The Sewol Tragedy, One Year On


Today, one year ago, the Sewol ferry sank off the southwestern coast of Korea, claiming more than three hundred lives. TK's series discussing the accident is below:


Based on the information that was uncovered since TK has written the post, Parts I and II contain some revision. The biggest revelation was that the Coast Guard responded negligently. For nine minutes after arrival, the Coast Guard was unaware that hundreds of passengers were still inside the ship. Because the Coast Guard made no effort to rescue the passengers from inside the ship in that precious time period, dozens of lives that could have been saved were lost. Kim Gyeong-il, the captain of the responding Coast Guard, was sentenced to four years in prison due to the dereliction of duty. 

*                 *                  *

There is no good way to respond to a sudden, and completely avoidable, death of more than three hundred lives, most of which belonged to young children. Even with the best response, the lost lives are not regained. But the striking part of the past year has been just how poorly Korean government, and in particular the President Park Geun-hye's administration, responded to the tragedy.

Imagine the United States, a week after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Information started appearing that the George W. Bush administration was utterly incompetent in detecting the threat by Osama Bin Laden, to a point that the attack really should have never happened in the first place. Families of the victims, outraged by the avoidable loss of their loved ones, began blaming the government. 

Now imagine if the Bush administration responded by shutting out the families, and planting CIA agents to monitor any subversive activities. The Republican faithful, sensing that their president was under attack, begin clamoring that the families should just get over it; all the mourning was putting a damper on domestic spending, hurting the economy. For the next year, the government does its best trying to pretend the 9/11 attacks never happened.

This is essentially what happened for the last year in Korea. The Sewol tragedy was one version of the 9/11 attacks, in that the entire nation saw hundreds of lives perishing real time on television. The collective trauma that Korea suffered was no less than the same that the U.S. suffered in 2001. Yet, facing this once-a-generation national tragedy, the Park Geun-hye administration responded to the tragedy in the worst way possible. The Park administration saw the social unrest following the tragedy as a threat to its power, rather than the natural expression of collective grief. Instead of taking active leadership to heal the nation, the administration did everything it could to paint the victims' family as greedy money-grabbers who were trying to profit from the deaths of their loved ones.

Incredibly, this shit worked. Korea's right-wing, which looks back on the dictatorship period of President Park's father with fond nostalgia, was happy to buy into the ridiculous idea that the victims' family were only too happy to wield their newly found power. Since the accident, nearly three-quarters of the Internet comments left on the Sewol-related news had been blaming the victims' family for asking money and other favors (which, obviously, were not true.)

Perhaps the lowest point came in late August of last year, when families of the Sewol victims began a hunger-strike to demand an investigation by special prosecutor. In one of the lowest display of sheer malice I have ever seen, members of Korea's largest conservative website organized a "gorging strike," mocking the families by essentially engaging in an eating contest of pizza and fried chicken.

Conservative Koreans engaging in "gorging strike" in front of hunger-striking families of the Sewol victims.
In the yellow test in the background, the families who lost their children were engaged in a hunger strike.
(source)
Aside from disgusting way in which the victims' families were marginalized, the most disheartening consequence of the events that followed was that no lesson was learned from the senseless tragedy. As the Sewol issue was increasingly seen as a political issue, ordinary Koreans grew tired of following the aftermath. The president and the administration played their parts, doing everything they could to pretend that the accident never happened. In a stunning display of tin-earedness, President Park Geun-hye went on a tour of South American summit meetings, declining to attend the anniversary memorial ceremony of the disaster. None of the cabinet ministers is visiting the memorial ceremony either.

As such, the most obvious lesson that should have been learned from the Sewol tragedy--public safety--has been completely forgotten. The administration established a new Ministry of Public Safety and Security, but it could not even get enough staffing to function properly. The victims' families, blinded by the pain of their tremendous wound, are stuck with protesting the government and demanding the ship to be taken out of the water. In the meantime, safety accidents on school grounds increased by 11 percent since 2014. On October 17, 2014, only six months after the Sewol tragedy, the grate covering a massive air vent at an outdoor concert venue collapsed, killing 16 K-pop concert-goers.

As with many Koreans, my mood at this one year anniversary is grim. There does not seem to be an upward trajectory. I pray for the souls of those who were so senselessly lost. I am angered that I cannot do much more.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Taxonomy of Korean Drinking Places

Dear Korean,

I recently stayed in Seoul for a while and was looking for a place to have some wine. However, my Korean friend told me I should careful about where I step into, because there are many different kinds of 'clubs' - there's the normal dance clubs for young people, and then there's hostess clubs/ host clubs, there are dallan jujeom  for businessmen only, then there's all the "bangs," like noraebang, PC bang, DVD bang. Could you give me a glossary of the different kinds of 'clubs' or 'bars' that's available in Korea, so I don't wander in by mistake? I saw a shop named "Bacchus" and wanted to go in for wine till my friend told me that it was "errm... for guys.... to sleep....."

Wandering Female in Seoul

What better way to come back after two weeks than talking about drinking?! 

Let's get right into it. Koreans drink, and they drink in all kinds of places. Here is a taxonomy of places where you can enjoy adult beverage in Korea. Like every attempt to categorize human society, the categories below are not hard-and-fast but are generalized groups.

Tier 1:  Hangouts with Alcohol

There are places in Korea where one can drink, but alcohol is not the main attraction. For example:

- Restaurants:  Nearly every restaurant in Korea sells alcohol, although one would primarily visit a restaurant to have a meal. The selections are usually soju and beer, and sometimes makgeolli. This is a very broad category that is particularly susceptible to a sliding scale. That is--some restaurants are closer to eating places, while other restaurants are closer to drinking places. Where a restaurant falls on that scale depends largely on the types of food it serves. Seafood restaurants, for example, would fall closer to the "drinking place" end of the scale.

- Convenience Store:  Korea does not have the silly public drunkenness laws that most places in the U.S. has, which means it is possible to drink virtually anywhere in Korea. One of the popular hangouts is the plastic table/bench in front of a convenience store. You simply purchase your choice of alcohol and food from the store, and plop your butt down on them chairs. Most convenience stores, in fact, sell packaged foods that are popular with drinkers.

Just like this.
(source)
Certain parts of Korea (e.g. Jeolla-do, or southwestern Korea) takes this concept to an entirely new level. Not only can one drink in front of storefronts, one can even order relatively high-quality cooked food. 

- Outdoors:  Outdoors? Yes, outdoors. TK means it: you can really drink just about anywhere in Korea. At the beach? Yes. On the river bank? Yes. While hiking on a mountain? Hell yes. In fact, if the weather is warm enough, there will be mobile vendors selling drinks while walking around those places.

- Sports Venues:  Simple enough. Baseball, soccer, bowling, pool--none of these places would be as fun as they are without alcohol.

(More after the jump.)

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.




Tier 2:  You Go Here to Drink

And then there are places where alcohol is the main attraction. 

- Street Carts [포장마차]:  Drinking in Korea does not get much more fun than drinking at a street cart. Along with alcohol, a typical street cart would sell noodles, dumplings, fish cakes, sausages, chicken gizzards, etc. 

(source)
Be sure to note the type of street cart, however--like restaurants, there are many different types of street carts, and only a certain type caters to the drinking crowd.

- Bars: Yes, Korea has regular bars, like the kind one could see in the U.S. There are far too many different types of bars to generalize--there is wine bar, soju bar, microbreweries, makgeolli bar, sake bar, you name it. If all you wanted to do is to chill out while having a drink, and you rear is too precious for a plastic chair, you would go to a bar.

On average, bars in Korean tend to be closer to "lounges" in the U.S.--slightly quiet with low music, which is conducive to talking within your table. Many bars, in fact, have separate rooms for each party. Dancing and/or randomly meeting members of the opposite sex do not usually happen at a bar. (Those things happen at a club.)

- Clubs:  If you feel like drinking and dancing, you would go to a club. There are two types of clubs: a "dance club" and a "booking club." Both feature drinking and dancing, with DJs mixing music. "Dance club" is essentially the same as a club in the U.S.; a "booking club," however, has an additional element. At a booking club, the waiter shuffles the lady guests to tables and rooms occupied by men guest like speed dating. Ladies may choose to hang out with the men, or decide to move on.

Tier 3:  Adult Establishment with Alcohol

Finally, we have places where alcohol is a sideshow like Tier 1, but for a different reason. The classification of the establishments below are extremely fluid. Some places are relatively innocuous places to hang out with (almost always) scantily clad women, like a strip club in the U.S. Some places are merely preludes to prostitution, like a strip club in the U.S.

- Noraebang with "Helpers":  There are two kinds of noraebang, or karaoke. The majority of them, in fact, fall under Tier 1--you go and sing, and have a drink or two as you go on. But a smaller subset of karaokes involve "helpers" [도우미]--usually women, scantily dressed, who hang out and drink with you. When you are going for a karaoke, double check to make sure you are not walking into the wrong kind.

- Male- or Female-only Bar:  There is a big range within this category. Some are called "Talking Bars"--where attractive women (usually, but a man sometimes) sit and chat with your party while having drinks. Some are called "Host/Hostess Bar", in which a strip tease goes on. The unifying factor in this category is that the bar space is open, and other patrons are visible--which tends to limit the more risque stuff.

Inside of a "Talking Bar"
(source)
- Room Salon:  A classic Konglish that repeats two words that mean the same thing. This is a straight-up, dirty-old-men place that is, at a minimum, a strip club with touching. As the name implies, you would be sitting in a room, which brings the level of "adultness" to another level. If you are not interested in this type of establishment, good news--it is nearly impossible to accidentally walk into this type of place, as they rarely rely on the business coming from a random passer-by.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Lee Kuan Yew versus Kim Dae-jung: the Battle for Asia's Soul

Lee Kuan Yew, the progenitor of Singapore, has passed away. Lee was a singular individual with many interesting ideas, and Singapore likewise is a singular place with many interesting features. Plenty of ink has been spilled about how special Lee was and Singapore is in the last few days, and TK does not have much more to add on Lee or Singapore, by themselves.

What this blog can add is a bit of perspective about Singapore and Korea, and the two countries' leaders, as ideological counterparts. In 1994, Lee Kuan Yew engaged in one of the most important debates in East Asian political science--against Kim Dae-jung, who was at the time an opposition leader in Korea, and later, Korea's president and Nobel Peace Prize winner. The debate came in the form of Lee giving an interview with the Foreign Affairs magazine, and Kim responding to Lee's points several months later on the same magazine. For anyone who is curious about East Asian politics and the spread of democracy, these two pieces are must-read classics.

Go now, and actually read them--because they contain big ideas, and any summary of them will not do full justice. But very roughly speaking, Lee Kuan Yew and Kim Dae-jung were debating the relationship between East Asian culture and democracy. Lee Kuan Yew considered East Asian culture to be distinct from the Western culture; accordingly, East Asia and Singapore would not accept democracy--at least, not the kind that was being practiced in the West. Lee, for example, said because East Asia focused greatly on family, "a better system" would be "if we gave every man over the age of 40 who has a family two votes because he is likely to be more careful, voting also for his children. He is more likely to vote in a serious way than a capricious young man under 30."


Kim Dae-jung, on the other hand, believed that democracy was a universal force. To Kim, culture was important, but cultural differences were overrated. Instead, the commonalities of world culture--arising from the common human experience--uniformly pointed to democracy. In a key passage, Kim Dae-jung wrote: "Asia has its own venerable traditions of democracy, the rule of law, and respect for the people[,]" pointing to traditional Confucianism under the which the king is held accountable to the people, the civil service system that was based on meritocracy rather than hereditary inheritance, and the independent bureaus that were free to criticize the king's deeds--all of which happened centuries before Europe even had a seedling of democracy. East Asia already had all the trappings of a democratic culture; it simply needed to transplant the democratic institutions that would give expression to this culture.

It has been a little more than 20 years since the Lee Kuan Yew-Kim Dae-jung debate began. Incredibly, both men made a real-life case for their arguments in their respective countries. Under Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore enjoyed brilliant economic growth under socially restrictive rules, topping the charts in positive indicators across the globe. Under Kim Dae-jung, Korea oversaw opposition parties peacefully exchanging power like mature democracies do, and at the same time raised a host of world-class corporations while becoming a major player in the global soft culture.

Who will be proven correct? The implication of this debate is greater than ever. In the last 20 years, democracy in Asia has either stalled or regressed, depending on where you look. Most importantly, China is yet to democratize. If Lee Kuan Yew was right, the world's non-democratic superpower will never be a democracy. If Kim Dae-jung was right, a seismic change is afoot. Either way, the result of this debate will shape the next century of East Asia and the world.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

So How Do You Become a Doctor in Korea If You're Not Korean?

TK's rant in the post about being a doctor in Korea brought about some negative reactions in the comments. He could care less; the idea that a non-Korean could simply waltz in and become a doctor in Korea is delusional and deserves ridicule.

However, TK does believe in being helpful. Owing much to the excellent, detailed information sent by a reader who explored this path, here is how a non-Korean citizen may become a doctor in Korea. Technically, it is possible--it's just that, as TK stated previously, the process is so mind-blowingly difficult that it is practically impossible for most non-Koreans. Again, if you even have to ask this blog to figure out this process, you are not going to make it.

Can you make it like Dr. Nick and say, 여러분 안녕하세요?
(source)

But what the heck, let's go ahead and satisfy some curiosity. There are four potential points of entry into Korea's medical job market:

1.  High school student about to enter college
2.  Transferring into medical school as a third year, with a bachelor's degree completed
3.  As a holder of a medical degree (e.g. M.D., MBBS, etc.)
4.  As a board-certified, full-fledged doctor

We can look each one in turn:

1.  High school student

If you are in high school, you may attend college in Korea and major in medicine. There are 36 colleges in Korea with a medicine major. Medicine majors will attend college for six years, and graduate with a bachelor's degree. The first two years are strictly undergraduate education. Years 3 and 4 are pre-clinical basic science, and years 5 and 6 are all clinical.

There are two tracks of college admission in Korea: international and domestic. Relatively few colleges in Korea have a separate admission track for international students, but there are several schools that do. The international admissions requirements--including whether or not you qualify for the international track--are different for each school.

For example, Yonsei University (which runs one of the four best hospitals in Korea) defines the international applicant as a non-Korean citizen with neither parent being a Korean citizen, who has been educated outside of Korea continuously since junior high school. The admission requirements themselves are similar to that of Korean universities, but the CSAT is replaced with the SAT/ACT with the addition of the Korean Language Proficiency Exam. If you were not continuously educated in an English-speaking curriculum or school (as defined by Yonsei), you also have to take the TOEFL. Other colleges have similar, but slightly varying, requirements.

Most colleges in Korea do not have a separate track for international applicants. If the school does not have a separate pool for international students, you will have to take the CSAT like any other Korean high school student, and score extremely high to secure admission as a medicine major. This will be practically impossible for most non-Koreans.

(More after the jump)

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.




2.  Transfer into Medical Program

Some of the colleges in Korea with a medicine major allow transfer admission into the third year of the six-year program, for applicants who has a bachelor's degree. Although technically the applicant would be repeating a bachelor's degree, the admission itself is similar to the graduate school admissions process. For those who have not completed high school in Korea, Korean Language Proficiency Exam will be required. The applicant will also have to take Medical Education Eligibility Test, which is equivalent of the medical (graduate) school entrance exam in other countries. MEET is conducted entirely in Korean.

It should be noted that the transfer opportunity exists as a stopgap measure. Previously, to be a doctor in Korea, one could either attend the six-year bachelor's degree program or four-year master's degree program. As of 2013, however, Korea decided to phase out the master's degree program, and instituted the transfer program in order to provide a path to study medicine for Korean students who did not choose medicine as the undergraduate degree, but was intending to attend the master's degree program.

This means that this route may disappear soon. It also means that the structure of the transfer admissions is largely indefinite. There is no indication that there is a separate international admissions process--in fact, it is almost certainly the case that this process, when created, did not contemplate non-Koreans taking this route to become a doctor in Korea. In practicality, like taking CSAT, it would be virtually impossible for a non-Korean applicant to take MEET in Korean and score higher than most other Korean applicants.

3.  As a Holder of a Medical Degree

If you have a medical degree, you can take Korean Medical Licensing Exam (KMLE) to become a doctor. But for a foreign medical school graduate to sit for the KMLE, s/he needs to first take and pass a qualifying exam. What is more, not every foreign medical school graduate may sit for the qualifying exam: if Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare deems that the foreign degree is not commensurate to Korean medical training, the degree-holder cannot sit for the exam. There are cases of medical degree holders from China, Belarus and Dominican Republic who were not allowed to sit for the qualifying exam because their degrees were considered inadequate.

Preparation for the qualifying exam is a two-year commitment, because it is very difficult. The qualifying exam is geared mostly toward Koreans who study abroad in a non-Korean medical school, which means the test is not non-Korean-friendly. (But unlike the transfer option, this route does contemplate that non-Koreans would take this exam to become a doctor in Korea.) Only one to three percent of the applicants pass the qualifying exam--which means that every year, there are less than ten foreign medical degree holders who even attempt to take the KMLE. If your Korean language skill is not at the native level, your chance of passing is pretty much nil.

If you somehow pass the qualifying exam, you are allowed to sit for the KMLE. Most Korean medicine major students take a year to prepare for the KMLE. Nearly every student who majored in medicine in a Korean college passes the KMLE. On the other hand, no more than three to four foreign medical degree holders pass the KMLE each year; in many years, there is no foreign medical degree holder who passes the KMLE.

4.  As a Certified Doctor

Even as a certified doctor, you may not practice medicine in Korea unless you passed the KMLE. However, TK came across anecdotal instances of non-Korean trained doctors working in Korea without passing the KMLE. I do not know their precise legal status, but they exist. At this point of one's career, practicing in a foreign country would be a fluid arrangement rather than a set path.

*                  *                 *
So, to recap:

1.  If you are a high school student, you might be able to major in medicine as an international student in the handful of Korean colleges that have a separate admission track for international students. If you cannot make it through the international application process, you have to take the CSAT along with all other Korean high school students to be admitted as a medicine major. If you study very hard during college, you may be able to pass the KMLE and become a doctor in Korea.

2.  If you have a bachelor's degree, you might be able to transfer into the third year of the six-year medicine program in Korea. To transfer, you will have to take MEET, which is conducted in Korean, and score higher in MEET than Korean college graduates.

3.  If you have a medical degree, you have to take the qualifying exam that is mostly designed for Koreans who study abroad, and be one of the one to three percent of applicants who pass the qualifying exam. Then you could be one of the three to four people in Korea who passes the KMLE as a foreign medical degree holder.

4.  If you are a world-famous neurosurgeon or someone similar, there just might be some way for you to work as a doctor in Korea. Good luck with that.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

I am so Sorry. Legally.

Dear Korean,

As they face sentencing on blackmail charges that could land them in jail for three years, two young women are trying to save themselves with letter writing: "Model Lee Ji-yeon and GLAM's Dahee have submitted their next letters of apology for attempting to blackmail Lee Byeong-heon, making it the 10th for the model and the 17th for the idol." Are letters of apology standard operating procedure as felons face trials and/or sentencing? And do they really send ten or more? Do they go to the court or to the victim?

Frequent Flier

Short answer:  yes! Letters of apology are more or less a standard operating procedure for criminal defendants. It is not legally required, but a criminal defendant who is already convicted or whose conviction is all but certain would be foolish not to write one.

For nearly all crimes, Korean criminal law's sentencing guidelines provide that the sentencing court may consider "sincere self-reflection" as a factor to reduce the jail term, potentially down to a suspended sentence (i.e. no actual time spent in jail.) In addition, there is always a chance that the letter of apology would move the victim of the crime to ask the court for clemency, which also factors favorably in sentencing.

Lee Byeong-heon being sad about that whole blackmail thing.
(source)

This is exactly how it worked with Lee Ji-yeon and Dahee, who were convicted of blackmailing Lee Byeong-heon. For those who are not up to speed with the latest Korean entertainment gossip: Lee Ji-yeon and Dahee surreptitiously recorded Lee Byeong-heon making sexually explicit jokes while they were drinking together. Lee Byeong-heon did not help himself either, as he later flirted with Lee Ji-yeon through text messages in a manner that borderlined on harassment. The two ladies, in turn, used the recording and the text messages to blackmail Lee Byeong-heon for approximately US $5 million. Instead of paying up, Lee Byeong-heon decided to suffer the embarrassment and let the world know about the blackmail. The jig was up for the ladies.

Lee Ji-yeon and Dahee did receive prison terms--14 months and 12 months, respectively. But their letter-writing campaign apparently worked, to some degree. Lee Byeong-heon did ask the court for clemency, and the prosecutor's office appealed the case because it felt that the sentences were too low. The prosecutors specifically questioned the sincerity of the two perpetrators' apologies, claiming that the defendants are continuing to testify falsely.

Does it make sense to consider "sincere self-reflection" as a part of the sentencing rubric? If you are the type who loves the idea of putting the bad guys in jail, the idea may sound ludicrous. You might also favor drawing and quartering a murderer and cutting off a thief's hand, but the modern criminal jurisprudence has moved away from that notion.

Is there some validity to the point that this requirement brings about the "apology inflation," of the kind shown with the case of Lee Ji-yeon and Dahee? (Even by Korean standards, 17 letters of apology is a big number.) Sure, there is some validity. But take it from a criminal defense lawyer: sentencing is always more art than science, because it is impossible to precisely measure the wage of one's guilt. Modern criminal law aspires for rehabilitation of criminals. To that end, it is meaningful to inquire whether the defendant is being remorseful, even if such inquiry at times may feel like mere formalities.

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

You're Not Going to be a Doctor in Korea. Stop Fucking Asking.

Dear Korean,

 I will soon be taking my IB’s and start to search for colleges and universities, but I was really hoping to work as a doctor in Korea. My plan was to go to King’s College or Imperial College in the UK, and then as I get my degrees and stuff, apply as a doctor in Korea. I am not really good in korean, but I am willing to try my best to learn it as soon as possible. Do you think my goal will succeed ? In Korean hospitals, do they accept foreigners as doctors? What if I will not be able to master my korean? That will be a problem right? 

 Valentina


TK cannot believe that he is writing a post about this question. But he must, because this question comes in with shocking frequency. Apparently, there is a sizable population of people around the world who really want to be a doctor in Korea. If only Korean hospitals accepted foreigners! Then these people can just pursue the dream, the dream! Of being a doctor in Korea!


Here is the simple answer: if you have to ask this question, you are not going to be a doctor in Korea. How does TK know this? Simple. In any given country, around 95 percent of the students will not be able to become doctors no matter how hard they try, because the material is too difficult, the requisite test scores are too high and the smarter students will crush them. Are you a top five percent student in your country? If you are, can you do the same in a completely different language? (And yes, if you want to be a doctor in Korea but can't master your Korean, it will be a fucking problem.)

A quick perspective on how hard it is to get into a medical school in Korea. Seoul National University is widely considered the best university in Korea. In 2014, to make it into most majors offered by SNU, the student had to score between 370 and 380 out of 400 in the College Scholastic Aptitude Test (CSAT). But to get into SNU as a medicine major? The student had to score 400 out of 400. Seriously. You could not get a single question wrong in an exam with nearly 200 questions that takes more than seven hours.

It gets better: getting admitted as a medicine major at colleges that are decidedly less prestigious than SNU requires a higher CSAT score than getting into most majors in SNU. Again, you only needed to score around 370-380 to get into most majors of Korea's best university. But to get into Chungbuk National University as a medicine major? Needed 390. Jeonnam National University medicine major? 387. Chosun University medicine? 386. Have you ever heard of those colleges? Don't lie, because you have not.

And this is even before getting into the fact that Korea's CSAT is probably a harder exam than anything that a typical non-Korean 17-year-old has ever seen in her life. Don't believe me? Here is a scale model of the 2010 CSAT that TK translated into English. Remember, if you want to be a doctor in Korea, you cannot get a single question wrong. And you would be taking this exam in Korean.

(A step back: in Korea, each major of a college administers the admission for itself. For medicine majors, each school uses a different proportion of CSAT--that is to say, in addition to CSAT scores, some colleges give their own exams and/or conduct an interview.)

Sure, there will always be special cases. Some of you guys will be hyper-geniuses who pick up foreign languages and medical school-level knowledge like we mortals eat a muffin. Some of you will have a family history that puts you close to Korea, such that you can compete on equal footing with other Korean students--like, for example, Dr. John Linton at the Yonsei Severance Hospital, who was born in Korea because his great grandfather Eugene Bell came to Korea as a missionary in 1895. (To be sure, Dr. Linton is a Korean citizen. But he was not one when he became a doctor, as he naturalized just three years ago.)

These folks can be a doctor in Korea although they are not Koreans. But they don't need to ask an anonymous Internet stranger to figure out how to become a doctor in Korea. You, on the other hand, sent TK an email with this question because you can't speak Korean well enough to figure out this information on your own. So I can say this with confidence: you're not going to be a doctor in Korea. Stop clogging my inbox with your stupidity.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.













What's Real in Korean Hip Hop? A Historical Perspective

Recently, Lizzie Parker addressed an important question in the Beyond Hallyu website:  what is "real" in Korean hip hop? 

The question of authenticity may pop up in any given genre of Korean pop music, because every genre of K-pop is an import. Yet the question of authenticity is particularly pressing in hip hop, because no other genre of pop music cares so much about "being real," to a point that authenticity is the genre's raison d'etre, as hip hop does. Indeed, even in the birthplace of hip hop, the quest for authenticity is elusive. (Is Jay-Z still real, even though he went corporate?) When hip hop is exported to a different cultural sphere, the hurdle of authenticity becomes ever higher.

Parker's article did a great job in identifying the elements of what is considered "real" in Korean hip hop. Consider this post a companion piece, about how the idea of authenticity evolved in Korean hip hop. This inquiry is necessarily a historical one. So let's jump right into history of Korean hip hop, and start with the pioneers.

I.  Pre-History:  Early 1990s

The very first piece of K-pop that may be considered "hip hop" appeared in 1989. Hong Seo-beom [홍서범], a moderately popular rock musician, recorded a song called Kim Satgat [김삿갓].


Even by today's standards, Kim Satgat's rapping, overlaid on funk beat, has held up surprisingly well. But Hong's attempt was clearly an experimental one. Hong never aspired to be a hip hop musician; Kim Satgat was a one-off, avant-garde take at the new form of music that was gaining ground in the U.S. at the time. In the popular recount of Korean hip hop's history, Hong name is rarely mentioned.

Instead, the K-pop artists who came after Hong, such as Seo Taiji [서태지], Hyeon Jin-yeong [현진영] and Lee Hyun-do [이현도] are usually considered the pioneers of Korean hip hop. But even with this corps of artists, the label "hip hop musicians" would be a stretch. Seo Taiji's first album in 1992 , for example, definitely caused a sensation with a historical rap number, I Know [난 알아요]. But hip hop was just one of the many musical styles that Seo Taiji played with; in his later albums, Seo drifted toward his original love, i.e. rock music. Lee Hyun-do and his group Deux showed more dedication to the genre, but Lee's creativity (at least for the music that he himself would perform) was cut short when Kim Seong-jae [김성재], Lee's partner in Deux and the animal spirit of the group, passed away under mysterious circumstances at the tender age of 23.

(More after the jump)

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It is fairer to think of this era as the pre-history of Korean hip hop, because few K-pop artists considered themselves as a "hip hop artist." In this time period, Hip hop was a device, not an end to itself. Even at the time, music of Seo Taiji and Lee Hyun-do was not referred to as "hip hop", but "rap dance"--dance pop with some rap sprinkled on. In fact, the tradition of rap dance is very much alive in today's K-pop, as it is almost a K-pop cliche to insert a rap bridge in a dance number.

II.  Anchored Realness:  Late 1990s to Early 2000s

It was not until late 1990s that K-pop artists who dedicated their career to hip hop began to emerge. For the first time, it made sense to refer to a proper "rapper" in Korean pop music scene. Korean hip hop in this time period brewed in two levels, which largely kept away from each other at first. Roughly speaking, the levels may be referred to "overground" and "underground." The former appeared on television and sold albums by hundreds of thousands; the latter put together mix tape-quality albums and performed in basement clubs.

1997 was a watershed year. A sizable crop of K-pop artists who may be considered proper rappers debuted through large production companies. (I add the "may be onsidered" because Korea's hip hop purists would vigorously disagree with my assessment.) Jinusean, Uptown, JP (Kim Jin-pyo [김진표]) and Yoo Seung-jun [유승준] all debuted in 1997. During this period, the idea of "realness" in Korean hip hop had a clear orientation: across the Pacific, toward America. Hip hop was the latest genre that was imported into K-pop, as all pop music genres were previously. The logical conclusion was clear:  real hip hop was American. Realness was anchored outside of Korea.

To be real was to look like America hip hop artists. So at the time, Korean hip hop appealed its American-ness in many different ways. Virtually all significant (overground) Korean hip hop artists in this period flaunted their American connection. Both members of Jinusean (Jinu and Sean--yes, seriously) were Korean Americans. So were all three members of Uptown; the crown jewel of Uptown, a promising female rapper who went by "T", was half African American. (T stands for Tasha; she is now better known as her real name Yoon Mi-rae [윤미래], and as the wife of Tiger JK.)

Cover for Jinusean's 2001 album, The Reign.
Jinusean still holds the record as the most copies of album sold among Korean hip hop artists.
(source)

Not only were Korean rappers kind of American, they (almost) looked and sounded like Americans. Much of their songs had a generous helping of English lyrics and rap. (Tiger JK and DJ Shine of Drunken Tiger, who debuted in 1999, could barely speak any Korean in the early stages of their career. JP wrote much of Drunken Tiger's Korean rap in their first album.) Korean rappers' fashion and choreography, ahem, "emulated" the prevailing black music trends in America. Their music videos were shot in locations that evoked the milieu of American inner cities--a sight that simply did not exist in Korea.

In this cohort, Jinusean enjoyed the most popularity, owing greatly to the two major figures in the pre-history of Korean hip hop:  YG (Yang Hyeon-seok [양현석]) of Seo Taiji and Boys, and Lee Hyun-do, who produced the group. But for our purpose, Yoo Seung-jun is probably the most significant, as Yoo was the one who pushed the "anchored realness" logic to its breaking point. Yoo Seung-jun did not simply import the music or the fashion of hip hop. Yoo sought to import the soul, the swagga of hip hop--the aggressive, authority-defying, rule-breaking "thug life" kind of rap.


Yoo's music video for his hit song Nanana, linked above, is in some sense historical. Yoo's first hit song, Saranghae Nuna [사랑해 누나] was about dating older women, already indicating his willingness to break the rules. (By the way: that's not really considered breaking the rules in Korea anymore. Korea changes quickly.) In Nanana's music video, Yoo Seung-jun achieves peak thug life, Korea circa 1998. The music video for Nanana displays Yoo in all possible variations of thug-life style power play in Korea--most daring motorcycle rider, best fighter in class, blatant disregard of school's hair regulations, romantic liaison with a young, hot female teacher, and so on. For some time in Korea, Yoo Seung-jun occupied the same space that James Dean occupied in his life: a rebellious, heartthrob bad boy.**

Let's take a step back, and make one thing clear:  in hindsight, Korean hip hop of the 1990s was cringe-inducing. The cringe does not simply come from the fact that most things, 20 years later, are tacky. It also comes from the fact that Korean hip hop of the 1990s was clearly an exercise in exoticism and cultural expropriation. To put it bluntly: these were a bunch of Koreans trying to be black--so much so that JP, in 1998, dropped this infamous diss that will forever remain in the annals of Korea's hip hop history:
혹시 그거 아냐? 여기는 미국 아냐
You know something? This isn't America.
얼어죽을 East Side, West Side 외치지만 말고
Stop saying freakin' "East Side, West Side"
제대로 좀 해봐 몇 년 후에 깡통 매봐
And do something real. Or wear a can a few years later. [="go bankrupt and become a beggar."]
그럼 두고두고 땅을 치고 후회할 테니 그럴 테니 하하하하
Then you will regret it for the rest of your life, that's right, hahahaha.
"Anchored realness" is a misnomer, if one takes the definition of "real" seriously. Any attempt to locate the source of authenticity in a culture that is not one's own would always look ridiculous--at first, at least. Korea's hip hop artists themselves were aware of this, and endeavored to make hip hop their own skin rather than an ill-fitting suit. And the breakthrough would soon come--from the underground.

III.  Inner Authenticity:  Early 2000s to Present

While Korea's overground hip hop artists were engaged in a wholesale air-lifting of hip hop from America, Korea's underground hip hop artists were attempting to grow the foreign seed of hip hop out of Korean soil. The early attempts were crude and grotesque, no better than the cringe-inducing replicas that their overground peers created. But it was from the underground that Korean hip hop found the new path forward.

No K-pop genre owed its existence to the Internet as much as Korean hip hop. Hip hop in America arose organically within the African American communities, which were (for better or worse; mostly for worse) segregated into ghettos. In Korea, it was impossible for a similar community to form, until the Internet appeared.

Korea was always ahead of the curve when it came to the Internet. Already by mid-1990s, the Internet was fairly common in Korea. Although the Internet at the time were not much more than collections of low-tech message boards, the message boards were quite enough to bring together Korea's emerging hip hop minds. Old rap heads of Korea are familiar with names like Blex, Camp Groove and Dope Soundz--the names of the early online hip hop communities that served as the breeding ground for truly localized hip hop.

Member of these communities met offline regularly. They would listen together and discuss the latest rap albums from America. Later, they graduated into creating their own music. Blex, for example, released an album called BLEX: Black Sounds, the First Sounds [BLEX: 검은 소리, 첫 번째 소리] in 1997, making history as Korea's first independent hip hop album. Early pioneers of underground Korean hip hop--such as MC Meta for the group Garion or DJ Wreckx, Korea's first hip hop DJ--were raised through these online communities. While most overground rappers were occupied with looking and sounding black, Korea's underground rappers explored ways to make hip hop Korean, trying to jump over the linguistic and cultural barriers.

And finally, the breakthrough came--from one of Korean hip hop's true geniuses, Verbal Jint.


One comparison* is sufficient to establish the revolutionary character of Verbal Jint's rhyme and flow. Below is the rhyme structure of G.O.D.'s 1999 song, To Mother [어머님께]. The letters in red rhyme:
어려서부터 우리 집은 가난했었고
남들 다 하는 외식 몇 번 한 적이 없었고
일터에 나가신 어머니 집에 없으면
언제나 혼자서 끓여먹었던 라면
Now, compare the above to Verbal Jint's 2001 song, Overclass. The rhyming phrases are color-coded and underlined:
90년대 말을 잘 기억해 난
힙합을 말하던 대다수가
거센 말투와
어색한 허우대만
찾으려하던 때 한 명의 팬으로서 제발
어서 그 저개발
상태를 벗어나서 크기를 바랬어
그러나 이 문화는
덧없는 언쟁과 함께 무너져 갔어
우리들 안에서
분명히 누군가는
선구자가 되어야만 했어
The difference should be obvious. G.O.D.'s rhyme is forced and mechanical. Other than the final syllable of each sentence, nothing rhymes, and no sentence pairs organically. In contrast, Verbal Jint's rhyme is three-dimensional and progressive. Verbal Jint changes speed and emphases of his lyrics to create parallel structures with clauses of different lengths. Each clause-pair evolves into the next set of rhymes, with the previous pair implying the next. Truly, it is not an exaggeration to say that Verbal Jint is the one who unlocked the true potential of Korean language within the logic of hip hop.

That Korea's hip hop artists were finally able to speak hip hop in their own language had massive implications for Korean hip hop's quest for authenticity. The ability to rap organically in Korean language, by its very nature, projected far more authenticity then any imitation of American rap. The heavy anchor of authenticity was gone. Through the medium of hip hop, Korean artists were finally able to speak in their own voice and tell their own stories.

CB Mass
(source)

This breakthrough allowed Korea's underground hip hop musicians to cross over into the mainstream. CB Mass, for example, became a mainstream sensation as they were able to combine their superb Korean rap with compelling story-telling. As the wall between overground and underground hip hop eroded, the mature Korean language rap began to infiltrate all the way to the ranks of Korea's idol pop. Not even the most "produced" boy band in today's K-pop raps like G.O.D. did in 1999.

As Korean hip hop artists tamed and domesticated the foreign genre, the question of authenticity became more internal. "Realness" in Korean hip hop became the question of expressing authentic experience and emotions--as it should be. Since the early 2000s, Korean hip hop as a whole has showcased the full range of pain, rejection, anger, joy, party, love, finally becoming true to the artist's inner self.

IV.  What's Korean about Korean Hip Hop?

Can Korean hip hop ever be "real"? Many American hip hop aficionados, who zealously guard their own ideal of "real," may scoff at the idea. And they are not without a point. Clearly, hip hop is not of Korea. It is a cultural artifact that Korea imported. And surely, hip hop in Korea is still in the process of becoming localized. Although Korean hip hop has come a long way in the last two decades, there is still no stand-alone "hip hop culture" as one exists in America. Idol groups that use hip hop as a mere device significantly outnumber those who pursue hip hop as a craft. So--if the definition of authenticity is narrow enough, it would preclude Korean hip hop from being real.

But what would be the point of that definition? Find me a part of the world that American pop culture has not touched. Is it not enough to say realness only requires the expression of true inner self? If the artist can successfully operate the vehicle to her desired destination, does it "really" matter where the vehicle comes from?

To hell with the snobs, I say. True authenticity requires no justification, because it justifies itself. Today, Korea's foremost rappers express their genuine selves through intricate rhyme and flow. Listen for yourself, and tell me it's all a lie. I dare you.


-End Notes-

* This comparison comes from 한국 힙합: 열정의 발자취 [Korean Hip Hop: Footsteps of Passion] by Kim Yeong-dae [김영대] et al. (2008).

** In fact, being too American became Yoo Seung-jun's downfall, as he used his U.S. citizenship to avoid Korea's military draft. The public backlash was severe, and his career was over. More background here.

*** The last piece is Poison [독] by Primary, featuring E-Sens of the group Supreme Team, from 2012.

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