Just a quickie

Sorry to bore all my loyal readers that have absolutely zero interest in gender and sexuality issues (which I would guess are the majority), but reading The Grand Narrative, there were three very interesting points that I felt the need to reblog, particularly after Lara's beautiful Grahamstown Slutwalk photos. If you want to read the full post, see here.

The Grand Narrative

Korean Gender Reader

Posted in East Asia, Korean Gender Reader by James Turnbull on November 6, 2011

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1) Korean Men’s Group Demands Ban of Movie You’re my Pet (너는 펫)

As translated at Soompi:

The Korean Men’s Association has filed a petition for an injunction against the film, “You’re My Pet.”
The Korean Men’s Association posted a link on their homepage to a legal petition that will force “You’re My Pet” to cease from playing in theaters. They voiced that the film is degrading to men and the concept of a female “owner” and a male “dog” is sexist and inhumane. They also emphasize their point by asking how people would react if the role was reversed and it was a male owner and a female dog. They ended the note by saying that these kinds of concepts should not be treaded upon, even if it is for entertainment.

Read the rest there.

What do you think? Hat tip to @suzyinseoul and @john_F_power on Twitter for the story, and you can see here, here, here, and here for their own thoughts on it. Also, see here, here, here, and here for some discussion of the differences in the way the male and female actors are portrayed in the posters, which relates to some sexual overtones to the movie that are absent in the original manga.

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3) Slutwalk Korea Having an Impact on Korean Men?

Sure, technically they may not be related (and see here and here if you’ve never heard of Slutwalk), but regardless it’s still great to hear a Korean male celebrity saying that preventing rape is men’s responsibility. As BadMoonRise explains of the above image:

This really caught me as a surprise.
I was watching Strong Heart (a Korean variety talk show)
Dana was talking about her experience in almost being kidnapped as a middle schooler. At the end of the story, one of the other guests asked KHJ “How do you think someone(women) can prevent sexual predators?”
and he responds “Men need to get their act together (a long the lines of “Men need to think clearly” as in “Men need to stop”)”

With apologies, after 45 minutes I’ve been unable to find a clip of that scene itself, although I did find the one of Dana that preceded it:

Badmoonrise reports that the other guests laughed in response to Kim Hyun-joong’s (김현중) comment, which sounds disappointing and confusing: like many people have said, what’s funny about it? But to play Devil’s Advocate, that may more be just have been because of the style of the show, where laughter and overacting is pretty much constant (especially after something as serious as Dana’s story).

Hat tip to I’m No Picasso, and to everyone on Twitter who *ahem* told me who “KJH” was. Also, if anyone knows of any more Korean celebrities – male or female – speaking out against victim-blaming for rape, please let me know.

Update – See Thrive for a more exact translation of what KJH said.

4) “In South Korea, Plastic Surgery Comes Out of the Closet”

A good introductory article from the New York Times, although personally I’m a little skeptical of the claims it makes. While I’ll grant that HDTV and netizens’ sleuthing means that celebrities can no longer hide it, I’m still unaware of any Korean celebrities loudly and proudly admitting that they had any procedures done, at least beyond minimal ones like double-eyelid surgery (but please correct me if you do know of any). Also, the NYT makes a big omission in not mentioning that Korea is one of the only two countries in the OECD where it is legal to require photographs on resumes (the other is Japan), and indeed this leads me to believe that greater acceptance and acknowledgment of cosmetic surgery is probably much more of a bottom-up phenomenon than the NYT makes out.

Update - Make sure to see Johnnie and Angela for some examples of the ensuing numerous Before and After advertisements.

Anything else? Oh yeah, just my awesome weekend! :D Why was it awesome I hear you ask? Well, firstly because Christy and I hit up Myeong-dong on a merciless shopping spree, followed up by delicious Myeongdong Gyoza kalguksu (칼국수) which is heaven in a bowl (the store has two locations in Myeongdong - the main one is across from the back entrance to Forever 21 and the other is near the back entrance of the small H&M but the food is the same at both places. I think there's actually one in Cheongju between the CGV and Homeplus too but I have yet to hit it up.) and then some yummy Redmango yoghurt at what we thought was a Redmango cafe but turned out to be the Cacao Green chocolate cafe. Confusing? Yes, we were too, but it was a delicious lower calorie option than the ice-cream we needed after the garlic kimchi assault from the kalguksu. The cafe also appears to be doing some on-going art project and took a photo for us which our waiter very kindly emailed to us too. I think it turned out very nicely :)

Later that night, and after a power-nap to recuperate from the shopping spree, a few of us headed out for some cocktails and dancing in Hongdae. Thanks to some recent problems (i.e. fighting and drunken violence), the club we went to, Mama Gorilla, had not only no cover charge (hooray!) but also no military douchebags. Not to say that all the guys in the military are like that, but enough of the ones that are make it hard to risk not judging the others to be the same. So excuse the generalisation, but a military-free club is always an immediate allure to people who think it's nice to be able to dance with your friends without some part of your anatomy being grabbed every ten minutes. Having said that, pinching seemed to be the order of the night - not particularly guys trying to cop a feel, just people in general, even when they were trying to walk through the crowd or past a group of other people dancing. It was crowded, like always, but hardly necessary to be so aggressive! Maybe it was just something about me and Christy that made people want to pinch the crap out of us because the others escaped completely pinch-free. Anyway, the music was also pretty good there and they even threw some classics into the mix to keep things interesting. The next morning we headed to the Wolfhound in Itaewon (*ptui ptui* I know, but worth it for the food) for an English breakfast and Eadaoin and I educated Michelle in the proper etiquette of an English breakfast - i.e. black tea only, under no circumstances to have it with coffee. If you must have coffee, save it for after you've filled up the important bits of your stomach.

Now you'd think that would be a pretty good weekend in itself, right? And it was, but then it got even better because I said goodbye to the girls and headed off to see "Hamlet: The Musical" at the Children's Park Theatre in Achasan. When the person who invited me first told me about it, I was immediately intrigued - I do love a good musical (and am perpetually puzzled by people who don't get into them at all) and was keen to see how the play would work as one. It was great! Luckily too, they didn't use the Korean equivalent of Shakespearian English (if one exists) so the song lyrics and script weren't too hard to understand, so I was very proud of myself ^_^ The songs and everything were in a variety of different styles too and there was even one that started off as a jazz number but included a rap. Oh and Claudius' wig was freakin' amazing! Ringlets on a man is always interesting, haha^^  The costumes were also really impressive and the set was both well made and well used, with a kind of turning section in the middle with three different faces that they rotated so the actors could appear to be walking through the castle and such. If you have the time and the sound, check out the sneaky videos I probably illegally took - they're not very good quality because it was so dark and the angle is really low because we were in the second row and I thought it would be pretty obvious if I held my camera up any higher, so sorry.

Anyway, so that was my weekend. How about yours y'all? :)