Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
> #198 of 199: Gerry Feeney (gerry) Tue 25 Jun '02
> ...  the *spirit* of Tae Kwon Do ... 

> It seems to me that the Korean football players exhibit that spirit
> also.  That led me to wonder, are these values limited to martial 
> arts, or are they promoted in other sports and in society at large?

Well, sure, those are all key characteristics that Koreans highly 
value and (used to) try to raise their kids to embrace...

> 1. Modesty
> 3. Self-Control

These are classical Confucian values.  They used to be strongly 
practiced / enforced, and are still widely seen in Korean society.
Koreans love to watch America's brash culture (even the hip-hop crap
that's as anti-modesty as you can get!), but most don't think it's 
right for them.  

However, as society is ever more sharply wide-open competitive, in 
an Anglo-American sink-or-swim-on-your-own way, some parents are 
reported to be raising their kids to be outspoken brats & braggarts,
elbows-out, as that type is seen to be "Winners", as in politics. 
Better that my kid is a bully than becomes a victim of the bullies,
they say.  This makes me sad, "eyeing the future so full of dread".

> 2. Perseverance
> 4. Indomitable Spirit

How do you differentiate between these two....?

They are certainly on display with our soccer team and fans.  Really
tho, it kinda developed as a Korean trait due to their continuous 
refusal to defend themselves with an effective standing army. Others
kept invading and swiftly conquering, but the Koreans would then not
submit, but take to the hills and wage gureilla war, never giving up
despite painful losses but harrassing the invaders for years until 
they finally left...  like Hezbollah or something.

This spirit has its bad side tho, manifesting as dug-in stubbornness.
And harrassment, as boys trying to date a girl turn into stalkers, 
never taking NO for an answer, because their parents told them 
"Quitters never win, and winners never quit" and so on...
  

    
> #199 of 201: Gerry Feeney (gerry) Tue 25 Jun '02 
> On the one hand, I get the impression that Koreans are one of 
> the most homogenous peoples on earth, perhaps even more so 
> than the Japanese.

This notion is way oversold by the Koreans themselves, for reasons
of national-identity-building.  Genetically, they are a mix of the
aboriginal polynesians (stone-age) with the Manchuraians, variations
of Chinese, Mongolians and Japanese that marauded through in waves 
for the past 3 or 4000 years; and you can see those didtinct strains
in the variety of faces on the street.  This has little to do with 
how Koreans themselves consciously divide themselves up into groups,
tho.  But it seems to have a lot to do with long-term social class,
however, my informal but extensive observations show -- the more 
brown-skined and narrow-faced tend to be the poor, while whiter skin
(sometimes REALLY "white") and rounder faces are found among the 
wealthy and highly-placed.  And i don't mean just that farmers are
tanned from being in the sun more...

But Koreans believe they are "one race", there's no question about 
it, they're quite attached to the notion.  Ethnically, they are one
distinct group, with little way for untrained foreigners to pick out
the provincial differences in accent & custom that are so important
to them (but are less evident in and important to the younger gen-
erations, as TV-led homogenity proceeds).

> On the other hand, I have a vague notion of there being certain 
> groups within Korea, but I know little about them.
> My Korean friend is from Masan (southeast Korean), and proudly
> identifies himself as "Kyung-Sang-Do," which he tells me is to 
> Koreans like what Texas cowboys are to Americans.  I also gathered
> from him that there's a bit of a grudge or rivalry of some sort 
> between the Kyung-Sang-Do people and the "Jah-Lah-Do" people of 
> the southwest region of Korea.  (I have no idea how these words 
> should be romanized, so I've just guessed at the spelling.)

Kyeong-sang-do or Gyeongsang-do  /  Cholla-do or Jeolla-do
"-do" means Province, and sometimes a large island.

> And I understand that the people of central Korea, including Seoul,
> are of some other ethnic background, but I forgot the name.

Chung-cheong-do & Kyeong-gi-do or Gyeonggi-do, the "Central Region".

> Are there just three, or are there more in the North?  Are these 
> in fact ethnicities?  If so, what is the basis for them?

Well, y'see, there were 8 Provinces of old Korea -- Gyeongsang-do, 
Jeolla-do including Cheju Island, Chung-cheong-do, Gyeonggi-do &
Gangwon-do (which together pretty much make up South Korea); and 
Hwanghae-do, Hamgyeong-do and Pyeong-an-do (which together pretty 
much make up North Korea, together with some extra northern land
which used to be the fringe of Manchuria).

The genesis of "Korean Culture" is the Three Kingdoms era about 100-
665 CE --- Gyeongsang-do was the Shilla Kingdom, Jeolla-do, Chung-
cheong-do & Gyeonggi-do was the Baek-jae Kingdom, and all northern
areas along with most of Manchuria was the mighty Kogu-reo Kingdom.
Gangwon-do ["Origin of the Rivers"] was a large no-man's mountainous
wilderness, and Cheju Island was a "primitive" place that retained 
shamanic culture and escaped much direct rule by Koreans until the 
late 19th cen.

Each of these Provinces had its own accent and vocabulary-quirks, 
and differences of customs, mannerisms & character.  Outsiders have
to look hard to figure the differences out, but the Koreans play 
them up in order to promote their own group and despise the others.
Weird, petty and destructive.  Still today, those from the Jeolla
(aka Honam) region are discriminated against, esp by the Gyeongsang
(aka Yeong-dong) folks, who have mostly run things for a long time.
Thus it was a big deal when Kim Dae-jung was elected as the first
National Leader from the Jeolla region, 5 years ago, almost as big
as American getting a black President...  (Kim is also Catholic, 
another social minority, so that added a bit).

Television and modern/standarized education is fuzzing out these
provincial differences, as a deliberate policy, even on Cheju Island.
South Koreans are geting more similar to each other, esp as 30% of
the entire population lives in & around Seoul.  Young folks care 
much less than their parents about Provincial origins, and politics
seems to be *slowly* changing away from being based on that.  Honam
and Yeong-dong youths can even marry each other now, with little
"scandal" being made of it, the parents just keep quiet.

I hear that the same ethnic-unification is going on in the North.

Of course, South and North Korea are ethnically SEPERATING with every
year that goes by, turning into fairly different groups, maybe like
Americans and Australians.  The South gets all its cultural influence
and new vocabulary from USA & Japan & Europe, the North from China
(and a bit from Russia).  The longer this goes on, the tougher the
eventual re-unification will be...
  

    
This reminds me of a thing I have wondered. I've noticed that Koreans in 
the Bay Area seem to speak Korean in two very distinct ways -- one sounds 
somewhat like Chinese, and is also the accent you hear on the Korean 
TV shows, and the other sounds more like an Eastern European or Middle 
Eastern language, with lots of strong gutteral sounds and the words 
running together (sounding like longer words with many syllables rather 
than in more-distinct single syllables like the more Chinese-sounding 
accent).

What am I hearing? Regional accents, like the differences in American 
English between New England and Georgia and Illinois, or different 
languages?
  

    
Hmmmmm, maybe that's the regional accents... former is "Seoul accent"
which is used on TV and taught in schools as the national standard 
(like my Michigan English :-)    The latter sounds like the Gyeong-
sang-do way of talking, much rougher, sounds rude and farmer-ish to
the more culturally-refined types of the former Baekje areas.  There
is only one Korean language, now with no real dialects...  tho North
Korean is becoming a dialect i guess.
  

    
By the way, those original 8 provinces i named in #202 have been
divided up into 18, 9 in the south and 9 up north.  And each side
has created some "Metropolitan Cities", like Seoul & Busan, that 
have a political status equal to the provinces which surround them.

North Korea artificially keeps its number of provinces and metro- 
cities exactly equal to those in the South, so when re-unification 
ever comes up they can claim equal 50-50 political status, instead 
of submitting to direct democracy (the South has twice the North's 
population)...
  

    
> #199 of 203: Gerry Feeney (gerry) Tue 25 Jun '02 
> Korean reunification.  The only obvious precedent that comes to 
> mind is Germany.  

Yeah, the South Koreans have put a lot of research, observation and
discusion into the German case.  But the Germans have had it MUCH
easier than the Koreans ever will...

450 defectors have made it to S K soil so far this year --- equal to
the total for all of 2001.  The "refugee crisis" in NE China has now
become a major political issue.

> Anyway, I have this theory about homogeneity and the success of
> democracy.  I look at places where crime rates have been relatively
> low, and it seems to me that democracy works well where there's a
> high degree of homogeneity, say, Japan and Sweeden.  Where the 
> people and cultures are very diverse - say, Singapore or the 
> former Yugoslavia - it seems only the rule of an iron fist 
> maintains social order.  I haven't found many people who agree 
> with me, but there it is, FWIW.

Well, what about the case of the USA...?
I'd hesitate to comment deeply on this idea, as its far beyond my
field.  There must be tons of Political Science papers dealing with
this question, that could be considered...
  

    
> But the Germans have had it MUCH
> easier than the Koreans ever will...

David, could you expand on that a little?  My hunch was that it might
be easier for Koreans than it was for Germans, but obviously I don't
know enough about the situation have a valid opinion.  Do you think the
toughest part lies in the political/sociological, or in the actual
task/money of bringing NK up to par with SK?

Have there been any studies based on observing the process of how NK
refugess try to assimilate into SK society?  How easy/hard of a time do
they have?  How much adjustment has to be made?

> Well, what about the case of the USA...?
> I'd hesitate to comment deeply on this idea...

I *should* hesitate, but what the hell.  If I'm wrong, it wouldn't be
the first time.  And I sincerely hope that I am wrong.  But I'm
pessimistic in the case of the USA.  The USA was an artificial
amalgamation in the first place, bound together by military force
(Civil War).  I believe we've been gradually approaching a police
state, like Singapore, - particularly since WWII - and we will continue
to do so.  And, though it may be too soon to say, I fear the pace of
that change is now accelerating, what with our "War on Terrorism" and
all.  

Thomas Jefferson observed that people will always be inclined to trade
liberty for security.  And he was right.
  

    
> This reminds me of a thing I have wondered. I've noticed that Koreans in
 the Bay Area seem to speak Korean in two very distinct ways -- one sounds
 somewhat like Chinese, and is also the accent you hear on the Korean
 TV shows, and the other sounds more like an Eastern European or Middle
 Eastern language, with lots of strong gutteral sounds and the words
 running together (sounding like longer words with many syllables rather
 than in more-distinct single syllables like the more Chinese-sounding
 accent).

Fom, have you heard women speaking in this second way too?
  

    
Yes, in fact just the other day I did, at the flea market, and I looked 
over at the speakers expecting to see middle or eastern Europeans, and saw 
instead that they were a couple of Korean ladies.

The difference is very distinctive. It sounds like a completely different 
language from the one spoken on TV and by other Koreans I overhear.
  

    
You have sharp ears. I can't distinguish, and I'm sure I watch more Korean
movies than you do.
  

    
Yeah, you'll hear older women talking like that openly; younger ones
won't if they think any third person can hear...  :-)

Those strong gutteral sounds may be linked to the idea that Korean
is a member of the "Turkish/Ural/Altaic Family of Languages" and is
somehow related to Hungarian and somesuch.  But i'm not a linguist,
have no details or real knowledge.  But they do say that Korean is
totally different / seperate from Chinese...  which has always been
a problem because of the heavy use of Chinese characters in written
Korean.  This led to the Ks developing their own phonetic alphabet /
script, first in the 600's and then for real in the 1400's.
  

    
I've never seen a Korean movie! But I suspect this isn't the way people 
in movies talk.

frako, I'll explore Koreatown (Oakland's tiny Koreatown) and see if I can 
find a shop where they talk this way, and let you know. I'm sure you'd 
notice the diff. I've been meaning to explore Koreatown anyway.
  

    
It's funny, but I've spent a lot of time listening to spoken Korean,
yet my ears are not so sharp.  When my Korean friend speaks, it sounds
very aggressive to me - like he's barking.  Most other Koreans I listen
to don't sound that way.  But I don't speak Korean, so I'm not
qualified to say.  FWIW, when I listen to Chinese speakers, I can tell
the difference between Cantonese, Mainland Mandarin, and Taiwanese
Mandarin.  But when someone shows up speaking Fu Kien or Hakka or
something like that, I'm easily thrown off.  I can listen to a bloke
from England and usually guess within 100 miles from what part of
England he hails.  Likewise with Irish - I can usually discern from
what region of Ireland someone is.  Spanish?  I can usually tell from
what country a Spanish speaker is from, and if s/he is from Mexico, I
can probably tell you the state, if not the city.  But Korean?  That's
tough, from where I'm standing.


I did take one semester of Korean way back when, but failed to reap
much benefit.  It was kind of discouraging, actually, because I was the
only white guy in the class.  Everyone else there was Korean-American,
i.e., Korean having been born & raised in the US.  So they were
intimately familiar with the *sound* of Korean from their parents &
grandparents, but were taking the class in order to learn something
about Korean grammar and formal written Korean.  I was at a great
disadvantage and felt left behind.  Hell, I *was* left behind.
  

    
That's funny -- we all have such different ears. I can't tell regions of 
Ireland, and I certainly can't tell regions of China, but this Korean 
thing is very pronounced to my ear.

Although, there is one kind of Chinese that sounds distinctive to me; I 
have no idea where it's from, though. The people who speak it tend to have 
a certain look, too. 
  

    
> #207 of 211: Gerry Feeney (gerry) Thu 27 Jun '02 
> David, could you expand on that a little?  My hunch was that it 
> [re-unification] might be easier for Koreans than it was for 
> Germans, ...  

It's widely pointed out that:
A. The poulation ratio of West to East Germany was 3:1, while that
   of South to North Korea is 2:1 --- fewer "rich" people supporting
   more impoverished dependants.

B. E G was the richest out of all "2nd World" (communist) nations; 
   N K is (now) the very poorest, on a level with black Africa. E G
   had a fair basic infrastructure going and no major social/health
   problem, tho they lacked competetive export industries; N K has
   pretty much NOTHING that's worth a fart in the modern world, and
   already has major starvation/malnutrition/health/social-breakdown
   /refugee crises going on.  N K would have to be rebuilt from Zero.

C. W G was one of the richest and most industrially powerful of all
   nations on the globe, with vast pools of capital available.  S K
   is only a middle-class industrial nation, and the 1997/8 Financial
   Crisis left its banking system & international-credit-rating very
   fragile.  Even basic & minimal re-unification would cost untold 
   billions that S K just doesn't have.  It was once thought that 
   Japan might pony up the needed bucks -- but now they're bankrupt
   too.  Doubtful that the USA will agree to pay...  so...?

4. People in E G knew a lot about life in W G due to open radio and
   TV, freedom of mail, cross-border visits, etc; thus they knew 
   what they wanted and could adjust quickly.  People in N K know 
   next-to-nothing about life in S K, or anywhere else on earth!, 
   nothing direct or accurate anyway, just whispered rumours at best.
   They have only very negative propaganda pumped at them by their
   evil gov every single day.  For example, N K people don't know
   that any human has ever visited the Moon, and they have not been
   told that S K is hosting the World Cup.  Their level of enforced
   isolation is Incredible but True....
  

    
Wow!  That's sobering.  It could be a tall order, indeed.
  

    
> Do you think the toughest part lies in the political/sociological,
> or in the actual task/money of bringing NK up to par with SK?

Both are going to be extremely tough, and they're intimately woven
together.  North Korea's in SUCH bad physical shape it'll take 100
years before it's homgeneous with the South.  S K's younger genera-
tions are SO westernized and sophisticated and even way ahead of the
USA in high-tech usage... N K's "primitive" people who don't even 
use cassette tapes for the most part won't fit in at all, regardless
of endless rhetoric about "one family".

Consider this: Maybe 95% of the people in N K are not qualified to 
do ANY sort of job in a 21st-Cen economy, their education is useless
and many of their current children are at least slightly brain-dam-
aged (low IQ) from a straight decade of malnutrition.  So if they 
re-unify, all the northern people will be given the lowest, dirtiest 
sorts of jobs, if they get any jobs at all.  What else could happen?
(the best-educated best-qualified best-ability Northerners are those
high-up in the current Party & Regime, and are likely to be in jail
or in Chinese exile after the collapse, if they're left alive by the
vengeful mobs at all).  The northern girls & young women will become
a new class of prostitutes & bar-girls & mistresses & poor-mens-wives
& such, just replacing the current SE Asians (NK refugee females are
already heavily used in such slavery-roles in China).  

Pretty sad prospects.  But that's how it'll be, for 30+ years until 
the new gov can raise a whole new generation of physically/ mentally
fit & decently-educated northerners.  

And given that the current northerners have been fed Communist egal-
itarian rhetoric for 50 yrs, I don't think they'll be very accepting
of the 2nd-class status i've just described.  I think there'll be a 
lot of protest and violence when they see the reality of Unity.  
Including the SKs taking ownership of all their best land, one way 
or another (by now, land is the ONLY thing they "have").  "Democracy"
won't function very well for a good long time, i fear...

> Have there been any studies based on observing the process of how 
> NK refugess try to assimilate into SK society?  How easy/hard of 
> a time do they have?  How much adjustment has to be made?

Yes, studies; i've read plenty of reports in the papers.  They have
an extremely hard time adjusting.  Southerners look down on them,
exploit their naiveté.  Their re-settlement funds are ripped off by
con-artists and gangsters who promise to "help them invest, get rich"
-- hell, they have no idea how capitalism works... (well, same thing
just happened to street-smart Americans with Enron & WorldCom & etc).

N Ks are raised to be so passive, just waiting to be told what to do,
repeating propaganda all the time, individual thought is punished &
individual efforts are useless -- most rewards & punishments are to
group-units, social-status is determined by your birth, promotions 
by who you're connected to, not ability.  So when they're thrown into
the hyper-competetive fast-moving sink-or-swim everyone-for-herself 
meritocracy of post-Olympics S K....  well, just GUESS what happens.
They sink...  :-(
  

    

Mandarin and Cantonese are very easy to distinguish after you've seen a 
couple of movies. When people do "comic" Chinese accents in America, 
they're almost always doing Cantonese, which is more tonal and, to my ear, 
more...*emphatic*. Mandarin tends to have softer consonants and a whole 
lot of "zh" sounds and soft "er"s. 

Generally when I'm flipping channels on tv, if I see actors who look 
ethnically Chinese to me, but sound like they're speaking something closer 
in rhythm and diction to Japanese...they're Korean. 
  

    
<saiyuk>, yes, from briefly sutdying Mandarin about a million years
ago, I recall that it had four different tones.  Thus (in theory) a
single word could have up to four different meanings, depending on the
tone.  I think Cantonese has something like 11 or 13 tones.

David, now that you've painted that bleak picture, I can appreciate
why you said it will be much tougher for Koreans than it was for
Germans.  In fact, it seems so terrible that prudence would seem to
dictate that if (or should it be "when"?) reunification is decided
upon, it must not happen the way it did in Germany - suddenly.  It
should be a slow, gradual, and controlled process, perhaps spanning a
decade or more.  Or at least, something needs to change in the North
before reunification.

I can also appreciate, more now than before, the role that San-shin
could play in helping to unite the two Koreas.  Still, it's a tough nut
to crack, isn't it?
  

    
Yep, Gerry, that's the thinking behind the "Sunshine Policy" and etc.
S K spent 40 years trying to bring the Pyeongyang regime down, then
switched some ten years ago to trying to keep them propped UP, in fear
that sudden collapse would be catastrophic, but also trying to get
them to start reforming Chinese-style so that the eventual 
inevitable re-unification would be a bit easier.  But it hasn't 
worked out well -- N K doesn't respond to the friendly gestures,
won't reciprocate at all, remains highly militarist, won't "reform"
even tho the Chinese themselves keep urging.  Propping up the regime
has only led to 10 more years of the N people suffering -- up to 10%
of them have died of starvation so far.  The "Sunshine Policy" isn't
working... but nobody has a better policy, nobody knows quite WHAT 
to do about this...  they won't even negotiate.


Folks, 
Monday has been declared a special National Holiday to celebrate the
success in and of the World Cup --- and so the wife and i are OFF now
On The Road, gonna hunt mountain-spirits in North Jeolla Province. 
I'll be back atcha on Tuesday (in July).  Keep talking as you will...
  

    
Have fun, David!

> frako, I'll explore Koreatown (Oakland's tiny Koreatown) and see if I can
 find a shop where they talk this way, and let you know. I'm sure you'd
 notice the diff. I've been meaning to explore Koreatown anyway.

OK, fom. By the way, a recent article in the SF Chronicle was the first time
I'd seen print mention of Oakland's Koreatown (I assume you mean Telegraph
Avenue). I knew there was a huge Korean presence there, but I hadn't seen it
acknowledged in mainstream print until now.
  

    

Where is Koreatown in Oakland?
  

    
It's a little stretch of Telegraph (and a couple of cross streets, I 
think) near, or maybe in or  at the edge of, Temescal -- I forget the 
streets but it's maybe 45th-ish. I'm still not very clear on Oakland 
neighborhoods, though I've lived here a year now. Anyway you'll see it if 
you drive along Telegraph.
  

    
Well, there's the Korean restaurant at 44th and Tele. I guess that's it.
  

    
Just as a kind of post-script to the above 6-months-ago discussion,
this book was selected by Korean National Academy of Sciences as
one of the best research-books of recent years, and they laid out
$10,000 to buy up 500 copies for distribution to all sorts of
libraries.  That was nice... 

And it forced my Publisher to do a Second Printing, with mistakes
corrected, which is good, it looks better.  Academic-sortta books
rarely get a 2nd printing; i guess that mine has so many color pix has
made the difference, it also functions as a coffee-table / gift tome
of sorts...   Now, they are starting to edit the Korean translation of
it; maybe that will finally get published this Spring (after 2 years
of delay!).  

See:  http://www.san-shin.org