By The Expat at Expat Hell
The Korean Ministry of Tourism has a new mantra: No Foreigner Left Behind. Welcome to Korea, You’re in Good Hands Now. Check your educational baggage and world experiences at the door and let us be your guides. We have white male expat geniuses with bitch-tits and MBAs in Korean culture. We have mail order brides from over 56 different countries on hand at all times to correct your Korean pronunciation and grammar. When they aren’t busy restoring 한옥 or writing classical Korean poetry, our crack legion of bitch-tit clad white male expat geniuses will be available online to correct any mistakes you make in either English or Korean. All bases are covered; we’ve got your back.

By Mizaru

In 1948 Korea competed at the summer Olympics in London, England winning a bronze medal in both men/s weightlifting and middleweight boxing. The division of Korea was not yet complete as South Korea was establishing itself as a sovereign nation and the two narratives of those athletes surely would serve as interesting profiles of character. In 1948: Graham Greene, Norman Mailer and John Steinbeck published weighty novels. Also published were, Thomas Merton’s autobiography turned spiritual treatise, The Seven Story Mountain, and T.S Elliot’s’, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture. It was a pretty essential year for the written word in English.

‘So why stop reading if you are going to write?’ is a maxim not so popular with today’s new age hothouse writing culture in full bloom. But, while wondering about the literary boosterism coming out of a small corner of Korea’s pop-culture blast out to the world, I have picked up J.D. Salinger’s “Nine Stories,” also published in 1948…

By Mizaru

A review Of Nanoomi/Subject Object Verb’s Quest: Does Asian America Need a Brand Makeover?

Editor’s note: Before the racial flagellation comes my way, no I am not a Korean National or a Gyopo. I am American in fact a hyphenated Irish – American who understands indentifying with more than one place at one time. We are all Midnight’s Children living through different allusions at the same time, and as it’s been said it is not where you were born but where you belong and now I live in Seoul.

In a recent editorial I read on the Korea promotional site Nanoomi I was intrigued and finally flummoxed by the consideration and proposal that in order to get Korean soft power (i.e., books movies, pop-music, TV shows and the like) out to a worldwide audience a sort of Asian Creative Agenda should be established. “Does Asian America Need a Brand Makeover?” The idea is …

By Jake Reed
This is Part 2 of Jake’s Chengdu travel. Read Part 1 here.

Chengdu might not be the frat party of China and maybe that’s a good thing. I would hate to think I went to a place just to sample the radial Dionysian outlets where the Sun rises in the East, sets in the West and what follows for me is another gripey hangover. Better to ask what was old China like in this neck of the woods? Well, Chengdu did happen to be in possession of the Tao which preceded Buddhism and is creating wonders still in effect today. Next to a KFC on any given street here you can yourself gazing into a lush garden tendered by skin headed, peace mongering Asians.

By J. Lee

A week after the North Korean shelling of the Yeonpyeong Island, I e-mailed Sung-yoon Lee of the prestigious Fletcher School, Tufts University, outlining my thoughts on the recent provocation. Like many people, I, too, had been shocked by North Korea’s gratuitous attacks on innocent civilians. Nonetheless, I felt that one had to adopt carefully measured strategies to stave off a further crisis—what I described in my e-mail as a potential “Doomsday.” In it, I wrote that “now is perhaps the most opportune time for Lee Myung-bak and his retinue of sycophants to resume talks with North Korea…” for “[s]hould another Korean War occur, there will be no victors, but victims only.”

By Konrad Kostecki

I am staying at home with my folks at the moment. It is good to see them again and I gotta say that they seem to be in a relatively good form. I ventured out of the house to see what is different, what is new. My gut told me that this place was going to differ greatly from Korea…No shit Sherlock! A short trip to the Safeway supermarket confirmed my suspicion unequivocally. In place of the made up hotties in high heels were haggard women sporting fashions that should not see the light of day under any circumstances. My god, what a collection of flotsam and jetsam! Overweight women wearing tight “leggings” or loose tracksuit pants.

By Mizaru
When reading any of the English language mainstream press in Korea, it is hard not to run into something sooner or later that comes out against “Konglish”. You know the phrases in English with a Korean twist to its usage. “Handphone” instead of cell phone or cellular phone; “One shot” instead of cheers or bottoms up quickly come to mind. The mainstream hack with perhaps too little time or spirit to explore fresh expression no doubt wants to grind Konglish back down to earth and chastise anyone who is not at open war with it. Tirades against “Konglish” are often delivered by various Korean government officials with a PhD.

By Conor O’Reilly

Don’t let this fool you! The whole festival is a massive outlet for people trying to be cool, trying to be real, trying to festival. It’s a place where people try to escape into the streets, have run-ins with the 5-O, dress over conspicuously and raise their chin higher than the person they are talking to. This is a place where people walk down the street with an empty guitar case just to get the nod from a fellow case carrier. Yes, the Hardly Bothered Coming Festival® really is a wonderful place to be cool. Disgusting!

By Jack Dashwood

I clicked on a Web site the other day that was paragraph after paragraph of “stupid things Korean girls text to foreigners.” The gist of it was “hey look at this broken English this girl sent me. What a tard!”. To a certain type of person, this point of view makes sense. If for example, you’re the type of person who would spike girls’ drinks at your college fraternity parties, or if you taunted the one brown kid in your school for being a terrorist, then this style of humour might be rather entertaining. Let’s take a moment to look from another point of view though…

By James Barrowdale

Alas, I still can’t tell you. The game went on, and my boredom and drunkenness increased at the same rate, a very rare occurrence. The sun started to get low in the sky, but the heat remained as oppressive as ever. The players were toiling out in the middle, but that is their job. I was sitting down fanning myself with a paperback and drinking cold beer.

By Iwazaru

“GOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAL!” or NOT.
Late in the first half of its second-round game with Germany, England was behind 2-1 when Frank Lampard blasted a shot off the crossbar. The ball came down at least a foot inside the goal line, but referee Jorge Larrionda (now booted from the Cup just like England) called for play to continue. Replays (a tool rejected by Fifa so far) confirmed the ball was across the line in another embarrassing incident for the game.

By Mizaru

Here we are heading into a new summer and as I walk into a local expat watering hole to attend a birthday party, the talk at the bar revolves around how last week’s perfectly pitched baseball game was marred by a bad call at first base for the last out of the game in the bottom of the ninth. I find that foreigners who come to South Korea to teach English (amongst other endeavors) and hang out tend to believe in the “we have the technology so we have to use it” aphorism. I didn’t bother with the instead of that: to see if someone saw a greater truth that maybe we and technology have turned the corner on and can’t see anymore. That perhaps there’s a more powerful perfection in the umpire blowing the call, but then admitting it with an earnest apology, and then the pitcher matching that with an effortless forgiveness.

By Marie Kulik

The city of Seoul. All cities are alive, but whilst others are fading into the annals of history this one has a beating pulse, a young pulse. The spotlight must move, it has chosen this peninsular.

People work and walk and sing and drink, but underneath it all, like any good city, is another face. People on street corners staring into what you are meant to perceive as nothingness; the telephone box users are not making calls,[...]

By Mizaru Greetings from The Three Wise Monkeys (3wm), a smart and alternative yet accessible look at the English speaking world roiling to and fro here on the Korean peninsula. The plan is to put up stories, essays, short films, opinions and anything really that lets people know what life is like over here. Most [...]