The books I read this year

Here's a chronological list of what I got around to reading in 2008. As always, it wasn't enough.

1. The Razor’s Edge—W. Somerset Maugham
2. Lost Illusions (Part 1: Two Poets)—Honore de Balzac
3. Memories of My Melancholy Whores—Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4. Travels With Charley—John Steinbeck
5. A Man Without a Country—Kurt Vonnegut
6. The Rum Diary—Hunter S. Thompson
7. Winesburg, Ohio—Sherwood Anderson
8. Factotum—Charles Bukowksi
9. No Country For Old Men—Cormac McCarthy
10. The Dream of a Common Language—Adrienne Rich
11. What is the What—Dave Eggers
12. The Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor—Marquez
13. Tao Te Ching—Lao Tzu
14. Chronicles Volume #1—Bob Dylan
15. Lady With Lapdog, and Other Stories—Anton Chekhov
16. The Rum Diary—Thompson (2)
17. The Book of Tea—Kakuzo Okakura
18. Poor Folk—Fyodor Dostoevsky
19. The Maltese Falcon—Dashiell Hammet
20. Children of the Volga—George Bruntz
21. The Dangerous Summer—Ernest Hemingway
22. What Happened—Scott McClellan
23. White Noise—Don Delillo
24. Nexus—Henry Miller
25. Slouching Towards Bethlehem—Joan Didion
26. V for Vendetta—Alan Moore

There were some great books in there. "The Rum Diary" made me roll on the floor with laughter, the Dostoevsky was great, as was the Delillo and the Didion. If I had to pick a favorite, it would probably have to be Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley." It wasn't the most remarkable piece of writing, but I loved the story. I'm on the last pages of James Frey's "Bright Shiny Morning" and I'll carry "The Emotional Brain" by Joseph LeDoux over into 2009. Anybody want to share their list?

What happened to Conor Oberst?

I've been reading a lot of year-end music lists this week and almost none (actually, none) of them include the Bright Eyes frontman's record. Was it really that bad? I admit, I'm biased -- Bright Eyes has too much to do with my "formative years" to be objective -- but I liked it. Especially "Lenders in the Temple." I'd put that song in a top 50 of 2008 list. Probably even toward the top.

In a year of over-production and hyper-stylized dance music, we didn't have enough well-worded songs. Maybe the darkness of Bon Iver took up too much room for other lyrically focused artists. That was a really large record. Or maybe Bright Eyes and Oberst fans wanted him to be equally as dark, which this record wasn't at all. But that's not really fair. We can't expect our artists to suffer needlessly for their art, can we? I mean, if the guy wants to be happy and healthy and that's how his music comes out, then we can't really fault him for that. I still think he's better with words than 99 percent of songwriters out there.

UPDATE: This useless magazine has "Moab" at 31, right after "Pork and Beans" by Weezer, and before "Everyone Nose" by N.E.R.D. He's in more trouble than I thought.

Out of the tunnels, back in the saddle

This story of mine ran in the Korea Herald today.

When I first moved to Seoul, I rode the train. I went down into the tunnels with everyone else. We fought and pushed to get on after work -- beat and wanting to go home. Everyone slept, pretended to sleep, or watched TV on their cell phones. The men and women that sat on the benches looked defeated.

There was never a moment during the day that felt more like a struggle. The strain and fatigue seemed contagious. Even in the event that you felt good when you got on the train, you suppressed it -- vitality seemed insensitive.

For the first six months, the environmental benefits of using mass transportation outweighed my displeasure. When I wasn't flying across oceans on airplanes, I generated a minimal amount of carbon, and that felt good.

Despite my environmental ideology, after hearing a friend praise the smooth ride from Sinchon to City Hall, I went down to Toegyero to find a way to escape the subway. From Chungmuro station (Line No. 3, Exit 1), I crossed the street and walked east.

Shops lined the north side of the street. Glass windows displayed hundreds of scooters, dirt bikes, light-CC trail riders and heavy, high-dollar motorcycles. I walked down Toegyero with two criteria -- black and cheap.

A motorcycle should be black. If you have two motorcycles, then you are allowed to have a yellow or a purple one. But a motorcycle is like a leather jacket, there is one best color.

I walked the blocks of Toegyero asking prices and checking tachometers until I found a prospect: a dark, Magma 125cc in good shape and the man selling it willing to talk about the price.

A man who wants to make a deal is hard to find. We passed the calculator back and forth. After a few grimaces and grunts, he agreed on 500,000 won -- 200,000 off what he told me when I walked in. So I took it for a test drive and it ran straight. He put on new mirrors, changed the key box, and threw in a helmet as "service."

The first tank of gas I paid to fill my motorcycle felt like a compromise. There I was, with an efficient, effective subway system running clean and smooth under my feet, buying gas. I had bent my environmental ethics for freedom.

But it was worth it. A motorcycle is an icon; it symbolizes individuality. When I leave work every night, I am leaving alone, traveling alone, at my command -- I decide who I ride with and how we get there.

My commute time has been reduced by 60 percent. Although it is 2,000 times more dangerous, and I wouldn't recommend buying a bike for the Seoul streets if you haven't ridden before, I like it better.

If you do know what you're doing, and you're still riding in the tunnels, think about living above the ground.

That's where life is.

Feliz Navidad!!

Kim Jong-Il Interprets Sunrise As Act Of War

From the Onion:

PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA–Increasingly defiant toward international pressure since his nation's first nuclear test in early October, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il condemned this morning's sunrise, calling it "another hostile, deliberately timed act by the world community" and "a clear and blatant declaration of war."

It's satire, but it's not that ridiculous. The Korea Herald has run stories that were "true" dealing with North Korea that were just as outrageous.

Remember why we went to war?

Here is a transcript of the full text of Bush's speech from March 18, 2003, that sold the war to America.

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq's neighbors and against Iraq's people.

The regime has a history of reckless aggression in the Middle East. It has a deep hatred of America and our friends. And it has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda.

I agree with this

Selfishness　is　not　living　as　one　wishes　to　live,　it　is　asking　others　to　live　as　one　wishes　to　live.　--　Oscar　Wilde

There's no future in it

Stories don't get much more sinister than this.

Billboards showing Tijuana's most wanted kidnappers don't include Garcia's image, even though he is believed to be behind most of the gang war that has claimed more than 400 lives here since late September.

"That tells you that you don't want to be the one responsible for putting Teo's picture in public," said one U.S. law enforcement source who spoke on condition of anonymity. "There's no future in it."

One possible positive side effect of global warming

The world's oceans are in serious turmoil. Fisheries have collapsed across the globe and scientists predict that rising global temperatures — particularly nearer the poles — will melt the polar ice caps and cause sea levels to rise. Waves, however, are the bringers of this bad oceanic news onto human-inhabited shores and evidence that extreme wave heights are increasing in some regions has remained relatively under the radar.

Read the rest here.

Women used to douche with Coca-Cola?

I like nothing better than to see a busted myth.

Contrary to popular belief, poinsettias are not toxic to people or animals, suicides do not increase over the Christmas holidays, and sugar does not make kids hyperactive. Also, Wales winning the rugby grand slam does not influence the death of popes, and douching with Coca-Cola is not an effective contraceptive method.

Being brave lets no one off the grave

Today someone asked me if I had a favorite poem. Today it is this:

Aubade, by Philip Larkin

I work all day, and get half drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not used, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never:
But at the total emptiness forever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says no rational being
Can fear a thing it cannot feel, not seeing
that this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no-one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Bustin' Down the Door

This looks like a good story:

The setting was the 10km stretch of coast that was home to some of the best breaks in the world, which exploded every northern winter as intense storms in the north Pacific sent mountainous swells towards the island's rocky shore.

Until the year before, the Hawaiians had dominated the annual season of amateur competitions at their beaches which were, and remain, the pinnacle of the world's surf meets.

In 1975, however, haoles (white people) from Australia and South Africa had been granted precious invitations to the meets after proving their skill and courage out of competition the year before. They wound up winning each of the four events. The Hawaiians' pride was wounded but they hid it well. They had been generous hosts to the haoles and assumed that the newcomers, regardless of their success, had an understanding of the code of humility and respect central to Hawaiian culture.

Mix Tape #2 - Soft Edges

Enjoy, and of course, if you recreate this list, order is important.

1. "Strange Overtones" -- David Byrne & Brian Eno
2. "Monsters" -- The Boy Least Likely To
3. "Paper Planes" -- M.I.A.
4. "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)" -- Bob Dylan
5. "Furr" -- Blitzen Trapper
6. "Hymn #101" -- Joe Pug
7. "Star Witness" -- Neko Case
8. "Song To Bobby" -- Cat Power
9. "Sugarman" -- Rodriguez
10. "City of Electric Light" -- Chad VanGaalen
11. "No One Does It Like You" -- Department of Eagles
12. "Talking Shit About A Pretty Sunset" -- Modest Mouse
13. "Cherbourg" -- Beirut
14. "Circe" -- Harmonia Ensemble & Kocani Orkestar

Expats bridge class divide

The Korea Herald ran a story of mine this week about the challenges of making English education affordable for low-income families.

As a response to this divide, as well as recognizing the financial obstacles for parents, Soo and a few other English teachers created a non-profit organization to provide free English lessons to underprivileged children.

Part of their thinking was that English education is expensive in Korea, and part of it was that they realized they were making money here and wanted to give something back.

Read the rest here.

On change, saying no, and staying too long at the fair

A city this size has a million pitfalls. The clubs are always open when you need them, the bars always have a place for you to sit, and there's always a friend somewhere doing something. It's hard to say no to your friends. It's hard to slow things down.

Joan Didion, in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, was the same age as I am now when she wrote "Goodbye To All That." Her city was New York, mine is Seoul. There are a lot of other differences, but there are also a lot of similarities. A few choice passages from that essay:

That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it. (pp.233)

I remember one day when ... we both had hangovers, and I cut my finger opening him a beer and burst into tears, and we walked to a Spanish restaurant and drank Bloody Marys and gazpacho until we felt better. I was not then guilt-ridden about spending afternoons that way, because I still had all the afternoons in the world.

And even that late in the game I still liked going to parties, all parties, bad parties, Saturday-afternoon parties given by recently married couples ... parties given by unpublished or failed writers who served cheap red wine and talked about going to Guadalajara ... parties where all the guests worked for advertising agencies and voted for Reform Democrats, press parties ... the worst kinds of parties.

You will have perceived by now that I was not one to profit by the experience of others, that it was a very long time indeed before I stopped believing in new faces and began to understand the lesson in that story, which was that it is distinctly possible to stay too long at the Fair. I could not tell you when I began to understand that.

All I know is that it was very bad when I was twenty-eight. Everything that was said to me I seemed to have heard before, and I could no longer listen ... I no longer had any interest in hearing about the advances other people had received from their publishers, about plays which were having second-act trouble in Philadelphia, or about people I would like very much if only I would come out and meet them. I had already met them, always. (pp. 235-6)

I'm not as over it nor is it as bad for me as Didion puts it. I don't believe that I have already met everyone that could tell me something new. I don't believe I'll ever feel like that. But there is a lot of truth in what she is feeling, and how it resonates with what I see in my days. If anything, the essay is about growth. It takes a lot of honesty and discipline to get to that next place.

Paddle in to a 30-foot wave?

This will be something to see.

The breakers can top 30 feet. If surfers in the competition miss the ideal drop-in spot and get sucked into its crashing whitewater, they can expect to languish in the deep for up to a minute. When they resurface, another mammoth wave could be towering overhead, ready to pummel them back below all over again.

The Lekman show: Happy and over too soon

The Jens Lekman show at Freebird last night was fun. Some stupid, obnoxious behavior in places (really, who runs into a crowd and starts a three-way jumpfest during "Black Cab" [and who was breaking all those bottles?]) but a good time. The show was completely over sold, way past fire code, and Lekman's set was too short. But it felt good to have somebody like that playing. And the people in the crowd seemed happy to have something to be excited about. (Check Roboseyo's post here.)

On a side note: I talked to the promoter and he said that he had a lot of trouble with Lekman's Korea representation. They didn't return his emails. They didn't come to the show. They wouldn't even show up to sell his merch and maybe make them and their artist some money. "He's not popular in Korea," they said. It feels like there really is a lack of support for unproven artists here. Why is that?

Hongdae working on its indie cred

Here's the link to the story I wrote about Jens Lekman. They're only selling tickets at the door now for the Freebird show tonight, and sales start at 7:30. This is going to be really fun.

A brief overview of the automotive clause in the KORUS-FTA and how it impacts both countries

I wrote this for the Nov. 19, 2008 edition of the Korea Herald:

The automotive clause of the Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement is but one part of a multi-faceted agreement. However, U.S. president-elect Barack Obama, along with other key U.S. lawmakers, has focused specifically on an ailing U.S. automotive industry as a crucial economic concern. Couple that with slumping demand and weak profits worldwide causing problems for Korean carmakers, and the importance of the passenger vehicle section of the KORUS-FTA becomes more pronounced.

During the first U.S. presidential debate on Sept. 27, 2008, Obama said “We have to... invest in alternative energy, solar, wind, bio diesel, making sure that we're developing the fuel-efficient cars of the future right here in the United States, in Ohio and Michigan, instead of Japan and South Korea.”

The National Assembly trade committee met on Nov. 13 to discuss the ratification of the FTA, which was first agreed upon in April 2007 under the Roh Moo-hyun administration. The committee met with intense partisan bickering, with one side suggesting a quick ratification to fend off a renegotiation demand from the coming Obama administration.

U.S. exports to Korea

As it stands now, American automobiles have been suffering from a diminished reputation in the eyes of the international community. Claims of poor fuel efficiency, lack of durability and cumbersome size have all contributed to U.S. autos’ decreased appeal worldwide. While the quality of American cars is debatable, there are legislative and economic factors at play as well.

The rest of the story.

Bill Ayers talks about palling around with Barack Obama

From the Salon interview:

One of the delicious ironies of a campaign filled with ironies was that the McCain campaign tried to use me to bring Obama down -- and every time that he mentioned my name his poll numbers dropped. Again, I think that's a big credit to the American people. But I did see a few clips. I saw the clip where she [Palin] first talked about Barack Obama palling around with terrorists and the crowd shouted, "Kill him, kill him." That was sent to me by my kids.

I don't know if you remember the Two Minutes Hate in George Orwell's "1984"? In Two Minutes Hate, the party faithful gather in front of a television screen and the image of Emmanuel Goldstein is cast up on the screen and they work themselves into a frenzy of hatred and they begin to chant, "Kill him." That's how I felt. I felt a little bit like I was this character cast on the screen. It bore no relation to me. And yet it had a serious purpose and potentially serious consequences.

The rest of the story.

You can't surf in all 50 states

I want to know what they surfed in Nebraska.

“We met a good doctor and had good surgery. We feel very lucky.”

Need a new hip, Grandpa? Come to Korea.

South Korea has joined Thailand, Singapore, India and other Asian nations in the lucrative business of medical tourism. Heart bypasses, spinal surgery, hip-joint replacements, cosmetic surgery — procedures that may cost tens of thousands of dollars in the United States — can often be done for one-third or even one-tenth of the cost in Asia, with much shorter waiting times and by specialists often trained in the West.

The War Is Over

And America is doing a lot of other stuff right, according to this fake edition of the New York Times.

Less meat, less junk, more plants

Eat crap, become crap.

The kimchi problem

This is a good blanket story for anyone trying to understand modern South Korea.

And now it seems this nation -- which worked its way from the Third World to the First World in a single generation, and whose people show the strain by working more hours, consuming more hard liquor, having more sex and committing more suicides than in any other country -- is facing another culture clash between traditional identity and a globalizing world: the kimchi deficit.

7:23:50 a.m. Nov. 4 (MST)

Today I was walking out of my Korean class with Gabriel, this tall skinny hipster kid from Switzerland.

"The next time I see you either I'll be ashamed to be an American," I said. "Or I'll be feeling a lot better about America."

"Yah, I don't think I could not be ashamed to be an American," he said.

"Oh, you hate America. It's cool to hate to America."

"I don't hate the people. I hate the country."

I took the underpass and he took the subway. Then I got on my bike and rode down to the gym. I had a good run on the treadmill listening to White Blood Cells and watching Korean television pundits dissect the election. But after that I couldn't work out properly, I couldn't focus on anything. All I was thinking about was tomorrow, about Obama, about America, about how important it felt and how I couldn't prepare myself for a McCain win.

I just want to scream...HELLLOO

Last weekend in Jirisan I finally found my norae bang song. Now if I can just find "Better Man."

Pearl Jam: "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town"

Black Cab! Black Cab! Black Cab!

That's what I'm going to be yelling when Jens Lekman comes to Seoul. He's playing Freebird (really?) two nights, Nov. 29 and 30.

Jens and crew singing "A Sweet Summer's Night On Hammer Hill"

Are you making fun of me?

Whomever it is over at Dokdo Is Ours did a nice little parody of the story I wrote about Brian Deutsch and bloggers in Korea.

"But really, what does Brian's blog mean to you?"

"It means I don't have to dig around on Dave's ESL Cafe, because he does. Brian has saved me a lot of effort, and he's funneling off a lot of the trolls and VANKers that used to load up my comment boards."

"You SUCK!" somebody shouted from a corner of the room. Nobody even paid attention.

He wasn't dead, he was working construction in Detroit

This song's too good not to share. And what a great story:

After failing to make an impact in America, he gave up his career as a musician. However, although he was relatively unknown in his home country by the mid 70’s, his albums were starting to gain airplay in countries like South Africa, Rhodesia, New Zealand and Australia ... Unbeknownst to Rodriguez it went platinum in South Africa, where he achieved cult status. With a new buzz around Rodriguez, in 1979 he toured Australia with the Mark Gillespie Band as support. Two shows from the tour were later released on the Australian only album "Alive" - the title being a play on the rumors caused by his public obscurity that Rodriguez had died years ago. It wasn't until the late 1990's (which at the time he was working on a Detroit building site) when his daughter discovered his fame thanks to a South African fan website.

Rodriguez: Sugar Man

It's not a zero-sum game

This, for me, was the golden age of basketball. When the best players were coming up, pushing each other to get better, to be better.

NBA Slam Dunk Contest: Michael Jordan vs. Dominique Wilkins

This is what we're looking at on Nov. 5

Here's a comprehensive look at what's happening with the U.S. elections, with timetables for the results in Korea.

Happy belated birthday, Mr. Berryman

October 25 was the birthday of one of my very favorite poets, John Berryman. From the Writer's Almanac:

His mother was a schoolteacher. His father, who was a banker, committed suicide when John was 12 years old. A few months later, his mother married a man whom she'd been having an affair with for the past year. They moved to New York, and Berryman went to a prestigious boarding school and then to Columbia University. He was an excellent student — a good poet and passionate about Shakespeare. He earned a grant to study Shakespeare at Cambridge in England. When he came back to the United States, he tried to get a job in advertising, but instead he went into academia. He became an "academic nomad" over the next decades, teaching at many different schools before settling at the University of Minnesota.

His personal life was tumultuous. He struggled with alcoholism and mental illness, and he was a chronic womanizer. One summer, two years into his first marriage, he fell in love with the young wife of one of his graduate students, and they began a passionate affair, which he chronicled in a cycle of 100 Petrarchan sonnets.

He made his name with Homage to Mistress Bradstreet (1956), a dialogue between Berryman and the 17th-century poet Anne Bradstreet. He worked on the project for five years, and it was so consuming that it led to the end of his second marriage. But critics thought the work was brilliant.

Berryman sought treatment for his mental illness, and part of his psychotherapy regimen was to keep a log of his dreams. Many of these dreams made their way into his poetry cycle Dream Songs. The poems were an enormous critical success.

He described his 385 Dream Songs as "essentially about an imaginary character named Henry, a white American in early middle age, sometimes in blackface, who has suffered an irreversible loss." He said, "These Songs are not meant to be understood. … They are only meant to terrify & comfort."

The first of the Dream Songs begins:

"Huffy Henry hid the day,
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point, — a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked."

Berryman was also a great scholar of Shakespeare. For decades he worked on a critical work on Shakespeare. Before publishing the book, he committed suicide by jumping off a bridge on the University of Minnesota campus on a January morning as students walked to class.

He wrote: "It is reassuring to consider that Shakespeare wrote four failures, plays that few have ever cared to produce and mostly scholars read. These failures are The Two Gentlemen of Verona, King John, All's Well That Ends Well, and Timon of Athens. The reasons for his failure in each case were different, but at least he was always capable of failure, and it is pleasant to know this."

"South Koreans reliving nightmare of last financial crisis"

Quite an alarming headline from the IHT. This place can feel nightmarish sometimes, but it's not because of the economy. Read the story, if you dare.

That'll teach you to make international phone calls

It's easy to forget that North Korea's only 40 kilometers away from safe, benign Seoul. Then you read something like this:

North Korea is using public executions to intimidate its citizens and has imposed restrictions on long distance calls to block the spread of news about rising food shortages, the U.N. investigator on human rights in the reclusive nation said Thursday.

The rest of the story.

He's very well-read, it's quite well known

Lee Siegel writes about the influence of reading classic literature in the books section of the NYT.

Somehow, we’ve been sold a bill of goods about how literature empowers us. But the idea that great literature can improve our lives in any way is a con as old as culture itself.

Take the power back

I'm really late to this, but it's too awesome not to blog. Cops shut down Rage Against the Machine at the RNC, so they did an acapella set for the crowd outside.

More on the Kundera case

A longer story in the IHT today provides more background -- and more speculation -- about the allegations that Milan Kundera ratted out a spy to communist Czechoslovakia.

"The reality is that the totalitarian regime was constructed in such a way that 99 percent of people cooperated in one way or another, and the Kundera case helps them to feel morally absolved, like they are the good guys and he was one of the baddies," Pehe said.

Many historians have found the evidence wanting. The policeman mentioned in the secret police report identifying Kundera is dead, while Kundera's signature is nowhere on the document.

There are trolls and then there are just plain assholes

No one should have to read something like this. The Korea Times has terrible judgment about what to put into their newspaper and if I was an English teacher I would cancel my subscription chigum.

Unfortunately, most native English speakers make no attempt to learn Korean; and even if they did, they probably could not, anyway. Look around you. Does the typical English native teacher strike you as being someone who is of high sophistication? Not! The sad fact is that the typical native teacher graduated near the bottom of his/her class from a lower-tiered university, and probably could not hold down anything better than a minimum wage job in his/her home country. The creme de la creme do not come here, I am sorry to say.

"The most ferocious fighting since the Korean War"

An eight part video series of the fighting in Afghanistan from embedded reporter Ben Anderson. Top tracks include "This guy lives for firing his RPG" and "Nothing like a little opium to get you ready for a firefight." Watch it here.

Where'd Russia go?

What if McCain had a heart attack from caring too much about his friends? Enter the Oval Office with Palin in charge.

The Unbearable Heaviness of Lying

This reads to me like Kundera's hiding something.

The allegations could diminish Mr. Kundera’s moral stature as a spokesman, however enigmatic, against totalitarianism’s corrosion of daily life.

The reclusive Mr. Kundera vehemently denied the account.

“I object in the strongest manner to these accusations, which are pure lies,” he said in a statement released by his French publisher, Gallimard.

In a rare interview on Monday with the Czech CTK news agency, Mr. Kundera also accused the news media of committing “the assassination of an author.”

That's pretty reactionary, defensive language.

North Korea's Octopussy

Like something out of a James Bond novel, the North Korean woman who seduced multiple S. Korean military officers, spread propaganda, and did other shady, spy-like things has been sentenced to prison.

Investigators have also accused her of scheming to murder intelligence agents using poison-tipped needles, though the plot did not go ahead.

Take the debate to the corner bar

Columnist Jim Shea has a suggestion to liven up the next presidential debate -- have it in a bar.

The candidates want to relate to Joe Six-Pack? This is where he hangs out, along with Joe Twelve-Pack, Frankie Foreclosed, Jimmy Jobless and all the rest of the blue-collar voters the candidates want to impress with their regularness.

(If you're in Korea, the debates start at 10 a.m. on Thursday the 16th.)

A Cartoon

Mr. Fish

Anarchy in the S.K.

Korea Herald reporter Bae Hyun-jung put together a greatest hits of the most absurd courtroom moments in recent months. One of my favorite stories I've read since working for the paper.

We set controls for the heart of the sun, one of the ways that we show our age

Did a little disco dance for the Korea Herald hyping LCD Soundsystem coming to town tonight. Read it here.

UPDATE: The event was poorly organized -- oversold, a clusterfuck at the doors, and then understaffed at the bar -- but the music was good. They played for 3 and a half hours. My legs are still sore, and even though Murphy and Mahoney didn't play any LCD, the lyric "I wouldn't trade one stupid decision for another five years of life" is running through my head.

LCD Soundsystem "All My Friends"

We're gonna need a bigger clock

The digital counter that marks the U.S. debt has run out of digits.

The more I seek the more I'm sought

I like the sincerity of this.

Joe Pug "Hymn #101"

Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it

In the first presidential debate John McCain said:

"The next president of the United States is not going to have to address the issue as to whether we went into Iraq or not. The next president of the United States is going to have to decide how we leave, when we leave, and what we leave behind. That's the decision of the next president of the United States."

The quote makes for a good lead into a book review I never wrote about What Happened, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's memoir about his days working for the Bush administration. Members of the administration fed him bad information and then left him to deal with the public and the media on his own when it was found out he had relayed lies. He writes about journalists, the practice of the permanent campaign, the run up to the war and how it was sold to the public, and, most interestingly, the character of the man who has done more to change the world than any single president in U.S. history.

About the war:

Today, as I look back on the campaign we waged to sell the Iraq war to the American people--a campaign I participated in--I see more clearly the downside of applying modern campaign tactics to matters of grave historical import.

They are caught up in an endless effort to manipulate public opinion to their advantage.

It is all part of the political propaganda effort to advance one's causes.

About his relationship with Bush:

I know the president pretty well. I believe that, if he had been given a crystal ball in which he could have foreseen the costs of war--more than 4,000 American troops killed, 30,000 injured, and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens dead--he would have never made the decision to invade, despite what he might say or feel he has to say publicly today.

But Bush was not one to look back once a decision was made. Rather than suffer any sense of guilt and anguish, Bush chose not to go down the road of self-doubt or take on the difficult task of honest evaluation and reassessment. Rather than look back, he would always look forward, focused on the challenges of the future rather than the regrets of the past. That was especially true when it came to a decision as irrevocable and consequential as war in Iraq.

Which is what McCain doesn't understand when he talks about not having to address the issue of how we got into Iraq. If he becomes president, under these current economic conditions, he could possibly be asked to make a decision about going to war with another country.

About the media:

The American public hungers for truth--not just as it relates to petty partisan squabbles and the controversy of the day, but larger truth, including the hard truths we too rarely hear emphasized on television or see written prominently about in our major newspapers and magazines.

We need to give a greater emphasis to who is right and who is wrong, who is telling the truth and who is not, and the larger truths about our society and our world might achieve some amazing results.

About Bush putting shit up his nose:

"The media won't let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors," I heard Bush say. "You know, the truth is I honestly don't know whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don't remember."

I remember thinking to myself, How can that be? How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine?

Fuck the police

A Slate piece on Obama and Biden's criminal justice policy worries me.

In particular, Biden and Obama have promised to beef up two federal grant programs critics say have exacerbated many of the very problems Obama expressed concern about earlier in the primaries. Obama and Biden's position shows an unwillingness to think critically about criminal justice. They are opting instead for the reflexive belief that more federal involvement is always preferable to less.

One of the least appealing aspects of American life is the police state it has become.

The New Yorker endorses Obama

The mighty magazine from NYC has spoken.

The incumbent Administration has distinguished itself for the ages. The Presidency of George W. Bush is the worst since Reconstruction, so there is no mystery about why the Republican Party—which has held dominion over the executive branch of the federal government for the past eight years and the legislative branch for most of that time—has little desire to defend its record, domestic or foreign.

Read the rest here.

Can't put all the blame on Bush, at least not for this

An article in the Oct. 6 edition of the Washington Post helps to make sense of the deregulation argument.

So the first cause of the crisis lies with the Fed, not with deregulation. If too much money was lent and borrowed, it was because Chinese savings made capital cheap and the Fed was not aggressive enough in hiking interest rates to counteract that. Moreover, the Fed's track record of cutting interest rates to clear up previous bubbles had created a seductive one-way bet. Financial engineers built huge mountains of debt partly because they expected to profit in good times -- and then be rescued by the Fed when they got into trouble.

Read the rest here.

Songs for musical chairs

Chicago multi-instrumentalist and bad ass whistler Andrew Bird's new album Noble Beast drops on January 27, on Fat Possum Records. No Seoul tour dates yet.

Bird performing the new single "Oh No" from Noble Beast:

The pulse thing was optional: 23 dead people in Ohio were also approved

If you're anything like me, it's hard to get all these economic terms to sink in. This week-old New York Times article about the media trying to make this all less nonsensical helps a little.

“We ordered three, four bottles of Cristal at $1,000 per bottle,” he said on the broadcast, recalling a night when he had a table at Marquee, a nightclub in Manhattan. “They bring it out, you know they’re walking through the crowd, they’re holding the bottles over their heads. There’re firecrackers, sparklers. You know, the little cocktail waitresses,” he said. “You know so you order three or four bottles of those and they’re walking through the crowd and everyone’s like: Whoa, who’re the cool guys? We were the cool guys.”

"This American Life" has a follow-up show here.

Don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows

Palin's claim that Obama hangs out with terrorists is tenuous at best. This is a little background on that.

Irishman shares wave with a Great White

"Just imagine being in the barrel and looking at a massive shark like you're at the bloody aquarium or something."

I'm going to pass, but thanks. Story here.

Seeing South Korea

Home and Away Magazine ran a story on their website last month I wrote about traveling in Korea. I wrote the story last year during Chuseok, when I traveled through Gangwando, visiting Seoraksan and Sokcho. The story was written for an American audience without prior knowledge of Korea, so please forgive some of the generalities. From the story:

"If you are the type that needs your vanity affirmed, Koreans are happy to oblige. They often stare from a short distance as though you are unaware, especially children. This takes some getting used to, but once you manage it, stare back. They mean no harm. Some of them are quite interesting to look at."

To read the rest here you have to enter a zip code -- 46032 -- and then click on Web Exclusives on the left. It's probably really of the most interest to you poor suckers living outside of Korea.

Al-Jazeera People Power North Korea

Sing along: The pathetic Americans kneel on the ground/they beg for mercy. A long (22 min.) news program on the North from Al-Jazeera. It looks bleak, devoid of color.



(Stolen from Korea Beat.)

Obama Kids: Sing for Change (Pyongyang Remix)

(Stolen from the Marmot's Hole)

Super Kim

Palin the Post Turtle

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75-year-old rancher, whose hand was caught in the gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Palin and her bid.

The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Palin is a Post Turtle."

Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a "post turtle" was.

The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'post turtle.'"

The old rancher saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he continued to explain. "You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, and she doesn't know what to do while she's up there, and you just wonder what kind of dummy put her up there to begin with."

Have you ever heard of Philip Roth?

Slate's Adam Kirsch has a nice rebuttal to Horace Engdahl's claim that "the U.S. is too isolated, too insular" to have competitive authors for the Nobel Prize.

It kept on raining

This is old news, but I just watched Spike Lee's "When The Levees Broke," about the causes and effects of the disaster in New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina. It's a sad and angry documentary, and worth your time. Three years after Katrina bands of armed raiders prowl the asbestos-lined FEMA trailers.

"Use the double-wide!"

Even Homer voted. Will you? (HT to Matt)

3 thoughts on the VP debate

1. Sarah Palin would make an excellent talk show host, but I don't want her running the United States of America.

2. Joe Biden makes me feel like I'm listening to a wise man, but I'm skeptical of his ability to lead the country with real dynamism, and that's what is needed.

3. The lack of potential for controversy is disappointing.

4. Biden won.

Chinese children

Slate has an interesting story here about Asian-Americans in the political system.

"Unless I'm hit by a bus or fall off a horse, I don't see why not."

Do you all remember Sufjan Stevens? C'mon, try hard. He was that indie songwriter with the ethereal textures, the one with all the instruments, that wrote all those songs you liked? Remember?

(Casmir Pulaski Day, from "Illinois")


Does that do it? No? Remember he said he was going to write an album about all 5o states? Well, it's been three years. The rumor was the next one is going to be Oregon, but it's been a long time since I've heard anything. Dude better hurry up or he's going to be double-discing the Dakotas and the Carolinas just to get it done.

Oh how I love the shirts you wear

As I'm not a street photographer, I don't have pictures of these. Imagine them on women in their 30s with long t-shirts, the words written in all caps down the front.

DROP ACID NOT BOMBS

SUN YOUR BUNS

I WAS IN NAM WHEN YOU WERE IN MOM

YOU LOOKED BETTER AS A FRESHMAN

PUREFUCKINGCANADIAN (Made in Italy, born in Canada)

THE HANDSOME BOY IN BLUE OFTEN DANCES WITH A GIRL

I SUPPORT THE COSMETIC SURGERY

And my favorite, I mean I stopped on the street to laugh -- a boy wearing a bright, canary yellow t-shirt that read in big block letters, I'M WITH STUPID and the arrow was pointing up.

Where are all the protest songs?

How long have we been at war in the Middle East? Where is Phil Ochs? Where is Woodie Guthrie? Where are the songwriters? We have talented lyricists, we have David Berman, John Darnielle, Conor Oberst--we have all these so-called folk singers that play acoustic guitars and sound "folky," but they forget what it is to be a folk singer. Is it going to take to a depression before our country makes the type of art that the world we live in requires? I wrote about this four years ago, and still nothing's changed.

At least Steve Earle's trying ("Come Back Woody Guthrie" at the 2008 Philadelphia Folk Festival)


Phil Ochs singing "I Ain't Marching Anymore":

Cleanse song

Korean food, even if I avoid gochuchang (red pepper paste) and keep it mild, can seriously hurt. Especially if there's a lot of beer and soju involved. Saying I live in a place where it's culturally required to drink misplaces the responsibility; it's ultimately up to me what goes in and out of my body. For a long time now, though, I've pretty much taken in everything put in front of me. I am an excessive American, and at times it catches up to me. I'll have brutal nights of stomach pain that over-the-counter medicine doesn't salve, doesn't cure.

I've long talked about getting a colonic, which I've heard great things about, and would love one if I find the right clinic. In the meantime, when I was back in the States I picked up a cleanse. As much as I laugh at West Coast New Age philosophy, there are some parts of their culture people can benefit from, namely their ideas about food and health.

For the past week I've been on the First Cleanse, an herbal program intended to detox. At the health food store in my hometown, the woman clerk told me it wouldn't be overly intense, not send me running to the bathroom, and I'd be able to work on it. So far I haven't noticed any real differences in anything. I have to piss a lot, but that's about it. If anything I'm acting healthier knowing that I'm on this, so that's a start.

Joe Six-Pack my ass

This is the type of Republican deceit that I find the most maddening. It's what got W. elected and what I can't understand. Why do American voters want a quality of average in their leaders? I don't know about you guys, but I want exceptional.

Cities in rivers, Oregon Trail, end of summer, and Hymn California

One of my great favorite writers is also one of my great favorite friends. He wrote a book that got published this year, and it's Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac, but today. It's stories about America from a guy that's done more living in 30-some years than three people do in their lives. Raw, vivid, lyric descriptions--sung stories about fighting through hard times in hard places.

Hymn California’s characters witness a strange wide-sweeping, panoramic America unfolding before them, while its 200 pages examine death obsessions, regional history, difficult love, and having an abusive relationship with a place (California) rather than a person. It shows displaced characters scattered across the continent, burdened by fear and homesickness while fighting to have a good time, raise hell, and live unencumbered by bourgeois ideology and “bullshit consumer culture.” Death stalks at every intersection and on every riverbank. Lives sway in the delirium of wartime. Waffle Houses, UFO cults, dead friends, serial killers, yellow-lit billboards, reluctant soldiers, suicidal teenagers, drug dealers, grandparents, Mexican cops, drunken cat-killers, and the Pope collide like trains. As its road story unravels, the characters find heavy violence, superstition, hard drugs, and surreal and wonderful mornings set across the contidental US and Mexico. Says Gnade, “a friend of mine asked me if I was trying to write ‘American magic realism’ with the book and I didn’t really have an answer for him. If it is, it was an accident.”

He lives in Portland, Oregon, and if you do too you can buy the book at Powell's Bookstore. If you don't, you can order it here.

5 podcasts

1. NPR: World Story of the Day Podcast

Hard news from around the world. Short, usually 3-4 minutes.

2. The FADER

Street-level music magazine set lists. If I had a house, I would have a party every month when these come out and all my friends would think I had excellent taste in music.

3. Rocketboom

Smart, breakneck 3-minute videos on internet culture. I have a huge crush on the host, Joanne Colan, who is often funny, always attractive.

4. Slate Magazine Daily Podcasts

Insightful commentary on the world. News stories everyday are relevant and sharp. My favorite part is the Gabfest, where three whip smart journalists hash out the week's news and give recommendations for party chatter.

5. This American Life

Great stories.

6. New Yorker: Comment

Analysis about America from the best writers in America.

7. APM: Weekend America Enhanced Podcast

Stories about America that remind me why I miss it. John Moe is hilarious. Last week he told the joke: "What is brown and sticky? A stick."

Find all these by searching the titles in iTunes.

Someone great in Seoul?

LCD Soundsystem is playing a disco set in Seoul on Oct. 10. Maybe. I don't trust Korean promoters, especially whenever it sounds too good to be true, as this does. I'm trying to do a story on it for the Herald for next Thursday's paper. We'll see. If it does go down, I'll be there with my disco boots and gold chain, and you should too.

Mix Tape #1

If I would make you a mix CD right now, I'd make you two, and this is what I'd put on them.

Disc 1
1. "People As Places As People"-- Modest Mouse
2. "Call It A Ritual"-- Wolf Parade
3. "You Belong"-- Hercules and Love Affair
4. "Let's Make Love and Listen To Death From Above"-- CSS
6. "No Substitute Love"-- Estelle
7. "First Class Riot"-- The Tough Alliance
8. "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover"-- Paul Simon
9. "Lost Coastlines"-- Okkervil River
10. "Love Dog"-- TV On the Radio
11. "Visions of Johanna"-- Bob Dylan
12. "Skinny Love"-- Bon Iver
13. "Twilight"-- Elliott Smith
14. "Waiting Around to Die"-- Townes Van Zandt

Disc 2
1. "Four Provinces"-- The Walkmen
2. "Constructive Summer"-- The Hold Steady
3. "You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As Your Told)-- The White Stripes
4. "Gobbledigook"-- Sigur Ros
5. "Party Barge"-- The Silver Jews
6. "I Luv the Valley OH"-- Xiu Xiu
7. "Where Summer Goes"-- Peter and the Wolf
8. "Fools"-- The Dodos
9. "Rise Above"-- The Dirty Projectors
10. "Little Brother"-- Grizzly Bear
11. "Lawyers, Guns, and Money"-- Warren Zevon
12. "Sympathy For the Devil"-- The Rolling Stones
13. "If I Had a Boat"-- Lyle Lovett
14. "Green Gloves"-- The National

Ways of Seeing

For the duration of this blog, nearly two years, I have been posting longish pieces written for newspapers in Nebraska and Korea. I have since decided to take a slightly different approach. It won't always be about Korea -- in fact it probably won't be that much about Korea at all, aside from the obvious fact that I live in Seoul and that will underscore my writings. I'll still post stories I write for the Herald and elsewhere, but I'll try to keep my posts brief and more frequent. As always, comments, feedback, etc. are encouraged.

--Bart

5 Pictures of Bukhansan

Marilyn Manson, Death Cab For Cutie and Korea's Michael Jackson

Sometimes referred to as “the president of culture,” Seo Taiji is one of Korea’s biggest cultural icons.


The first time Marilyn Manson played in Seoul his band destroyed the venue’s sound system because their music was turned up too loud.


American rock band Death Cab for Cutie weren’t used to the kind of media attention they received when they shared the press conference with Seo Taiji.

5 Pictures of Maisan

You don’t understand Korean culture

"I think foreigners do have a right to speak about problems in Korea and to address sensitive issues from our own perspectives. At the most basic level we are invested in this society, even if for only a short time, and we pay taxes, function as consumers, participate in local communities, and teach local children." --Brian Deutsch

In 2007 and 2008, in a span of 12 months, seven school children from Jeollanamdo died in traffic accidents. Suncheon-based teacher Brian Deutsch found it interesting how educators mobilized their students to protest American beef imports, but said little about traffic safety. So he wrote an opinion piece for The Korea Times titled “Rallies Have Little to Do with Food Safety.”

In the piece Deutsch, who is American, wrote: “Encouraging students to skip school to attend these candlelight vigils and rallies is not only inappropriate and outside the bounds of a teacher-student relationship, but it detracts attention from more pressing issues students are facing.

“Namely, they are far more likely to be killed on field trips or while walking home from school than by contracting mad cow disease, which as of yet has claimed no Korean or Korean-American lives.”

Add that to a previous piece about the use of Nazi imagery in a skin care ad, both of which were used in a modified version for the Gwangju News magazine, and Deutsch had attracted the attention of the netizens.

Who told you to talk, foreigner?

The internet campaign was led by a Gwangju man Kim Hong-su. He started two blogs to counter Deutsch’s stories and posted Deutsch’s name, blog url, and Facebook profile on Daum cafes along with an accompanying letter. He also posted the names of Deutsch’s schools and advised people to direct their complaints there. Deutsch went to the police but was told they were too busy.

Kim wrote: “What galls me the most is that these foreigners are growing fat and rich in Korea teaching their native tongue while making fun of the same people who are paying their wages. I need your (other Koreans') help in correcting this kind of behaviors from foreigners. I would like you to e-mail the editor and those of you who are local to Suncheon should track down this Brian Deutsche (sic) and find out which school or hagwon he teaches in. You can assist me when you find that information. I seek full and unfettered cooperation in my campaign to correct this foreigner's behavior. If we cannot do that to a foreigner on our own soil, how can we hope to correct the behavior of U.S. President Bush?”

I emailed questions to Kim concerning Deutsch. He responded with, “Before you try to learn about Korea via a Korean, you should learn Korean and ask the questions in Korean first.”

The Gwangju News is operated by the Gwangju International Center. When Deutsch consulted with the staff at the GIC, they told him they didn’t like his articles, either. They didn’t like the Nazi story or the traffic safety story, and they also didn’t like the story he wrote about the drowning death of a 14-year-old American boy, Michael White.

The staffers told him the magazine was publishing stories that were too foreigner-intensive. On top of that, the publisher of the magazine told Deutsch that they might as well close down the magazine if it wasn’t going to be appreciated by foreigners.

Deutsch quit the magazine. But his troubles weren’t over.

'Generalizations are kind of fun'

Anyone can be a blogger. It takes minutes to sign-on to Blogger or Wordpress. Throw up a few pictures, spew some vitriol and start checking the site meter for hits. Living overseas it’s a good way to stay in touch with friends and family. The days of the mass email are over—check the blog for life-updates.

It’s common for teachers and other non-Koreans to start up a blog. But most of them die a slow death. It’s difficult to update often enough to keep readers; what seemed like a good idea at the time can easily turn into a bore.

Still, there a few prominent expatriate blogs in Korea that receive a lot of hits. The six we are interested in here are: The Marmot’s Hole, Scribblings of the Metropolitician, The Grand Narrative, Ask a Korean! Roboseyo and Deutsch’s – Brian in Jeollanam-do.

The Marmot’s Hole is run by Robert Koehler. It is the most heavily trafficked blog of the foreigner-in-Korea set. Koehler, with the help of a handful of guest bloggers, posts news items, analysis, entertainment and pictures of old buildings. Koehler is American, the editor-in-chief of SEOUL magazine, and has been operating the blog for five years.

“Our role is to offer commentary and criticism from a fresh, outside perspective,” Koehler said. “That being said, it’s easy to overthink these things – personally, I don’t think the ‘foreign observer’ has any special role beyond that of any observer, which is to say, relaying observations he or she has made.”

“All countries are open for criticism. The question that really needs to be asked is whether anyone should take what we write seriously. For the most part, the answer to that would be no.

“Most of us are guys with too much time on our hands who like to bitch about things we don’t really understand. Which, granted, would make our uneducated rants little different from much of what passes for commentary on Korea, Western or Korean.

“I have a warning on my blog asking readers not to generalize from anything they read on my site, but still, many seem to do it anyway. Besides, generalizations are kind of fun -- nationalistically hysterical Koreans, pot-smoking over-sexed English teachers, condescending expats … who doesn’t love ‘em? It’s all a question of how seriously you take what you read.”

Do you see what I see?

Scribblings of the Metropolitician comes from Michael Hurt. The blog is a mishmash of social criticism, international politics, pop culture and comments on Korean media. Hurt first came to Korea from America as a Fulbright English teaching assistant in 1994. After earning his master’s in ethnic studies from the University of California-Berkeley, he came back in 2002 to finish his dissertation research on Korean nationalism. Now in his eighth year in Korea, he edits the Korea Journal and teaches social issues in Korea at Honguk University.

Both Koehler and Hurt brought up Alexis de Tocqueville. De Tocqueville was a 19th century Frenchman who wrote “Democracy in America,” considered by both men to be a great book about America.

“The fact that we’re foreigners shouldn’t disqualify us. I look at American social commentary and social criticism and some of our sharpest and best social critics have been foreigners, people coming from a foreign perspective,” Hurt said.

“We have eyes, we have ears. We can read your newspapers. We read what you read. We have access to your information.

“I pay taxes, I buy (things) I live here, so why do I have any less say than you do?

“Why would I put all this effort, why would I even care, or put myself out there, why would I do this if I didn’t actually give a shit?”

We’re not that different

New Zealander James Turnbull runs The Grand Narrative. He calls it “An irreverent look at social issues.” Much of his work deals with Korean advertising and media as well as social commentary. In his eighth year in Korea, Turnbull teaches English in Busan.

“I find the notion that only Koreans are ‘permitted’ to speak about Korean problems simply absurd. That isn’t to say that all foreigners’ opinions on them are equally valid, but if the roles were reversed then I’d be quite happy to hear the opinions of, say, a Korean person who had spent some time in New Zealand and who made an active effort to study and know New Zealand society and learn the language. In fact, probably more so than someone who was merely born there.

“The majority of netizens aside, I’ve actually found a significant number of Koreans to feel much the same way about the opinions of non-Koreans.

“Koreans are not unique in readily dismissing the opinions of foreigners, but they do seem more defensive about foreign criticism than most. For that reason, it is very important to use Korean sources as much as possible.

“Another advantage to using and considering Korean-language sources as much as possible is that it makes you realize how much you may stereotype and generalize Koreans yourself without being aware of it.

“Without any Korean ability, foreigners are usually forced to rely on either the limited English language media or books for the bulk of their information, and both have problems: the former for often presenting a rose-tinted version of Korea to the world, and the latter for being quickly out of date in a country as rapidly changing as Korea.”

Koehler also emphasized using the native tongue.

"Do it in Korean, and in a major Korean newspaper," Koehler said.

Writing complaints in English may be "cathartic," he said, but it does no good.

Why do foreigners complain so much?

Another pair of bloggers, a Korean man living in America (Ask a Korean!) and a Canadian teacher in Seoul (Roboseyo) put together a two-part series dealing with foreigner criticism and social commentary.

Ask a Korean! wrote, “many complaints from expats that the Korean has seen show a certain level of ignorance. This is not to say that complaining expats are dumb. It is only to say that were they more aware of certain things about themselves and about Korea, they would not be complaining as much, and the pitch of their complaints would not be as strident.

“Expats rarely venture out of large cities in Korea, and they only really interact with Koreans who are fluent in English. Do you know what makes a Korean fluent in English? Money, tons and tons of it. So not only are expats insulated from older Koreans, they are also insulated from younger Koreans who are poorer. What kind of understanding about Korea could an expat possibly have with this kind of limited exposure?”

About social critics, Roboseyo wrote, “Naming a problem is the first step to solving it, and maybe some of these critics are attempting to be a legitimate part of that process -- that is, they're writing because they want to see Korea become a better place . . . in which case, Koreans who are upset about non-Koreans criticizing Korea need to stop and take a careful look at why that upsets them, because the problem does not lie in the complainers or their intentions.

“To be fair, sometimes the social critics' intentions are good, but their methods are poor: the sometimes bitter and mean tone of certain critics can be hurtful, and as I've said to some of my friends who complain about Korea with a rude or condescending tone: "when you talk so harshly, even when you're right, you're wrong, and even if you win the argument, you still lose."

You don’t understand Korean culture

Deutsch plans to continue writing for the Korea Times and updating his blog.

“I like doing it and I like staying on top of current events and discussions. On the one hand I totally recognize that I’m being paid to teach, not to think, and I say that without being cynical at all. Most people couldn’t care less about the particular issues foreigners face, whether in the classroom or in society at large, and hearing a foreigner talk about them probably isn’t very interesting.

“I’ve also had to question how welcome those opinions are. My colleagues themselves told me that it was not my place to opine on what are called ‘sensitive issues,’ and a recent letter to the editor in the Gwangju News suggested that I, and foreigners, mind their own business and not worry about Korean internal affairs.

“But I think foreigners do have a right to speak about problems in Korea and to address sensitive issues from our own perspectives. At the most basic level we are invested in this society, even if for only a short time, and we pay taxes, function as consumers, participate in local communities, and teach local children.

“Moreover these issues are so prickly because they’re not black and white. While it might be unpleasant for some Koreans to hear the other side of the story, I don’t think it’s inappropriate for it to be raised.

“Our opinions are often dismissed with a line about ‘you don’t understand Korean culture.’ Often this comes when something unpleasant happens to a foreigner, or when a foreigner expresses an opinion disagreeable to the Korean listener. It’s well beyond my abilities to explain why this happens, but it’s patronizing and inappropriate. I do believe that although foreigners can sometimes dwell on the negative when writing or talking about Korea, I think taking a critical look shows an interest in the host culture that can be healthy if applied properly.

“I realize that a greater measure of tact is necessary when addressing sensitive issues and when trying to foster conversations across cultural boundaries, but even with a lot of coddling I remain cynical that people are ready to hear what we have to say just yet.

“I would love to have Koreans who disagree with me take the time to point out their objections, rather than simply railing against a foreigner who dares to publish something against the grain. And I would love to have Koreans spend more time trying to educate us about their culture and their views, then, since so much energy is spent telling us how wrong and misinformed our opinions are.”

Deutsch was asked by his school to drop the case against Kim. His job was also placed in jeopardy because of what he has written.