South Korea
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South Korea's Real Culture of Shame
Academic literature has extensively documented the so-called ‘culture of shame’ in East Asia, and South Korea is no exception to the phenomenon as a national collective that suffers acutely from fear of losing one’s face — chemyeon as they say in Korean. Shame over possible loss of one’s
When the Elite Don't Care
K.R.K. for Korea Exposé If Park Geun-hye chooses you for prime minister, beware because your political career is in peril. That is the joke in South Korean cyberspace where the biggest topic is the nomination of Lee Wan-koo, former floor leader of the ruling Saenuri Party, as
History Guides the Future in South Korea's Latest Blockbuster
Three uniformed South Korean high school students mercilessly heckle a South Asian migrant laborer in contemporary Busan. Seeing this, an elderly Korean man flies into a rage against them. The privileged youngsters are oblivious to the fact that the old man, Deok-soo, had himself been a migrant laborer. In fact,
A Nation as Beautiful as a Rolex Knockoff
I only recently saw the photos of 20 remarkably identical-looking Miss Korea contestants. The shots of these polished young women inspire both horror and confusion. They look like they were made from the same cookie cutter, mass-produced at some beauty queen factory, like the same model iPhones in a Chinese
Say You Love Kimchi, And Nothing Else If You Want in
When a Palestinian student — an avid K-Pop fan at the time — said to me some years ago that she wanted to visit South Korea, I told her she should just videotape herself in her usual hijab and abaya gushing “I love Korea. I love kimchi”. Then the government
Chaebol Nutcase: Welcome to a Feudal Aristocracy of the Orient
Once upon a time, in a faraway land called South Korea, Heather was working at her father’s airline company as a high-powered executive. One winter’s day, Heather went on a trip to America, where a flight attendant on her company-owned jet offered her a bag of macadamia nuts
The Republic of Korea: No Democracy as We Know
The Constitutional Court of Korea made history on Friday by ordering the dissolution of a political party for the first time since the court’s establishment in 1988. It was also the first time a political party was disbanded in South Korea since 1958. The entity in question was
Thank God for LGBT Rights
Homosexuality equals AIDS. Incest. National doom. With such rousing words, on 20 November, South Korea’s Evangelical Christian lobby effectively scuttled Seoul’s human rights charter that had been in the making for months, chanting “Amen!” to obstruct discussion at a town hall meeting attended by Mayor Park Won-soon. But
Inside the Noraebang: Power Ballads and Neoliberal Capitalist South Korea
South Koreans aspire to be the best. ‘Challenge’ and ‘fighting’ are imperative verbs plastered across billboards. From English-learning to b-boying, society is suffused with the message that if you practice for hours daily, for years at a time, you can succeed. For example, consider ballerina Kang Sue-jin, a master of
Disposable Workers of Hyper-Capitalist Korea
A call-center manager beats her subordinates with an umbrella at an office in Jongno, Seoul. She slaps them in the face over and over. She pushes them around till they cry. All for not selling enough magazine subscriptions. As a contributor to the publication of the International Trade Union Confederation,
Gender Equality in South Korea: A Long Way to Go
In 2004 a police officer in Miryang told several middle school girls who were repeatedly raped over the course of a year by forty-one high school boys that they, the victims, were “embarrassing his hometown”. Eight years later, in 2012, it was revealed that the girlfriend of one of
Breaking Soles, Saving Seoul: Teenage Missionaries of the Mormon Church
My name is Elder Johnson. I’m nineteen years old. I came to Seoul thirteen months ago as a Mormon missionary. I’m in Korea because I have something I really want to share. I’ve seen what it’s like to live in accordance with the Mormon Church, and