Costco sells instant, and there are (as of a couple years ago, to my great joy) a handful of stores — one in Itaewon (at least) and another in Sinchon, that sell 1 minute and 5 minute quaker oats — the real stuff.
My life is so much better now.
Someone please tell me Korea sells oatmeal. I need to know this in advance in case I get into exchange and I can’t buy oatmeal in Korea. I’m not above mailing myself several 3kg bags to ensure that I have access to it everyday that I am there if need be. Essentially, I need to plan accordingly.
Ooh ooh ooh!
Like. Trying to explain privilege is really hard, because the devious thing about it IS that it’s invisible. This might be the best explanation I’ve seen.
beautiful pictures taken from rooftops around Seoul.
great post at @SeoulEats on old restaurants. Been to a few of these…wanna try the rest.
Reading through this, I recognize that a lot of what he is describing about how he fell in love with J-pop mirrors how I feel about K-pop. There are a lot of similarities between J-pop and K-pop on a general level, though I think they are very, very different. Nonetheless, his description of what he likes about J-pop is very recognizable to me (both in regards to actual J-pop and to K-pop).
Yes, this lecture is a good articulation of what I’m hearing when I listen to AKB48 or Perfume, and the elation associated with a really good K-pop single, as well. However, I’m not sure how much of his description of J-pop (which is not a genre, as Make-Believe Melodies pointed out) applies to K-pop (as genre) in a technical sense.
This part I got caught on in particular:
One thing that I really like to point out, particularly about her song and many female singers in Japan, is that they just sing the melody. There’s no bullshit, there’s no like ad-libbing, there’s no gospel singing, there’s no screaming. If a girl sings high, she’s just singing high, she‟s just singing the melody. It’s almost like playing the melody one note at a time, on a keyboard; which is unlike American pop singing. Especially the female ballads, the American girls have to constantly show all of their vocal ad-libbing, how great they can riff and stuff like that. That’s fine if that’s your taste. For me it’s not my taste at all. To me that’s all American Idol stuff and American Idol, in my opinion, is everybody is just searching for the next Celine Dion and the next Mariah Carey, and it’s all about the vocal skill and range. Whatever happened to just singing the melody? Whatever happened about having magic that‟s in your voice so you don’t have to show all these vocal tricks to do? Now that’s only my concept and I’m only one person, so my opinion is not any more valuable than anyone else’s. But I’m just saying this is what stands out to me in Japan. So there’s very little of that kind of Mariah Carey ad-libbing scat singing or “melisma” as they call it. That’s a very important thing to know about Japanese music, they stick to the melody. You don’t need to be this great virtuoso singer, if you sing and you have your own tone to your voice, that may be just enough magic. That actually shows a vulnerability to your voice, as opposed to if you are only singing scales and singing adlibs and stuff all the time; where is the personal vulnerability, where is the personal magic to the voice? It’s all technique, so that is a very important thing to know about Japanese music.First of all, I really hope he’s not trying to avoid using the word “unsophisticated” here. Anyway, this lack of vocal decoration is definitely a thing I’ve noticed in (some) J-pop, but not so much in (most) K-pop. As much as there’s a large amount of non-singers given singing lines and a strong emphasis on melody, K-pop is still very much tied to this American R&B tradition, not to mention to trot and its characteristic flashy vibrato. The acrobatics aren’t always as extreme as Mariah’s, but there’s a definite place for that kind of voice. There’s an adlib at the end of “Bubble Pop!” that I’m certain Hyuna never sang herself, but it’s there because, well, that’s where the adlib goes. That’s not to say that this “just singing the melody” never happens in K-pop, but I would argue it’s not as simple as Friedman makes it out to be.
The biggest issue I have with this is the dichotomy he creates between technique and personality or “magic”. In his original post Trevor rightly notes that this is a reversal of the usual association of fancy singing with emotion, but I don’t think that one should preclude the other in the first place. I think it’s also oversimplifying to describe un-technical singing as only hitting the notes you’re given. When IU hits her famous “three high notes”, she’s “just singing high”, nothing more and nothing less, but she’s also showing off her ability by being able to sustain the notes or reach them at all. And even though her “real” voice is exposed (and I suspect Friedman’s argument is an authenticity argument, too), there’s no vulnerability expressed; instead, you’re meant to marvel at what she can do, how unstoppable she seems. That’s a different kind of magic.
Stupid dichotomy.
The reason it sucks when crappy American Idol contestants do it is because they’re crappy American Idol contestants, not because embellishment is bad. And if embellishment reminds you of American Idol, stop watching crappy talent shows and listen to a Jeff Buckley, Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone or Neko Case album instead, silly.
Ella Fitzgerald sang some songs with plain, honest simplicity… because that’s what the song called for and she went to town on other songs, because that’s what THAT song called for. And she made both of those work, because she was a great singer. Ella had a great sense of what makes a song work, according to the song and according to the arrangement, not because simplicity is better than embellishment, or because embellishment is better than simplicity.
If you have a voice like Jeff Buckley, you have to write songs like Jeff Buckley wrote, you have to embellish, soar and swoop like Jeff Buckley does. If you have a voice like Norah Jones, Leonard Cohen or Josh Ritter, you have to sing plainly and simply, and write or choose songs like they do. And if you’re a good singer, it’ll work, because the voice serves the song.
My favorite artist is Tom Waits, and his voice is a raspy howl, but he bends that raspy howl around to fit the mood and feel of the song, so that he can break your heart
<iframe width=”420” height=”315” src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/OpQ411_FI1o” frameborder=”0” allowfullscreen></iframe>
or scare the hell out of you,
<iframe width=”400” height=”233” src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/1J_U3wgNtlQ” frameborder=”0” allowfullscreen></iframe>
make you angry or suspicious or homesick… because he writes, arranges, and sings, to serve the emotional note of the song he’s creating.
Steve Vai and Eddie Van Halen can play more notes, faster, than Stevie Ray Vaughan or Jack White. Or maybe they couldn’t, but Stevie and Jack never felt the need to race them. Because Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Little WIng” makes me cry, and Jack White’s “Ball And Biscuit” makes me feel twelve feet tall, and THAT’s why I like them. Hell, technically, Prince can roll with any guitarist you’ve ever heard… but he turns it off when he doesn’t need it, so that it’s more surpising when he turns it on, and so that each song gets exactly the touches it needs to become the best song it can be. If the technique (dizzy gillespie), or lack of technique (chet baker… and let’s not forget simplicity IS an affectation) doesn’t serve something bigger, it doesn’t matter.
I am excited about this. You should be, too.
In this vein, I also suggst these changes to the English language, in order to remove offensive words, or letter combinations resembling offensive or ethnically loaded words, before someone gets offended:
Niggle - too similar to the “N” word: from now on, to persistently bother someone will be called “Sheep-fuckering”
Hope you new zealanders don’t mind that one.
“Haejeonggook, mandu gook, ddeok gook, Kalgooksu: so many Korean soups are actually racist! Let’s change them all. To gewp. ’Haejeonggewp’ ‘mando gewp’ ‘ddeok gewp’ ‘kalgewpsoo’ “
This isn’t about soup. Context. It’s about romanization of a word in a website for foreigners whose first language is English.
“I also suggst these changes to the English language, in order to remove offensive words…before someone gets offended”
All the words you give examples of are fine out of context. (Yes, I know that’s your point) Thanks for taking the time and effort to make a post about your absolute disregard.
Besides the above in-context word, if we’re pulling words out of the air, how about this in-context word of the English language:
How about not using the word “gypped” as in “That guy totally g*pped me!” which is based on the derogatory slur “g*psy” for the Romani people and other Walking People.
I don’t use the word “Gyp” and actually once asked another blogger to rethink their use of the word “gyp” to mean cheating someone, because they weren’t aware it was denigrating a group of people. that blogger adjusted their post, and I appreciated their sensitivity.
I’m totally cool with sensitivity and awareness. As a white male trying to figure out how privilege works, how to become sensitized to something I grew up surrounded by, I try to step carefully. And I don’t want a pat on the head for saying that. I think that discussions about these things are really important. As the father of a multiracial child, I have a stake in this conversation, and hope my kid doesn’t have to grow up feeling marginalized the way many players in this conversation have. And I want to know enough about what’s going on, to be able to talk to him about it, and introduce him to people who can talk about it with kindness, with gentleness and wisdom and perspective.
My reply to your post was flip, and pretty dismissive. And I apologize, personally, to you, SOS, for that.
I’ve never liked the words foreigner or “wayg**k” myself - for different reasons. The only time, before this, that I’ve seen the word “Wayg**k” parsed for the last four letters was in this blog post. And that post was written by a multiracial Korean-American who is not a part of the English teaching community (who are mostly the ones using the website in question). I know him. He’s a smart guy.
But are you part of the foreign English teaching community (which includes lots of people of color, including folks with background from all kinds of countries in Asia who certainly grew up hearing the “g” word, and of whom, unless I hear otherwise, only one so far has had a problem with the “W” word)? The foreign English teaching community here is actually quite diverse, and discussions among us are fairly robust, with numerous blogs and sites where we talk about exactly this kind of stuff…
Are you familiar with them? Are you a member of the expat teaching community? Are you familiar with the websites, and the way we talk about these things? Because if you aren’t, if you popped in for a drive-by Iwasoffended, perhaps that’s part of why people responded dismissively. If the same critique had come from some of the Korea expat veterans, they might have listened a little more carefully than from a stranger. A number of non-white writers have strong voices in the Korea expat online community. Are you familiar with any of them? I know some of them personally, and I listen carefully to stuff they say about privilege and racism, just like I mostly listen when I’m talking about gender issues with my non-hetero-male friends. Those conversations work better face to face than online, I’ve found.
There’s a balance somewhere, between global awareness and local particularities. Between my Grandma getting offended while reading a map of Austria and writing a letter to the mayor of the town of Fucking that the spelling of his town’s name offended her on one hand, and on the other hand, the fact that yes, in our new world, everything touches everything else, almost instantly, thanks to communication technology, and we should be mindful of it, more than ever before.
Bollywood films never show kissing. Should Hollywood stop showing kissing, lest we offend Indian sensitivities? I don’t think so. Especially given that Bollywood skirts the kiss ban with innuendo song-lyrics and randy dances. But maybe a discussion of what the content of hollywood movies says about American culture is worthwhile. I think people (including website-namers) deserve the benefit of the doubt and the due diligence of finding out what’s going on before we assume things about their intentions, but I also think people deserve to be heard out when they explain their side, and wayg**k.org dropped the ball on that point by banning you instead of hosting a conversation.
Anyway, that’s what i have to say for now. I pay attention to these conversations, and prefer listening over speaking for the most part, and I’m sorry if my gunning for a cheap laugh hurt you or made you feel invalidated.
This is the first of a handful of surveys I’ll be running for research papers this semester.
If you’ve been wondering why my blog has been light on posting lately, this is part of it.
We’re studying Korean identity and multiculturalism, and looking for responses from people who have Korean ethnic background (a little or a lot), who have lived overseas, who were born overseas, who were adopted overseas… and who then had the experience of returning to Korea.
If that includes you, please do the survey! If it doesn’t, share it! If that isn’t you, hang on: there’ll be more coming.
Wow. Ok.
So I was just searching for some things to do while in Korea, and came across a forums site called:
waygook.org
Um…does anybody else see what I see?
A *racial slur* in the title of a site about Korea?
How many hundreds of people use this site and just don’t care about the violence associated with the word “g—k”?
So, I signed in as tr39 and asked if the name could be changed, saying:
“G**K is a Racial Slur against Koreans and other East Asians!!
Why is there a racist slur in the title of these forums? Is there any way to change the name?
Because currently it is *really* offensive”
When I checked back to see responses, I was surprised to see that the post was deleted! So I just reposted in case there was a mistake.
There wasn’t - moderators deleted my post again and banned me from the site.
When I checked my e-mail, there was this:
“You have just been sent a personal message by jackdaniels on WAYGOOK.ORG.
IMPORTANT: Remember, this is just a notification. Please do not reply to this email.
The message they sent you was:
The Korean word for foreign (외국 aka waygook), or foreigner (외국인 aka waygookin) or even foreign person (외국사람 aka waygook saram), all use 국 as a base word and the use of gook in this context is so far removed from North American meaning that nobody recognizes it as a derogatory term. So when you have a website for foreigners in Korea, waygook.org seems quite appropriate.”My response was:
“Hey, just saw your e-mail.
I’m replying to this e-mail because there’s no other way for me to reply since you’ve deleted my post twice.(The first time I thought it was a mistake, but now I realize it was a deliberate delete.)I’m pretty sure that many people who use the site are North Americans. How is there a way to separate the history of that offensive word in North America on a site that foreigners (frequently North Americans and frequently people who don’t speak Korean) from its racist meaning?Additionally, my post was phrased angrily, but also politely, so I’m not sure why you couldn’t respond publicly so that everybody could see, and why you deleted it twice.In any case, I’m just horrified that foreigners would use a racial slur to talk about the people of the country they are visiting!I hope that there’s a way to change the name somehow.”Really, is there no other clever wordplay that the site could use that doesn’t involve a word that shares history with racism?Am I overreacting or what?Okay wow. You’re NOT overreacting at all. I had to keep rewriting this response because I couldn’t believe the extent of their whitesplaining. As you may know, “gook” was coined from the way white Americans made fun of the Korean language during the occupation (the Korean words for the U.S and Korea are “mi gook” and “han gook” respectively).
There is no way for the context to just change because a bunch of white assholes don’t want to admit to the slurs that they created and threw around while butchering and raping Korean people en masse. That’s some really gross privilege right there. They don’t get to fucking claim that the North American meaning is “lost” so that they can laugh behind the backs of people who don’t realize that their own words are still being used as anti-Asian slurs.
But I guess the parasites running this forum are too fucking stupid to realize that a crapton of Koreans live overseas and know exactly what “gook” entails, and that we understand all the motions of white sociopathy in all its simple bitch glory.
So yes, it sounds like they know what they’re doing is wrong, but they’re just assuming that we’re as stupid as they are and pretending that their lying asses have nothing to do with the racist history of the word. And if they’re trying to sound cultured or “respectful” or some shit by having a Korean word as their website name, their gringo efforts are painfully embarrassing because 외 sounds nothing like “way.” Unless that’s supposed to be a grade-school mockery of Korean words, too.
Also, even native Koreans likely know the implications of “gook” because companies like “Hankook Tires” and “Hankook Ilbo” have modified spellings that avoid the slur altogether, even if it results in a slightly different sound. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if their romanization rules were based on the handbook of “Shit White People Ruined Vol. XXIII.” How sad is it that we can’t even spell things a certain way any because a bunch of racist, imperialistic warmongerers attached such ugly and hateful meanings to our own vocabulary?
tl;dr - reason #40943534 to hate most white English teachers in Korea
Also edited for rage typos lol
Thanks for that. Glad to know I’m not seeing things - the information about the romanization of Korean companies like “Hankook Tires” is interesting (and sad and enraging), too.
I just - wow, still can’t believe it.
This has to be the most ridiculous thing I have ever read on Tumblr. I had to check the original site to make sure that it wasn’t an incredibly brilliant piece of satire.
How the fuck are we supposed to romanise any Korean words if we must avoid romanisations that may be sensitive to non-Koreans?
I’m just stunned by the lengths that people go too in order to be offended. There is SO MUCH shit in the world that is legitimately offensive…yet we choose to be offended by shit like Korean words being romanised (even a Korean company!!) and including ‘gook’ or ‘kook’ as a legitimate romanisation of the original Korean word.
Would you rather we simply changed the entire Korea language in order to suit your precious nature? We need to change the Korean word for Korea, change their national anthem, the name of their flag, and the names they’ve given many significant countries around the world. I’m sure that once we finish your re-writing of their language it will appeal to your sensitive soul.
In this vein, I also suggst these changes to the English language, in order to remove offensive words, or letter combinations resembling offensive or ethnically loaded words, before someone gets offended:
Nipple - clearly includes the word “nip” which is an old slur for Japanese people. Let’s change its spelling and pronounciation to “Nirble”
Kick - too close to the offensive word for Jews, “Kike” — let’s eliminate the word entirely, and just say “punch, except with your foot” from now on.
Haejeonggook, mandu gook, ddeok gook, Kalgooksu: so many Korean soups are actually racist! Let’s change them all. To gewp. ”Haejeonggewp” “mando gewp” “ddeok gewp” “kalgewpsoo”
Jerry - every person named Jerry is clearly racist, as Jerry was a dehumanizing term used in the World Wars for Germans. Rename them all to Jambixlebrox, which is offensive to noone.
Bob - too similar to the word “boob” which objectifies women. From now on, all Bobs will be known as Bloorgin
Guide - too similar to “guido” - which denigrates italians. Guides will henceforward be called “Groobyflams”
Niggle - too similar to the “N” word: from now on, to persistently bother someone will be called “Sheep-fuckering”
Hope you new zealanders don’t mind that one.
