Category: Korea

I’m going to start a series of postings while I’m here in Korea aimed at highlighting websites in this wonderfully internet-wired country which are poorly designed, filled with coding errors, and essentially unusable for anyone who does not use Internet Explorer and Windows. I can only hope that web designers in Korea will increasingly work towards creating standards compliant web sites that work regardless of browser and platform.

Disaster Site: Korean Studies NET
Link: http://ksnet.aks.ac.kr/

Problem as of June 29, 2007: 1) Membership page located here is a very simple web form. Can be created with a few lines of code and any server based scripting language. There is no excuse for a simple form like this not to work. However, when filling the form out in Firefox or Safari browsers on a Mac, you will get error messages. Furthermore, if you load this page with the Firefox “Error Console” showing, no less than 7 errors appear in the CSS and other loaded code for the page. 2) Pressing on “advanced search” produces a cute little timer which never ends, you are never redirected to the advance search page.

My favorite language teacher here at the SNU language program (the same teacher whose stories about student stereotypes and protest culture I talked about in an earlier posting) told us a few interesting things about dog meat in Korea. Again, this posting probably won’t be anything new to those who know Korea well but life here is full of new discoveries for people as ignorant about Korea as I increasingly feel. I am ever reminded that, “A little Learning is a dang’rous Thing.”

I think many people, including those who have never visited Korea or have had the opportunity to study it, know that they eat dogs here. Now, I had my share of dog meat in China—more than my share, actually, as I did not really care for the dish that was served at a Guizhou restaurant near my dormitory in Beijing. However, dog meat isn’t exactly topping the menu in either country and has often been used as a convenient way to dismiss the two countries for their barbarism.

I remember playing pool one night with some friends in New York a few years ago. I was wearing my Qinghua University T-Shirt and a woman spoke to me suddenly and asked me if the writing on the shirt (the name of the university) was in Chinese. I said yes, and she proceeded to tell me why she could never travel to China, “You see, I never travel without my [her dog’s now forgotten name here] and if I took [said dog] to China, I would be too scared that someone would snatch her away and eat her.” I was perhaps just as surprised that she could travel on short vacations anywhere outside the US with her dog—given all the regulations on potentially disease-carrying pets—as I was her at her fear of starving Chinese dog thieves.

I have not eaten any dog meat (개고기) here in Korea yet, or visited the dog meat market here in Seoul. I think the market is only held twice a month, with the 5th day of the month being one of them (hmm…that would be this Saturday…) Again, however, despite the fact that summer is the season for eating dog meat, according to my teacher, it isn’t nearly as common as it used to be. What I say below is entirely based on her own claims and I haven’t confirmed any of this.

My teacher claims that the consumption of dog meat has steadily declined over the years. The “summer delicacy” in Korea has gradually gone from being dog meat dishes such as dog meat soup or Bosintang 보신탕 and chicken to being more than anything, the ubiquitous Samgyetang 삼계탕 soup. She believes that Samgyetang has essentially replaced Bosintang in Korean food culture.

She made two further observations about this shift and the decline of dog meat: 1) There is increasing opposition from pet owners who object not only to the fact that dogs are eaten, but also to the cruelty towards the dogs in the killing process. 2) This reflects, in a way, the economic development of Korea, as the owning of (but perhaps more importantly, the love towards) pets and a general sympathy for animals reflects changing priorities in society.

One aspect of dog meat consumption which adds to the disgust many already might feel comes from the killing process. My instructor explained that before they kill the dogs, they often put them into a special bag and beat the dogs severely or simply beat the dogs slowly to death. Why would they do this? She says that while being beaten the dogs release all sorts of hormones in their excitement, all of which help make the final product more delicious. My teacher added as a side that this was exactly why cats play with their mice for so long before killing them, something I had not heard before.

I asked a fellow foreigner here about this process and he claims to have witnessed the beating process at the dog meat market (they didn’t use a bag, he said, but just beat the dog slowly to death in a pen) and he said it was enough to put him off dog meat forever. He said he contemplated briefly setting up a special dog market for the creation of “well-being” dog meat made from freshly killed dogs that were killed in a more humane way. It would be slightly less tasty but a bit easier on the conscience.

Perhaps the most interesting thing my instructor had to tell us was about the increased demand for the meat in earlier days. When she was a child, in the 1970s, dog meat dishes were not all made from the special breed that is apparently mostly used today. In those somewhat more chaotic days, all sorts of dog meat was apparently marketable. This meant that people could and did occasionally sell their household pets or their litters.

One common feature of living in Japan and Korea is the fact that small vehicles with loudspeakers, recorded tapes, or sometime just a yelling driver will pass by one’s house or apartment advertising items they have for sale (such as vegetables or heating oil) or things they wish to collect and buy (such as old household appliances).

According to my teacher, as late as the 1970s a dog meat collector would occasionally come through her neighborhood yelling, “개 팔아요” Despite a literal translation which might suggest that dogs were being sold, it was in fact a call for people in the neighborhood to sell their own dogs. In more familiar terms, the dog butcher passing through was essentially calling out, “Bring out your dogs!” My instructor told us that she can never forget seeing another child in her neighborhood weeping as she was forced to carry her puppy out for sale.

UPDATE: The market I mentioned is not in Seoul, but in Seongnam, Gyeonggi province and is on a five days cycle: the 4th, 9th, 14th, 19th, etc.

I am beginning to see a pattern in the opinion columns of Michael Breen. I talked a little bit about his problematic portrayal of Koreans in a previous posting. In today’s Friday issue of the Korea Times, in a warm and fuzzy column entitled, “Why Streets of Seoul Are Safe” he tells us why he felt comfortable leaving his wife alone on the streets of Seoul in the middle of the previous night.

There are several reasons, he says. One seems to me a quite plausible factor: the dense population of a place like Seoul means that there are “always witnesses,” making it more difficult to conceal crime completely, thus acting as a kind of constant deterrent against crime. He also claims that the Korean press does not play up stories of crime as much as our own media, which if true might also help explain why the public feels more safe. However, one of his “overriding” factors is:

“…that Koreans are raised to think hierarchically and, contrary to the popular expatriate theory that people bump into you in the street because they see you as a non-person, Koreans instinctively consider people to be either above, below or equal to them. If you think like that, it is much more difficult to get aggressive with someone you consider a superior. Put the other way, if you see all people as equal to you, you’d have less compunction about mugging or assaulting them.”

Is it just me, or this just a completely bizarre claim? Well let us put aside the discussion of whether or not the “hierarchical” thinking of Koreans really could create this sort of effect against crime. Since he identifies this with Confucian ethics, wouldn’t it be simpler to claim that the Koreans, if they are still just brain washed Confucians as he seems to think they are, have been raised to follow moral principles that dissuade them from committing acts of crime? Apparently, it isn’t the passages of the Analects, Mencius or in the commentaries of Zhu Xi exhorting them to act in a morally responsible manner but those which emphasize their hierarchical relationships with each other that count more for Breen.

The pattern I see emerging in his writing is the habit of portraying Koreans as being stuck in some feudal Confucian mindset. All of the ills of Korean society can be blamed on its Oriental despotism and Confucian hierarchy. All the virtues of Korean society can be attributed to those same Confucian values and hierarchical thinking. Oh quaint land of the morning calm Korea, how we love it and how we hate it for its mysterious oriental ways. Breen’s fans, both Koreans and non-Koreans alike can say, “Wow, he doesn’t always criticize Korea, but he really comes through with his love for Korea by showing us how its feudal mindset actually helps produce an ordered and productive society.” I believe, however, that anyone who thinks a little bit more about it will see how condescending this whole approach is.

Culture matters, to be sure, and the values and education of this society have an important impact. Breen might even be able to make a reasonable claim about the relevance of culture on the level of street crime, when carefully combined with other factors. However, his particular brand of pop-psychology is demeaning to Koreans and unhelpful for foreigners who want to better understand the environment they are in. It is truly sad that Andrei Lankov’s historical articles in his series “The Dawn of Modern Korea” should share the same page with Breen.

I mentioned some interesting anecdotes my favorite teacher told us in class recently in my last posting. Another thing she brought up was what she saw as a huge change in Korea’s singing culture. As with previous and future postings from my time here in Korea, I must apologize if I write anything which is either common knowledge or obviously mistaken. I simply don’t have a strong enough knowledge base related to Korea yet to be sufficiently selective or critical about some of what I hear and experience.

When my teacher started talking about how much Koreans love singing, I remember that, while at Harvard, I had to endure one of those “national virtue” lectures in Korean class that, after years of Chinese and Japanese language classes, I’m really getting sick of. Back in that earlier class, we were told that the Korean race, the Korean 민족, had a unique love for singing. More than any people in the world, the Koreans love to get together and sing songs and have a deep appreciation for music. I was worried my teacher here was about to give us a dose of the same.

Now, I know absolutely nothing about this subject, but yesterday my teacher told us something, which if true, is a much more interesting side to this “Koreans love singing” story. She says that she thinks the Korean “noraebang” or karaoke box, was introduced to Korea in 1988 or 1989. She claims that before this time there was “Karaoke” in hotels and in some bars and such but not karaoke boxes of the kind we find in Japan, Taiwan, China, Korea and around the world today. She says that after their introduction, they spread like wildfire all across the country and the habit/culture of noraebang in the social life of Koreans expanded just as quickly.

She then talked nostalgically about how the appearance of noraebang changed Korean singing culture. I admired the way she refrained from elevating her description of this pre-noraebang age to some kind of “authentic” and pure past as compared to some inferior and cold modern present, but she clearly did feel a sense of loss. She claimed that before the rise of noraebang culture, it was very common for large groups of students, friends, etc. to go to restaurants and sing together there. She says they often banged their spoons on the table so much so that it was a very common sight to see bent spoons and dented tables everywhere in Korea. After the rapid introduction of noraebang culture, however, she says that the habits of singing together in groups, especially in restaurants but also at personal house parties, etc. slowly began to change and become more restricted to the noraebang. She also claimed this also had a strong negative economic effect on the restaurant business. She believes, for example, that a rapid decline in the number of restaurants in the Sillim area close to Seoul National University is connected to this shift in habits of socialization.

There are unfortunately a lot of aspects of Korean society and socializing that I will never get to experience. I loath smoke to the point it makes me nauseous and I don’t drink alcohol at all. I’m simply not willing to compromise on either of these points so I have basically excused myself from a large range of social activities in Korea. I can only frequent larger restaurants or chains that follow the non-smoking regulations, and only study or meet friends in large chain coffee shops which are non-smoking. Everyday I spend in Korea, however, I look around me and realize that there are many worlds of culture, activity and socialization which I will never really experience or fully understand.

Update: I totally missed Antti’s recent posting on this topic which tells us much more useful information about the introduction of Noraebang to Korea in 1991.