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A Song for Ssireum: Traditional Wrestling Dies a Slow Death in South Korea
The Uiseong Middle School ssireum team at practice. (Credit: Karl Schutz) UISEONG, South Korea — Ssireum, a style of Korean wrestling some say is as old as Korea itself, has been seeing a slow and silent death in South Korea in recent decades. The sport, which feature two plus-sized competitors wrestling
When the Foreign Husband Is a Nepalese Labor Activist
Udaya Rai is a Nepalese citizen and president of the Seoul-Gyeonggi-Incheon Migrants’ Trade Union (MTU), one of the most visible organizations to fight for the rights of migrant workers in South Korea. I recently profiled him for Equal Times, a publication of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). But our
Korea, Thy Name is Hell Joseon
One of the biggest scandals of 2010 involved Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan, whose own daughter was found to have mysteriously qualified for a plum job inside the ministry, presumably with the father’s backing. This itself would not have been ordinarily such big news in South Korea, but the timing
A Confucian versus Capitalism at South Korea’s Centuries-Old Institute of Learning
Sungkyunkwan University, in the heart of Seoul, boasts a history dating back to 1398. Photo by InSapphoWeTrust On South Korea’s blue 1000-won note is a picture of Sungkyunkwan, the nation’s centuries-old bastion of Neo-Confucianism steps away from the old Changgyeong Palace in central Seoul.
South Korean Evangelicals' Anal Obsession
“They enter into carnal relations with multiple people several times a night, and wipe the semen, shit, blood, and lymphatic fluid from anal sex with discarded towels on the floor. Each morning the whole room is full of such towels and condoms covered in blood and feces. […] They reuse the
Say You Love Kimchi, And Nothing Else If You Want in
When a Palestinian student — an avid K-Pop fan at the time — said to me some years ago that she wanted to visit South Korea, I told her she should just videotape herself in her usual hijab and abaya gushing “I love Korea. I love kimchi”. Then the government
Chaebol Nutcase: Welcome to a Feudal Aristocracy of the Orient
Once upon a time, in a faraway land called South Korea, Heather was working at her father’s airline company as a high-powered executive. One winter’s day, Heather went on a trip to America, where a flight attendant on her company-owned jet offered her a bag of macadamia nuts
The Republic of Korea: No Democracy as We Know
The Constitutional Court of Korea made history on Friday by ordering the dissolution of a political party for the first time since the court’s establishment in 1988. It was also the first time a political party was disbanded in South Korea since 1958. The entity in question was
Thank God for LGBT Rights
Homosexuality equals AIDS. Incest. National doom. With such rousing words, on 20 November, South Korea’s Evangelical Christian lobby effectively scuttled Seoul’s human rights charter that had been in the making for months, chanting “Amen!” to obstruct discussion at a town hall meeting attended by Mayor Park Won-soon. But
Disposable Workers of Hyper-Capitalist Korea
A call-center manager beats her subordinates with an umbrella at an office in Jongno, Seoul. She slaps them in the face over and over. She pushes them around till they cry. All for not selling enough magazine subscriptions. As a contributor to the publication of the International Trade Union Confederation,
Gender Equality in South Korea: A Long Way to Go
In 2004 a police officer in Miryang told several middle school girls who were repeatedly raped over the course of a year by forty-one high school boys that they, the victims, were “embarrassing his hometown”. Eight years later, in 2012, it was revealed that the girlfriend of one of
Beyond Blood and Bloody Relations
My grandmother was born in Inje County, Gangwon Province, in what is now South Korea. She was displaced by the division of the peninsula, ending up in the North. I vividly remember her repeatedly saying she wanted to visit Jeju Island before leaving this world. The irony is that I,