Category: Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Caveat: Weaponized Migration

Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Many years ago, I made some posts on this blog (in its earliest, pre-Life-in-Korea incarnation) about the issue of open borders and migration as a human right. I still basically believe this, although it’s not something that I consider particularly urgent, and certainly, living as a de facto immigrant in one of the world’s less immigrant-friendly regions presents some ironies to this.

Recently, in a post on the crookedtimber blog, I ran across what I would consider one of the best counter-arguments to the idea that borders should be thrown open. Actually, it was a comment below the main post that raised the issue (by a commenter named “Merkwürdigliebe” – whoever that might be), but I think it’s possibly the best rebuttal to open borders I have run across.

The idea is that when you have open borders, a government (or a people, in the form of a mass movement) could “weaponize” migration. Many conspiracy-theorists (especially on the right) already believe there is intentionality behind mass migrations of e.g. Mexicans into the US, and, with respect to certain fringe groups (such as the Aztlan revanchist movement) there is actually some validity.

The commenter raised the idea of, say, the Russian government using putative open European borders to flood former East Bloc countries such as the Baltics with direct Russian migration, until those countries were rendered majority Russian and thus captured into the Russian orbit.

In fact, there are plenty of examples from history of successful “weaponized” migration – everything from the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire to the movement of settlers from the British Isles into North America to the Argentinian leverage of Welsh nationalism to subdue the Patagonian natives, to the entire Zionist project from conception to its current manifestations in the West Bank settlements.

These historical examples themselves constitute the essential counter-rebuttal to the argument, however: all of these historical examples of “weaponized” migration were successful despite active resistance on the part of the people being “migrated against.” Thus, whether or not there are “open borders” seems structurally irrelevant. If a given people or movement or government make a concerted effort at weaponized migration, the presence or absence of border controls seems not to matter a whit. As the borg pointed out, as it effortlessly zoomed across Federation border controls, “resistance is futile.”

Nevertheless, it is a cogent and intelligent argument, and would need to be addressed in the context of a debate in favor of open borders.

[daily log: walking, a little bit]

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: 혁신도시

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Science & SciFi

Korea’s “New Cities” have always fascinated me, given my own proclivities as an unfulfilled urban planner as well as my current long-standing residence in one of Korea’s largest and most successful New Cities, Ilsan. There are many aspects of the the New City concept and process that are interesting to me, but perhaps what I’m most curious about is why some can be so successful, while others fail. What are the factors which cause this? What decisions are made that influence the success or failure, and what sociological factors beyond the control of planners influences the success or failure?
Ilsan is quite successful. If you came to this city of half a million residents, you might be surprised to learn it was less than 30 years old, and that nothing existed but a small village when when I first visited the area in 1991, while in the US Army stationed in Korea.
On the other hand, there are large New Cities which feel like ghost towns. They are not empty, but they have not managed to coalesce into a city-type place. They have atmospherics which resemble those of some US suburbs (or exurbs), contrasting only in being much higher density.
I was thinking about this recently, having watched on the TV a fairly in-depth report on a New City being built down near Gwangju, the other Korean metropolitan area that I have called home. The report first caught my attention because the name of the city is 빛가람 [bitgaram], which struck me as a weird name for a New City – it means “Bright Monastery” or “Bright Cathedral” and so what struck me as odd was the apparent religious aspect of the name. I suppose it could be seen as a “Cathedral of Capitalism.”
It is being called “혁신도시” [hyeoksindosi = “Innovation New City”] – the term “innovation” in the name seems to be… an innovation. What are they trying to build? Gwangju has a history of trying to reinvent itself as a high tech city, from its old character as agricultural center and “car town” (it is the original home to KIA motors in that company’s pre-Hyundai merger days, as well as home to the Kumho chaebol, maker of car parts and tires and buses). I have described it as Korea’s Detroit. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but I think there is a reputational aspect that matches up, too.
Bitgaram Innovation New City is being built in the city of Naju, which is Gwangju’s older but much smaller neighbor to the south, but which is now absorbed into the Gwangju metropolis. Naju was one of two capitals of the pre-modern Jeolla province, and dates back to the Baekje kingdom era, I think.
Toponymically (and to digress), the name of the other capital, Jeonju, along with the name Naju, are the origins of the name of Jeolla province, since Naju was originally La-ju (a natural sound change from medieval to modern Korean), and thus Jeon+La = Jeonla->Jeolla. Originally, there were two provinces, Jeonju and Laju (“ju” just means place or province, after all).  I have always wondered why, when the modern Korean government decided to split Jeolla, they named them North Jeolla and South Jeolla. Why not just return to Jeon and La (Na)? It would be as if, say, Iowa and Minnesota merged, to form Minnesotiowa, and then split again to form North Minnesotiowa and South Minnesotiowa.
This blog post is rambling a bit.
My real question is, will this New City if Bitgaram be successful, like Ilsan, or less successful, like e.g. Ilsan’s western neighbor, Unjeong? I have been to Unjeong many times, and even have had coworkers and students who live there. But despite the ambitions attached to it, it has so far never evolved into anything more than a bedroom suburb, unlike Ilsan. It’s a bit younger than Ilsan, but that doesn’t explain its failure to develop its own city character – Ilsan had its own city character well-established even 15 years ago, which is Unjeong’s age now. Unjeongians always commute to Ilsan for their city-type activities. I wonder why.
The one trend that I find disturbing is that the newer New Cities seem to lack the commitment to diverse public transit that the older New Cities seemed pretty good at. Thus Unjeong is not built along a subway line (as is the case with Ilsan, really along two lines) but rather off to the side of one. Gwangju’s subway (which is, anyway, a joke) will not connect to Bitgaram, as far as I can tell.
Here is an image of Bitgaram, fished off the internet. It is a “rendering” – not an actual view – the city is still under construction.
picture
[daily log: walking, ]

Caveat: Hypotheticals

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Some criticism has been leveled at Barack Obama, over the years, for being a perhaps excessively cerebral president. I understand such criticism, but I cannot wrap my head around the vernacular American resistance to the idea of an intelligent president – this is a problem that has puzzled me since my youth.

Anyway, it looks like this tendency is being taken to a new level by Republican candidate Scott Walker, who recently said, in response to a question about how he might handle the Syrian refugee crisis if he were president:

"Everybody wants to talk about hypotheticals; there is no such thing as a hypothetical"

Let me present a hypothetical: are we now ready for a president who is not only anti-intellectual (a la Reagan) but who a priori denies a capacity for abstract thought?

[daily log: walking, 6 km]

Caveat: Hello? Your Goat Is Blocking My Driveway

Found Online / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

In Korea, it's common for people to put their cellphone numbers on small placards or stickers facing outward in the windshields of their cars. The reason for this is that then they can park blocking entrances and driveways, and if someone needs to get in or out, they can simply call to have the person move the car. It's quite logical, if a little bit chaotic, and clearly subject to abuse, but because the Korean social contract is mostly civil, it seems to work out. 

Recently I read about a new thing emerging in Somalia, wherein people put their cellphone numbers on their goats. This seems similar, although obviously it's not, in fact, about goats blocking driveways so much as it is about goats getting lost or damaging someone else's property. But it's very fascinating to me that such a trend should emerge in a country like Somalia, which is supposedly a country utterly lacking in a civil social contract. Maybe that's not, in fact, the case? 

Goats2

[daily log: walking, 6 km]

Caveat: You cower in your tower praying that I’ll disappear

Background Noise / Not My Poetry / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

What I’m listening to right now.

Saul Williams, “List of Demands (Reparations).” This song has a reference to the concept of reparations for African-Americans, which has recently seen some revival, especially on the part of the stunningly talented writer, Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Lyrics.

I want my money back, I’m down here drowning in your fat
You got me on my knees praying for everything you lack
I ain’t afraid of you, I’m just a victim of your fear
You cower in your tower praying that I’ll disappear

I got another plan, one that requires me to stand
On the stage or in the street, don’t need no microphone or beat
And if you hear this song, if you ain’t dead then sing along
Bang and strum to this here drum ’til you get where you belong

I got a list of demands written on the palm of my hands
I ball my fist and you gon’ know where I stand
We living hand to mouth, you wanna be somebody?
See somebody? Try and free somebody?

Got a list of demands written on the palm of my hands
I ball my fist and you gon’ know where I stand
We living hand to mouth
Hand to mouth

I wrote a song for you today while I was sitting in my room
I jumped up on a bed today and played it on a broom
I didn’t think that it would be a song that you would hear
But when I played it in my head, I made you reappear

I wrote a video for it and I acted out each part
And then I took your picture out and taped it to my heart
I’ve taped you to my heart, dear girl, I’ve taped you to my heart
And if you pull away from me you’ll tear my life apart

I got a list of demands written on the palm of my hands
I ball my fist and you gon’ know where I stand
We living hand to mouth, you wanna be somebody?
See somebody? Try and free somebody?

Got a list of demands written on the palm of my hands
I ball my fist and you gon’ know where I stand
We living hand to mouth
Hand to mouth

Ecstasy, suffering, echinacea, buffering
We aim to remember what we choose to forget
God’s just a baby and her diaper is wet

Call the police, I’m strapped to the teeth
And liable to disregard your every belief
Call on the law, I’m fixing to draw
A line between what is and seems and call up a brawl

Call on them now ’cause it’s about to go pow
I’m standing on the threshold of the ups and the downs
Call up a truce ’cause I’m about to break loose
Protect ya neck ’cause son I’m breaking out of my noose

I got a list of demands written on the palm of my hands
I ball my fist and you gon’ know where I stand
We living hand to mouth, you wanna be somebody?
See somebody? Try and free somebody?

Got a list of demands written on the palm of my hands
I ball my fist and you gon’ know where I stand
We living hand to mouth
Hand to mouth

I got a list of demands written on the palm of my hands
I ball my fist and you gon’ know where I stand
We living hand to mouth, you wanna be somebody?
See somebody? Try and free somebody?

Got a list of demands written on the palm of my hands
I ball my fist and you gon’ know where I stand
We living hand to mouth
Hand to mouth

 [daily log: walking, 6 km]

Caveat: King Jeong-eun

My Videos / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Teaching & Methodology

We were having a debate in my HS classes, on the topic of "restoring the Korean monarchy." 

This may seem like a quixotic topic, and it is, a little bit, but it is a sort of leitmotif in Korean media, sometimes – there was a popular TV drama a while back set in a vaguely alternate universe where South Korea was a monarchy. Historically, for most of its long history, Korea has been one or more monarchies in the Sinospheric tradition of "conceptually tributary but de facto independent" kingdoms under the suzerainty of the Chinese emperors. 

Anyway, to make the debate more interesting and less of a fairy tale, I focused on the aspect of an implied transition from a presidential system to a parliamentary system of government, since that is generally how monarhies operate in the modern world. We talked about separation of powers, about the seeming higher incidence of authoritarianism and corruption in presidential systems, South Korea's own problematic history of authoritarian presidents and how a parliamentary system might have moderated that or how it might prevent future tendencies in that direction.

In that vein, the students vented their annoyance with the incompetencies of our current dynastic president, Park Geun-hye, the daughter of the 1970s dictator. I made a throwaway line about the methods by which we might choose the new monarch, aside from simply annoiting some descendant of the Yi family that ruled Joseun prior to the Japanese takeover in 1910. In this vein, I mentioned both the Park family of the current president and the Kim family that has been ruling our neighbor to the north for the last 75 years. This was really meant as a joke.

However, one student, Seungyeop, decided to run with it. Seungyeop is one of those types of students that abound in my high level middle-school debate classes: pretty good at English, quite brilliant academically, but not really interested in doing homework. In fact, Seungyeop never does homework, but he can often get away with it in my class, where the main score is based on the quality of one's speeches. 

He gave a speech yesterday where he explained, more-or-less cogently, the advantages of making Kim Jeong-eun, North Korea's current dictator, the king of Korea as a part of resotring the monarchy. He said that since he seems mostly interested in the trappings of power, he would be happy for such a figurehead position, but since it would be implemented as a constitutional monarchy, he would be essentially powerless. Thus, this type of restoration could bring about Korean reunification.

His speech is the first in the series of five speeches in the video I posted for the class blog (embedded below). 

It's a little bit hard to hear, and as always, keep in mind that these are just middle-schoolers learning English, so I hold them to a fairly low standard on some axes of evaluation. But overall I thought it was a clever argument and it holds together especially well considering he slapped it together in the five minutes before speaking. 

[daily log: walking, 6 km]

 

Caveat: Hey kids! Let’s have a debate about Park Chung-hee!

Banalities & Journaling / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / The Wonders of Work

The monsoon has finally come. The last week has been pretty continuously rainy and grey.

I like this kind of weather. I can feel my mood improving, as contrasted to how I feel when it is hot and sunny, which always just feels oppressive to me. 

I'm working hard. My TEPS-M cohort middleschoolers, who normally annoy me greatly, made me laugh yesterday. Somehow we got on the topic of politics. They said we should have a debate about politics. I am actually a bit wary of having debates about politics – the kids are either apathetic or bear the same irreconcilable "culture-war" views as their parents no doubt have, i.e. the evangelicals are Saenuri-dang (Korean Republican analogues) and the rest are Minju-dang (Korean Democrat analogues). Mostly I prefer to focus the debates on specific policies or lifestyle choices. 

Somehow they seemed intrigued when I said that a few years back I'd actually had a Korean "presidential debate" in one of my classes. They asked what other topics I'd done. Out of the blue, one student burst out, "Hey kids! Let's have a debate about Park Chung-hee!" 

It was in a voice meant to imitate mine.

"Hey kids" is an imitation of the way I speak to them, when I first walk into a classroom. It's a kind of fakey-jokey, super upbeat tone-of-voice phrase that is meant in a vaguely ironic way, that has become part of my classroom "brand," I suppose. Most of my students seem to find it entertaining as it contrasts with my normal tone, and it's quite predictable. 

The humor was in combining that cheery introduction with an immediate segue into what could conceivably be a very controversial debate topic – but of the sort of complex, elevated topic material for which I'm probably also known (and dreaded): Korea's notorious dictator, Park Chung-hee.

Anyway, it made me laugh. I hear only silence. Maybe you had to be there?

[daily log: walking in the rain, 6 km]

Caveat: The ideological foundation of our united struggle is unceasingly solidifying

Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Quotable

I was led to this "document 9" (formally "Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere") of China's party leadership by a comment thread on an entry at Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution blog.

A commenter basically said, "Why do we spend so much time trying to figure out the China Leadership's intentions? Why not take what they say at face value?" with a link to this document. Frankly, this is a very good point. I don't think that anyone with even a limited background in the history of Marxism, Maoism and China could fail to see that the Party leadership isn't really hiding anything here.

Whether one agrees with it or not, an exposure to Marxist thought on questions of ideology, dialectics and theories of history seems like the sine qua non as regards commenting intelligently on the China question. I think the Chinese leadership take a very long view of history, from a still unrepentantly marxian position, and their embrace of "capitalism" is merely a means to an end. The preamble to the last section of the document reads: 

Historical experience has proven that failures in the economic sphere can result in major disorder, and failure in the ideological sphere can result in major disorders as well. Confronting the very real threat of Western anti-China forces and their attempt at carrying out Westernization, splitting, and “Color Revolutions,” and facing the severe challenge of today’s ideological sphere, all levels of Party and Government, especially key leaders, must pay close attention to their work in the ideological sphere and firmly seize their leadership authority and dominance.

They intend to dance with the devil and step on his toes and force him out of the dance competition. 

[daily log: walking, 6 km]

Caveat: Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / 한국어 속담 (Aphorisms & Proverbs)

The Australian economist John Quiggin, who writes at a blog called Crooked Timber which I often peruse, had a slightly oblique discussion of a text by Thucydides (the Melian  dialogue) which I very vaguely recall once reading (or attempting to read). His summary is interesting, vis-a-vis drawing an eerie (and ironic) kind of parallel between the situation in Classical Greece, with Athens as hegemon within the Delian League, and the situation in modern Europe, with Germany as hegemon within the European Union.

He concludes with the quote I have used as my title on this post, which I guess is a kind of anonymous Greek proverb which was first recorded in Sophocles' Antigone (one of my favorite classical plays, I guess, though I most prefer Jean Anouilh's modern adaption, which neverthless stays quite loyal to the thematics… and speaking of Germans behaving hegemonically).

[daily log: walking, 6 km]

Caveat: Buy an Electric Car, Save the Environment!

Found Online / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Science & SciFi

Actually, no. Let's think this through. Where does electricity come from? Solar or hydro? Great, buy a Nissan Leaf. But most electricity comes from coal. So, in that case… burning gasoline is better for the environment. 

Here's the article that led me to think about this.

[UPDATE (a few hours later): I had written "Prius" but it occurred to me that this is ambiguous, since a Prius is technically a hybrid, not an electric car, and thus is just a new model for burning gasoline. I have altered the title and post to reflect this – but there's no majorly iconic electric vehicle, yet. I chose the Nissan Leaf because it's one I happened to have seen recently here in Korea.]

[daily log: walking, 6 km]

Caveat: Vigilant Disregard

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

On my work blog's admin page, hosted on the naver.com website, which is Korean, they will put up these little "prompts" to suggest blog topics, in Korean.

Yesterday, on June 25th, appropriately, they had the question:

6.25전쟁과 같은 전쟁이 다시 일어나지 않으려면, 어떻게 해야 할까요?

Roughly, it asks, "How can we avoid another war like the 6-25 war?" ("6-25 war" is what South Koreans call the Korean war, since it started with the  North's surprise attack on June 25th, 1950). 

The answer that popped into my mind immediately was: "Just keep doing the same thing that's been done."

Why such a flippant answer? Well, it's worked for 60 years, right? 

I would characterize the South's approach to the North with the oxymoronic phrase "vigilant disregard." Vigilant because the Korean military is large, well-trained (relatively speaking), and well-supported (e.g. financially, by the U.S. alliance, etc.). Disregard, because, despite this vigilance, there is little coherence or intentionality to be found in the broader policy portfolio. It is mostly reactive, but tempered by a strong conservative tendency to hove to the status quo and avoid provocation. I've always said that South Korea seems to mostly see the North the way a Korean family would regard a mentally ill elderly relative. Something to be embarassed by, to try to ignore, but also to be controlled as best possible. 

Anyway, I answered that naver blog question here on this here blog thingy. 

[daily log: walking, 6 km]

Caveat: 50 Years Dead

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

A few months ago, I missed mentioning the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, which was on February 21, 1965. It was one of those blog-posts I start to write but never finish. It seems apropos to think about it, however, in light of “Baltimore” and the many other events reflecting the dysfunction of racial and racialized politics in the US.
I don’t visit The Atlantic website on a daily basis, as I used to. At some point, I became fed up with the their constant efforts to pander to the lowest common denominator in the new internet-driven culture industry – so much in the same vein that I boycott the Facebook, I have been in a “soft boycott” (meaning not absolutist, but merely trying to avoid it for the most part) – I have stopped visiting The Atlantic website for the most part. Their recent reformats of their website were especially annoying, as it was all re-written to be “mobile-friendly” I guess, which is fine – but programming a website to have a “mobile” version and a “computer” version is technically trivial (well, not trivial, but certainly within the abilities of a competent IT department). So why “dumb down” one on my computer screen, too, making it more difficult to see all the different content they have?
Oops, OK, that was a digression (or a rant). I was intending to write about Mr X.
I mentioned The Atlantic because there is one editor / blogger at The Atlantic whom I nevertheless seek out and read on a regular basis. That is the journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates. He recently mentioned Malcolm X in passing when discussing the way in which Obama’s rhetoric on personal morality (of “people of color” – e.g. Baltimore) versus his rhetoric on issues of government policy forms a kind of “bait and switch.” This is cogent and uncompromising reasoning – as is almost always my experience with Coates. Anyway, I will let you read his thoughts, here.
However, Coates’ mention caused me to revisit X’s “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech from April, 1964.

Some people might find it dissonant that Malcolm X is one of people whom I most admire in history. I am neither black, nor a muslim, nor a revolutionary. I am not, arguably, American anymore, either. Furthermore, I have strong philosophical opposition to nationalisms of all flavors, and there is no denying Malcolm X’s nationalist bent.
I think I admire him because he seemed devoid of hypocrisy and self-deception, which is possibly the human failing I most dislike – both in myself and in those around me. Malcolm X called out hypocrisy wherever he saw it. His was a righteous righteousness, therefore.
It’s possible, too, that I admire him as a rhetorician. Certainly now, when I am, in essence, a teacher of rhetoric (if you want to reframe middle-school EFL in as grandiose manner as possible), I am very conscious of and inspired by his control of the spoken word. Even before my current career, however, I was quite drawn to talented speakers.
Regardless of why I admire him, I will merely conclude with an acknowledgement that I consider him one of the greatest Americans – something I’ve commented [broken link! FIXME] before on this blog, admittedly.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]

Caveat: Barking? No, the other end

Background Noise / Found Online / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Science & SciFi

Ha. The "surveillance state" is going to the dogs, now. 

The well-named municipality of Barking and Dagenham, in the UK, is going to be genetically testing dog poo and requiring pet owners to register their pets' DNA – this will allow unambiguous attribution of guilt to owners who don't clean up after their pets.

How far we've come. This seems like one of those fake news snippets from a 1960s-era Heinlein novel.

Really, though… could George Orwell have foreseen this?

What I'm listening to right now.

Informatik, "My True Love." The lyrics are stunningly banal – not what I would hope for from goth-rock. But whatever… I guess I like the sound of it. 

Lyrics.

My true love – the only one for me
And the other there will never be
My true love – always there for me
When I'm feeling so lonely
My true love calls my name
That's when I go running
My true love will never let me down
Please don't let me down

The more that I see you
The more that I need you
This feeling just won't go away

I can't live without you
I won't ever doubt you
I'm begging you – don't go away

My true love whispers to me
Tells me all the things that I want to hear
My true love takes over me
Will never let me go, never set me free
My true love is my everything
Everything I am, all I'll ever be
My true love will never let me down
Please don't let me down

The more that I see you
The more that I need you
This feeling just won't go away
(Won't go, won't go away)

I can't live without you
I won't ever doubt you
I'm begging you – don't go away
(Don't go, don't go away)

You have left your mark on me
I will never be the same
Even if I walk away

Your heavenly embrace
Not so easy to erase
Will I ever have the strength
To say goodbye to you

The more that I see you
The more that I need you
This feeling just won't go away

I can't live without you
I won't ever doubt you
I'm begging you – don't go away

[daily log: walking, ]

 

Caveat: University of malware… expected to do a rampant

Banalities & Journaling / Internet & Blogging / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Google translate is truly horrible, for Korean->English. I admit that at least for most major European languages, I am nevertheless impressed, and it does a great job. With those languages, there is a sufficiently large body of precisely parallel texts (mostly due to EU integration and language policies) that a statistical translation such as the google attempts can yield decent results. But Korean… the results can be truly weird.

Sometimes, I get text messages from my phone service (LG+). In case they are important, I will copy-paste them directly into google translate in an effort to decide if I can freely disregard the message or if I have to take some action on it. A message received earlier today was a great example where the google-translate version is hilarious and weird but nevertheless allows me to know that I can comfortably ignore the message.

The paragraph I laughed at came out in google as:

To celebrate the 24-year civil life cohesive, Courier, New Year greetings, New Year's gift quarterlies, University of malware, including entrance fees (SMS phishing) are expected to do a rampant.

The original was:

새해를 맞이하여 생활 밀착형 민원24, 택배, 새해 인사, 새해선물 연말정산, 대학 입학금 등 악성코드(스미싱)가 기승을 부릴 것으로 예상이 됩니다.

The gist is that I should watch out for spam SMS (which is definitely a problem in Korea – I delete 3 or 4 such messages each day from my phone), and maybe subscribe to their extra spam-fighting service … which I won't. I only pay attention to messages that are from a known source (e.g. a person I know or officially from my provider, like this one). It's hard to fall for phishing attacks in a language you don't know well. Speaking of which, when and how did some Russians decide I wanted to read vast quanties of Russian-language spam? Does anyone else have this problem with email spam in Russian?

And speaking of Universities of malware… maybe North Korea has one. Maybe there's a university of malware, doing a rampant, up the road in Kaeseong, 30 km from my home here in Ilsan. Somehow it's pretty easy to visualize.

 [daily log: walking, 6 km]

Caveat: Detour-de-force

Background Noise / Internet & Blogging / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

I ran across this on another blog I look at sometimes. If you don't know about toxoplasma, you might want to read up on it to understand better – it's so bizarre that it seems like something in science fiction. Slatestarcodex writes a blogpost about memes, starting off with PETA, riffing on Ferguson and police brutality, and concludes discussing what it means to write about controversial topics on blogs. But meanwhile, he takes a little speculative detour that strikes me as tour-de-force of memetics:

Toxoplasma is a neat little parasite that is implicated in a couple of human diseases including schizophrenia. Its life cycle goes like this: it starts in a cat. The cat poops it out. The poop and the toxoplasma get in the water supply, where they are consumed by some other animal, often a rat. The toxoplasma morphs into a rat-compatible form and starts reproducing. Once it has strength in numbers, it hijacks the rat’s brain, convincing the rat to hang out conspicuously in areas where cats can eat it. After a cat eats the rat, the toxoplasma morphs back into its cat compatible form and reproduces some more. Finally, it gets pooped back out by the cat, completing the cycle.

What would it mean for a meme to have a life cycle as complicated as toxoplasma?

Consider the war on terror. It’s a truism that each time the United States bombs Pakistan or Afghanistan or somewhere, all we’re doing is radicalizing the young people there and making more terrorists. Those terrorists then go on to kill Americans, which makes Americans get very angry and call for more bombing of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Taken as a meme, it is a single parasite with two hosts and two forms. In an Afghan host, it appears in a form called ‘jihad’, and hijacks its host into killing himself in order to spread it to its second, American host. In the American host it morphs in a form called ‘the war on terror’, and it hijacks the Americans into giving their own lives (and several bajillion of their tax dollars) to spread it back to its Afghan host in the form of bombs.

From the human point of view, jihad and the War on Terror are opposing forces. From the memetic point of view, they’re as complementary as caterpillars and butterflies. Instead of judging, we just note that somehow we accidentally created a replicator, and replicators are going to replicate until something makes them stop.

Replicators are also going to evolve. Some Afghan who thinks up a particularly effective terrorist strategy helps the meme spread to more Americans as the resulting outrage fuels the War on Terror. When the American bombing heats up, all of the Afghan villagers radicalized in by the attack will remember the really effective new tactic that Khalid thought up and do that one instead of the boring old tactic that barely killed any Americans at all. Some American TV commentator who comes up with a particularly stirring call to retaliation will find her words adopted into party platforms and repeated by pro-war newspapers. While pacifists on both sides work to defuse the tension, the meme is engaging in a counter-effort to become as virulent as possible, until people start suggesting putting pork fat in American bombs just to make Muslims even madder.

What I'm listening to right now.

Hooverphonic, "Eden."

Lyrics.

Did you ever think of me
As your best friend

Did I ever think of you
I'm not complaining

I never tried to feel
I never tried to feel this vibration
I never tried to reach
I never tried to reach your eden

Did I ever think of you
As my enemy

Did you ever think of me
I'm complaining

I never tried to feel
I never tried to feel this vibration
I never tried to reach
I never tried to reach your eden

[daily log: walking, 1.5 km]

Caveat: the winter will crave what is gone

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

Last week at some point, while searching for some utterly unrelated pedagogy-related material, I ran across a PDF of a PhD dissertation by a Korean-American graduate student at Georgia State University. The title is "Korean Teachers' Beliefs about English Language Education and their Impacts upon the Ministry of Education-Initiated Reforms," and was written by Cheong Min Yook in 2010 (it is accessible online here). I was so intrigued by the premise of the dissertation that  I downloaded and read a significant portion of it, hoping to find some insight into the sometimes beffuddling beliefs my coworkers exhibit in the realms of pedagogy and TESL. The dissertation is pretty dry (of course), and frankly I didn't feel it was particularly revelatory, but there was something else that struck me most profoundly, and was quite dissappointing: there is an almost complete disregard for what is, in my mind, the primary locus of ESL in Korea: the hagwon industry. 

Aside from a few single-sentence, off-hand mentions of the fact that parents often resort to "commercial supplementary education," the author seems to view the existence of the hagwon industry irrelevant to ESL in Korea. This strikes me as naive to the point of seeming like an alternate reality. In fact, I think that the hagwon industry (and the Ministry of Education's preoccupation with it, in the negative sense) is likely the single most significant factor in why reform in Korean ESL is so necessary yet also at the same time so incredibly difficult (especially if researchers like this graduate student are pretending the hagwon industry is marginal and nigh irrelvevant). 

I have attempted, anyway, [broken link! FIXME] elsewhere, to go into the history and structure of the ESL industry in Korea, although I confess I probably need to get back to it and make changes as I no longer entirely agree with everything I wrote there. Without going into a lot of that, however, as I read Cheong (is that the surname? I'm not clear if US-name-order or Korean-name-order was used, but Cheong is a more common surname than Yook so I went with that as a guess) I got a lot of insight into the timeline of what was going on with respect to "reforms" and changes in the Ministry of Education's approach to public school ESL. I was struck with a kind of insight or brainstorm about how that must have had a direct and probably uninintended consequence in the hagwon industry. Here is a brief outline of that brainstorm.

The "boom" in the hagwon business which occurred in the early 2000s wasn't just demographic (which is always how I'd conceptualized it, before) – it was also a direct market response to the government's effort to emphasize a more modern pedagogy in the public school system. That is because the government failed to support their programmatic methodological changes meant for the classroom with sufficient reforms to the exam system (i.e. the 4-times-a-year 내신 in middle and high school, as well as the 수능 [Korean "SAT"]).

As a result, what ended up happening was that the reforms, oriented toward spoken English and CLT ["communicative language teaching"], which occurred in the public schools in the late 1990s and early 2000s, rendered English education – as it was being provided by the public schools – irrelevant to what parents wanted and needed. What parents want and need, always, is adequate preparation for exams. The exams remained focused on passive-skills – mostly grammar, vocabulary and reading, with the only, arguably fairly minor, reform being some increase in a listening component. (As an aside, it's worth mentioning that the intended nation-wide TOEFL-style [therefore CLT-based and with a speaking component!] English exam, NEAT, was an utter flop, although I'm not clear as to the reasons for that). Thus, to the extent that public school ESL focused on communicative competence and speaking skills, to the exact same extent it became irrelevant to the national exams. Parents essentially fled the public system (not by quitting, but by simply ignoring it and influencing their children to ignore it) and instead invested even more money and hours in private supplementary education (i.e. hagwon) in order to adequately to prep their kids for the exams.

That makes a lot of sense to me, when I reflect on it. I wonder, therefore, if the current drawback in the hagwon industry is therefore also not just demographic, but is rather also a consequence (intentional or otherwise) of further changes to pedagogy in the public schools. Certainly I think the effort to increase emphasis on speaking and CLT in the public schools has been scaled back substantially – abandoned in middle schools and reduced in elementary schools. Just look at the reduction in foreign native-speaking teachers being employed by public schools. One could argue that the government was disappointed by the results, but it seems just as likely that at some high, administrative level they realized their previous reforms were driving the hagwon industry to new heights (which they didn't want) and so they reversed direction. 

Actually, there is one other factor driving the current travails in the hagwon industry that I might as well mention, as long as I'm writing about it, which is that the cost of 과외 [private tutoring] has veritably plunged in recent years, driven, I suspect, by the increasing number of English-fluent Koreans in the country, mostly returned emmigres who abandoned the Anglosphere due to the economic hardships post-2008. Unlike me or other foreigners who must be here on business-sponsored visas (E2), these returnees can work however they want, as self-employed one-on-one tutors, and there is zero regulation. Given the choice of paying the same for one-on-one with a native speaker or time in a raucous classroom with a native speaker only half time if they're lucky, it's easy to see why parents would pull their kids out of hagwon and find a tutor for them.

By the way… uh, merry christmas? Frankly, it was a sucky Christmas. Bah humbug, then.

What I'm listening to right now.

Future Islands, "Seasons."

Lyrics

-Verse 1-

Seasons change
And I tried hard just to soften you
The seasons change
But I've grown tired of trying to change for you
Because I've been waiting on you
I've been waiting on you
Because I've been waiting on you
I've been weighing on you

-Chorus-
As it breaks, the summer will wake
But the winter will wash what's left of the taste
As it breaks, the summer will warm
But the winter will crave what is gone
Will crave what has all gone away

-Verse 2-
People change
But you know some people never do
You know when people change
They gain a piece but they lose one too
Because I've been hanging on you
I've been weighing on you
Because I've been waiting on you
I've been hanging on you

[daily log: what?]

Caveat: Punningly

Found Online / Language & Linguistics / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

You may have heard that the Chinese government is has officially banned puns. I ran across some (serious) discussion of it on a linguistics site I frequent, Language Log. Ultimately, however, another site (Slate Star Codex) I have taken to frequenting nailed it, punningly:

China bans puns on the grounds that they may mislead children and defile cultural heritage. Language Log is on the story, and discusses the (extremely plausible) theory that this is part of a crackdown on people who use puns to get around censorship. Obligatory link to the Ten Mythical Creatures here. There’s no censor sensibility to the law, and it seems likely to cause Confucian and dis-Orientation among punks and pundits alike in its wonton disregard for personal freedom and attempts to bamboo-zle the public. It’s safe Tibet that dissidents who just Taipei single pun online will end up panda price and facing time in the punitentiary or even capital punishment – but those Hu support the government can Maoth off as much as they want and still wok free. I Canton derstand how people wouldn’t realize that this homophonbic bigotry raises a bunch of red flags. In the end, one Deng is clear: when puns are outlawed, only outlaws will have puns.

But even better was the following comment on Language Log by someone named Matt, in reaction to Slate Star Codex's punning:

You can definitely understand the Party's fears, though; after all, repurposing homophones or near-homophones in written Chinese has always resulted in radicalization.

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

Caveat: linguistics or hegemony, but never both together

Background Noise / Found Online / Language & Linguistics / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Speculative Grammarian observed yesterday, "Today is Noam Chomsky’s birthday. To celebrate, discuss linguistics or hegemony. But never both at the same time! Why is that?"

More seriously, this is a Chomsky quote in linguistics that is worth remembering, and fundamental to linguistics.

The most striking aspect of linguistic competence is what we may call the 'creativity of language,' that is, the speaker's ability to produce new sentences, sentences that are immediately understood by other speakers although they bear no physical resemblance to sentences which are 'familiar.' – Noam Chomsky

What I'm listening to right now.

TV On The Radio, "Careful You." The lyrics aren't that interesting, but I like the song anyway.

Lyrics.

Oui je t'aime, oui je t'aime
À demain, à la prochaine
I know it's best to say goodbye
But I can't seem to move away

Not to say, not to say
That you shouldn't share the blame
There is a softness to your touch
There is a wonder to your ways

[Chorus]
Don't know how I feel, what's the deal?
Is it real? When's it gonna go down?
Can we talk? Can we not?
Well, I'm here, won't you tell me right now?
And I'll care for you, oh, careful you
Don't know, should we stay? Should we go?
Should we back it up and turn it around?
Take the good with the bad
Still believe we can make it somehow
I will care for you, oh, careful you, careful you

Oui je t'aime, oui je t'aime
From the cradle to the grave
You've done a number on my heart
And things will never be the same

Freeze a frame, freeze a frame
From a fever dream of days
We learned the secret of a kiss
And how it melts away all pain

[Chorus] x2

[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]

 

Caveat: Inventing Modernity. Or Not.

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

pictureI finally actually finished a book. I read Arthur Herman’s popularizing history about the Scots, entitled, How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It.
Scottish history is a topic I haven’t actually read that much about – although I felt comfortable in my understanding of the broad outline of English History (and therefore British history post-Union), I never really spent any time studying Scotland, specifically – unlike Wales or Ireland. So I picked up the book in hopes of filling some of that in. In its purely historical aspect, I got a lot out of the book, including a much better understanding of the Scottish Enlightenment and some of the historical events surrounding it (Knox, the Covenanters and the Scottish Reformation; Bonnie Prince Charlie; etc.).
In fact, my main complaint about this book is probably the same as one of the other recent history titles I made a brief review of some time back, which is: good book, bad title. The title’s thesis (i.e. the idea that Scots invented modernity) seems unproven (and unprovable). It occured to me in looking up the text online just now that the title might not even have been the author’s chosen title, but rather the work of some hyperbolizing editor.
In any event, if the title had been something more modest to the effect of the Scottish Enlightenment’s impact on modernity (Hume, Smith, et al.), and their disproportionate contribution to the Anglosphere’s modern global cultural dominance, I’d have been less preoccupied with trying to decide if Herman did an adequate job proving his main thesis. As it was, I kept hoping the next chapter would explain exactly how it was they invented modernity. I’d say inventing modernity was a collective endeavor, in which the Scots definitely played a suprisingly outsized role.
picture[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]

Caveat: Busytown 2.0

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

When I was a child I had an inordinate fondness for Richard Scarry books. They weren’t really stories at all – they were cartoonified reference books with only the barest hintings of plot. Although which would be cause and which effect is not clear, I have ever since enjoyed refence books more than seems appropriate.
I ran across a comic in the series TomTheDancingBug, which I reproduce below. It is in Scarry’s classic style, “updated for the 21st century.” Funny.
picture
 
I never realized that Lowly Worm was an immigrant. But seeing here that he is, it makes perfect sense. I read once that Lowly was the “true protagonist” of all of the Busytown books. Now I see that he is possibly illegal. Suddenly I want to write a postmodern novel about him. This feeling will pass.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 hm]

Caveat: DARPA Brings Burning Man to Jalalabad

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

I ran across an article about hippies-as-defense-contractors in Afghanistan, that I found compelling and read at one sitting, which with longer-form journalism as found on the web really isn't that common for me. More typically these days, I simply skim an article or will read it in parts over some period of time.

The article isn't that new – it dates from over a year ago – and the material it treats seems rather like the conceit to a novel rather than a simple journalistic account of something the really happened… it's a kind of William Gibsonesque or Thomas Pynchonesque take on the Afghan War. So it is like reading some kind of fiction, but I suspect it is mostly true. It almost (I said only "almost") makes me imagine going to Afghanistan. Perhaps if my inner demon metastasized, I would – just for a last hurrah.

Speaking of which, I get to spend tomorrow mid-day (before work) at the hospital, getting a regularly-scheduled CT scan and check-up. I always feel nervous for these things, even though it's essentially just a roll-of-the-die.

[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]

Caveat: More Korean War Reading

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Having finished that Halberstam book I was working on, last week I started yet another Korean War book, which is also from the collection of books I acquired from my friend Peter when he was leaving the country "forever" last summer (I saw him on Saturday, so his "forever" hasn't worked out). 

FrompusantopanmujomIt's a book by a Korean War general named Paik Sun Yup (백선엽). After Halberstam book, it provides a very interesting and distinct perspective on the War, and I'm enjoying it more than the other book although I find myself speculating too much between the lines about his possible roles in the subsequent dictatorships in South Korea, given General Paik's noted anti-communism. Regardless, I read almost half of it on my low-tech Sunday, and I can recommend it.

According to the wikithing, the General is still alive – see picture below. It's hard to imagine how he must perceive the South Korea of today vis-a-vis his experiences.

225px-ROKA_GEN_PAIK

 [daily log: walking, 6km]

Caveat: Three Stars of Complexity

Life in Korea / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

“Samsung” means “three stars” in Korean. It is, I reckon, now the most widely known Korean word in the world – although few realize the word means anything more than fancy electronics, and a lot of Americans, for example, have the parochially mistaken belief that the name is Japanese.

I ran across an interesting diagram the other day, that has been circulating online. It shows the complex cross-ownership patterns of the many different “Samsung” companies.

picture

In fact, this wacky diagram (you can click to embiggen) doesn’t even show them all, since there are some Samsung companies that are no longer “related” to the vast Samsung empire held by the Lee family (e.g. Samsung Motors, and automotive company, Korea’s third-largest, that is an owned subsidiary of the Renault-Nissan Group, but which retains the Samsung name for historical and brand-loyalty reasons). Not including these unrelated Samsungs, the Samsung Group allegedly comprises about 20% of the South Korean economy – a fact I first remarked on this here blog 4 years ago.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo[daily log: walking, 5 km]

Caveat: Pervasive Corruption

Banalities & Journaling / My Videos / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

Yesterday (Wednesday), I had a brief discussion, via Kakao chat, with my friend Peter over the nature of the recent spate of deadly "accidents" and disasters that seem to be befalling South Korea. There was the ferry boat sinking last month, there was the fire at the bus terminal on Monday here in Goyang, and yesterday another fire at a nursing home or something. There were some subway crashes, too, last month. 

The public sentiment seems to be that there is a big problem with corruption as being an underlying cause or correlate of the neglect of public safety in these events. I pondered this after our brief chat, because I decided it might make an interesting debate topic.

I did something I haven't done much, so far, but I consider it to be the ultimate objective of my debate teaching: I went from "chosen topic" to actual debate in a single class period. At the start of class, I explained the topic, which immediately grabbed the kids attention because it was topical. I then crafted a proposition on the fly, which was something like this: "The recent spate of disasters in Korea (ferry sinking, fires, etc) indicates a problem of pervasive corruption."

We brainstormed some as to what would be some PRO and CON reasons, and I ran to my desk for a moment, went online, and found a recent and older editorial from the Korean English-language press on the topic of corruption, which I printed out. We did not read these exhaustively – rather, I presented the materials as a sort of instant research resource. Then we assigned sides and I said, "OK, 20 minutes." After the kids had prepared their ideas, we had our debate.

Normally the class has four students, which is perfect for debate – 2 to each side. However, one student was absent, so I stepped in and took a position in the line-up. When I do this, I handicap myself by denying myself the opportunity to adequately prepare – I have to speak completely off-the-cuff. As such, I would say my 2 speeches are less well organized than those of my students, even if they are, obviously, of higher quality in terms of referentiality and nativeness of the English. 

So here's the debate. I think these students did really well with short notice and a difficult topic. Even though I'd told my friend Peter I thought there was, indeed, corruption, notice that I'm taking the CON side of the debate below, with my student James, against the girls Jisoo and Andrea.

Caveat: State vs Capital

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Quotable

My mother recently asked me how I feel about the NSA, the prospect of Big Brother via technology, the much-announced end-of-privacy and all that. She also mentioned the preponderance of "conspiracy theories" in the media universe that arise in relation to these issues.

I started to write a long, involved answer in email form, but decided to just give her a short answer and save the long answer for some kind of blog post. Here is that blog post.

One can't think about the state except in relation to what lies beyond it, the single world market, and in relation to what lies this side of it, the levels of minorities, becomings, and the "people." Beyond the state it's money that rules, money that communicates, and what we need these days isn't a critique of Marxism, but a modern theory of money as good as Marx's that goes on from where he left off. – Gilles Deleuze

I don't buy much into conspiracy theories, but concede the "scariness" of bigbrotherism via emerging technologies. My own marxian counterpoint is to observe that capital and the state are not natural allies. As antagonists, they tend to damper each others' totalizing tendencies. When google or facebook get out of hand with their accumulation of user data, the governments tend to step in. When the governments get out of hand with their spying on citizens, the corporations and the technoanarchists step in. This is a broad tendency, and of course there will be many exceptions and counterexamples in both directions, such as the apparent cooperation of US phone companies with the NSA or the recent failure of the government to back net neutrality.

As a reflection of this principle, I will note that a new internet browser was created recently by everyone's favorite Swedish anarchists at Pirate Bay,  that "bypasses" the government sponsored DNS system through use of the same technology as the file torrenting systems, and therefore makes possible a sort of "stealth" internet that regulating governments can't "see."

The state-capital conflict is a long-standing interest of mine, and perhaps it is a source of my continued optimism for the lot of the little guy vis-a-vis big brother, even now. I think that Marx over-estimated the role of the "worker" (collectively) but that he also in some ways under-estimated the role of the state – hence his hoping that it would whither away under communism, for example. But this miscalculation in his theoretical work does not invalidate the perception that there is a sort of conflict at work, and my own tendency is to apply the more recent insights of cybernetics and ecological system to realize that it leads to a kind of "balance" that is, over the longest run, a steady state (different meaning for state, here).

The South Koreans know everything I do online. I have a very strong faith in their collective incompetence, and thus worry very little about it. My take on ALL conspiracy theories returns to the theorem: "Never attribute to malice that which is better explained by stupidity."

Caveat: The Culture

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

The blogger formerly known as IOZ, who has resurrected himself at some point in the last year as Blogarach, is one of my favorite bloggers – not just because I am sympathetic to his unapologetic marxism (if I can't always agree), but because he is a brilliant stylist, as I've observed before.

In a recent blog entry, he discusses the possibility of a post-scarcity society, and concludes our current problems with poverty and inequality are ultimately little more than a "supply chain problem." This both understates and oversimplifies the problem, and yet I think he is fundamentally correct.

He quotes Buckminster Fuller, who made post-scarcity arguments way back in the 70's. Here is the quote – I think it's interesting, as does the blogarach, in part because of how long ago the argument was made.

We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

But the most intriguing thing about his essay is the title: "The Culture."

That title is the only reference, except in the tags at the foot of the blog entry, to the recently deceased author Iain M. Banks' stunningly fascinating and deeply-wrought science fiction concept of post-scarcity in his "Culture" novels, launched in 1987's Consider Phlebas. I like that kind of subtlety. Anyway, my recommendation is: read Blogarach's blog entry; read Buckminster Fuller; read Banks' novels. That is the path to understanding my core optimism for humanity's long-term future.

Even if I sometimes end up foregoing that same style of optimism vis-a-vis the narrower futures that pertain to my own existence.

[daily log (1145 pm): walking, 5 km]

Caveat: Kennedy Stewartized

Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Quotable

"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can stop your country from doing." – Jon Stewart, paraphrasing (updating) Kennedy to match the current approach to lawmaking in Congress.

If Kennedy's original is a kind of soundbitized (soundbitten?) touchstone of progressive (liberal) sentiment, then Stewart's parody seems to represent the apotheosis of the contemporary Randian anti-liberal tendency.

[daily log (1100 pm): walking, 5 km]

Caveat: ius linguae

Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / Less Banal Than Usual / Life in Korea / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

There are two main systems for deriving citizenship, which, being essentially legal concepts, go under their Latin names: ius sanguinis and ius solis. The idea of ius sanguinis, or “right of blood,” is that citizenship derives primarily from the bloodline. This is the traditional way of determining citizenship in countries that are primarily monocultural, as the nations of Europe were in the early modern era. Modern Asian countries also mostly use this model. The alternative is ius solis, or “right of soil,” where citizenship is derived from where one is born. I’m not sure that any modern country has a strictly ius solis model, but most modern “Western” countries – especially immigration-driven countries like the US, Canada or Argentina for example – use a combination of ius solis and ius sanguinis to decide citizenship.

I have thought about the issues around these definitions a lot, first of all as someone who was something of an immigration reform activist in the US prior to my own somewhat unintended emmigration (I say unintended in that I never meant for my emmigration to be permanent or even so long-term, but it has definitely evolved that way), but also as someone who is intrigued by the slow, difficult path Korean society and government is navigating toward a more open attitude toward immigration.

I have been observing with some degree of fascination my recent coworker Razel, who is Philippine-Korean. She acquired her status via marriage, but the extent to which she is integrated into Korean culture and society is breathtaking, and although I have no doubt that she occasionally experiences racism and prejudice, she says it’s in no way the defining feature of her experience. I feel jealousy for her level of Korean Language speaking ability – listening to her on the phone talking to her friends, code-switching between English, Korean, Tagalog and Visayan (the latter being her “native” Philippine languages) leaves me in quiet admiration.

Korean culture is uncomfortable with the idea of immigration. They welcome ethnic Korean “returnees,” called 교포 [gyopo], because they can be more confident of their ability to integrate into Korean society, and they more-or-less accept the idea of mixed marriages as an inevitability, too – as in the example of my coworker. But Koreans resist the idea of foreign individuals or families arriving and simply becoming Korean. It doesn’t sit well with their traditional Confucian concept of the predominance of ancestry and their ius sanguinis model of citizenship.

The other day, however, I had a weird brainstorm as I was thinking about my coworker’s mostly successful integration into Korean society. What if we could define a new, third model of citizenship? Specifically, for a more culturally and linguistically homogeneous society such as Korea, we could grant citizenship rights based, essentially, on the ability to participate in the culture – which is to say, the capacity for the language. It wouldn’t be that hard to say something to the effect of “citizenship for those who pass the language test” – though this would require an ethical and corruption-free administration of a well-designed test, which I’m not sure is the current status of Korea’s de facto standard Korean Language test, the TOPIK. But it would be a workable goal. So that would be ius linguae, “right of language.”

One thought that springs to mind is that this is a model that many in the US would be pleased to adopt – force all those “damn immigrants” to learn English before they get a green card or citizenship! Yet even as I’m happy to propose ius linguae for Korea, I recoil at the idea of applying it in the US. What is the difference? Mostly, history. Korea is historically essentially a single language / culture / state – for hundreds at least if not thousands of years. The US, on the other hand, was almost from the beginning a state defined by some concept of essentially “right of arrival” – to recall one of my favorite quotes on immigration, from Herman Melville, “If they can get here, they have God’s right to come.”

There are tensions within this, but that is the essence. Further, the US project is complicated by the preexistence of linguistic minorities – both Native American and French, Spanish, etc. – groups of people who were in place when the US essentially appeared “over” them through war or annexation. The US is an empire, not a unitary state. It hardly seems fair to impose as a requirement for citizenship the imperial language, since to do so guarantees the possibility of stateless permanent residents within your country, similar to the horrific legal status of Koreans living in Japan even today, 70 years after the end of the War. That Japanese example is a perfect one: the inevitable consquence of applying a ius sanguinis citizenship model in the context of empire is inequality and injustice.

I think Korea, however, is sufficiently compact and homogeneous that applying this type of ius linguae model of citizenship might represent an excellent compromise path between the traditional and inevitably racist ius sanguinis and the more modern ius solis / sanguinis hybrids, the latter of which would lead to an increasintly multi-cultural society and the emergence of linguistic / cultural ghettos – Korea already is beginning to have these in places where there are large numbers of foreigners, such as the area I call “Russiatown” that I like to visit sometimes. Granting citizenship only to immigrants who have already shown a commitment to integrating into Korean culture via the acquisition of the language would be a great solution, maybe.

This is just a brainstorm – a first draft – that occured to me mostly while walking back and forth to work over several days. I’m sure it’s subject to plenty of criticisms and refinements, but I wanted to record my thoughts and put them down.

In other news: yesterday, I turned off the internet and my phone and did almost nothing. It was a lazy day but I think I needed it. I am in danger of social burnout given the teaching load I have taken on (willingly), so I’m going to nurse my off-time for maximum isolation, as my alone time is recuperative for me.

[daily log (1100 pm): walking, 5 km]

Caveat: 청보에 개똥

Found Online / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean) / 한국어 속담 (Aphorisms & Proverbs)

This is an aphorism from my book of aphorisms.
청보에                   개똥
cheong·bo·e             gae·ttong
blue-wrapping-paper-IN  dog-shit
[…like] dog shit in blue wrapping paper.
This is like that wonderful English aphorism about putting lipstick on a pig – the outside doesn’t match the inside: the problem of false advertising.
What’s the solution? Transparency, transparency, transparency. I guess I’m thinking about work.
IndexWant to hear something funny? Typically when I’m typing up these aphorisms, I will run a google search on them, just out of curiosity or to see if anything interesting comes up. I will do a web google search and an image google search.
Guess what the first image was that came up when I put this aphorism in to google? A picture of former president Lee Myung-bak (이명박) giving a speech, with the title “청보에 개똥을 쌀 놈, 이명박” (“guy who wraps dogshit in blue wrapping paper, Lee Myung-bak.”).

Caveat: And the Panda Says…

Found Online / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

A while ago I [broken link! FIXME] posted about the fad song circulating online by Ylvis, "What Does the Fox Say?" It's a funny and entertaining song.

Now the parodies and imitations have begun. This is a China-bashing parody out of Taiwan. Also funny, in a different way.

Related to the "Fox" song, I also ran across this meme-image.

Foxfeel_1378847_10150378519614945_1957180222_n

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