#105. 달님, 재앙 -- Current Korean political climate, North Korea, and the Olympics

Have you ever tried to eat the outer part of old celery stalks?

As the celery ages, the fibres become tough, and chewing doesn't do anything to make them any more palatable. Unless you toss them in a huge pot and boil them for hours, there is nothing you can do to make it delicious.

You can imagine that there are other things that are even tougher to eat. For example, imagine you are trying to cook cornstalk, or barks of trees. They would be tough, chewy, and rubbery.

South Koreans would sometimes steep tree bark into a cup of tea; North Koreans might actually eat these tough-looking things!

Koreans call this state of toughness "억세다." It is an adjective describing the toughness and hardness of material; unlike young shoots, willow tree, or fabric, which bend easily to the touch, the objects that are tough (or, "억센 물건들" in Korean) have the quality of resilience, and do not change easily from the outside force. For example, you can say:

"셀러리 줄기는 빨리 먹지 않으면 억세져." (The celery stalks become tough and chewy if you don't eat them soon.)

In this case, there is no nuance to this word other than the neutral one used to describe some property. However, you can describe someone who doesn't bend to outside pressure by using this word. While I would say that the nuance of this word is slightly negative in this case, it can be used in a positive context, like the example below:

"정아는 성격이 억세서 마음먹은 일은 꼭 이뤄내." (Jung-ah is tough and resilient, so she always gets things done that she intended to do.)

 Of course, some listeners would detect a subtle undertone of criticism, about how her personality is rather too strong (definitely not a desired trait in the Korean society!)

Nonetheless, the word "억세다" is often used by the South Koreans to describe the North Koreans. Due to the lack of food and other resources, the North Koreans are forced to be tough and resilient; otherwise they would have died from starvation already. When the food situation is dire, they resort to eating things like barks of trees (which are "억세다" themselves); it seems socially acceptable to commit small acts of crime such as petty theft (especially if it is against the government officials), and unfortunately, their sense of morals are not quite at the level of that of the South Koreans.

As you can see, natural resources are scarce in North Korea; between the government needing trees and other things, and the North Koreans eating whatever they can find, most of their mountains are bald. South Koreans call this "민둥산," literally "bald mountain."

Combined with the long years of separation between the two nations (this July marks 65 years since the truce), the young South Koreans are actually apprehensive about trying to unify the two countries. Although many of them have long-lost relatives in Korea, it is a tall order to try to feel that you are connected to someone that you don't even know exists -- I am one of them; my paternal grandfather is from Hwanghae Province in North Korea, although he moved to Seoul before the Korean war. He had siblings in the Hwanghae Province, although whether they married and had children, I have absolutely no clue. So, I might have cousins in North Korea, but so what?

When you're on the verge of starvation, anything can be fair game. Poverty in North Korea is heartbreaking.

In fact, I feel a little more negative than indifference. Suppose that the two Koreas decided to unite. It might happen that one day, some North Koreans might show up at my doorstep. Likely they don't own anything, they are very poor, and they might have been brought up thinking that stealing is more or less OK (as it might be necessary to survive). And because we're related by blood, they might be expecting me to take care of them (that would be the proper thing to do according to Confucianism.) As heartless as it might sound, I am not OK with this idea. Furthermore, our more-or-less orderly South Korean society would be flooded with these 억센 North Koreans who are used to doing whatever they can to survive. It could be a disaster in terms of our economy, security, and social stability.

This makes politics a little bit complicated in Korea. While many young people (myself included) tend to lean towards the left in the political spectrum, in Korea, if you lean too much to the left, you land right on the communism side, which is a real possibility!

Currently, our president Moon Jae-In (문재인) is left-leaning in the political spectrum, whereas the previous president Park Geun-Hye (박근혜) was right-leaning. This means that ever since the power change, there has been a drastic change in our attitude towards the North.

Choi Soon-Sil (left) and Park Geun-Hye (right)

Park Geun-Hye took a very strict approach to North Korea, with minimal aids ($337 million USD, compared to $4.36 billion USD during president Roh Moo-Hyun (노무현), who was the last left-leaning president before Moon), and as far as I can tell, did not give into any demands by the North that she deemed unreasonable, which lead to a few tense situations. (Ironically, she still wanted to unify the two Koreas; with the approach she was taking, I have no idea how she would have accomplished this -- perhaps she wanted the Kim Dynasty to collapse, and the South would just absorb the North.)

The current president Moon Jae-In

Moon Jae-In is taking a completely different approach, by trying to invite North Korea to participate in conversations, and to interact with other countries. While he is barely eight months into his presidency, and we will have to wait and see what he accomplishes, one of his achievements so far was to dissolve the tension between the US and North Korea, and to convince North Korea to participate in the 2018 Winter Olympics, which is being hosted in Pyeongchang, South Korea. While the figures won't be available, I imagine that the aid towards North Korea will again increase, compared to Park's times.

Ironically, this achievement threw Korea into a huge political turmoil.

Moon became the president under overwhelming support by the Koreans, whether they were fundamentally on the left or right wing, because of the scandal involving Park's impeachment (mostly due to the fact that she was being unofficially advised by Choi Soon-Sil, who is the daughter of a shaman). At the time of his inauguration, he was supported by nearly 80% of the Koreans in his political endeavors, and even until a few months ago, his approval rating was in the mid-70% range.

With his unique situation involving the spectacular failure of the previous president, his campaign, and also his good looks, he gained quite a following (think of the Korean version of the popular Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau!) leading to the nickname "idol president." His strongest supporters call him by various nicknames, "달님 (the moon-god, because of his last name "Moon")," and "이니 (Innie, using the last syllable of his first name; kind of like Lexie for Alexandra)."

When he first became the president, you would often see comments throwing huge support behind him, such as:

"우리 이니 하고싶은거 다 해" (Our dearst Innie, do everything that you want to do.)

Or

"달님이 계셔서 든든합니다" (Because we have our moon-god, we feel protected.) 

While exaggerated, it was that much of a relief to get rid of our previous president, and her shaman advisor.

Unfortunately, Moon's approval rating has dropped to around 58% in the past few days, and it has something to do with his approach to North Korea. And it came from a seemingly innocuous move involving North Korea and the Olympics.

A few days into 2018, North Korea announced that they are open for conversations with the South, and South Korea took this offer. At this meeting, it was agreed that North Korea would participate in the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics. The two Koreas would make their entrance as a single team (meaning that neither the South or the North Korean flags would be used; instead, they would use the 한반도기, the Korean peninsula flag.) Furthermore, while the two Koreas would compete mostly separately, they would form a single team for women's ice hockey.

This threw many Koreans into rage and disappointment.

This is Dokdo. Although it is a tiny island, it comes with a large amount of surrounding water, hence the dispute with Japan.

First of all, news broke that the 한반도기 that the two Koreas would use at entrance did not include 독도 (Dokdo), the disputed island territory in the East Sea between South Korea and Japan. Given that most Koreans feel animosity against the Japanese for their occupation (my grandmother, who lived through Japanese occupation and the Korean war, says that the Japanese were a million times worse than the North Koreans) this territorial dispute is a huge deal to many Koreans. To make matters worse, a Japanese news outlet has remarked that the flag does not include 독도, therefore the Koreans are giving up their claim on the island. Koreans were enraged at this; the would much rather just see the South Korean flag at the Olympics. The Korean government recently confirmed that the flag does not include Dokdo, as it doesn't make sense to add every island to the flag.

When the government confirmed that there was no Dokdo in the Korean Peninsula flag, the netizens went and found a photo of the flag, held by the unified Korean team at the Torino Olympics in 2006. Notice that this flag depicts Dokdo, which led to further criticism for the Moon administration.

Secondly, Koreans feared that by forming a single team for women's hockey, the South Korean hockey players would get less ice time, since the North Koreans need to play on ice. The young Koreans were especially upset at this; Korean society is lacking some transparency, as the children of high-ranking officials are sometimes mysteriously excluded from military duties, or they get into a better university than they deserve, like the case of Chung Yoo-Ra, the daughter of Choi Soon-Sil. They hoped for a more transparent society under Moon's presidency, but instead, he was bringing politics into the Olympics, and took away the opportunity from the Korean hockey players who worked hard for their spots on the Olympics team.

The unified women's hockey team.

Furthermore, one of the ministers in Moon's administration made the mistake of saying that "the unified team doesn't matter; they're not in the range for a medal anyway." The youths of Korea, who hope for fair opportunities and rewards commensurate with the efforts that you put in, were enraged. At least one hockey player has publicly spoken out against it, saying that she does not understand how the government believes that they are not taking opportunities away from the South Korean players, as every minute on ice counts. Her post more or less confirmed that the South Korean hockey players are not happy that they became the scapegoat for a political agenda.

Because of this, Moon also gained some negative nicknames. Some are calling him "문재앙" (Disaster Moon, because the word "재앙" meaning disaster is very similar to his name "재인.") For similar reasons, some are calling him "문죄인" (Sinner Moon). There seems to be a sizable (and possibly growing) Korean population that believe that he is too friendly towards North Korea, and that one day, he might sell out to North Korea. Some are critical towards the staunch supporters of Moon, and started calling them "문슬람" (Moom-slam, coming from Moon+Islam; Koreans tend to be very liberal with using racial slurs.)

An article that I read today gives some numbers to this.

55.8% of the Koreans believe that having North Korea participate in the Olympics will contribute to its success, whereas 42.9% believe that this will not help.

56.7% of the Koreans believe that this move will help improve the relationship between the two Koreas; 41.9% of the Koreans believe that this will not help.

37.7% of the Koreans believe that the participation of North Korea in the 2018 Olympics is an embodiment of the spirit of the Olympics.

51.0% of the Koreans felt positively towards using the Korean peninsula flag, while 47.4% of the Koreans were against using the Korean peninsula flag.

58.7% of the Koreans are against forming a single women's ice hockey team.

88.2% of the Koreans feel that unification of two Koreas in unnecessary; they prefer to have two Koreas, and just maintain the peace. Only 9.8% of the Koreans felt that Korea should take active steps towards reunification.

73.2% of the Koreans felt that while the North Koreans are of the same ethnicity, North Korea is a separate entity. 25.2% of the Koreans felt that North Korea is the same country as South Korea.


This feels like a tricky situation; I can understand where both sides are coming from, and I hope that they will come to some kind of an understanding. I've often felt that the Korean politics tend to be extremely polarized (probably because of North Korea), so this may just be one of these instances that highlight this. In any case, do keep an eye on the political situation, as it really is very fascinating how everything changes so drastically (even more than the Obama-Trump transition, I would say!) with the change of power. I wish all my best for Korea.

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#104. A trilingual Korean joke (Hanja 3)

I saw the following photo (or 짤, if you are fluent in Korean internet language) while browsing a Korean website. The poster of this image claims that this is a useful image to download onto your phone, and send it to whoever you are texting at an appropriate moment. Can you guess when you are supposed to send this photo? (answer below the image)

The answer is that you send this photo when someone is making excuses. To understand why, you need to be trilingual, amazingly.

The word "핑계" matches up with the background photo, which depicts a pink rooster. The letter "핑" comes from the English word "pink (핑크 in Korean)," and just taking the first letter from it. And the letter "계" comes from the Hanja meaning "chicken." As far as I am aware, the letter "계" does not refer to either the male rooster or the female hen.

The full name of this Hanja is 닭 계. For an explanation of how Hanja works, see my first post on it!

This Hanja appears often enough in the Korean language that the Koreans would relate the letter "계" to a chicken; I am not sure if I would have recognized this Hanja if someone just showed it to me, however. Some Korean words that use this Hanja letter 닭 계 include:

- 계란 (literally, an egg of a chicken -- so it would be wrong to use this word for an ostrich egg, for example!)

- 삼계탕 (Samgyetang, a Korean chicken stew, where you boil a whole chicken with various roots believed to be very good for your health)

- 군계일학 (one crane among a group of chickens; this word is used to denote someone who is way above everyone else in a group)

So, a "핑계" could mean a pink chicken, because of this clever wordplay using Hanja. Of course, this is just slang, and a fairly minor one at that, almost like an English pun. The prevalent meaning of "핑계" that you can find in a dictionary is "excuses."

The next animal is fairly self-explanatory: a "돼지" is a pig. In this case, however, the Koreans noticed that "돼지" sounds almost like "대지," which is difficult to translate alone in English. The point of this substitution is that the above phrase becomes "핑계 대지 마," which means "don't make excuses." The word "대지," coming from the verb "대다 (to give, tell, or apply things such as excuses)," roughly corresponds to "make" in the above sentence.

And the final animal, which is a horse, comes with a single letter "마." This is another Hanja!

This Hanja, which you would learn sometime in elementary school in Korea, has the full name of 말 마. So it means a horse (말), but it would be read as the letter "마" in Korean. Some Korean words that include this Hanja are:

- 마굿간: a stable (for horses)

- 출마: to leave on a horse; however, nowadays, it means to become a candidate for an election, as all government officials going to work would have been riding their horses back in the olden days.

- 애마: beloved horse (along with the Hanja 사랑 애, meaning love); however, nowadays, this is a slang referring to your car. This slang has been used across all generations!

Anyway, putting all of these three photos together, we get:

"핑계 돼지 마" (pink chicken, pig, horse),

  which sounds nearly identical to

"핑계 대지 마" (don't make any excuses).

So, by the virtue of the fact that most Koreans will understand this short photo that incorporates all three languages (Korean, English, and Chinese/Hanja), the above photo becomes a witty internet .jpg file to use among the Koreans! Having spent a lot of my life in notoriously monolingual countries, I am occasionally blown away by just how non-monolingual the Koreans can be!

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#103. 대나무숲 -- Tell me your secrets

It must be human nature to want to talk about your deepest secrets. Relationship troubles, secret crushes, and inner turmoil. Some of us pour our hearts out to our closest friends, some of us to our dear diaries. Yet some others, wanting impartial feedback and advice, turn to anonymous online forums. Whatever your method of choice may be, there is the feeling of relief and catharsis after having gotten something off your chest.

Koreans are no exception to this rule, and this is well-documented in our history.

There was a king in Unified Silla (remember that the three kingdoms were unified thanks to the efforts of the General 김유신) named 경문왕 (King Gyeongmoon). While he is not a notable king in terms of politics or military tactics, he leaves behind many mysterious legends. One says that whenever he slept, hundreds of snakes appeared out of nowhere and formed a blanket across his body. When his surprised servants tried to chase them away, the king stopped them, telling them that he couldn't sleep as well without the snakes. Another says that he is the father of 궁예, whose terrible reign led to the downfall of Unified Silla and to the establishment of the Koryo Kingdom (고려).

 But the most popular story of all says that 경문왕 developed very long ears shortly after becoming king, like those of a donkey. Even circa 850, people were insecure of their appearances, it seems, and this was a very well-guarded secret, as the king never took off his crown-hat.

Really?

 Even the servants and his wives didn't know about it, and the only one who knew was his hat-maker, as he had to take off his crown-hat to get his measurements taken when it was time for a new hat.

For what it's worth, I always imagined that his hat was slightly bigger than his actual size, so that he could stick his ears into the hat!

While the poor hat-maker tried his best to keep this a secret, legend has it that he started getting sicker and sicker from not being able to get this secret off his chest.  Eventually unable to bear it any longer, he went to a bamboo forest (which was fairly common in Korea) nearby, and yelled out into the forest his deepest secret:

"임금님 귀는 당나귀 귀!" (The ears of our king (임금님) are donkey (당나귀) ears!)

Bamboo groves are usually fairly dense, and uninhabited.

But ever since days, whenever the winds rustled through the leaves, it seemed to the listeners that the leaves were whispering the secrets of the king, saying that "임금님 귀는 당나귀 귀." So the rumours spread, and eventually even made it into history books of the Unified Silla era! It is said that eventually the king got wind of it, and ordered to have all of the bamboo cut down. The bamboo grove was replaced by small berry bushes, after which they only whispered "임금님 귀는 길다!" (The ears of our king are long).

Anyway, this story is so famous among the Korean public that the phrase "대나무 숲" (bamboo forest/bamboo grove) almost always evokes this story. Furthermore, the need to speak your mind hasn't decreased at all in the past 1200 years since Unified Silla, so the Korean internet users have created a safe space to whisper your secrets to, much akin to the bamboo groves from the days of Unified Silla.

In the Western world, the easiest thing to do would be to create a throwaway account and talk about your troubles online; however, in Korea, most account creation requires some form of an ID; they usually ask for your 주민등록번호 (resident registration number) which is a form of your government ID, or your cell phone number. So it hardly feels like a safe space to spell out all of your secrets.

So, the Korean alternative works like this. Some page (whether it be a Facebook page, a Twitter account, or a separate website) is created, along with an email address to which you can send your secrets to. When the creator/moderator of the webpage receives your email, your email is posted to the webpage, to which people can react or comment.

The most famous bamboo grove (대나무숲) belongs to the prestigious universities; for example, here is a post from the SNU Bamboo Grove (SNU is Seoul National University; possibly the most prestigious university in Korea):

January 1st, oppa (in this context, boyfriend who was older than the poster) wished me a lot of happiness and luck. January 2nd, oppa dumped me.

People seem to be interested in these university-level 대나무숲, because of several reasons. First, most internet-savvy people belong in this generation; they are either still in university, or university is a recent memory. Secondly, many Koreans have fantasies about the students in these elite universities; it is interesting to see that even an SNU student deals with the same everyday problems as the rest of us. Finally, these well-educated students tend to be more eloquent in their writing, and more interesting posts show up in these bamboo groves of the prestigious universities.

Aaaah, Bamboo Grove! I accidentally accessed Instagram with my boyfriend's phone! I opened my Pandora's Box... I knew that he [used Instagram] often... As I tried to access my own account by searching, I saw that his search history had "Sextagram," "hot body,"... etc.  He followed a lot of accounts that post hot body pictures... It's not like he's contacting them privately, so I'm trying to ignore it, but I can't... Is this common? It's not that common... is it?

I enjoy accessing these 대나무숲 every once in a while. Koreans tend to be extremely polite; I have pretty much never met a Korean who would say rude or risqué things to my face. So it is nice to know that even the Koreans think about the same things that I do. Also, I feel that the writings in these bamboo groves are very representative of the everyday Korean language, talking about mundane things. It's a way for me to keep current on the language trend of an average Korean, while getting my gossip fix of the day! For those who are interested, here is the link to the SNU Bamboo Grove. You can access many others via Google, of course!

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#102. 병림픽 -- Battle of idiots

As a child living in South Korea, I was perpetually afraid of the Korean War II. I used to cry at night worried that North Korea will attack South Korea overnight, and that my family would be caught in the middle of it all without any preparations (this is how the first Korean war started -- North Korea invaded South Korea at 4am on June 25, 1950, and South Korea was not prepared for it at all.)

It also didn't help that instead of fire drills, schools used to have air strike drills. We were to hide under our desks, while the loudspeaker would announce possible scenarios about where the North Korean soldiers were, and what we were to do in these situations. Even as a young kid, I was pretty sure that hiding under our desks wasn't going to save us.

We used to call it "공습경보 훈련," and I guess Koreans still do this! (also effective for earthquakes, etc.)

In a sense, the recent events brought back those nightmares for me. While I was immensely relieved that my immediate family and I no longer live in Korea, I was extremely concerned and terrified about my extended family and friends, and all the other innocent Koreans who would be caught between the two nuclear powers -- North Korea and the United States.

But this time, it was frustrating to watch. As someone who really didn't want a war to break out, the exchange between Trump and Kim was terrifying to watch. Trump calls Kim a "Rocket Man," and Kim in turn condemns Trump to death. All the while, they are threatening to push the button. This may have been based in some politics, but to me, it felt stupid and reckless. And one comment I saw online deeply resonated with me. This Korean internet user wrote on one of the US/North Korea articles:

"병림픽이 따로 없네."

Here, "따로 없네" literally means "there is no other." So this above phrase says that there is no other "병림픽," or that whatever is going on between the US and North Korea is the very definition of "병림픽."

So let me explain the word "병림픽." I am normally offended by this word, which is a combination of the Korean insult "병신" and the English word "Olympics" (in Korean, the "s" in "Olympics" somehow got dropped, and Koreans write it as just "올림픽.")

Now, the word "병신" is frequently used in Korean profanity. If your friend asks out a girl who is way out of his league, and gets turned down in a spectacular way, you might say (in way of consolation)

"병신아, 아주 삽질을 했구나?" (You idiot, you totally wasted your time.)

In this usage, the word "병신" is just a friendly derogatory word, just like how you can insult someone without actually meaning it in English.

Now you must be able to guess that the word "병림픽" means an Olympic of the idiots, where two 병신s (in the lighter sense of the word) duel to see who is the bigger idiot (fairly appropriate in the case of Trump and Kim, and you can easily see cases like this in Korean life too, such as in the case of 현피).

However, the word "병신" actually has a clearly established meaning: it comes from two Hanja letters "병" (illness) and "신" (body), so it refers to a body with an illness; i.e. someone who is disabled. No one should use this word in its full meaning, as it is incredibly offensive. Technically, if someone could not walk, you could call them a "다리병신" (since "다리" means leg, it means that the person has an illness in his legs). But remember that "병신" is also an insult in Korean, so you are insulting a disabled person in the worst possible way. You will NEVER see a Korean use such a word in real life (but you might see it in K-drama, or in some old literature, where this usage seems to have been more common, before the word "병신" became a widespread insult.)

And this original meaning of the word "병신" makes the meaning of the slang "병림픽" incredibly offensive. My issue with the word "병림픽" is that in the literal sense of the word, it is in fact synonymous with the Paralympic games.

Here's one other instance where you can definitely use the word "병림픽," to talk about that Olympic game where the figure skater Yuna Kim lost to Adelina Sotnikova. Koreans were so enraged, and I think they still are.

It seems that the Korean population is divided on this issue; some people will be very offended for the same reason that I just explained. But some argue that the word "병신" is not being used to describe the handicapped, and that one should not even be thinking about this real meaning.

In any case, I would refrain from using this word around most Koreans. Among close friends (who you know are foul-mouthed) I can see it being OK; but I would use this word with extreme caution.

In closing, here's a fun fact. The Chinese calendar uses sixty different words to describe each year (these words cycle, so the same name is given to different years spaced 60 years apart.) By this calendar, the word given to the year 2018 is "무술" ("무" means "yellow" and "술" refers to "dog", hence the year of the "yellow (golden) dog.") Similarly, 2017 was 정유년 (year of "red rooster") and 2016 was, amazingly, "병신년" (the year of "red monkey.")

But of course, the more common usage of the word "병신" is the insult for disabled people. To make matters worse, the word "년" has two common meanings; it can refer to the year, but it is also a derogatory suffix for a woman, so that "미친년" is a "crazy b-tch," and "짜증나는년" is an "annoying b-tch." And what was supposed to be "the year of red monkey" because "disabled b-tch." So, 2016 was an interesting year for the Koreans!

Koreans waited for 2016 just for this. It says "We have entered 2016, the year of the monkey," but of course, the more common meaning is "We have entered 2016, the year of the crazy b-tch."

Although the word "병신" have absolutely nothing to do with the insult "병신"as they are based on different Hanja, the Koreans didn't miss this funny coincidence. Not only that, 2016 was the year of the Olympics in Rio, so this Olympic Games was dubbed "병림픽." I guess this is one of the reasons I can't stay away from the Korean internet. They can be ridiculously politically incorrect, but at least you can count on them to be witty and hilarious!

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#101. How to find your true love (feat. Would U by Red Velvet, Shamanism 9)

K-Pop is one of my guilty pleasures in life. Yet I can't completely figure it out.

Although I am a straight woman, I listen almost exclusively to the girl groups. I suppose I do this because I feel that the K-Pop girl groups are the embodiment of femininity. Having always been a super-feminine person, listening and watching these girls with perfect faces and perfect body, with beautiful hair, makeup, and costume make me feel envious and happy at the same time.

They are also something that I could never be; I could never have that much courage to step out into the streets of North America wearing so much frills and laces in my clothes (although I secretly love them!), nor could I reasonably put that much care into my appearances and still not be sleep-deprived.

So, I never tell my real-life friends and acquaintances about how much time I actually spend listening to K-Pop (answer: most of the time when I'm listening to music.) But sometimes, you come across something so fantastic that you have to talk about it somewhere!

Red Velvet is one of the most popular K-Pop girl groups today. They are produced by SM Entertainment (the producer of Girls' Generation, f(x), Super Junior, TVXQ!, SHINee, EXO, NCT, etc.) which means they are comprised of the most elite trainees in the Korean entertainment system. Indeed, all five members of Red Velvet are known for being beautiful and talented. Everyone sings, raps, and dances extremely well. Furthermore, they go by two concepts: "red" and "velvet." While the "red" concept is the usual K-Pop stuff -- cheerful, bright dance songs -- the "velvet" concept is aimed at musicality and artistry. And they have found success in both, which is fairly unusual.

Let's stop for a moment to appreciate these beautiful and talented girls.

Anyway, the song that really caught my attention recently is a fairly minor piece for Red Velvet. This song was featured in SM Station, which publishes a song each week by SM artists to allow for experiments. The artists are free to deviate from their usual style and work on whatever they want. Red Velvet occasionally participates in SM Station as well, and the song "Would U" feels neither "red" nor "velvet." It is more stereotypically K-Pop, and a beautiful one at that. Take a moment to watch and listen:

In this video, Irene (there is just one girl in this video!) is surprised by a red yarn while daydreaming, and she follows it to find a boy waiting for her. Through the lyrics, she expresses her hope that this is the love from the fairy tales that she's been dreaming of for a very long time. And there is no doubt in my mind that she found it in this music video.

I say this because of the red yarn. According to a very popular myth in East Asia (Korea, China, and Japan), it is said that every woman has a red string tied to her little finger from birth. When you follow the string, you will find that the other end of the red string is tied to her spouse and one true love.

One famous legend comes from China, where a man meets a 신선 (immortal man-god who is said to know everything about humans) during his travels. The 신선 was carrying a heavy bag and resting under the moonlight. The man was curious about this bag, and asked the 신선 what the bag contained. When he looked inside, he saw heaps of red strings, and the man-god explained that everyone is tied to their future spouse by one of these red strings (which are invisible to the human eyes). When the man asked about his red string, the 신선 pointed out an old one-eyed woman in rags carrying a toddler, and told him that the toddler was his future bride. Enraged, the man ordered  his servant to kill the toddler. The servant, as ordered, found the pair and stabbed the toddler with a knife, then ran away.

Many years later, the man was still not married, although he played a crucial role in a battle which led his country (Tang Dynasty) to victory. His general was very pleased and offered to give his daughter to the man as a reward. The daughter was very beautiful, but had a scar between her eyes. Curious about this scar, he asked the general about it, who responded that when the toddler was out with her nanny, some psychopath (!) tried to stab her and ran away. Her nanny was, of course, one-eyed and very old. It is said that the man finally realized that he could not go against the will of the gods.

There are many variations of this story; some say that the strings are tied to one's ankles, or that the strings are actually red and blue (to signify yin and yang). In fact, in traditional Korean marriages, the strings are featured prominently in various parts of the wedding.

Can you find the red-and-blue strings?

Even in modern-day Korea, some shamans will claim to see these red strings ("붉은 실") tied to people's fingers (and the Koreans are, for the most part, willing to play along or believe). Can you imagine what our world would look like, though, if everyone had a string tied to their fingers? It would look amazingly complicated, as all the strings will be tangled together.

But then, if you think about it, this is how relationships work. Like the mass of tangled strings, we meet many people and then drift away, realizing that we're not right for each other. Sometimes the strings are so tangled up that we don't realize that our true love has been right beside us all along. Then once in a while, the world rights itself, all the strings get untangled, and it is clear as day that the person in front of you is definitely your true love.

While I find the Asian philosophy to be too complicated for the most part, I find the story of the red string of fate to be incredibly romantic. It tells me that if I follow the path of my life as I follow the red string tied to my finger, one day I will eventually arrive at my destination, where my true love awaits.

Of course, this sounds way to fantastical to actually voice out in real life -- just like how I will only ever secretly listen to K-Pop. In that sense, I am glad that Irene of Red Velvet managed to follow her red string of fate and found her true love. Such is the world of K-Pop. That wonderful world of ideals and fantasy.

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#100. 졸혼 -- the most searched-for Korean slang of 2017

Happy new year! As we send off 2017 and greet 2018, here is a short blog post about the most popular Korean slang of 2017.

Naver, as you probably know, is probably the most-used search engine among the Koreans (I often find that Google is not the best at searching Korean content; for example, Google often assumes that I made a typo when I am searching for some celebrity's name, and shows me the result for the more popular celebrity. What can I say, the Korean names are all very similar!)

Unlike Google, Naver offers various other services and entertainment. You can read all the headline news and celebrity gossip; you can read webtoons; you can find information about stocks and exchange rates; there are online forums not unlike Reddit; and you can read articles entirely dedicated to humour. Furthermore, Naver offers a good dictionary for various languages, which sometimes includes slang words in Korean.

The Naver dictionary team writes a blog post about various statistics at the end of each year. Among these is the most searched-for slang word of the year. In 2017, the slang word chosen by Naver was the word "졸혼."

The headline that prompted me to write this article.

This word, not really existent in the English language, comes from the combination of two words. "졸업," which means to graduate, and "결혼," which means a marriage. (You could have guessed, without actually looking up the meaning of the word, that "졸혼" had something to do with marriage, because of the Hanja letter "혼.")  Putting the two words together, "졸혼" roughly means that you "graduate from a marriage." You might say something like:

"우리부부는 이제 서로에게 간섭하지 않기로 했어. 이제 졸혼하려고." (My spouse and I decided not to get involved in each other's life. It's time to graduate our marriage.)

It almost sounds like a divorce, but for the Koreans who are after this lifestyle, it is definitely different. While a divorce is often heated and bitter, graduating from a marriage isn't quite the same. You look back at the good memories with fondness, you still support your partner, and you still maintain your marriage (like how you are still an alum to your old school, and occasionally make donations.) However, you no longer try to involve yourself in the life of your partner, and your partner does the same. Some people in the stages of 졸혼 might go on a long trip; some might start dating others; yet others might continue living their lives in the exact same way as before.

This post parodies the title of the popular Korean entertainment show, "We got married" (우리 결혼했어요). In that show, two celebrities pretend to be in a marriage and go through all the motions of a Korean marriage.

I suppose the idea of 졸혼 is somewhere between a marriage and a divorce. I think there are a few reasons in the Korean society why such a phenomenon might become commonplace.

In my previous post, I talked about how a Korean marriage is often a union of two families, rather than a union of two individuals. While Korean marriages are usually not arranged, this means that your family could potentially object to you marrying your one true love. They could decide not to support you at all financially (typically most Koreans will support their children with a significant amount of money at the time of their marriage, either in the form of cash, or by paying a large part of their apartment.) They could also decide to bully your spouse whenever there is a family gathering (the women feel this more than the men; hence the word 시월드.)

If you thought that a couple is likely to split while planning a wedding, a typical Korean couple plans a wedding and deal with two families who want the best for their respective child (who is clearly the best spouse there is!), and so they are even more likely to split in the planning stages. Even if they hold onto each other, I think the continuous nagging from their families really wear on the Korean marriage.

And Koreans tend to have less privacy --  your spouse (and their family) will most likely be interested in even your very private business, and perhaps they would like some space.

On the other hand, Koreans are still a conservative bunch. A divorce is still somewhat frowned-upon in the Korean society, and having a divorced parents is one of the reasons a family might reject a potential spouse for their child. So it is a huge decision to get a divorce, especially if you have a child. Not only will you be labelled as the divorcee, your child might have problems when it is time for him to marry. So as long as you and your spouse can't stand the sight of each other (and it's just a case of love not being there), there are social advantages to keeping a marriage going, at least in the eyes of the public.

Here is an image inserted into a Korean newspaper article explaining the word "졸혼." It explains that 졸혼 comes from the Japanese culture, where a couple maintains their marriage, but they live separately to pursue their personal hobbies, while meeting a couple of times each month. It seems that 57% of the surveyed Koreans felt positively about it.

There seems to be a lot of negative publicity on getting married on the Korean internet nowadays. People feel that there are so many unnecessary components to a Korean marriage (both financially and emotionally). The women feel that there is a significant risk that the in-laws will treat them like a servant (which is how a traditional Korean marriage worked), and the men feel that the women will quit their jobs when they marry (which is also how a traditional Korean marriage worked), leaving them to be the sole bread-winner of the family while the women enjoy their free time and the money that they bring home. You often see people writing that you should not get married if you are able to support yourself.

Despite that, this seems to have a neutral nuance. It's less of a taboo than 이혼 (divorce), and there is no underlying vulgarity that even the media feel fine using this word once in a while.

I haven't quite made up my mind about how I feel about this phenomenon of 졸혼, but I suppose I will go with my usual philosophy about these things -- as long as there is no harm done to the others, people are free to do whatever they want in their bedroom!

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#99. 시월드 -- Your in-law problems, and how a traditional Korean marriage works

As a young child in Korea, it was a normal occurrence for me to go visit a friend's house, and to realize that she lived with her parents and her grandparents (and in exceptional cases, also with her great-grandparents!) Some of these grandparents doted on their grandchildren and their friends, resulting in many sweets and head-patting. Others were more strict and wanted to make sure that we finished our homework, that my parents knew where I was, and that I was well-mannered (resulting in scoldings when they felt that my manners weren't good enough).

They might all live in the same house, and this is not weird at all by the Korean standards.

From the Western perspective, this must seem very odd, to say the least. I can't think of a single friend from the Western culture who lives with his grandparents. From the parents' perspective, this is even weirder -- I mean, this is equivalent to being supervised by their parents all the time when you are on a date, even when you become an adult!

Yet this used to be the norm in Korea until recently; we even have words to describe such families. We call them "대가족," meaning "large family" (in Hanja, "대" means large; you should see this letter on your large t-shirts, for example.) On the other hand, the Western-style small families are called "핵가족," which comes directly from the English phrase "nuclear family," consisting only of the two parents and their children.

While the number of nuclear families, or 핵가족, is on the rise, it seems unlikely that the 대가족 will ever disappear completely in the Korean society. And my personal theory is that a part of the reason is because the Koreans view a marriage differently from the Westerners.

This is probably what English-speakers think of when they hear the word "family."

For the Koreans, a marriage is not only a union between two individuals, but really a union of two families. This is of course true everywhere, but in the ancient dynasties before the modern Korea, this idea was taken to the extreme. There were many different castes in all of these dynasties, and marriages were permitted only between those within the right castes; you had to go to an extreme to gain an exception to this rule.

Therefore, it was common for the parents to do extensive research into the family of their child's potential match to ensure that their family was approximately on par with them in terms of values, social class, education, and wealth. This custom continues into today's Korean wedding, and it is now called a 상견례 (in Hanja, it means to see "견" each other "상" with decorum "례"). Once a couple starts to talk about getting married, their first step is to arrange a place (usually a fancy restaurant) for their families to meet. Korean customs seem to dictate that the male pays for this meal (important later). It is absolutely forbidden to talk about worldly things such as money. It is mostly used to get a feel for each other's family, and nothing important is said at this meeting.

A Korean drama portrays a 상견례.

 If one (or both) of the families find the other to be unsatisfactory, they will voice their concerns to the child about to get married, and some marriages are broken up at this stage. Otherwise, the real wedding planning is underway -- the two families agree on the date and the place of the wedding (many families will actually consult a shaman to find an auspicious date, or in extreme cases, to make sure that the two children are suitable for each other, but this is a story for another day!) and now they must talk about money -- that distasteful thing not suitable for any polite company. Naturally, the two children become the messengers of the two families.

The biggest worry for the newlyweds is to find a place to live. Nowadays, living in Seoul is your best bet for a decent job. Unfortunately, salaries are low and housing costs are high in Seoul. Almost no young couple can afford buying a house in Seoul. And it is not unusual for the parents to chip in a significant amount of money to help them buy an apartment. Traditionally, it is the groom's family that are responsible for the house (a quick explanation is that in the Korean male-dominant philosophy, the woman becomes a member of the man's house when she marries him; therefore, the man's family is responsible for the house.) This puts a huge burden on the groom's family, and the parents might be looking into spending their retirement savings to be able to afford a house (important later).

Every newlywed dreams of a beautiful honeymoon house (신혼집), and matching furniture (혼수) to go with it. Most Westerners work towards it, while many Koreans expect to have it ready before the wedding.

It should be noted that it is very rare for the Korean children to live away from their parents -- Korea is a small country, so often moving away from home means you move within an hour's radius of your parent's place, which is not strictly necessary. Furthermore, this is how the traditional Korean society operated -- the children live with their parents at least until they marry. This means that when the couple finds a home, they have no furniture. Since the groom bought the apartment, the bride supplies all the furniture that goes into the apartment. This furniture is called "혼수." Of course, the furniture is much cheaper than a house (important later).

Once all of this is settled, the bride sends some gifts to the groom's family (remember, a marriage is a union of families, so it is not enough to exchange things -- a house and furniture -- between the bride and the groom). This gift from the bride, which is the dowry, is called "예단." Traditionally, the groom's family would send some silk to the bride's house, and the bride would then sew up the silk and make clothes for the groom and his parents (and this served as a further test that the bride was fit to be married!) Nowadays, the bride sends some cash (a few thousand US dollars to tens of thousands of dollars is fairly common) along with beddings, traditional Korean clothes, and other expensive items such as jewellery, watches, or designer handbags for the groom's parents. These are all wrapped in a beautiful traditional papers and sent to the groom's parents.

An example of 예단 -- the bride's family sends these beautiful gifts to her in-laws as dowry, in hopes that the bride will be treated well in her new family.

The groom's parents then return a subset of these gifts (usually around half of the cash) to the bride's parents, for her efforts in sewing the clothes and the bedding (of course, the bride doesn't actually sew anymore). By the way, the list of items for the 예단 and how much will be returned is determined in advance, communicated through the couple to be married. While it seems unnecessary, the traditional Korean wedding tends to have a lot of items on its checklist. And another step of the wedding is complete.

Finally, the bride and the groom agree on the presents for themselves -- their wedding rings (Koreans often skip the engagement rings, and wear a single ring only after the wedding. If the engagement starts with a 상견례, you can imagine that it is not as romantic as a wedding proposal!), and possibly a few more items depending on what they decide to do. The families also pay for this if the couple do not have enough money saved, and these gifts are called "예물." As the bride already paid her dowry, typically the bride receives twice or three times as many 예물 as the groom.

While there are often no engagement rings, the bride receives many beautiful gifts during this stage of the wedding preparations.

If you think that there is a lot of unnecessary money involved, you would be right. And a lot of it will be paid by the parents, as the newlyweds seldom have a large saving. As there is no love connecting the families of the bride and the groom, the families are often doing their own accounting at this point.

At the actual wedding ceremony itself, the money-counting continues. It is customary in Korea to try to attend most weddings that you are invited to. As a wedding gift, you give some amount of cash called 축의금, equaling about 50 USD or 50,000 Korean won (more if you're very close to the couple, less if you barely know them). The catch here is, you are expecting the couple to attend your wedding at a later date, and that the couple will return exactly what you have paid. Similarly, the parents of the couple will also invite their friends, and these friends are either repaying the parents from their children's wedding, or expect the parents to return the money later at their children's wedding. All of these 축의금 are meticulously recorded and sorted, and returned to the right recipients (in some cases, it is not the couple, but their parents!)

There are a few more money-exchanging steps after this -- a 폐백 after the ceremony (where the bride presents the parents of the groom with some food, and her in-laws thank her with some cash), and then the newlyweds bring back expensive gifts from their honeymoon trip.

Traditionally, you write "축의금" in Hanja on the envelope, but you can also write a short congratulatory message instead.

When you make a grand tally of what the families spent, you will notice that the groom's family comes out short. The housing is so expensive that it trumps any other expenses incurred during the process of the wedding. Now, after a long period of preparing for the Korean wedding (a large part of which is the money-counting), the groom's parents have a lot more that they hope to recover to make things fair. And this triggers what the modern Korean brides call a 시월드.

There is no such thing as free lunch. And for the most part, the groom's parents do not buy their son a house for free. They expect their son to repay their monetary contribution with filial piety (terrible English translation in my opinion), or 효도, which is an idea from Confucianism. It means that they are counting on their son to support them materialistically (via money, gifts, by helping them out with various chores around the house, and ultimately, living with them and taking care of them when they are old and helpless) and emotionally (by lending a sympathetic ear, or by gladly being there for them.) And the bride, having been the recipient of their monetary generosity, is on the hook too. Plus, the bride is not even their own child, so the bride often ends up feeling the brunt of the expectations from the groom's parents, who would rather expect the 효도 from the bride than their own son.

The most common form of 시월드 is asking the bride to take care of all the housework in place of the elderly parents of the groom when the newlyweds visit the groom's house.

This feeling of stress and isolation of the bride gave rise to the neologism "시월드." The letter "시" comes from the fact that almost every appellation of the groom's family by the bride begins with the word "시." The groom's mother is "시어머니" to the bride; the groom's father is "시아버지"; the groom's family is "시가" or "시댁"; the groom's younger siblings are "시동생" to the bride, and so on. So when the bride visits the groom's family, she is entering a 시-world, or 시월드 in full Korean. For the most part, 시월드 ends with the bride feeling stressed or isolated; for some families, it is taken to the extreme where the bride is downright bullied.

For example, a 시어머니 might want the bride to come over at 7am on a weekend so that she can learn to cook the groom's favourite dish from his mother (so that the mother no longer has to cook for her son -- the bride is taking over one of her duties, thus engaging in an act of 효도). The bride obviously doesn't want to go, as she would rather spend the day sleeping in with her groom, but the 시어머니 could be insistent, and as the bride owes her, she feels obliged to go. She might complain to a friend:

"시월드때문에 늦잠도 못자고 정말 힘들어." (I'm so tired from not being able to sleep in, thanks to my mother-in-law.)

 Or, a 시어머니 might pay a surprise visit to the newlywed's home, and nag the bride for not having done the laundry (although she should really nag her own son!) The bride's friend, upon hearing about it, might tell the bride:

"웰컴투 시월드." (Welcome to the world of the in-laws.)

Notice that "시월드" sounds exactly like "sea world" which is probably some fun water-themed amusement park. Of course, the "시월드" is also fun. This word reflects the younger, trendier generation's disdain for the traditional Korean marriage, and how they cope with it by bringing some humour into the situation in a typical Korean way.

The brides seem to feel the most abandoned when their husbands don't step in to rescue them from the 시월드.

Furthermore, as a composite of a Korean prefix "시-" and the English word "world," the Koreans are creating a type of word that does not exist in the proper Korean language! These words are often humorous in nuance, and "시월드" is no exception. This word, from its unusual combination of two languages that did not meet until the 20th century, takes on the nuance of sarcasm and satire.

The best part about this word is that it is not vulgar at all (albeit offensive to the in-laws!) So the Korean media has picked up on this word, and they will sometimes use it to describe the conflict between the in-laws and the bride! As long as you do not use it to your in-law's face, this word is fairly safe to use.

While this custom is the traditional Korean way to get married, I am not really a fan of it. I personally feel that going through this lengthy process of keeping scores and counting contributions will sour the love held between the couple. This also highlights the sexism that is still rampant in the Korean society -- if there were no pre-defined gender roles within the marriage, things would have been more equal!

Furthermore, some people get the wrong idea that the more the groom's family pays for a wedding, the more his family is entitled to the near-bullying towards the bride. In my opinion, some Koreans end up putting a price on something that should never be evaluated.

As a result, many young Koreans are beginning to exclude their families from paying for any part of their new lives as a married couple. This trend of "반반결혼" or "half-half marriage," where the couple splits all the expenses in half, is gaining popularity, and might one day be the norm in the Korean society. I have a feeling that I would be happy to see this change.

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