The Korean Wave: Not the First? (Part II)

A Japanese “Wave”?

“With parts made in Japan
I am the modern man
…
Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto”
-Styx, “Mr. Roboto”[1]

“I think I’m turning Japanese
I really think so”
-The Vapors, “Turning Japanese”[2]

During World War II, Japan and the United States threw themselves violently against each other. As American sailor struggled to fight off the murderous attacks of of kamikaze pilots, some of them couldn’t help but feel a twinge of respect for a foe who was willing to sacrifice themselves for victory. The thought that the Japanese, despite being an enemy, might have a special culture, began to take root. In the subsequent occupation of Japan by America, each began to learn about the other, whether they wanted to or not.

During the late 1970s, Japanese culture began to find its way into western culture. If Bruce Lee was the biggest action star of the mid-1970s, then Chuck Norris was the biggest action star of the late 70s and early 80s. In the same way that Lee popularized kung fu, Norris popularized karate. (Ironically, Norris’ first martial art was a Korean one.)[3]

Perhaps the biggest television event of 1980 was the miniseries “Shogun” (based upon the novel by James Clavell). “Shogun” introduced western audiences to, among other things, samurai and ninja, the latter of which was to become a craze in movies and comic books. Even Spider-man was fighting ninjas. Ninjamania’s last gasp was probably when “The Tick,” a parody comic book, released a multi-issue storyline entitled “Night of a Million Zillion Ninja.”[4],[5],[6]

Speaking of comic books, Japanese-style comics, manga, have enough followers in the west that American artists have produced comics that imitate the style (e.g. The Dirty Pair). Japanese science fiction, such as “Akira” and “Ghost in the Shell,” are admired the world over.[7],[8],[9]

Japan also made its presense known in the world of music. The 1980s saw songs such as “Turning Japanese” and “Mr. Roboto” achieve high popularity, and the Japanese heavy metal band Loudness found fans in America, which is quite an accomplishment in the era of vinyl records, decades before anything like iTunes. Karaoke machines eventually found their way into American bars in the 1990s.[10]

Enticed by the idea that that Japanese food was healthy and thus helped contribute to Japan’s famous longevity, people began eating things like sushi.

Japan’s successful economy began to create concern when American automobile manufacturing began to lose out to Japan. This can be seen in the novel and movie adaptation of “Rising Sun” and, more humourously, in the movie and TV show “Gung Ho.”

Lastly, Japanese and Japanese-inspired children’s shows, such as Sailor Moon, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and Pokemon have been very successful the world over.[11],[12],[13]

[To be concluded ...]

Related Topics

The Korean Wave: Not the First?

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Korean cultural products such as television dramas and pop music (dubbed K-pop, an abbreviation of Korean pop) has been finding an audience in foreign countries. It began in the neighboring Asian countries of Japan and China and later spead to Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines. This phenomenon has been referred to as the “Korean Wave” or “Hallyu.” Recently, two sold-out K-pop concerts were held in Paris, France. Fans came not only from France but from other Asian countries as well, and for the first time, a majority were not Asians or of Asian ancestry. Newspapers have described the event with phrases like “takes Europe by storm,” “sensational popularity,” and “taking over the world.”[1],[2],[3],[4],[5] When reading descriptions of the Korean Wave, one gets the impression that this is a unique phenomenon that has never happened before. However, I would argue that in the 1970s and 1980s, Chinese and Japanese culture found their way into Canada and America.

The Chinese Wave?

“Everybody was kung-fu fighting
Those cats were fast as lightning

[...]

It’s an ancient Chinese art and everybody knew their part”

-Carl Douglas, “Kung Fu Fighting”[6],[7]

Chinese immigrants began coming to Canada and America in significant numbers around the 19th century, where they worked as labourers, including on the railroads, where many of them died. Mostly living in Chinatowns, they were separate from mainstream society, but slowly but surely that began to change. Chinese food began to be eaten, first by railway workers, and later, by the general population. Characters, both good (e.g. Charlie Chan) and bad (e.g. Fu Manchu) found their way into English literature. Then came Bruce Lee.[8],[9],[10],[11],[12]

Bruce Lee’s movies were phenomenally successful, despite the fact that all of them had to be released in North America post-mortem. His popularity lead to a string of imitators (none of whom could measure up to the orginal). The popularity of Kung Fu movies inspired the 1974 song Kung Fu Fighting, one of the most successful singles of all time. Many boys, irrespective of their race or ethnicity, wanted to be Bruce Lee. That meant learning martial arts and eating Chinese food. After all, it was what Lee ate; it couldn’t hurt, and might help. To this day, you can see characters on American TV shows as diverse as Smallville and Big Bang Theory eating Chinese take-out food at home. Also, it was Lee who broke the taboo of teaching Kung Fu to non-Chinese. Many boys watched low-quality Kung Fu movies as much for the hilariously-bad dubbing as for the fight sequences.[13],[14]

Lee’s success opened the door for Jackie Chan and Jet Li to star in mainstream Hollywood movies (albeit after many successful years in Hong Kong). In the two Kill Bill movies, the yellow track suit that Uma Thurman’s character wears, as well as the old master who trains her, are clearly tributes to Bruce Lee and to Chinese Kung Fu masters, respectively. Even though the movie The Karate Kid was about Japanese martial arts, the teacher, Mr. Miyagi, bears a resemblance, both in appearance and in character, to many of the old, wise masters of Kung Fu movies. It’s no surprise that in the 2010 remake, the master is Chinese (Jackie Chan, no less). The Chinese movie, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was a hit in North America, becoming the the highest-grossing foreign-language film in American history. The popular animated movie Kung Fu Panda did not come out of nowhere; it grew out of a deep layer of Chinese-American cultural topsoil that had been laid down in the previous decades.[15],[16]

Now that China is a rising power with economic ties to America, we can expect this cultural exchange to continue.

[To be continued ...]

Smartphones have become very popular in both South Korea and Canada, and when comparing the two countries, some interesting similarities and differences can be seen.

How many people use smartphones? In South Korea, over 10 million people have smartphones, while in Canada, the number is 6.6 million.[1],[2] However, when you divide the number of users by population (48.875 and 34.491 million, respectively), you end up with almost exactly the same number of per capita users: one in five people. However, while almost everyone in South Korea, from elementary schoolchildren to elderly grandmothers, has a cell-phone (either a smartphone or a so-called “dumb” phone), the number in Canada is only about 60%, so the percentage of cell-phone users in Canada who use smartphones is higher. I should add that out of all 34 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) member countries, Canada has the highest fees for sending or receiving data to or from a cell-phone.[3] If prices in Canada were lower, the situation might be different.

Which brands are the most popular? In Canada, the most popular brand is the Blackberry (42% of market share), which is produced by a Canadian company, Research in Motion.[4] In South Korea, however, the Samsung Galaxy S, which is produced by a South Korean company, is slightly less popular than the iPhone.[5] What could account for this? I would guess that it has to do with who is buying smartphones and why. In Canada, iPhones tend to be seen as “fun” but if you’re, say, a business person, you want a more “adult” smartphone. In South Korea, when I see people using a smartphone, it rarely looks to me like they’re using it for work.

What do people use smartphones for? In South Korea, the most common uses of a smartphone are: as a diary, as an alarm, to get information/web-surfing, listening to music, for storing contact information, sending or reading e-mail, playing games, checking the news, watching TV or movies, weather information, and traffic information.[6] In Canada, smartphones are used for taking photos, sending or reading e-mail, checking the weather, sending or receiving text messages, and checking social networking sites (such as Facebook or Twitter).[7]

It looks like people in both countries are using smartphones to do things that “dumb” phones have been able to do for years (playing music, taking photos, playing games, sending text messages, as a television set, ringing an alarm, etc.). One has to wonder why smartphones have become so popular? I imagine that it comes down to choice. For example, “dumb” phones have games, but you, the consumer, didn’t choose them. You can’t delete them nor can you add new ones. Like a kind of mini-computer, smartphones are customizable. Even if you are already able to send text messages, you can upgrade to a newer, better program like, say, Kakao Talk, and if a better messaging program becomes available, then you can upgrade to that, too. Since “dumb” phones are very capable, I think the true allure of smartphones is the greater freedom (or perception of greater freedom) that they offer.

Related Topics:

Kakao Talk, the Little Company that Could

Once upon a time, there were no cell phones

Cat Scratch Fever

Until recently, South Korea was an unwelcoming place for cats. Students would tell me that they disliked them, and when I asked them why, they would say that it’s because they’re scared of them. When asked why, they would say that they believed that cats have a demon spirit that may seek to do them harm. Why did they think that cats have “demon spirits”? Because of their eyes, which glow in the dark. Further back in history, there was even a “mudang” (Korean shaman) ritual for discovering thieves which required a cat to be boiled alive. (The thief would thrash about in the same way as the cat, and thus be discovered.)[1]

An incident in June 2010 seemed to confirm the continuing dislike: A young woman saw a cat in the corridor of her apartment building and proceeded to stomp on it and throw it out the tenth-story window, killing it. (She was later fined.)[2],[3] However, while one person in this story clearly hated the cat, at least one other loved it –its owner.

In South Korea, young people still live with their parents until they are married. Also, Koreans work and study very long hours. For these reasons, it’s difficult for young people to have pets. However, if they have the means, they might have pets, and those pets might be cats. Lee Hyo-ri is one of Korea’s most famous singers, and has been for about a decade. She has two pet cats.[4] Also, some cafe owners in Seoul have opened “pet cafes” as a way to both distinguish themselves from the Starbucks crowd and to help out people who like pets but can’t have them.[5],[6],[7] I went to a cat cafe near Shin-chon* subway station, near Yonsei University. You trade your shoes for slippers, then rub disinfectant on your hands. As with a normal cafe, you buy a beverage, but you can also pet or play with one of the many cats there. Almost all of the customers were either young women or young couples (with the man probably having been dragged in by his girlfriend). I’ve seen another cat cafe near Gang-nam station, and I’ve heard that that there are others.

The cats at the cafe seem contented. It’s not surprising, since being treated with affection is very different from what their forebears experienced here.

* Not to be confused with Shin-cheon.

For the vast majority of students, the only way to get a failing grade, for all intents and purposes, is to be absent too many times. However, in the event that a student actually fails, they have an easy recourse: take the course again. If their mark is higher than before, then the previous mark is expunged from their record as if it had never existed. Consider this fact: Over 98% of those who enter university graduate with their degree.[1] Where in the west do less than 2% of students drop out, except at diploma mills?

It’s very telling how tests are regarded differently. In the west, tests serve two purposes: to see if students have learned the class material sufficiently well, and as a diagnostic tool through which the student can find out what their strengths and weaknesses are and what they need to study more. In South Korea, tests are merely obstacles to be overcome. When I hand students back their tests, they immediately put them away (for quick disposal into the nearest trash bin later). When I tell them to take them out so that we can go over them together, they don’t understand. When I try to explain that I want them to learn from their mistakes, they still don’t understand. Test are merely a hurdle, not something to learn from. (Korean students study long hours, but inefficiently. They make the same mistakes over and over again because they don’t learn from their mistakes.)

South Korea now has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, which means that there are fewer potential students.[2],[3] Since fewer students would mean less tuition, and thus a loss of revenue, Korean universities are compensating through three methods.

The first method is to “lower the bar,” that is, to accept students whom they would not have accepted in past years.

The second method is to create new departments. For example, one of my students told me that her major was “domestic science.” What’s that? Cooking food in beakers with bunsen burners? It turns out to be what my high school called “home economics.” High school courses are being expanded into four-year degrees. Call something a “science” to give it a sheen of legitimacy.

The third method is through accepting more foreign students.[4],[5] This is the method that I like best, because I have had foreign students in my classes, and with only one notable exception* they’ve all been good. Their English might not be as good as the Koreans’ but they’re motivated. South Korea is now a developed, industrialised, wealthy country, and these foreign students (typically from less-developed countries) are, figuratively, hungry. Their competitiveness lights a fire under their Korean classmates.

Some teachers have expectations of their students that are low or nonexistent. However, I don’t think it does any good to mollycoddle the students. Furthermore, they might even respond positively to holding them to high standards. I once had a student return to my class for a second semester. Since students can decide on their teachers, I couldn’t fathom why she had chosen me. She had been a horrible student (passive, sullen, and lazy) and I had given her the commensurately awful mark that she had deserved. She turned out to be a fantastic student, and she was not only the best student in her class, but one of my favorite students that semester. She had matured enormously. I entertained the thought that the student in the previous semester had been her evil twin. That’s how different she was.

Of course, grade inflation is problem not just in South Korea, but all over the world. However, without real education, in which students are held accountable and to a high standard, Korea will find in more and more difficult to maintain its place in a world in which more and more countries are industrialising.

* He and a classmate were dating, and after they broke up, he became sullen.

Recently, a report came out describing how, across all departments at 190 universities across South Korea, 37.8% of students received A’s and 36.2% received B’s, so that 74% of all students received a grade of at least B.[1] As someone who teaches at a good university here, that sound accurate. If that doesn’t strike you as grade inflation, then think about this: 24% of BELOW AVERAGE students receive a B. To me, that’s inconceivable. Add to this the fact that a former dean at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, which is kind of like Korea’s MIT) sent a memo to professors, encouraging them to raise student grades.[2] As far as I’m concerned, the grade system might as well be done away with and replaced with a pass/fail criteria. Then again, maybe I’m just an old-fashioned dinosaur from an ancient, bygone epoch in which A’s and B’s actually meant something.

South Korea’s education system, including its universities, bear some resemblance to Korea’s eastern neighbor, Japan, which is no surprise considering that Japan had colonized Korea for thirty-five years. Also, Japan was the first East Asian nation to industrialize, and South Korea took a lot of cues from them when they began to industrialize themselves. In both countries, high school students study hard, both at their schools and at after-school study acadamies (called “hogwon” in Korea) in an effort to do well in the all-important college entrance exam. On they day of the exam, students feel immense pressure from the expectations of their parents and family members. (It should be noted, however, that over 82% of South Korean high school students successfully go on to college.[3]) Once students arrive at university, they are burned out and no longer want to study. Instead, they want to date, drink, have hobbies, and pursue extracurricular activities for the first time in their lives. This is understandable, and in a sense they “earned” it through their hard work in high school, but as a result, freshman university students are pretty awful as students. (My brother-in-law taught briefly in Japan and he has told me that it’s similar in Japan.) Perhaps you might have a stereotype of East Asian students hanging on everything their teachers say, attentively writing down every word, and diligently doing all homework assignments. Please allow me to dispel that myth. If you were to look through my eyes, you would see students sleeping (despite the fact that I carefully explain that it is, in my opinion, the rudest thing that a student can do), sending and receiving text messages on their cell phones, doodling, or utilizing the entertainment capabilities of their smart phones or tablet computers. Short and simple homework assignments (e.g. read a three-paragraph passage and answer five fill-in-the-blank questions) often goes undone.

Here are a couple of excerpts from Michael Breen’s The Koreans: Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies:

“Colleges are reluctant to fail students because to do so may ruin a young person’s life, indicate the school erred in accepting them in the first place, and also cost between two and three thousand pounds in lost fees.” (page 70)

“Those gaining access to the top few rungs* can be sure of a guaranteed place in the exclusive club that makes up top Korean society, because once in, it is very unlikely that they will fail to graduate. Korean universities, like Japanese, and indeed like Korean organisations in general, are very difficult to be thrown out of. Sogang University in Seoul, which was started by American Jesuit missionaries, became notorious for actually failing students who never attended classes. Because organisations seldom remove people, the great difficulty in Korea is securing entrance.” (page 66)

Sogang University rattled other universities by actually failing students who never attended classes, but nowadays, almost all universities have a policy of failing students who are absent too many times. However, this is the only way that students can fail. No matter how badly they do on tests, presentations, assignments, or other class requirements, excessive absences are, for all intents and purposes, the only way to get an F. This systen then degenerates into a complete mockery of education when celebrities are exempted from this requirement and are, literally, given a free pass by virtue of them being famous. Such students are referred to by other, regular students as “ghost students.”[4] So if, for example, one of your students is a member of the girl group Wonderful Generation** then you can expect to see her only on the first day of class, if then.***

* the top-rated universities, known by the acronym SKY: Seoul National University, Korea (Koryo) University, and Yonsei University

** I made that up, by the way.

*** It’s for this reason that I really respect singer IU for saying: “I’m the type that wants to do my best at whatever I try. If I were to go to college, I’d like to be able to study properly, but my music schedule would overlap. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to my best as a student, so I explained that I wanted to focus on music and go to college when I’m ready.”[5]

If you reside in South Korea and don’t know who IU is, then you probably live under a rock in a cave.

[to be continued ...]

You may have heard of Incheon International Airport. You may be aware of the fact that it has won numberous awards for being one of the best, if not the best, airport in the world.[1] You may have been through this airport and, like me, experienced its cafes with free Internet access, restaurants, bars, and shops (many of which are duty-free). You may even have indulged in things that I haven’t, such private sleeping rooms, a spa, and even a museum. However, to truly appreciate it, you have to do as I have done, and experienced a South Korea without it.

When I first came to South Korea, Incheon International Airports was but a gleam in a bureaucrat’s eye. At the time, international flights were handled by Gimpo International Airport, and let me tell you, it was a zoo. One time, I went to Gimpo and had given myself plenty of extra time. However, I found myself waiting in a long line in front of the check-in counter that, for some inexplicable reason, was virtually immobile. As minutes turned into half-hours, and then into an hour-and-a-half, I began to get genuinely worried that I might miss my flight. At the time, I had quit my job and, even though I was intending to begin a new one, visa laws dictated that I leave the country immediately* and return later. I had no home in Korea to return to and my luggage contained all of my possessions. Missing my flight would have been much more than an inconvenience. The “cushion” of time that I had given myself was effectively evaporating. I don’t know what the problem was, but there was no end in sight. I began to feel hysterical and after I made some agitated inquiries, the line finally began to move. I made my flight, barely, but I dreaded having to go through that airport again.

When plans for a new airport were announced, I felt relieved. At first, there was no subway that went there, so you had to take a shuttle bus. I was worried that the bus would get stuck in Seoul’s infamous traffic, but to my pleasant surprise, on the many times that I took the bus, delays were never too severe. I don’t know if it was because I was lucky, or if the buses had special routes, or if there were some other reason. Nowadays, you can take the subway all the way to the airport and bypass traffic altogether.

Now, I don’t dread going to the airport, and in fact look forward to it. Of course, when you have to go through a thirteen-hour flight, check-in, security screening, immigration, and a baggage carousel, there’s a limit to how positively you’re going to anticipate going to the airport. However, I was only hoping for something better than Gimpo, which was setting the bar very low. I have to say that Incheon International has exceeded all of my expectations.

* These days, immigration allows you to stay for a little while after you stop working, but this was not the case back then.

In October 2010, the Societe de transport de Montreal (STM) was given an award for Outstanding Public Transportation System in North America.[1] As someone who is familiar with both Montreal and South Korea, I can tell you that perhaps Montreal is taking cues from Korea.

In January 2008, my sister and brother-in-law visited me in South Korea. They were impressed with the bus and subway system, which use the same card. The card has a kind of “account” into which you can put money. When you take the bus or subway, it takes out money, and the amount is determined by the distance that you travelled. Also, if you take a bus within thirty minutes of getting off the subway (or vice-versa), you save some money.[2], [3] When I visited Montreal in the summer of 2010, my sister informed me that Montreal’s public transportation system had changed, becoming more similar to Seoul’s.

I’ve found South Korea’s bus and subway system to be very cheap and reliable. Improvements continue to be made. Nowadays, at some (but not all) bus stops, a screen displays all the buses that go there, and their estimated time of arrival. Psychologically, it makes a big difference for me, as I know whether or not I have enough time to take out my iPad and start doing some work (or playing). Also, if you have access to the Internet, you can check schedules or, if you’re taking the subway, find out the most efficient route from Point A to Point B.

South Korea’s public transportation is definitely something that I will miss if or when I return permanently to Canada.

Are you a young Korean who dreams of becoming an actor? The logical course of action would be to go to acting school. Traditionally, you would begin by making commercials and then move onto dramas. However, these days, aspiring actors are being advised to spend at least three years as a pop singer first.[1] If acting is your true love, and you have little interest in singing, then it seems that you’re out of luck.

As with any business, movies and television shows carry the risk of a costly failure. Producers have decided to hedge their bets by casting people who have already proven to be popular in another form of entertainment. The ability of attractive faces to carry a show with a poor script was proven by the success of the television show “Boys Over Flowers,” a series with illogical storylines and plot holes that one could drive Korea’s KTX train through. Its success will try to be repeated by “Dream High,” which stars no fewer than four singers. Three of them come from the same talent agency, and includes the agency’s CEO, so it isn’t just young actors who are being pushed to the margins. The fact that one of the singers was harshly criticized for her poor acting does not seem to have hurt its viewership much.[2]

In 2007, Jeon Do-yeon won the award for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival.[3] Four years later, Ms. Jeon remains one of Korea’s foremost actresses. While this is undoubtedly due to her skills, it is also because of the fact that talented young actresses who have followed her have tended to be singers, whose priority is music.

Ironically, there are plans to build, by 2014, a theme park dedicated to the so-called “Korean Wave,” a phrase referring to Korean music, movies, and television programs that have found audiences abroad. However, without acting done by professional, trained actors, this wave might be ebbing away by the time its theme park is completed.[4]

At present, Korea has an address system that is different from those used in western countries, but that is going to change in 2012.

The system dates back to when Korea was a colony of Japan. Cities are divided into districts (“gu”) which are further sub-divided into neighborhoods (“dong”). All buildings in Korea have a number (whether they are visible or not), but they are based upon when a building was first constructed. As a result, they are not systematic, and building number 20 could be next to building 120. Despite the clumsiness of this system, mail and packages are usually delivered in an accurate and timely fashion.

In the recent past, I noticed that street signs had been appearing. Each street, even the little alley on which I live, now has a name. I thought that it was useful, but that its usefulness would be limited as long as the present address system remained. Little did I know that Korea was taking steps to leap ahead of its former colonial master.

This past December, I received a letter from the government. In it, it showed my present address near the top of the page, and below that, what my address will be in 2012. Addressed are to be changed to a street-based one that is similar to those that exist in other countries. Buildings will be given systematic numbers, with odd numbers on the left and even numbers on the right.[1] For example, “735-10, Yeoksam-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul” will change to “South Teheran Road No. 5, Gangnam-gu, Seoul.”

The task will not be an easy one. Over 9,000 types of documents will have to be rewritten, and for the first few years, both types of systems will be in place as this difficult transition is worked through.[2] It is undoubtedly a huge undertaking. However, according to one saying, “Nothing worth doing is ever easy.” Another, more colloquial one, says, “No pain, no gain.”

South Korea’s well-developed Internet infrastructure and its world-class electronics and software should help ease the burden, and once all of the pieces have finally fallen into place, Korea’s export-dependent economy will surely begin to reap the benefits of this more efficient system.

Related Topic:

Lost, Again …