Category: East Asia

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Don’t Visit North Korea

Vientiane, Laos

Yes, it’s possible to visit North Korea. No, you shouldn’t do it.

As the horrifying case of Otto Warmbier unfolds, it’s clear that North Korea is interested in taking American hostages. Warmbier has been sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster in his hotel room.

It’s unclear whether Warmbier will ever serve that sentence, but if he does, he will not be alone in the labor camps. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans are there already, in the conditions that upset us so much when we consider an American being sent there, and often for reasons as stupid and paltry.

Visits to North Korea are not really visits to North Korea. They’re visits to a performance of North Korea, staged by the government. Your money for your visit goes to the government. It sustains the same government that is destroying Otto Warmbier’s life without remorse as part of its power games. The same government that holds out the promise of family reunions, only to withdraw at the last moment, toying with the hearts of its own citizens. The same government that has kidnapped teenagers from Japanese beaches. The same government that the UN found has committed human rights abuses “without parallel in the contemporary world.”

If you have a real reason to go to North Korea, like the volunteers at Choson Exchange, then go. Otherwise, don’t.

I realize that by posting this, I am disqualifying myself from going to North Korea. I shouldn’t go. You shouldn’t either. It’s not safe, and it’s not right to support the regime. We are only pawns in their game.

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Convergences

Ayutthaya, Thailand

I’ve arrived at Tony’s Place Bed and Breakfast in Ayutthaya, charming guesthouse in a sprawling house full of teakwood touches and Thai decor. I suppose it might have been trickier to get here had not one of my new Thai friends messaged me this morning to ask if I needed a ride to Victory Monument, where the vans for Ayutthaya depart, and then decided as we were driving that we might as well go all the way to Ayutthaya together and have dinner. I’d originally booked just two nights here, but it took me all of an hour to decide to add two more. Already I feel worlds away from the jittery madness of Bangkok and Sukhumvit. This feels like a vacation.

UN connections

In other news, I had lunch today with Heike Alefsen, Senior Regional Human Rights Adviser, United Nations Development Group Asia-Pacific Secretariat, whom I met at the Halloween party at my hotel in Bangkok. It turns out Heike once worked under Kang Kyung-wha, an extraordinary woman who stood out as one of the most impressive and formidable of the many excellent diplomats I worked with at the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations. I love these kinds of surprising convergences! Lunch was a delight, and I learned a great deal about Thailand and the region.

(We ate at a fancy buffet in Sukhumvit called Crave. There was dragonfruit.)

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Helping Resettled North Koreans to Succeed

I am raising funds for Liberty in North Korea’s empowerment programs. These programs are a lifeline to North Koreans who have escaped their oppressive regime, but now need to make a new life on the outside. They don’t have the networks of family and friends that we take for granted — they left those things behind.

But we can help. I am hoping to raise $1000 by the time I leave for Asia on October 28. (You won’t see my donation because I already have a standing commitment to Liberty in North Korea’s general fund.)

Please donate. You can make a difference on one of the world’s toughest issues!

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Thesis

I have, at long last, posted my master’s thesis online. Called Swiss Gods Don’t Like Rice Cake, it tells the story of how Korean shamanism has begun to incorporate non-Koreans as shamans. You can find it here.

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End-of-term Speech

Today I delivered a short speech in Korean as part of the closing ceremony for my monthlong Korean language program at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, on what has turned out to be my speaking tour of Asia. The speech was a hit with the teachers and staff, as well as with my classmates, all of whom were amused by how much of our new grammar I managed to work in.

As for the lower-level students, they were just confused — as I was confused by the opening speech by, well, someone — not sure who — who spoke in rapid, low-toned Korean for several minutes. It’s true what Psy said: “뛰는 놈 그 위에 나는 놈” (“Wherever there’s a running man, there’s a flying man above,” a proverb that more or less means that no matter how good you are at something, there’s always someone better). But I suppose I could also make the claim now that “Baby baby 나는 뭘 좀 아는 놈” (“I’m a guy who knows a little something”).

Below you can find the text of the speech in full, errors and all. (I assume there are errors.) Have fun running it through Google Translate, which makes a hash of what I intended to say, but which might actually capture the muddled flavor of my Korean.

안녕하십니까 여러분. 나는 미국에서 온 조쉬입니다.

벌써 한 달 진났습니다. 레벨 테스트를 봤습니다. 친절한 선생님을 만났습니다. 문법을 많이 배웠습니다. 발표 했습니다. 한 달 동안 우리 다 열심히 공부했습니다.

자, 사실에 보통 열심히 공부하지만 가끔도 궁부하는 동 마는 동 하면서 열심히 공부 한 적 했습니다. 어차피 한국어를 조금 배울 수 밖에 없다고 생각합니다.

그렇게 공부 할 만 했습니다. 하지만 공부 한 김에 더 중요한 것 교실 밖에 했습니다. 외데에 오면 세상을 만나다더니 한 달 후에 사실이라고 압니다. 일본, 러시아, 대만, 미국, 프랑스, 스페인, 영국, 독일 등 친구를 만들었습니다. 함게 같이 전통 음악 치고 Kpop 춤 추고 빳빙수 너무 많이 먹었습니다. 정말 한국 문화를 많이 즐거웠습니다.

우리 새로운 친구들을 그리울 겁니다. 하지만 너무 슬플 리가 없습니다. 세상에 어딘가 외대 친구가 만나면 기분이 좋겠습니다. 그리고 또 다시 한국에서 만나기 바랍니다.

감사합니다.

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The Language School Bubble

When you go to a Korean-language immersion program, there are certain illusions to which you’re likely to fall prey, especially if you’re at something of an advanced level.

First, you might start to think that what you’re doing is normal. After all, everyone around you has also devoted years to learning your target language. You can lose sight of how uncommon it is — how downright weird it is — to spend hours upon hours trying to parse and retain this obscure and difficult language. And you can forget that not all people from Japan, England, Spain, France, Taiwan, and China have an interest in Korea, or even know where it is. You start to think that everyone everywhere cares who EXO is.

Second, you might come to believe that you’re actually pretty good at Korean. I’ve been hanging out with a group of Japanese women, communicating almost entirely in Korean, and we’ve been able to have a lot of fun and even some intelligent conversations about things like religion. But it’s an illusion created by the fact that we’re all at the same level: we know more or less the same grammar and vocabulary, so we don’t tend to use stuff that’s way beyond what our counterparts can understand.

But as soon as I get into a conversation with actual Koreans, I’m in trouble — especially if they’re talking to each other rather than just to me. I catch words, sentence endings here and there. I get general ideas, maybe, but miss important key points, like that the entire conversation was about someone’s boyfriend rather than about not having a boyfriend. In other words, I have no idea what’s going on most of the time, but now speak Korean well enough that I feel like I should be paying attention anyway.

Some of this is the midpoint letdown — I’m two weeks in, with two weeks left to go, and feeling frustrated by all the short trips I’ve had to Seoul these past few years, when what I really want is to live here, to settle in, to be able to commit myself to an extended period of learning. Two weeks is such a tiny span, but I feel like I’ve learned an enormous amount, met interesting people, started conversations that I want to continue. But I’ll be leaving again in two weeks. What I need here is time.

I’m excited for my upcoming travel in Southeast Asia, and I have no intention of giving that up. But this visit to Seoul has reaffirmed my desire to be here and stay here. And I know that when I come to stay, I will finally get an experience that right now feels tantalizingly just out of reach.

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The Student Life

I am currently in Seoul, lying in bed in what is the tiniest room I’ve ever stayed in, resting my head on a pillow called Ratasha. I’m here at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, in an outlying and moderately dumpy neighborhood, for a month of intensive Korean language study before I take my proficiency exam at Columbia University. I’m staying at what’s called a goshitel, which is a combination of the words goshi (exam) and hotel, and is a kind of fancified word for what’s more often called a goshiwon, or exam housing. They’re basically dorms with tiny little rooms for students who are cramming for tests or studying at universities. Mine is so small that I sleep with my feet under my closet. But it’s reasonably clean, reasonably cool, there’s a laundry machine down the hall, there’s free rice and kimchi in the kitchen, and it’s costing me a little over $400 for the month.

I’ve actually grown kind of used to the little place, as one does with pretty much anything in life. And I like the student life here. I have Korean classes every day from 9 am to 1 pm, at a high enough level that we’re having somewhat interesting conversations. My classmates range from a passel of undergrads of various nationalities — English, French, Taiwanese, Chinese, Japanese — to an 80-year-old Japanese guy who’s pretty much deaf, shouts a lot, and tends to make lots of semi-rude comments about drinking and the attractiveness of HUFS teachers. There’s also a retired Japanese woman, a Japanese woman who’s something like my age (she’s secretive about it), and a Spanish woman who teaches Spanish in Spain and wants to teach it here instead. After class we all go to the shitty campus cafeteria, where cranky ajummas dish out low-grade Korean food but it only costs $2 for lunch and you buy your meal tickets from big computerized vending machines.

It’s hard to believe I arrived just a week ago. It feels like I live here.

When I think about my plan to move to Seoul, I sometimes go down this rabbit hole of fear where I imagine myself all alone and miserable in the middle of a long Korean winter, with no one to talk to, living in some hellhole and hating myself for having come here. But every time I do come here, I find that my schedule fills up to the point that I have to plan time to be alone and do the alone things I want to do, like writing or studying. I have friends here, and I make new friends here easily, and I’ve been having fun on both counts. I’ve been all over Seoul, out to Gimpo, down to Suwon. I’ve seen foreign friends and Korean friends and gone out with classmates. I have discovered new neighborhoods where I might want to live when I come back. I have also studied quite a bit. I like it here.

Seoul by now is easy. I still have fears about living here, but it’s easy both because I’m used to it and because it’s improving. You can get flossers now at Daiso, and I’ve been told that you can walk into a pharmacy these days and just ask for the medicines you want — not like the old days, where you told the pharmacist what was wrong with you and received a mystery packet of pills. There are bagels, though they are not ever going to be New York bagels.

There are friends. There are, in fact, people here who love me.

Things that used to be sticking points have come unstuck. I can make it here. After all, I made it in New York, and the song tells me I can make it anywhere after that. And in the meantime, I’m having a blast, learning a ton, and occasionally even sleeping.

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Vietnam and Korea

Just a quick post to note that I’m alive and well in Korea, after five fascinating days in Saigon. While in Saigon, on my first day, I had the privilege of delivering a seminar on Jewish child-rearing practices to an audience of 120 Vietnamese. They were hungry to learn new ideas — many were taking notes — and I was glad to be able to share the best aspects of my own culture, like Judaism’s emphasis on asking questions and following one’s curiosity. The seminar was held in a beautiful cafe in the Bitexco Tower, Saigon’s tallest building.

Beyond that, I spent a bunch of time with my good friend who showed me all around the city and took me on a Mekong Delta tour as well. Vietnamese food is delicious, and you knew that already, but it’s delicious in ways that surprised me: the fresh herbs and greenery that come with just about every dish, the fish, the curious rice cake concoctions.

Saigon is a city that’s going through rapid changes, growing into a modern city, with bits of Communism still, and bits of third-world chaos, and bits that look as new and organized as the fancier stretches of Seoul. (Korean investment is everywhere.) The people there seem excited by the changes but still uncertain about the future, and it will be interesting to see where Vietnam goes in the next decade. I can’t wait to go back.

Seoul, meanwhile, is my future home, and I’m pretty used to it. My goshitel — a sort of student dorm hotel — is fine, though this is the tiniest room I’ve ever stayed in. Classes are good, the neighborhood by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies is more OK than I thought it would be, and I’ve been busy with old friends and new. I have this longstanding fear that when I move to Korea, or when I visit, I’ll spend long stretches of time alone and lonely, staring at the walls, with nowhere to go and no one to talk to. And then I get here and discover I don’t have a minute to think. Since I arrived Thursday morning, I’ve taken a placement exam, started classes, spent time with a couple of different friends, gone out to Gimpo for a night and a day, and today went down to the Suwon Folk Village for the first time since 2002, in the company of a Japanese classmate, and then afterward met a bunch more classmates and a couple of their Korean friends for a barbecue dinner. In other words, Seoul life!

There’s much more to say about both Vietnam and my time here in Seoul so far, but I don’t know when I’ll get a chance to say it, so I figured I’d better start now and fill in the details later.

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New and old

Design Korea has posted some pictures of a Korean house with a cutaway roof, designed by the Korean architecture firm IROJE KHM.

The house looks exquisite, if perhaps a bit awkward to furnish. But what I find fascinating about it, beyond the intrinsic cleverness and whimsy, is how well it manages to be at once contemporary and rooted in local tradition — in this case, that of the Korean hanok,

I find this fascinating not just for its intrinsic cleverness, but because it is a very rare example of an architecture that feels at once contemporary and rooted in a local tradition — in this case, the Korean hanok, with its dark-gray sloped roof and its interior courtyard.

It’s a synthesis that’s hard to pull off. Too often, especially in Asia, the attempt to integrate local traditions into modern architecture results in modernism with retro decorative flourishes. But it’s not surprising to me that Korean architects would be feeling their way toward a deeper fusion. Korea has made a concerted effort over the past decade to find ways to bring its traditional culture into its modern culture.

Korea has an interesting history when it comes to working with its own traditions. China went through the Cultural Revolution, during which traditional culture was vilified and destroyed in an orgy of violence. Japan, on the other hand, after the rapid modernization of the Meiji Restoration, suffered the defeat of its modern nation while retaining its emperor, leading to a reactionary cultural conservatism that’s much less prominent in Korea. Korea (and here I mean South Korea) has used its traditional culture for various purposes in the modern era, first as a rallying point for national autonomy against Japanese colonialism, and later both to legitimate the conservative military government and to rebel against it. The result is perhaps more flexibility than one finds in either China or Japan when it comes to working with traditional culture in a modern context.

When I first came to Korea, in 2001, traditional culture was still somewhat fenced off, seen as maybe a bit of an embarrassment by a country keen on taking its place among the developed nations. But as Korea has grown more confident, there has been more willingness not just to preserve traditions, but to extend them, to grow them, to let them live and breathe. This unusual house is just one example of many, and a rare architectural example. I hope to see more such architectural innovation coming out of Korea.