Smokes Bad, Booze Good

South Korean televisions shows have pretty much fazed out scenes of smoking, but scenes of heavy drinking?  No problem!:

"Article 28 of the country’s broadcasting review regulation stipulates that TV broadcasts 'must exercise prudence when dealing with obscene, decadent subjects, narcotics, alcohol, smoking, superstition, gambling, vanity, luxury and wasteful trends.'

Standards weren’t necessarily applied equally to these supposed ills to society. For example, scenes with TV stars smoking weren’t difficult to see in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. But nowadays, it’s virtually impossible to see such scenes, as they’re excluded from preproduction. When a rerun of an old show or a movie is aired, such footage is often blurred out.

But drinking, by all accounts, seems to be going the opposite direction - it’s not only common to find shows featuring drinking nowadays, some are even seen depicting booze in a romantic fashion."

 Other than sports and the news, I watch very little Korean television.  But I would only add that a year ago my college, with great fanfare, introduced a campus-wide ban on smoking with great big banners everywhere.

As of today, if you want to find dudes smoking just stop in front of one of these many banners.  Or a campus bathroom.

It Was Nice Knowing You, Spring

It's supposed to hit 90 by the end of this week here in lurvely Daegu.

It Only Gets Worse

This game is getting a little too easy to play but, let's imagine Obama invited two Russian higher-ups, one of them a known spy-master, into the Oval Office but only allowed Russian state media into the room.

Who the fuck knows if we'll make it to 2020 before we're wearing leather jackets and scouring the wasteland for fuel and cans of dog food.

My guess?

Maybe!

More New Books!

John Doe, Under The Big Black Sun
Margeret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Howard Chaykin, American Flagg!
Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem
Art Pepper, Straight Life
Lauren Beukes, Broken Monsters
Yoon Ha Lee, Ninefox Gambit

Yes It Was Racism, Stupid

As long as we're focused on 2016, turns out people like me were right -- it was racism "racial anxiety," not economic anxiety, among white voters that led to Trump's victory:

"Economic factors played a much smaller role, suggesting that Trump’s rise was shaped more by cultural and racial concerns than by economics. For example, white working-class voters who displayed economic fatalism — measured through the belief that getting a college education is 'a gamble' — were only twice as likely to prefer Trump.

And economic hardship among white working-class Americans actually predicted more support for Hillary Clinton, not Trump: Although not highly statistically significant, the survey found that '[t]hose who reported being in fair or poor financial shape were 1.7 times more likely to support Clinton, compared to those who were in better financial shape.' This finding rebukes the common sentiment that poor white Americans came out in droves to put Trump over the top in 2016."

In the American media "working class" is coded entirely as meaning "white people."  That's pretty much the heart of the problem.

But if only liberal elitists like Hillary had gone to Pennsylvania more often then she wouldn't have lost to a down-to-earth, man-of-the-people New York real-estate mogul / reality TV star.

President Moon

After the impeachment of the conservative Park Geun-hye, Korea has a new president named Moon Jae-in, a liberal:

"'I will work toward peace on the Korean Peninsula,' he said. 'If necessary, I will travel to Washington right away. I will go to Pyongyang if conditions permit. For peace on the Korean Peninsula, I will do anything.'

He also said his government will engage in serious negotiations with the United States and China in order to resolve the conflict involving the deployment of the U.S. antiballistic missile system."

A lot going on here.  First of all, he'll have no transition period.  As of today he is now living in the Blue House (Korean White House) as president.  Transitions are tough on anybody, but he's filling a huge vacuum left by an unexpected impeachment and he'll have no grace period to speak of.

Second, conservatives have been in the South Korean presidency (Lee Myung-Bak for five years, then President Park for almost four) for almost a decade.  There's going to be a big shift with regards to relations with North Korea and China, at a time when Trump is pushing for the conservative "hard line" approach.

Still, at the end of the day, I'd imagine many Koreans are happy to just have a president in place and restore a bit of normalcy to what's been a very tumultuous year.

Meanwhile, an adult student (avowed PGH fan) let me know that the South Korean economy would now collapse since a liberal is in charge.

I was unable to check my cheek in letting him now that after nine years of conservative stewardship, the South Korean economy is completely stagnant, especially for young people.

It's no secret that Koreans are in favor of change, for better or worse, that voters in England, America, and France also voted for (terrible change, horrific change, pretty good change, natch).

Beyond Farce

The next time any Republican tries to talk to you about the importance of a) the rule of law b) ethics or c) the importance of national security, please laugh heartily into their hypocritical little faces.

What's So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding?

And a happy Buddha's Birthday to you.

Truth

being an Orioles fan is as much about hating the Yankees and RedSox as it is liking my own team

— ITMFA James (@wetcasements) May 3, 2017

Also, fuck Boston.

Spring Again

George Benson, "Giblet Gravy"

This is a strange week -- we've got Buddha's Birthday and Children's Day, so the work-week is only two days long.  However, I had a ton of make-up classes to take care of and I had to grade my midterms.

Basically, holidays suck.  They just throw off everybody's schedule, and the students are salty about having to come to class on an irregular day.

But for the very long weekend I'm going to pull of one of my patented Daegu Staycations -- a soccer match, a ball game, and some hiking.

The Problem With Korean Food And Food Culture, Globally Speaking

With the South Korean Winter Olympics less than a year away, lots of problems are popping up.  In particular, local restaurants aren't sure how to bring in business from foreigner visitors:

"The opening and closing ceremonies for the Pyeongchang Olympics will take place at Hoenggye. Forty-one out of 102 Olympic events will take place there for bobsledding, ski jumping and alpine skiing events. However, the restaurants in the area are ill-prepared for the more than 100,000 visitors expected. 

Restaurants near the Hoenggye Intercity Bus Terminal had a noticeable dearth of English-language menus, except for the larger 50-seat establishments. Even when smaller restaurants offered English language menus, their items were translated inconsistently. 

One restaurant wrote 'pork belly' for samgyeopsal and another wrote 'pork loin.' Another was satisfied using Korean romanization for beef short ribs soup, using galbitang.

Not a single restaurant provided an explanation of their menus in English. Restaurant placards in English were nowhere to be seen. A tiny 'Korean Restaurant' in English, affixed to some Korean language restaurant signs, was all."

It's kind of amazing how many of my pet peeves regarding South Korea are nailed in this seemingly innocuous article.

Where to begin?  In increasing orders of subjective opinion:

1)  I've traveled throughout Asia (with the notable exception of mainland China) and I've never had a problem eating delicious, exotic food despite obvious language barriers.  Why?  For starters, pointing at a plastic model of a dish or a simple picture of one using mere body language suffices in every country except Korea for some reason.  Koreans will simply freeze up in the presence of a foreigner and possibly even refuse to serve them to spare themselves the embarrassment of having to deal with one of them.  And no doubt, foreigners in South Korea don't always act like angels.  But hey, if I can order shark curry on a beach in Goa, or Pho in Hanoi, or dim sum in Hong Kong, places where I speak literally none of the local language, it's amazing that body language isn't enough for many restaurants in South Korea.  But why?

2)  Well, it's complicated, but before we even deal with English translation let's get to Korean food and restaurant culture.  Moreso than other countries, there are very specific rules for Korean food and if you break any of them Koreans will visibly cringe.  Dip your slice of pork belly into pepper sauce rather than salty shrimp paste?  You have basically insulted somebody's ancestor.  Leave the country and never come back.  (I'm not kidding here -- I've had good Korean friends physically grab me and stop me from dipping into an inappropriate sauce.  And if you asked them, they thought they were being polite.)  Because?

3)  Korean food and food culture are awesome, but paradoxically if Korean food wants to make more progress in the global food scene it needs to (ahem) get the fuck over itself.  Yes, kimchi and doenjang and gochujang are unique and delicious.  Yes, certain dishes really are unique in the truest sense of the word.  But for all of the goodness that is Korean cuisine, there's basically an annoying attitude of control that goes along with all of it.  (Cf. number 2).  Why?

4)  South Korea remains, despite many appearances, a deeply (scarily?) authoritarian culture, and to have a "genuine" Korean cultural experience (food-related or otherwise) without the watchful gaze of a Korean person renders the whole experience inauthentic.  I'm getting more out on a limb here, but I think this is really the problem in a nutshell -- Koreans don't trust foreigners to fully appreciate what Korean food (and culture generally) has to offer on its own terms.  But guess what -- at the end of the day, it's just food.  You can find the most gregarious and talented Korean grandma to cook up a dish of, say, stewed chicken, but as delicious as it is it's still stewed chicken.  It's a great, unique Korean dish, but chances are a foreigner has probably had some variation of chicken, veggies, and a starch before.  That's what I mean by "get over itself" -- food is more universal than Korean cuisine will ever be profoundly unique.  Variations of meat, veg, salt, and starch exist in every country and have for thousands of years.

5)  tl,dr -- the perfect is the enemy of the good.  Until Korean food culture realizes this and tries to cater to foreigners rather than beat them over the head with the snowflake-y "authenticty" of Hanshik (Korean food) it won't go far, globally speaking.  There's no reason it has to be the next big thing, and maybe at the end of the day it lacks the basic adaptability of national cuisines that aren't nearly as anxious about changing as they go global.