The Korea Times

'The Silent Sea': Not bad out of 10

A scene from "The Silent Sea" / Courtesy of NetflixBy David A. TizzardWhile acknowledging the genuine popularity and success of hallyu products around the world over the last couple of years, I've often had a slightly different take on some of the biggest hits. Despite the welcome inclusion and representation of a transgender character and a Ghanaian-Korean, I thought Itaewon Class had a ridiculous plot and lost its way heavily in the mid-point of the series, if not earlier. BTS are the world's biggest boyband at the moment, but their recent all-English hits (“Butter” and “Dynamite”) purchased from western songwriters seem to be reinforcing occidental hegemonic cultural power rather than challenging it with anything particularly new or Korean. And I often wonder if many of those caught up in the controversy surrounding the new drama, “Snowdrop,” have actually watched it and realized it's a teen romance, more akin to a Disney feature than anything pretending to present an authentic and accurate portrayal of real Korean history and democracy. In sayi

Jan 1, 2022By David A. Tizzard

Opinion

Is Korean law fair? (Part two)

Courtesy of David Geitgey SierralupeBy David A. TizzardFor the last few months, the television, newspapers and social media have been dominated by the lives and scandals of Korea's political elite. Back and forth they go, making accusations, reveling in each other's misfortunes, and using the law as a means to serve their own goals rather than to protect citizens. As if it weren't enough that more and more stories reveal how the country's top lawmakers have personal and family histories that often fall well short of the legal and moral standards required of everyone else, we have been given an extra treat to talk about this Christmas with the release of a host of “political prisoners.” Former lawmaker Lee Seok-gi, former Prime Minister Han Myeong-sook and former President Park Geun-hye have all benefited from amnesty over the past few days. There is talk of former Justice Minister Cho Kuk's wife and former President Lee Myung-bak being afforded similar treatment. Releasing people like them a few months before an upcoming election is clearly political. It's all designed to

Dec 26, 2021By David A. Tizzard

Opinion

K-Hitchens and North Korea: A decade of death and dictatorship

Courtesy of Kai SchreiberBy David A. TizzardThis week marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Christopher Hitchens, columnist, orator and public intellectual famed for his drinking, charm, wit and polemics. Hitchens was human: fallible and emotional, yet at the same time kind, poetic and capable of great artistry with the English language. God was certainly not on his Christmas card list, neither were the Clintons, Mother Theresa or Princess Diana. But he was principled and stood by many people, including former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.Hitchens spent time with the former president in the United States and then accompanied him back to South Korea in 1985 despite the repeated threats, murder attempts and suffocating presence of a brutal military dictatorship led by Chun Doo-hwan. Hitchens described Kim as a rare man, unwilling to compromise his principles to preserve his own safety. He closed out an article in Mother Jones saying, “Kim never resorts to anti-Japanese rhetoric, though his grievances against the Japanese authorities are genuine… At the slight r

Dec 18, 2021By David A. Tizzard

K-Hitchens and North Korea: A decade of death and dictatorship

Opinion

Rumors of impurity

Courtesy of WHBy David A. TizzardIt feels somewhat peculiar to write about women in Korea because I'm neither a woman nor Korean. I also don't think that there is a singular female experience in Korea. Women's personal experiences differ greatly across time, class, and many other factors. Nevertheless, nationwide statistics paint an all too familiar and distressing story. They show Korean women incredibly far behind their OECD counterparts in terms of boardroom participation, political representation, wage gap, parental leave, and a host of other factors. Dry statistics also fail to account for the more psychological and existential fears many women feel in society. There has been a great deal of progress in the past century here in Korea. Such progress is not to say that the current situation is desirable nor is it to make an excuse for what is seen as acceptable today, of course. However, it is just to make that point that Korea is not Canada, the United Kingdom or Germany. History matters, as does culture. Those who ignore it fail to understand problems in their true context.At th

Dec 12, 2021By David A. Tizzard

Opinion

Resistance to violence in Korea

Courtesy of PascalBy David A. TizzardJinu sees himself as a humble musician who focuses on providing solidarity to those suffering from oppression, violence and health problems. This week he spoke to me about his experiences and why, as an individual, he has decided to try and take a stand while no-one else will do so. He describes having seen firsthand young hired thugs (called “yeong-yeok” in Korean) and police carry out acts of violence against the workers of Noryangjin fish market in central Seoul; workers who are often elderly women. The workers are decent people, citizens of the city who enjoy trot music, television dramas, and living the lives they have. Yet water cannons and excavators are used to forcibly move those who don't agree with government plans to relocate them to new premises.The new fish market into which the vendors are expected to move is described by some as a collusion between government and large financial enterprises. No longer a public market supported by officials and taxpayers' money to provide quality goods at reasonable prices, the responsib

Dec 4, 2021By David A. Tizzard

Opinion

Twitter or television?

Courtesy of MattysFlicksBy David A. TizzardStephen Fry suggested this week that “social media is a lavatory wall.” Essential, capable of providing anonymity and security when we need it most, yet basically surrounded by a load of old crap and home to glory holes and spycams. It's a place where ideas are scrawled by anyone and everyone, often without consideration of the consequences. A soapbox. A place to vent: to be outrageous. You can declare your love for Suzie, rage war against Junho, or just put a silly picture of a cat for no reason. Social media, and Twitter in particular, talks of hot-button topics. There has to be news, outrage, something happening every morning. Hashtags fly. If there weren't, we would probably have to learn about Twitter users' lives instead. Imagine the horror! If you want to see Twitter at its worse, have a look on a day when something of reasonable importance happens: Everyone shares the same information just to make sure you don't miss it ― for the 500th time. Each user feeling that they are in some way creating reality, shaping a narrative

Nov 27, 2021By David A. Tizzard

Opinion

Neon Bunny: A new Korean cosmos

Courtesy of HillaryBy David A. TizzardMusic needs space. Claude Debussy, Miles Davis, and many others knew this. It's not always what you play; it's the gaps, the intervals, the meditations and the silence between the noise that really resonate. Nothing is louder than silence. Unfortunately, that silence is often hard to find in modern life. A constant barrage of shorts, jingles, and government alerts beep, tweet and ring from our pockets. We sleep with podcasts on. Netflix automatically plays the next episode of the drama we're not really interested in but everyone else is watching. And music has to hit us within the first 10 seconds, otherwise we skip and scroll down. Influential songwriter and producer Tat Tong, a man whose discography has gone 80x platinum, echoed this sentiment in a recent video upload to LinkedIn. Explaining how he listens to demos, Tat says, “I listen to it the way a listener with a very ADHD attention span would. I start the track. Does it grab me instantly? Is there something cool about it? If there's something that throws me off, I skip it.”This

Nov 22, 2021By David A. Tizzard

Opinion

The metaverse as capitalist nonsense

Courtesy of Elif AyiterBy David A. TizzardI don't want to live in the metaverse. Multimillion dollar companies' insistence on intoxicating us with sentimentality, hooking us on disposable simulated emotions, ubiquitous visibility and the hyper-clarity of a digital world are the themes of innumerable sci-fi novels and films and they never have a happy ending. Despite the over-egged emphasis on individuality, choice and existentialism supported by oblique references to Jung, Nietzsche and Freud by corporate entities that use philosophical ideas as concepts to sell products, rather than having any genuine understanding of the work, the metaverse is someone else's creation. Someone else's sandbox. Not yours. Not mine. Not ours. Your participation in such a place profits others first and foremost, and I mean it literally profits other people in financial terms. After all, this venture would not have gotten past the boardroom if it wasn't destined to make other people incredibly rich and you and your life (virtual or otherwise) the source of all that money. The metaverse is not an egalitar

Nov 14, 2021By David A. Tizzard

Opinion

Cultural appropriation: Inside and out

Courtesy of USAG HumphreysBy David A. Tizzard2021-11-05(코리아타임스)Last week I sat down with Yu Jung-ahn (Daisy), a former member of the K-pop group Momoland, for a chat about life inside one of the world's most talked about industries. When our conversation was eventually released as a podcast, two things immediately became clear. First, the adoration fans around the world have for these idols is tangible and genuine. Second, these idols, despite the amazing choreography, curated existence, and incredible looks, are humans just like us. Despite our talk covering a wide range of subjects, from fancams (appreciated, useful, but sometimes weird), mental health (not enough focus on it), training (hard), and creativity (little), the K-pop media outlets that picked up on our chat seemed to focus on one aspect of it: cultural appropriation. And it was perhaps easy to see why. The topic generated a huge response and provoked really strong reactions. Fans were attacking each other online, each accusing the other's bias of having fallen foul of a costume, hairstyle, or video that used a cultural

Nov 6, 2021By David A. Tizzard

Opinion

Foreigners, Halloween and xenophobia

Courtesy of Neil CummingsBy David A. TizzardAbout 10 days ago, I began seeing local television news warning viewers that COVID-19 infection numbers would increase during Halloween, claiming that foreigners would be in Itaewon partying and not respecting the nation's social distancing guidelines. The narrative being constructed was unambiguous and early. It was also playing into ready-held stereotypes and beliefs. This situation meant that the narrative was easily disseminated and accepted without too much cognitive dissonance or thought. Moreover, this narrative was of course all being communicated in Korean and largely unobserved by the non-Korean speaking population of the country. Over the past few days, we have seen the population of residents of foreign nationality become more aware of these reports. There has been outcry at what is seen as unhospitable attitudes toward those of foreign nationality living and working here. Others point to the hypocrisy of relaxing guidelines during the traditional holiday of Chuseok, then tightening them for a western holiday, only to then comme

Oct 31, 2021By David A. Tizzard

Gov't warns of strict response to foreigners violating COVID-19 rules

David A. Tizzard

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'The Silent Sea': Not bad out of 10

Is Korean law fair? (Part two)

K-Hitchens and North Korea: A decade of death and dictatorship

Rumors of impurity

Resistance to violence in Korea

Twitter or television?

Neon Bunny: A new Korean cosmos

The metaverse as capitalist nonsense

Cultural appropriation: Inside and out

Foreigners, Halloween and xenophobia

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