tell the feeling was mutual, but I also got the feeling that the special relationship that enabled research is now over. (Actually, it's about time now that I'm finally to get the doctorate...)

Mr Pak, the most important person for my research, was very busy in his rice bakery (ttôk pangakan) before Christmas, so I could exchange only the basic courtesies and news. Not surprisingly, he had moved to a newly built apartment in Sillim 7-dong (or was it 6-dong) meanwhile.

"Yumin's mother" operated her clothing repair shop as before. Her husband, who operated a "cramming dorm" (kosiwôn) for a while, was back driving taxi, now for a company before he can get his own private taxi.

Hairdressing business is nowadays slow, at least in "Mrs Hong's" place. Her explanation makes sense: people's funds are so much tied to real estate that expenditures such as dressing one's hair are being cut.

When "Mr Kim" and "Mrs Kang" were closing their restaurant in 2001 in the Sillim 2-dong neighborhood where I conducted research they said they were planning to open a restaurant somewhere in the countryside, specializing in a single dish. For a long time it didn't look as if they were going to realize their plan, but now it turned out that they had purchased a house in the rural parts of Icheon, Gyeonggi-do, living in the upper floor and operating a duck meat restaurant in the ground floor. It appears that despite of being in the middle of nowhere, there is enough clientele to sustain such a place, and the urban Icheon, a growing place and a prospective site for a "new town", is a 10-15 minute drive away.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: businesskeepers ∙ neighborhood ∙ people ∙ self-employment ∙ Sillim/Gwanak

since coming to Korea

2006-12-18T08:48:00.000+02:00

Since arriving at Korea:

• I have even less time and opportunities to write blog notes than during the last months, or follow the Korean events.
• reading the printed version of Chosun Ilbo, I'm not surprised that some think Chosun bears some responsibility for the skyrocketing real estate prices, as so many of the whole-page ads were about real-estate. But ascribing so many of the present-day social ills to Chosun Ilbo, the critics are admitting that the anti-Chosun activity has been unsuccesful, as far as its aim has been to "normalize" the influence of the paper and achieve a state of affairs that Chosun no more decides the issues of the day.
• I did not remember that Korean TV is this bad. It shows that it's been long since I've been to Korea.

"Anti-communist child Yi Seung-bok"

• I didn't mean to talk about Chosun Ilbo all the time, but the accompanying photograph that I took yestertoday in front of a comprehensive school (ch'odeunghakkyo) in Changwon today inspires me to do so. It's a statue of the "anti-communist child Yi Seung-bok", who was killed by North Korean commandos in 1968 with the most of his family. Chosun Ilbo reported at the time that he had told the commandos "I hate the Communist party" (kongsandang sirheoyo), for which he had been killed and his mouth slashed open. It's not only Chosun's reporting back then and later that has contributed to the use of Yi in anti-communist campaigning, but Chosun's story of Yi's alleged words ("I hate the Communist party") has since the late 1990s gathered the ire of anti-Chosun campaigners as an example of distorted and false anti-communist propaganda, with claims that there's no proof that Yi would have said so and that Chosun's reported wouldn't even have been present after the killings in the location. Chosun has taken the case to court, and the High Court decised last month that Chosun had been correct (see Chosun, Nov 25, 2006; see also Chosun's special section of the Yi Sung-bok case). Chosun was of course triumphant after the decision, and its opponents expressed disappointment and bewilderment because their view is that known facts are against Chosun.

I've always been bewildered by the willingness of the opponents of Chosun to prove that Yi didn't say he hates the Communist party. After all, they have never denied that the killings took place and that they were done by armed North Korean commandos; without Yi's words, the killings would appear even more merciless and sinister than with them, since it is conveivable that hearing "I hate the Communist party" would have enraged the commandos to commit the act. (I'm thinking of for example B.R. Myers' and Andrei Lankov's remarks of the North Koreans' propensity for instant violence, as in the "axe murder case" near Panmunjom in the 1970s.)

• It'll be quite interesting to see people that I've written a Ph.D. thesis about after four years.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: blogging ∙ Koreanpolitics ∙ media

Presentation at Academy of Korean Studies, Seongnam

2006-12-12T17:06:00.000+02:00

I will be giving a presentation this Friday, December 15 at 10.30 in the Academy of Korean Studies in Seongnam in the Korean Studies Colloquium series on the topic "Individual Skills, Social Roles, and Cultural Expectations: Family Members in Korean Small Businesses", based on, surprise surprise, on my dissertation-soon-to-be-approved on small businesskeepers in a Korean residential neighborhood (announcement in Korean at the Academy homepage)
• Link to directions to the Academy:

By Subway The simplest way to get to AKS from Seoul is to take the subway. There are two main routes.
Take the #4 blue subway line heading south. Get off the train at Indeogwon Station (seven stops south of where the blue and green lines meet at Sadang in southern Seoul). Leave the station via exit #2 and walk 25m straight ahead to the bus stop. Take the #303 or #1550-3 bus heading towards Bundang (W1,500) and get off in front of AKS (about 15 mins). Or, you could take a taxi (about W10,000).
Take the #3 Orange subway line and change to the Bundang line at Suseo Station. Get off at Seo-hyeon Station or Sunae Station and geta taxi to AKS (about W20,000).

What follows is the abstract of my presentation, but I'm afraid it fails to convey the absolute richness and brilliance of my paper. Yes.

Individual Skills, Social Roles, and Cultural Expectations: Family Members in Korean Small Businesses
Antti Leppänen
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
University of Helsinki

ABSTRACT
This presentation discusses the position and role of family or household members in Korean small businesses, focusing on the nexus of a married couple so often found behind the operation of small retail or service establishments, but also delineating and analyzing the participation of other household members.
The persons who appear in this presentation and who provided its primary ethnographic data were men and women working together with their spouses in small “neighborhood” businesses with varying degrees of technical or commercial expertise and skill, intensity of labor, formal and actual responsibility and time invested, adapting to and utilizing shared cultural assumptions and understandings concerning the roles and spheres of men, women, and offspring of households.
First I outline some general contours of keepers of small businesses in comparative material, paying attention to the prominence of married couples in the organization of labor in the operation of establishments. I also note that despite of the commonly used definition of “family business,” comparative material on small businesskeepers suggests that those establishments tend not to be inherited within the family and that the stratum is mostly transitional and reproduced through new entrants. My research and other sources suggest that it is even more pronounced among Korean keepers of small businesses, especially in the cultural milieu favoring salaried and professional employment based on educational credentials.
Drawing on my fieldwork, I remark that contributions by family members, while occasionally important in some cases, are by no means very common, and the participation of family members in operating the shops is characterized by its notable absence as much as by its occasional presence. As businesskeeping is not part of the long-time aspirations of the household, its members’ participation is not unconditional and they tend not to be subordinate to the demands of businesskeeping.
While the contributions of household members are of occasional and conditional nature, the appropriation of spousal labor is more given and unconditional. Whereas some characteristics of the common gender divisions of labor in small businesses can be seen as extensions of household divisions of labor, in such a work setting a shopkeeper man is not as wholly removed from the domestic sphere as a salaried man is, and women are removed out of the household in a way that they often find uncomfortable and unsatisfying not only due to cultural notions of male and female spheres but also because of awareness that such a condition is likely to be detrimental for the family aspirations and trajectories.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: anthropology ∙ Koreanstudies ∙ academic

to Korea

2006-11-28T16:16:00.000+02:00

In three weeks, on Dec 13 to be more precise, me and my wife will travel to Korea for three weeks. For me, that's the first time in four years and for her, for five. For the three weeks that we'll stay there (returning on Jan 5) we'll stay the better part, or at least half of the time in Jinhae and its surroundings where my in-laws live, participating also in an important family event, but we'll spend also some quality time in Seoul. I'll also be giving a talk in the Academy of Korean Studies in Seongnam on Dec 18 - more precise info will follow later.

Of course I would've liked to get my Ph.D. before going, but things didn't go that way. It's still better to leave when having received the statement concerning my dissertatin from the other of the two so-called external examiners; I don't think I could have hoped for a more positive assessment.

making foreigners sympathetic to the unification policy

2006-11-21T14:18:00.000+02:00

The Institute of Unification Studies at Ehwa Women's University has a research project that, given a closer look, doesn't look like a research project at all but a covert propaganda and intelligence campaign for the government's and Unification Ministry's North Korea and unification policy. The project, begun in May 2005, is named something like "Developing a new model for citizen's participation" ("국민참여방안 신모델 개발"), and it's sponsored by the Ministry of Unification.

The research project, as explained in the above link, is basically about conveying correct information about the policies of the Ministry of Unification to "outside customers" (oebu kogaek, that is foreigners) via strategically placed Koreans. After quoting professor Andrei Lankov that he has received concessant requests from embassies in Seoul to explain North Korea and South Korea's northern policy since arriving in Korea, it is noted that there needs to be an effective route to convey the unification policy to this kind of "outside customers."
In the following, I have translated the frequently appearing word kogaek as "customer", even though it is clearly used to mean the object (target) persons of the planned policies.

[...]
To respond to this kind of a need, this research has the following aims. First, to define the citizens of the Republic of Korea who are in frequent contact with foreigners and are thus in a good position to explain the specificities of the Korean partition and the unification as the main type of "connection customers" (yôn'gyôl kogaek) to be administered by the Unification Ministry and find out about their special characteristics and attitudes about unification and North Korea.
Second, to draft an effective administration plan for the Ministry of Unification concerning those who fall into the category of "connection customers."
Ultimately, the purpose of this study is to present a plan, which would persuade the "outside customers" to become sympathizers (tongjoja) of the policies of the Unification Ministry of the Republic of Korea via "connection customers."

III. Targets and Contents of the Study
1. Targets of the Study
This study will define the following groups in specific circumstances as "connection customers," who are going to be developed as the new "policy customers" of the Unification Ministry
o Korean employees serving in embassies, cultural institutes, chambers of commerce and research institutes
o professional secretaries and professional interpreters working with foreigners
o other Koreans in similar circumstances

2. Contents of the Study
This study will survey and analyze the following issues among the "connection customers."
o What are their overall attitudes concerning unification and North Korea?
- the necessity and properness (?) of unification; do they want unification? What do they think North Korea is? Do they have exact knowledge about the reasons and the process of the separation?
o How exact and how sufficient is their knowledge about unification and North Korea?
- This part needs to be discussed between the researcher and the Ministry of Unification, because this will include also the inspection of how much the persons are aware of the policies to be conveyed to citizens in addition to their general knowledge.
o Have they received questions from their foreign co-workers concerning the questions of unification and North Korea?
- if they have been asked, have they explained to the degree that they themselves are happy with? If they have not, have they felt the need and tried to give an explanation?
o Do they think that the foreign co-workers are trying to gather information about unification and North Korea from other sources than asking from him or her?
o Do they think there's a need for lectures or other information material about unification and North Korea for people in their position? How positively would they respond to this kind of initiatives?
[...]

V. Expected results of the study
1. To develop a new kind of policy customer for the Unification Ministry
2. To develop methods of explaining unification policy that conform to specificities of different groups
3. To contribute to more effective explanation of the unification policy to the international society

A ministry or a governmental organization that does not make efforts to explain its policies is not doing its job, and I'm not surprised that the Unification Ministry feels its policies are understood properly, but here, this scheme clearly expects these "connection customers" (secretaries, interpreters) to compromise their loyalty and confidential position and even misuse it.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: academic ∙ Koreanpolitics ∙ minjok ∙ DPRK

"PD Memo" team tells more about the Hwang case

2006-11-08T12:19:00.000+02:00

The team of the PD Memo program of MBC received pressure from a former government minister not to air the program in which it was to be stated that Hwang Woo-suk did not have any stem cells, the recently published book based on the PD Memo's investigation (article in Pressian).

The producer Han Hak-su tells in the book that in the evening of the 3rd of December, when the team was preparing the program about the existence of the stemm cells, Choi Seung-ho, the head of PD Memo's investigation team, met a former government minister, who asked them not to broadcast the segment, "even if there were no stemm cells." He claimed that he was not representing the presidential office (Blue House, Chongwadae). The person asked to think of Dr Hwang as "something like a father who has raised a family in difficult circumstances, so even if the father had done something wrong, would the PD Memo's claims be credible?" The person also mentioned the confusion the revelations would cause to the populace.

As Choi, the head of team, refused the requests, the former minister referred to the problems in investigation ethics that YTN was going to broadcast a program about the very next day. Choi admitted that some of their wordings may have been excessive, but they were not legally troubling and were neither related to the main issue. Still, the person insisted that there were going to be problems concerning the issue of investigation ethics.

Interesting and important issues that arise from these pieces of info are the facts that the person was already aware of the forthcoming contents of both the PD Memo program on stem cells and the YTN program on PD Memo's investigation ethics. The person - and those behind him - had been informed about the conclusion that the stem cells did not exist either by governmental intelligence gathering (NIS, Kukka Chôngbowon) or directly by MBC itself. Further, the Pressian article points out the possibility that YTN was doing its own program that questioned the credibility of PD Memo by a request from the government. (It was pointed out already at the height of the scandal that there was a high likelihood that the government authorities had pressured MBC and PD Memo in the matter; Pressian article from Dec 17, 2005.)

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: media ∙ Koreansociety ∙ Koreanpolitics

rekindled factional strifes in DLP

2006-10-31T12:57:00.000+02:00

The recent events, starting from the North Korean nuclear test and continuing to the recent allegations of the participation of some recently or formerly highly placed Democratic Labor Party functionaries in illegal information gathering (read: spying) for the benefit of North Korea, have deepened the gap between the two main factions in the party, the "National Liberation" (NL) faction and "People's Democracy" (PD) faction. The former, forming the majority in the DLP high committee, for example prevented any formal condemnation of the nuclear test, and allowed only the expression of "regret" in the statement of the party. In the process, tensions were boiling high, and some members of the minority faction stormed out of the committee meeting, using even rather strong language such as kaesaekki.

Now the spy allegations have created strife also between the social democratic circles active within DLP (represented by "Autonomy and Solidarity for Social Democracy" and the marxist All Together, appearing in the DLP members' bulletin board. (Not that there had been much chance for constructive cooperation between the two, even though these movements are not really associated with either of the two main DLP factions, and they are not basically divided over the stand towards DPRK, as "NL" and "PD" factions are.) Autonomy and Solidarity published a statement which acknowledged that the authorities (NIS) are not all wrong in investigating the case and demanded that the party cease talking about "oppression by authorities." To this, All Together (which, as I said, in its unconditionally critical stand towards the DPRK government is basically different from the "NL" faction) responded by asking that "are we supposed to surrender to the witch hunt?". The pen name Hyônminokch'a, a member of the executive of "Autonomy and Solidarity," responded by giving a rather nasty description of All Together as playing to the sensibilities of the "NL" faction. It didn't take long for All Together to respond again, showing how insurmountable the divide between the two groups after all is.

An interesting piece of info from the latest All Together comment is that one of the Autonomy and Solidarity activists ~~is operating~~ operated a blog, in blog.chosun.com of all places, called T'ado chusap'a ("down with jucheists"). This sounds like the Finnish social democrats' relentless anticommunism from the late 1940s to early 1960s!

Väinö Tanner, the biggest noske of them all. This is his speech (ram) as a foreign minister on December 3, 1939 broadcasted by NBC in the United States.

Another interesting thing - the reason why I started to write this note in the first place - was that All Together compares Autonomy and Solidarity to Gustav Noske, the early 20th century German social democrat and the minister of the interior who gained notoriety in putting down the uprising of the Spartakist League in 1919. Here in Finland, "Noske" (or noskelainen) used to be a slur used by communists for social democrats.

For reference, a table of the two main DLP factions compiled by Daily NK; note the conservative and anti-DPRK leanings of the newssite when reading the table.

	자주파 (NL. 민족해방) 계열	평등파 (PD. 민중민주) 계열
대표 이론	주체사상	사회민주주의, 사회주의
기반 단체	민노총 일부, 민노당 일부, 전국연합(한총련, 전농 등)	민노총 일부, 민노당 일부
당면 과제	6.15연대 강화, 주한미군 철수,국보법 철폐	신자유주의 반대, FTA반대, 평화군축
당내 지분	최고위원 11명 중 8명	정책연구소 중심

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Koreanpolitics ∙ DPRK ∙ minjok

French-Korean situationist film dialectics

2006-10-27T09:32:00.000+03:00

La Dialectique Peut-Elle Casser Des Briques? ("Can Dialectics Break Bricks?") is a French "situationist" (see Wiki) film from 1973. Both the Wiki entry for the film and the Youtube entries of a couple of excerpts assume that it's a Chinese (or Hong Kong) film that the director (?) René Viénet has overdubbed the dialogue about the dialectical tactics and radical subjectivity used by the oppressed masses in their struggle against the oppressors. But the film is Korean, and judging from the imagery used in it, North Korean. (Can't be sure, though...) The movie depicts the struggle of bare-fisted Korean peasants against sword-armed Japanese during what must be the Japanese colonial period.

• excerpt of "Can Dialectics Break Bricks?" in Youtube

At 2:34 in the film, the landlord or his supervisor tells the peasants the following:

I don't want to hear any more about class
struggle. If not I'll send in my sociologists.

And if necessary my psychiatrists!
My urban planners! My architects!

My Foucaults! My Lacans! And if that's
not enough, I'll even send my structuralists.

• second excerpt of "Can Dialectics Break Bricks?" in Youtube

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: literature/movies ∙ DPRK ∙ culturalhistory ∙ media ∙ art

livelihoods in North Korea

2006-10-25T11:24:00.000+03:00

The journal Ilda has an article on a seminar by Peace Foundation (P'yônghwa Chaedan) about the daily livelihood of people in North Korea.

Some points worth noting from the discussion, as conveyed by Ilda:

• In case both salary and rations are given, it's possible to get by, but these two conditions are rarely fulfilled simultaneously (now that an average monthly pay is at around 3000 won, 1kg rice costs 1000 W, 1kg of pork 3200 W, one head of Chinese cabbage 150 W, and one egg 200 W).
• North Koreans' livelihood depends on a large part on trade, which has been the situation for the last 10 years; the upper class deals in high-risk items such as drugs and antiquities, but the risk is covered by the high position and political power. Low class is engaged in all kinds of petty commercial dealings from trading to handicrafts and growing veggies.
• "Almost all people are making a living either by illegal means or by trade"; also corruption is widespread
• the gap between the poor and the rich is growing; those with means (money) cannot be defined as "capitalists" (chabon'ga) in the North, but are called tonju (-主?) instead. "Evene if you've got a job you can't make more than 3800 W a month, so people are fed up with party members and functionaries, and nobody wants to work in the party"; instead, people are concentrating on how they themselves and their families survive
• a refugee from Musan close to the Chinese border tells of having collected juice from bellflower (toraji) but later got to know that it had been a government's opium poppy field
• a DPRK refugee who took part in the discussion suggested that the sanctions will have the biggest efect on mid-level government (party) functionaries.
The poor people have not been relying on the government distribution since the late-90s' famine. The mid-level functionaries in the party or in the security apparatus are highly dependent on the state and on bribes given from below, and the sanctions are likely to affect this structure the most according to the speaker.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: DPRK ∙ self-employment ∙ stratification

'Peopled Economies: Conversations with Stephen Gudeman' availabe for free

2006-10-23T15:03:00.000+03:00

To my pleasant surprise, I found that a recent volume of contributions centering around the work of economic anthropologist Stephen Gudeman, including his own long article, (Peopled Economies: Conversations with Stephen Gudeman, ed. by Staffan Löfving) is available for download for free at the publisher's website: download link (pdf, 912 k). (At Amazon, a hardcover print is $39.50.) The volume appears to be, on the basis of some reading and browsing, a useful look at Gudeman's work, concentrating mainly on his The Anthropology of Economy. Considering the volume is titled "Conversations," the second article in the book, "Resisting the Black Hole of Neoclassical Formalism in Economic Anthropology: A Polemic" by Alf Hornborg is surprisingly critical of Gudeman's Anthropology of Economy, but with Gudeman's reply to the critique at the end of the volume, it should make good and constructive reading. (I'm similarly not at ease with Gudeman's community-market dichotomy.)

Perhaps I'll comment more on the book after I've read it through. Or, then I may end up not doing so...

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: anthropology ∙ academic ∙ books

Andre Kim fashion show in the 1960s

2006-10-11T15:49:00.000+03:00

Here are two newsreels of Andre Kim fashion shows from the 1960s.
This one presents summer clothes (link to the page at mncast.com)

(Via Ainslie Days)

This one presents winter clothes (link to the page at mncast.com). The text in the beginning, chasôn ûisang palp'yohoe, means "charity clothing show".

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: culturalhistory ∙ people ∙ modernization

.edu hits

2006-10-11T09:32:00.000+03:00

For someone trying to give an appearance of having an "academic" or "scholarly" blog, hits from .edu domains in the sitemeter help one to feel that way, even if the frequency and the quality of recent blog notes wouldn't support it. Now someone from the harvard.edu googled for my name written in hangul, except that she or he wrote the middle character of my family name as 베 instead of 배 (which is closest to the syllable pä). Must be someone whom I know from my time in SNU anthro dept. 에이, 저렇게 내 이름을 검색하고 블로그까지 들르면 메일이나 보내 주지, 섭섭한데.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: blogging ∙ academic

Korean-born parliamentary election candidate

2006-10-06T12:46:00.000+03:00

A news report in a daily newspaper about a one-day sea cruise of the Center Party (the other of the two main government parties) mentioned briefly that a Korean-born person will be among the party candidates in the Finnish parliamentary elections next March. Quite interesting. I won't name names, as I have no intention to endorse the person, but I respect the decision.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Korea-Finland

NAJAKS 2007 call for papers

2006-10-04T12:44:00.000+03:00

NAJAKS is short for Nordic Association for Japanese and Korean Studies. A call for papers for the 2007 conference in Copenhagen, 24.-26. August just arrived via email. As the receivers of the notice were requested to assist in disseminating information about the conference, I'll do my share with this blog note. A conference home page will be set up later this year.

Call for Papers – NAJAKS 2007

Proposals for papers are invited for the 7th NAJAKS Conference in Copenhagen, 24.-26. August 2007. The conference theme is:
Translating Japan and Korea
"Translation" is to be taken in the broadest sense – it is how we interpret and explain different cultures in our scholarly projects, whatever our disciplines.

We are "translators," not only when we literally transport and transform one medium into another. We also interpret and explain the forms and figurations of cultural phenomena at different levels: to students, to colleagues, or to the public at large. The manner in which we render words, concepts and worlds into our own language depends on many factors: power relations, ideology, religious beliefs, disciplinary constraints, and other things of which we may not be completely aware.

Sections and convenors

1. Literature (Yoichi Nagashima, [yoichi(a)hum.ku.dk])
2. History (Margaret Mehl [mehl(a)hum.ku.dk], Morten Oxenbøll [mortenox(a)hum.ku.dk])
3. Social Sciences, Politics & Anthropology (Marie Roesgaard [roesgd(a)hum.ku.dk] & Karl Jakob Krogness [krogness(a)hum.ku.dk])
4. Economics and Business Studies (Carl Jørgen Saxer)
5. Philosophy and Religion (Margaret Mehl [mehl(a)hum.ku.dk])
6. Visual Culture (Gunhild Borggreen [gunhild(a)hum.ku.dk] & Lars Martin Sørensen [lms(a)hum.ku.dk>)
7. Linguistics (Bjarke Frellesvig [bjarke.frellesvig(a)hertford.ox.ac.] & Janick Wrona [wrona(a)ling.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp])
8. Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language (Yasuko Madsen [yasuko.madsen(a)japan.gu.se])

Proposals should be submitted directly to the convenors. Proposals not relating to the conference theme are welcomed; however convenors may give preference to papers relating to the conference theme, if they receive more proposals than they can accept.

I separate document for each of the sections accompanied the mail; from those I have only included the email addresses of the session convenors. The deadline for presentation abstracts in all sessions is February 1, 2007, and notions of acceptance will be mailed at around April 1, 2007.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: academic ∙ Koreanstudies ∙ anthropology

"Sounds of the Seoul Marketplaces" at Youtube

2006-10-02T10:50:00.000+03:00

I have downloaded on Youtube the snippets of a documentary video about Seoul marketplaces (linked to in this earlier note of mine), called "Sounds of the Seoul Marketplaces" (Sôul Sijangûi Sori, 2004) and produced by the Seoul Museum of History.

• Sounds of Seoul marketplaces 1 - Gwangjang market (7:01)

• A short description of the contents in an earlier entry: Sounds of Seoul Marketplaces: Gwangjang Market

• Sounds of Seoul marketplaces 2 - Dongdaemun market (3:04)

• Sounds of Seoul marketplaces 4 - Gyeongdong market (4:03)

• Sounds of Seoul marketplaces 5 - Namdaemun market (2:02)

• Sounds of Seoul marketplaces 6 - Garak wholesale market (5:59)

• Some remarks in an earlier note: Sounds of Seoul Marketplaces: auctioning at Garak Market

I will download the video nr 5 as soon as I get it into two pieces, as it's slightly over the 10-minute limite that Youtube has. Here's a direct link to it in Lee Mon-woong's visual anthropology archive: Seoul's traditional marketplaces.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: marketplaces ∙ urbanspace ∙ work ∙ Koreanstudies ∙ anthropology ∙ Seoul ∙ Koreanculture

spy trial

2006-09-29T17:31:00.000+03:00

The trial of Mr Chông Kyông-hak (Jong Kyong Hak in the DPRK convention) has proceeded without any specific difficulties, judging from the Yonhap piece carried by Chosun Ilbo, except that judges are said to have been a bit at loss because it's been so long since such cases of directly dispatched spies have been tried in ROK courts.

An interesting piece of info concerns Mr Jong's master's thesis in DPRK in 1989. His topic was "Study of reactionary character and fragility of the South Korean puppet army" (남조선 괴뢰군의 반동성과 취약성에 관한 연구), in which he stated for example that "because the South Korean army is a reactionary army in which individualism and mammonism (hwanggûmmannûngjuûi) are rampant, the class enmity between superiors and underlings must be induced and [the army] rebuked."

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: DPRK

descendants of Hakpong Kim Seong-il celebrating chuseok

2006-09-28T10:22:00.000+03:00

This five-minute snippet of the descendants of Hakpong Kim Il-sông (1538-1593) preparing and celebrating ch'usôk is a part of a 51-minute documentary by National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage (국립문화재연구소) called "Four seasons of the main line descendants of Hakpong" - a clumsy descriptive rendering of the Korean 학봉종가의 四季 (2002). I downloaded it from professor Lee Mun-woong's Visual Anthropology Archive in order to show it to the students in my on-going class - and having it available via Youtube seemed like the most secure method...

학봉 김성일 in Korean Wiki; born in Ûisông Kim lineage; was a disciple of T'oegye Yi Hwang with Sôae Yu Sông-ryong. Passed the highest civil service exam in 1567. He was dispatched to Japan in 1590 and returned early next year; in response to a memorial presented by one other official who warned that Japan's invasion was imminent, he maintained in his memorial that confusing people's minds (minsim) with the threat of invasion was more dangerous than "pirates of the island nation", for if the "people's minds" are lost, all the fortifications are of no use. (The Wiki entry says that Kim Sông-il has been wrongly accused of the lack of preparations before Hideyoshi's invasion.) Nevertheless, he took part in the defence of the country as an official, but contacted a disease and died during the hostilities in 1593.

T'oegye Yi Hwang

A small factoid is that one of the two founders of Trigem computer company is a direct descendant of Hakpong, and the other related to him through marriage; later, a descendant of T'oegye joined the company.

(So if your school library holds a good collection of T'oegye's works, it's quite likely a consequence of Trigem's support...)

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Koreanculture ∙ Koreanhistory ∙ people ∙ companies

political map of ROK

2006-09-18T13:52:00.000+03:00

A graphic four-field representation of the South Korean political landscape has appeared (via Jinbonuri bulletin board). The four dimensions are "socialism", "capitalism", "Yeongnam kkolt'ong", and "Honam kkolt'ong". The big red circle is the "ordinary people's political leaning". Check how your favorite news outlet or politician situates!
(Click for a big map to open in a new window)
Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Koreanpolitics ∙ people ∙ media

Korea Nat'l Housing Corp. becomes "Humansia"

2006-09-18T10:00:00.000+03:00

I must have been searching for info about the present state of apartment construction work in what soon is only remembered as Nan'gok in Sillim 7-dong, Southern Seoul when I encountered a previously unheard term "Humansia." Turned out "Humansia" is the new brand, or signboard, of the Korea National Housing Corporation (Taehan Chut'aek Kongsa), defined as "not just a housing brand" but a new "urban brand" denoting the "creation of urban space good to live in and economically competitive, and public company realizing residential welfare" according to an introductory article in the real estate pages of Seoul Economy. Accordingly, the homepage of the corporation displays only the "Humansia" brand, and the old homepage is, well, outright termed as "old": old.jugong.co.kr.

Housing corporation continues the imaginative use of linguistic entities associated with English languages in naming its new brand. The use of the first component "human" demands no further explanation, as the subtitle to "Humansia" is in'gan chungsim tosi, "human-centered city". The second component "sia" remains murkier for my linguistic perception, but according to the article in the above link it stands for "wide space, a site/lot" (넓은 공간, 대지 [垈地?]). It remains to be seen whether the name, which will be applied not only to residential houses but also to all other buildings in teh blocks, will be written in Roman or Korean alphabet. I'd think it'll be in Roman letters, since the brand design seems to be always that way.

An interesting development indeed; the government-owned housing corporation enters the housing brand market with the stated reason that the housing brand market is "excessively confused and competed" (from the above link). It doesn't make sense to be only cynical towards such signboard change: improvement in the image of the public sector housing might at least alleviate the real and perceived increase of social polarization (or then it might heighten the drive of the private sector to distinguish itself further...).

Samsung Apartment in Mok-dong in the foreground, repainted Raemian behind

A recent piece of news in Hankyoreh was that apartment blocks are forbidden to repaint their old names to match the "apartment brands" that the original construction companies are currently sporting. Thus, in a market situation when the term "apartment" (ap'at'û 아파트) in the apartment block name lacks to convey the idea of development and modernity, "Samsung Apartment" is not allowed to become "Samsung Raemian", or Hyundai Apartment to become "Hyundai I-Park", or "Dawoo Apartment" to become "Prugio" and so on. Seems that those already did the repaint job are allowed to remain so, while the future offenders are levied a hefty fine of five million won (4000 €). (What is 5 mil W compared to anticipated housing price hikes?

And yes, the new apartments in former Nan'gok, to which residents have started moving in since the end of last month, are also branded "Humansia", as can be seen for example from the official site of the "redevelopment right owners' association" (that means those are entitled to acquire an apartment as it's been their property that was redeveloped).

Nan'gok in 2006, from KD News;
see Nan'gok in 2000-2002 in an earlier entry

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Sillim/Gwanak ∙ urbanspace ∙ cities ∙ Koreansociety ∙ modernization

further signs of abolition of death penalty in ROK

2006-09-08T09:39:00.000+03:00

Kyunghyang Sinmun's report on the prospective constitutional court members' negative position towards death penalty shows that South Korea is leaning towards the abolition of putting people to death by the government. Chôn Hyo-suk (Jun/Jeon/Chun/Cheon Hyo-suk/sook), the candidate for president of the constitutional court, told in parliamentary hearings that while she's for the maintaining of the national security law, she supports the abolition of death penalty. (In my view, both deserve to go, but death penalty is first in priority.)

The abolition bill that was submitted already two years ago, despite having signed by a majority of lawmakers, hasn't gone anywhere from the legislation committee. No executions have taken place since the last days of Kim Young-sam's administration, when the authorities cleared the table, sarcastically speaking, for Kim Dae-jung's government. Neither KDJ nor Roh Moo-hyun have allowed execution of death sentences to take place.

The Kyunghyang article gives also a summary of some cold (sorry sarcasm again) figures: in 2005, six death sentences were given in first trials (eight in 2004), and three sentences confirmed in the Supreme Court; presently there are 62 inmates in death row; 998 executions have taken after the establishment of ROK (what happened during the Korean War is apparently not included in this figure).

• list of earlier posts on abolition of death penalty in ROK (del.icio.us/hunjang/)

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: deathpenalty ∙ Koreanpolitics ∙ Koreansociety

"smash asem", support Chinese peasants

2006-09-05T13:39:00.000+03:00

People calling themselves anarchists announce a demonstration against the ASEM meeting in Helsinki, Finland the following weekend. The announcement, here in English, begins as follows:

We heard news about peasants and sweatshop workers rioting all around China on almost a daily basis. The least we can do together to support them is to bring at least a bit of disorder to streets of Helsinki as well.

Expressing solidarity with oppressed people like Chinese peasants is all good - and Chinese peasants are truly oppressed - but don't ask solidarity from me if the police uncles see it appropriate and necessary to apply physical law enforcement on you; I'm going to side with the shopkeepers whose windows you're in all likelihood going to try to break.

But that was not what I set out to point out in this note. Of the four photos in the banner of the anarchist site, while refering to Chinese peasants, three are from Korea:
click to open a larger photo in a new windowIt is understandable that it's more difficult to get good photographs from a totalitarian country like PRC, so Korean pics can do as well: people look the same, and the writing isn't all that different either. And who knows if even the second pic from the left is from a place like Hong Kong and not from the mainland (my knowledge on police gear is very scant).

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Korea-Finland

제출

2006-08-29T10:37:00.000+03:00

최근에 블로그질을 별로 안 한 이유는 이전 글에서 볼 수 있다. 어제 월요일에 이번 달 논문제출 마감날에 드디어 박사논문을 "예비심사"를 위해서 제출했다. 그 전 밤을 새웠고 오후 4시 다가올 때 어떡할까 하다가 결국 문 닫기 10분 전에 300쪽의 종이 뭉치 두 개 들고 땀 흘려 학부 사무실에 들어갔다. 제출하고 나니 조심스럽게 논문을 좀 급히 프린트했으니까 모자란 부분이 나타나면 어떨까 물었더니 학부비서가 심사위원들한테 미국으로 다음 달 6일에 보내니 고칠 거 있으면 그 때까지 갖다 주어도 된다고 했다. 휴우...

그래도, 일단 제출을 했다.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: academic ∙ blogging

"the"

2006-08-24T12:57:00.001+03:00

Amending my diss. manuscript after the (?) proofreading done by an English-speaking colleague of mine, it's funny to see what being a speaker of a language that does not have articles (the, a) does to one's English. The large majority of the (?) corrections concern the article the. Such a lousy language, in need of all that small loose stuff when everything could be expressed with single words, even if longer because of inflection and all that.

From OED: (institutional subscription I guess)

B. Signification. I. Referring to an individual object (or objects).

* Marking an object as before mentioned or already known, or contextually particularized (e.g. ‘We keep a dog. We are all fond of the dog’).

1. The ordinary use.
[...]
2. Used before a word denoting time, as the time, day, hour, moment: the time (etc.) in question, or under consideration; the time (now or then) present. the while: see WHILE.
[...]
3. Before the name of a unique object or one so considered, or of which there is only one at a time
4. With a class-name, to indicate the individual example most familiar to one, or with which one is primarily or locally concerned
5. Formerly with names of branches of learning, arts, crafts, games, and pursuits. Now chiefly dial. Also generally with gerundial vbl. ns. (arch.).
[...]

And so on...

And it's not just once that I've written "his husband" and "her wife"; yet another annoying trait of English to distinguish between "he" and "she".

I have a hunch that these mistakes are familiar to ESL teachers in Korea.

Update.

And yet another individual peculiarity, almost all of my also words were in a wrong place in sentences.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: academic

Amnesty report on migrant workers in South Korea

2006-08-18T12:13:00.000+03:00

Amnesty International has released a report on migrant workers in South Korea which, as is easy to guess since this is a human rights organization, is not pretty reading.

• Republic of Korea (South Korea):‘Migrant workers are also human beings’
• Press release: South Korea: Migrant workers exploited and abused

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Koreansociety ∙ work

review of Jung E-hwan's book by Choi Jang-jip

2006-08-16T10:03:00.000+03:00

Choi Jang-jip, a leading intellectual and critical thinker (not afraid to say so) in today's Korea, has written for Pressian a review of "Political Sociology of the Labor Market in Contemporary Korea" (현대 노동시장의 정치사회학) by Jung E-hwan (?, Chông I-hwan) of Seoul National University of Technology.

[...]
그러나 문제의 중요성에도 불구하고 노동시장에 대한 학문적 관심과 진지한 연구는 상대적으로 희소한 것이 현실이다. 아마 양적 측면으로만 본다면 연구결과의 수와 규모는 오히려 늘었다고 할지 모른다. 민주화 이후 정책결정과정에서 전문가에 대한 수요와 각종 연구용역과 프로젝트 사업이 크게 늘면서, 전문가들이나 대학교수들이 양산해내는 정책보고서가 급증했기 때문이다. 이러한 현상은 1990년대 이래 노동문제에 대한 연구가 사양산업화하여 거의 사라지다시피한 대학의 지적 풍경과는 큰 대조를 이룬다. (…)

최근 출간된 서울산업대학교 정이환 교수의 <현대 노동시장의 정치사회학>은 앞에서 말한 이러한 학문적 상황에서 나타난 중요한 저작이라 할 수 있다. 무엇보다 이 책은 최근에 양산되는 정책보고서적 연구의 결과물도 아니고, 현장으로부터 괴리된 순수 학문적 연구도 아니며, 어떤 이데올로기적 편향이나 선진적 거시모델에 무비판적으로 경도된 연구도 아니다.

정 교수는 신자유주의적 세계화에 따른 산업 및 고용구조의 급격한 변화, 그리고 금융위기 이래 급속히 진행된 한국 노동시장의 분절화, 고용과 실업문제, 사회양극화의 문제를 중심으로 광범위하게 문헌을 섭렵하고 외국과 한국의 경험적 자료를 치밀하게 분석한다. 그리고 그 분석의 결과를 토대로 한국의 현실에서 실현가능한 하나의 대안적 노동시장 체제를 조심스럽게 제시한다.
[...]

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: books ∙ academic ∙ Koreansociety ∙ work ∙ stratification

woes of Democratic Labor Party

2006-08-16T07:13:00.000+03:00

Hankyoreh 21 weekly has a story about the not so small problems that the Democratic Labor Party is struggling with at the moment. Nothing is really new: support figures going down like cow's tail (this isn't an English idiom, is it?), power struggle between PD ("people's democracy") and NL ("national liberation") factions, an image too closely associated with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), and North Korea as well.
The article remarks that DLP has two "sacred precints" (sôngyôk 聖域), topics on which the range of opinions is very restricted: KCTU and North Korea. The former is given treatment in the text, citing opinion surveys on DLP, but the latter, North Korea, is given just that one notice - in a magazine that claims to have no "sacred precints" (성역없는 비판 보도 <한겨레21>).

The article cites some interesting pieces of info from the survey by Hangil Research about the support figures of DLP at the time when the overall party support wass 7.8%:

Education 
middle school or less 1%
high school           4
techn. college       10
university           10

Occupation
Agriculture etc      2.1%
Self-empl.           3.7
Blue collar         12.3
White collar        10.6
Housewife            4.5
Student              4.3

Family income
1 mil W or less      1.2%
1-2 mil W            6.0
2-3 mil W            5.5
3-4 mil W           11.2
4 mil W or more      8.6

DLP has been doing some good work on the behalf of the self-employed for example in gathering info and providing support on the issue of high-interest loans, but as much as it aims and claims to work for and represent the interests of these shopkeepers and other petty businesspeople (most often sômin/seomin in the political lingo), it hasn't really been able to reach out to those people, and I guess one reason must be the KTCU image. It is interesting that the support of DLP is the highest among the "blue collars" (manufacturing industry workers, working class), and the income stratum with the highest support figure for DLP is 3-4 million won (2500-3300€).

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: stratification ∙ businesskeepers ∙ Koreanpolitics ∙ Koreansociety ∙ seomin

football ad and the Koreas

2006-08-15T09:09:00.000+03:00

The Korean KTF had a TV ad during the football-soccer World Cup this summer in which a North Korean family was supposedly watching the South Korea vs. Italy game in the 2002 games. The game, as well as others, was actually broadcast in North Korea, with the announcer showing appreciation for the exploits of the Southern team. So now KTF put up an ad, borrowing the actual voice of the North Korean announcer and paying royalty for it, to construct an imagery of a divided nation which had a chance to become one even for

Namhan vs. Ittallia

Namchosôn vs. Ittallia

a moment via the game broadcast. The name of the ad is Pugûi chinsil, "Reality of the North": it shows first general images of what is, I guess, Pyongyang, then youngsters doing gymnastics or rehearshing for a mass show in front of a huge concrete building. Then it continues to the front of a dreary-looking grey apartment building, where a young boy rushes in, we learn, to watch the game between South Korea and Italy. The North Korean announcer's voice is in the background. The family, a very extended one, or several neighbors, are sitting around the table and cheering for the goal that the South makes. I remember reading somewhere that the ad was shot with Chinese-Korean actors.

With ads, it'd be too easy to make an issue of it being called Pugûi chinsil, "Reality of the North". But I can't help making one: as much as the makers have created a DPRK-looking imagery (or what looks like the potential wievers' perception of the reality of the North), including also the lettering in the TV screen and the translitteration of "Italy" in North Korean style (이딸리아)- but not the name of the Republic of Korea. The picture above is a capture from the ad: South Korea is given as Namhan, which is a South Korean word for "South Korea", when the distinction with the North needs to be made or when Taehan Min'guk would be clumsy. In the North they'd never use it in such a context. But using the correct North Korean term for "South Korea", Namchosôn, as in the second capture of what should be the actual North Korean broadcast (snipped from this Weekly Donga article), would have taken the becoming one (hana toegi) a bit too far, considering that the viewers were most likely to include only the Republic of Korea in their idea of the team they were cheering, and also that there are things about South-North relations and issues which are not done just like that, such as having the name of the country as Namchosôn.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: media ∙ Koreanlanguage ∙ Koreanpolitics ∙ DPRK ∙ minjok

leftist friendship with ROK

2006-08-11T18:49:00.000+03:00

One Finno-Korean factoid is that the head of the parliamentarian friendship group of the Republic of Korea (or whatever those country friendship groups that members of parliaments have are called) is Kari Uotila of Left Alliance. What is perhaps a little bit of interest is that his party comrades have for the most part felt (and many must still be feeling) affiliation with the northern part of the Korean peninsula than with the southern. Left Alliance is a party born out of the bankrupted (financially and ideologically) Communist Party of Finland and the Finnish People's Democratic League, which was a cover organization for both communists and left-wing socialists who felt too lefty to be Social Democrats. As far as I'm aware, MP Uotila was one of those left-wing socialists. What is also interesting, for his position as the head of the parliamentary South Korea friendship group, is that he is a shipyard worker by profession; perhaps much more than his politics, this fact would discourage him to feel affinity with South Korea, considering the frictions between EU and Korea over shipbuilding. But apparently either his politics or occupation do not matter for him, and that's all good. There's still room further away in the left to support DPRK.

Oh well, South Korean rulers are all bunch of commies nowadays anyway, so it's only appropriate that a socialist parlamentarian wants to be their friend.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Korea-Finland ∙ Koreanpolitics

흉년

2006-08-09T09:55:00.000+03:00

올해는 흉년(凶年)이다. 비가 안 와서 숲속 자연산 열매가 잘 안 나와서 그렇다. 제일 큰 걱정은 우크라이나와 러시아에서 건너온 그 나라 사정에 비해서 큰 돈을 벌기 위해서 열심히 열매를 따려는 사람들이다. 숲에 열매가 없어서 집에 가지고 갈 돈커녕 핀란드체류 생활비조차 벌기 힘등 상황이다. 우리야 열매를 겨울 내내 죽에 넣어 먹을 사람들이라 생사가 걸린 일은 아니지만 그동안 버릇이 된 데에 뭔가 대책을 세원야 한다. 자연산 열매 (블루베리, 링건베리) 대신 재배된 것을 보관해서 먹는 것이 그것이다. 재배된 열매의 수확이 보통이라 해서 가격도 자연산 열매의 금값도 아니다. 블랙커런트 5길로 5유로 할인된 12유로로 구할 수 있었다. 아래에서 부수어 설탕을 넣고 블래스틱통에서 냉동할 블랙커런트다. 맛은 독하고 쓰지만 설탕과 먹을 만하고 바이타민량은 으뜸이다. (통에 적은 것은 블랙커런트의 핀란드말의 줄임말이다.) 참, 열매가 정말 한국이름이 없는가 보다. 동물들은 한국이름이 알아듣고 기억하기 잘 지어져 있는데 (처음에 들어도 나무늘보가 무슨 놈인지 알 수 있음) 열매의 경우에는 엉뚱한 영어낱말만 쓰인다. 국립국어연구원이나 관련 단체에서 누가 이름 좀 지어 보게.

같은 주제에:
• 블루베리 보관
• 링건베리 - 베리 굿

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: food/alcohol ∙ Korea-Finland

Passing away of James Palais

2006-08-07T18:11:00.000+03:00

A following message just arrived via Korean Studies List:

I just received the sad news from the University of Washington that James Palais passed away today. It's a great loss to our field. I'm sure in a day or two somehow will send out an email obituary with details of his scholarly accomplishments.In the meantime, let me just say that it is not only his scholarship that will be missed. Those of us who were lucky enough to get to know Jim and work with him knew what a wonderful sense of humor he had. He also was a dedicated teacher of graduate students, determined to push his students to do the best they were capable of but doing so with a smile rather than a verbal whip. All of us who worked under him can say we have not only lost a mentor, we have also lost a friend.

Sincerely,

Don Baker
Associate Professor,
Department of Asian Studies
Director, Centre for Korean Research
University of British Columbia [...]

I have nothing else to add or to commemorate a great scholar but only say that if someone's going to read just one book on Chosôn dynasty Korea and is not afraid of more than 1000 pages and immense amount of info and analysis of premodern Korea, it'd be Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions: Yu Hyongwon and the Late Choson Dynasty by Palais.

Update, Aug 11, 2006

Owen has written a note on professor Palais' death at Frog in a Well, compiling also a bibliography of his most important works and articles.

Update 2.
• obituary by Gari Ledyard in the Korean Studies list
• ‘행동하는 지식인’ 역사학자 제임스 팔레 별세 (경향신문)
• 한국학 대부 제인스 팔레 타계 (한겨레)
• 美한국학의 대부 제임스 팔레 별세 (조선일보)
• 美 한국학 대부 제임스 팔레 별세 (연합)

"I submitted professor Palais a 100-page manuscript, and after a few months I got it back from him with a 90-page commentary attached", says professor Park Cheong-sin.

• Top scholar brought prestige to UW Korea studies, by Carol N. Vu, Northwest Asian Weekly
• Founder of Korean Studies in US James Palais Dies
• Obituary: James Palais, 72, leading Korea scholar (Seattle Times)
• James Palais (Wikipedia)

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Koreanstudies ∙ academic ∙ people ∙ Koreanhistory ∙ books

그 때 그 체제

2006-08-04T07:18:00.000+03:00

안드레이 란코프 교수가 데릴리NK에서 조선인민민주주의공화국과 옛 동구권의 억압의 정도 등 비교하는 글을 실었다. 스탈린 체제에 하에서도 북한에 있는 절대적인 통제가 행해지지 않았고 60년대부터의 소련과 소련권 동유럽은 북한에 비교만 하면 자유의 땅이었다. 란코프는 다음과 같이 쓴다:

동유럽 국가에서는 이러한 자유가 소련보다 더 컸다. 1950년대 말 이후 대부분의 동유럽 국가들은 주민들이 공산당 정권에 직접 도전하지 않으면 주민들의 개인생활에 별로 신경을 쓰지 않았다. 이러한 '관대한 입장'을 잘 표현해주는 말이 “우리를 반대하지 않는 사람이면 우리와 동맹자다”는 것이다. 이렇게 주장한 사람이 다름 아닌 수십 년 동안 헝가리 공산당 총비서로 지낸 야노시 카달이었다.

어떤 동유럽사람들이 핀란드사람들이 있는 자리에서 조금 비판적인 어조로 말해도 되는 줄 알았는데, 운이 안 좋았을 경우엔 말은 우리나라 공산주의자의 귀에 거슬렀다. 제일 악명 높은 경우는 핀란드 작가가 헝가리 작가를 고발한 사건이다. 핀란드 방문 허가를 받은 헝가리 작가가 핀란드 작가들하고 얘기를 나누는 자리에서 파시즘에 대해서 누군가 말을 거냈나. 헝가리 작가는 "검은 파시즘 아니면 빨간 파시즘 말씀이십니까"라는 식으로 물어보길레 그 말을 듣는 어느 핀란드작가 헝가리아 작가연맹에 고발편지를 보냈다. 깜빵에 들어가지는 않았지만 헝가리 당국들의 심한 검문을 당했다고 한다.
또 다른 사건이라 할 수 있을지 모를 일이 에스토니아에서 있었었다. 최근에 나온 에스토니아의 소련강점기 일상생활을 그리는 책에 따르면 어느 에스토니아 관광가이드가 핀란드사람들을 안내하고 있었는데, 그들은 다람쥐를 보고 나니 에스토니아 다람쥐가 털이 핀란드 다람쥐보다 얇다는 얘기가 나왔다. 에스토니아 가이드는 "우리 다람쥐가 사회주의 체제에서 자라서 그랬을 것"이라고 농담 좀 하길레 그 말을 들은 핀란드 방문객이 그 가이드를 소련체제를 비하했다고 소련당국들한테 고발했다.

그 때 그 사람들은 이랬었다.

공산 향수를 느끼랴.

Kuin ensi kertaa / Yong Hye-won 처음처럼 / 용혜원

2006-07-31T09:01:00.000+03:00

처음처럼 / 용혜원 우리 만났을 때 그 때처럼 처음처럼 언제나 그렇게 수수하게 사랑하고 싶습니다	Kuin ensi kertaa / Yong Hye-won Tavatessamme kuin silloin ensi kertaa Niin koruttomasti haluaisin rakastaa
처음 연인으로 느껴져 왔던 그 순간의 느낌대로 언제나 그렇게 아름답게 사랑하고 싶습니다	Ensirakastuneena kokemieni hetkien tunnot Niin kauniisti haluaisin rakastaa
퇴색되거나 변질되거나 욕심부리지 않고	Haalistumatta haurastumatta ahnehtimatta
우리 만났을 때 그 때처럼 처음처럼 언제나 그렇게 순수하게 사랑하고 싶습니다	Tavatessamme kuin silloin ensi kertaa Niin aidosti haluaisin rakastaa

Käännös Antti Leppänen 안띠 렙배넨 옮김.

헬싱키에서 아셈정상회담을 하는 동안 회담에 참가하는 나라들의 사랑시(詩)를 모아서 헬싱키 어느 광장에서 전시회를 열린다고 하니 나한테 한국의 사랑詩를 찾아 번역해 달라고 했다. 한국 詩를 잘 모르는 것이겠지만 인테넷이 있어서 걱정할 것 없다. 용혜원의 <처음처럼>을 "101가지 사랑시"에서 찾아냈다. 핀란드말로 옮긴 것을 보니까 그렇게 욕볼 일을 안 했다 싶네. 누가 딴 말 해 보게.

고침.
"우리 만났을 때"를 Tavatessamme로 고쳤다. Kun tapasimme보다 좀 詩적인 감이 좋을 것 같아서.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: literature/movies ∙ Koreanlanguage ∙ Korea-Finland

Aidan Foster-Carter and the media

2006-07-28T16:18:00.001+03:00

Compared to me who ended up being requested only once to appear in media for the "expert opinion" about the situation after the North Korean missile tests, Aidan Foster-Carter had a lot more hectic times with the media after the news broke out:

Wednesday, July 5, was one busy, dizzy day. It began early (6:45am) with lots of radio. Besides BBC World Service, there was a full house of Celts - Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - plus local radio in Essex and Warwick. I'd been booked for BBC Radio 4's flagship Today too, but was first postponed and then stood down. They always do that to me. Still, this was all done by phone from home; hence no great inconvenience, just a tad annoying.

He also got a phone call from across the Atlantic:

Worryingly, ignorance seems to increase across the pond. Fox TV phoned, wanting someone who'd met Kim [Jong-il]. I suggested Madeleine Albright. Who? Er, your former secretary of state! (I'm not sure if right-wing Fox even speaks to Clintonistas, mind, or vice versa.)

As for me, appearing in media is always a good opportunity to hone the skill to present one's expertise in a clear and condensed manner, and the vanity factor is not irrelevant either... Except that I do not consider myself a specialist on DPRK missiles, which I told the producer when he contacted me, but as the vanity factor is not irrelevant, we agreed that we can work out something after I told him how I might be of use for their program. As the commuter train was late, my biggest concern that morning was not the interview but that I'd miss the program; after getting assured that I wouldn't be late, it was that all my sweat (it was 30 degrees that morning) would show on air. It did not.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: DPRK ∙ media ∙ Korea-Finland

ssahn.com one-eyed photographs

2006-07-28T09:38:00.000+03:00

Just a note of the most ingenious and silliest of blogs, ssahn.com kept by Hongik professor Ahn Sang-soo, which contains only pictures of people covering their other eye. One of the latest additions is the reporter Cho Gab-je.

Let me pick some other examples as well: the actor Kwon Hae-hyo, former president's daughter Roh So-young, the migrant worker Gufi,
the musician An Chi-hwan, Hongik students Chang Hye-jin and Cho A-ra, restaurateur Mitsuyoshi Kawanishi, the poet Kim Chi-ha, keepers of Yogi Punsik Bae Tae-jin and Lee Hyun-ja, and so on.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: blogging ∙ photography ∙ art

photography and travel site

2006-07-28T07:22:00.000+03:00

Such are the ways of googling: 창실동 image search took me to a travel and photography site 뭉그니의 여행이야기 Diego's Travel World, kept by a fellow who, judging from his extensive trips around the world, is close to being a professional traveller and travel writer, but is actually a high school geography teacher. Lots of things to see, such as the following:
• visit to Naksan close to downtown Seoul
• Gaesimsa (開心寺) in Southern Chungcheon
• from downtown Seoul to Inwangsan
• list of photographic visits in Korea

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: photography ∙ Seoul ∙ urbanspace

losing weight in the army

2006-07-27T14:51:00.000+03:00

Newsis (?) via Daum brings us the piece of human interest news that Mr Yu and Mr Hwan lost respectively 40 kg and 47 kg in weight during their military service. For example Mr Yu 's weight had increased to 120 kilos during his studies due to frequent occasions of drinking and late meals. What draws my attention to this issue is that in my country, which has a similar mandatory military service as the Republic of Korea, the most common change in bodily weight is exactly the opposite to what happened to these two young men. When I've told of this to Koreans, some have commented that the same often happens in Korea as well due to increased muscle mass in excercise. Over here, it's most often the increased bodily fat: for example I must have gained 5 kilos during the first two months back then in the 1980s. One learns to be lazy.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Koreansociety ∙ Korea-Finland

more Kim Kwang-seok at Youtube

2006-07-25T12:10:00.000+03:00

Seems that since I linked a Kim Kwang-seok performance from Youtube, several new pieces of him have been added: see search for Kim "Kwang Seok".

Naûi norae ("my song") from a concert hosted by pianist No Yeong-sim.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: music ∙ art ∙ media

Mr Chough and the Romanization of Korean names

2006-07-21T14:44:00.000+03:00

Chough (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax),
Fi. alppivaris, Kor. 붉은부리까마귀

Browsing quickly through the main pages of some of the Korean newssites, I saw the name Cho Sun-hyông (조순형) mentioned as a formidable candidate in the by-election of Seongbuk-gu. As someone who's paid some attention to the romanization of Korean names, I thought that wasn't that not Mr Cho but Mr Chough; yes indeed, Chough Soon-hyung (elected as the leader of Kim Dae-jung's old Millennium Democratic Party a few years ago ). When googling to find about his name, I learned that "chough" is actually a bird (see Wikipedia), pronounced [tʃʌf], as even I could have figured out, but not apparently Chough Soon-hyung, who with other Korean Choughs must have had the impression that "chough" rhymes with "though" and not with "tough". (What I'm not sure about is whether it can be made to rhyme with "though". In the NPR programs that are aired over here, the listeners who send in mail are asked to indicate how their names are prononounced; "my name's Chough, and it rhymes with "though.") Well, actually Mr Chough is not fully on wrong tracks here, as Wiki remarks that "its [the bird chough] name probably comes from the old Cornish pronunciation of chough - "chow" as in bough." But still, here would have been a good case for at least a bit of Romanization guidance, if not discipline. (In case Mr Chough ever makes it so big that his name is mentioned in Finnish news, it's conceivable that his name gets pronounced something like 코우그흐.)

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Koreanlanguage ∙ people ∙ Koreanpolitics

old note: "let's support Kim Dae-jung and crush communism"

2006-07-21T11:48:00.000+03:00

I found this following gem from my research notes. It's a text from a paper slip that a customer had left in "Yumin's mother's" clothing repair shop for her reading. Who says Kim Dae-jung's government wasn't supported by the supporters of Natural Security Law and opponents of communism?

대한민국을 사랑하자 • 김대중 대통령님을 받들자 • 민주주의를 지키자 • 공산주의 공산주의자를 멸망시키자 • 국민의례를 하자 • 국가보안법을 지키자 • 간첩을 막아내자 (Let's love The Republic of Korea • Let's support Kim Dae Jung's government • Let's support democracy • Let's wipe out communism and communists • Let's observe the national etiquette • Let's support the National Security Law • Let's keep away the spies • – translation AL)

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Koreanpolitics ∙ people

human toll: Korea 50, Finland 11 - proportional: Finland 2, Korea 1

2006-07-21T09:27:00.000+03:00

Last weekend, after heavy rains and rapidly rising floods, 50 people were feared dead in Republic of Korea, population 48 million. The previous weekend, 11 people drowned in Finland (pop. 5.3 million) even though the only extraordinary weather phenomenon was the fine weather. The number of drowned here proportional to population was double the human toll of floods and other consequences of the rains in Korea. (Still, with their alcohol drinking habits and lack of swimming skills, Koreans are fortunate not to have a huge number of lakes and boats...)

Take for example this case: cops had been called to prevent a boisterous and drunk company to take a motor boat out to the sea. The cops took away a part of the motor so that the boat couldn't be driven. The men nevertheless found a rowing boat somewhere and took out with the consequence that one of them drowned. 차암 대단한 민족이다, 우리가.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Korea-Finland

Title:	Neighborhood Shopkeepers in Contemporary South Korea: Household, Work, and Locality
Author:	Leppänen, Antti
Contributor:	University of Helsinki, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Date:	2007-05-11
Level:	Doctoral dissertation (monograph)
Abstract:	This is an ethnographic study [...]