opinion
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How I Became an Ajumma
The Korean version of this essay appeared in the Kyunghyang Shinmun on 12 February 2015. The English version here has been published with the permission of the newspaper and the author. I have lived in many countries, but the ajumma character seems rather unique to South Korea. In case
Memories of Dictatorship from Not Long Ago
One night in 1972, I was having dinner with an American friend and her fiancé at the restaurant of the YMCA in downtown Seoul. It was a dangerous time. The talk of the town was a constitutional change the government was pushing for so that then-President Park Chung-hee
South Korea's Real Culture of Shame
Academic literature has extensively documented the so-called ‘culture of shame’ in East Asia, and South Korea is no exception to the phenomenon as a national collective that suffers acutely from fear of losing one’s face — chemyeon as they say in Korean. Shame over possible loss of one’s
When the Elite Don't Care
K.R.K. for Korea Exposé If Park Geun-hye chooses you for prime minister, beware because your political career is in peril. That is the joke in South Korean cyberspace where the biggest topic is the nomination of Lee Wan-koo, former floor leader of the ruling Saenuri Party, as
A Nation as Beautiful as a Rolex Knockoff
I only recently saw the photos of 20 remarkably identical-looking Miss Korea contestants. The shots of these polished young women inspire both horror and confusion. They look like they were made from the same cookie cutter, mass-produced at some beauty queen factory, like the same model iPhones in a Chinese
Say You Love Kimchi, And Nothing Else If You Want in
When a Palestinian student — an avid K-Pop fan at the time — said to me some years ago that she wanted to visit South Korea, I told her she should just videotape herself in her usual hijab and abaya gushing “I love Korea. I love kimchi”. Then the government
Chaebol Nutcase: Welcome to a Feudal Aristocracy of the Orient
Once upon a time, in a faraway land called South Korea, Heather was working at her father’s airline company as a high-powered executive. One winter’s day, Heather went on a trip to America, where a flight attendant on her company-owned jet offered her a bag of macadamia nuts
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,
Ilbe: South Korea's Angry Young Men
A hundred people gorge on pizza and snacks in the heart of downtown Seoul. Nothing is wrong with that picture, except that they do it next to men and women who are fasting to protest government inaction in the aftermath of the Sewol sinking nearly a half year ago. South