Opinion - The Korea Times

Korean men triggered by pinch symbol

By Jason LimAn San, a member of the Korean women's archery team, won three gold medals in the Tokyo Summer Games. You would think that would earn her unconditional acclaim from all Koreans, especially since she achieved them in Japan. Apparently, however, her short haircut, attendance at a women-only university, and specific expressions used in her past social media posts drew suspicions of her as a potential feminist, attracting online attacks from presumably young Korean men. These suspicions quickly devolved from there into a surreal fight between those supporting An and petitioning the Korean Archery Association not to force An to apologize for being a feminist and those who were accusing An of being a feminist and demanding that she apologize or renounce her gold medals.If you are wondering when being a feminist became something that you had to apologize for, then welcome to the club. However, for some men in South Korea, the term carries radical anti-men connotations that rub particularly young Korean men the wrong way. And it seems that lots of seemingly innocuous things rub y

Aug 8, 2021By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Olympics and multiculturalism

By Jason Lim“Hafu” is the term that's used in Japan to denote someone born from parents of different ethnicities. Apparently, 35 members of the 583-strong Japanese Olympic team are multi-ethnic. What undoubtedly struck me watching the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics was seeing the tennis champion Naomi Osaka, daughter of a Haitian father and Japanese mother, a hafu, light the cauldron after walking up the mock-up of Mount Fuji. It's not something that could have happened back in 1964 when Tokyo hosted its first Olympics as a part of its coming-of-age party to the world. Japan is significant to Korea in multiple ways, mostly due to geographical proximity and past history. However, it's Korea's future that can be foretold in Japan's now. Korea has mirrored Japan's post-World War II paths in so many ways that Japan's trends almost seem like Korea's inevitability. Sure, Korea might have amplified upon what Japan has done in terms of industry, pop-culture, etc. but, in many key ways, especially demographics, Korea is walking in her neighbor's footsteps.This is certainly

Jul 25, 2021By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

From Korean War to armistice

By Jason LimGrowing up in Korea, the Korean War was always referred to by the date when it started: 625, for June 25, 1950, the date when well-armed North Koreans invaded South Korea across the 38th parallel. Referring to important historic events by their dates is typical in Korea, so I never questioned that 625 was the definitive term we would use to refer to the Korean War.However, more recently, the date 727 made its way into the mainstream narrative of the Korean War. July 27, 1953, was the date when the armistice was signed, pausing the Korean War that continues to this day. It was supposed to be followed by a treaty that would mark the official end of the war, but that never happened. Seeing that Koreans never refer to historic events by their end dates, how did 727 enter into the Korean War lexicon?Well, I had the privilege to witness this process. There is an oft-quoted maxim by Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has.” In this case, however, it was essenti

Jul 11, 2021By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

We don't live on Planet Vulcan

By Jason LimAn Economist article titled, “Closing the world's schools caused children great harm,” made the point that governments around the world closed schools for two-thirds of the school year due to the pandemic, even though the probability of a child between the ages of 5 to 14 years old dying from COVID-19 was only one in 500,000. The implication is that governments made a hasty decision that unnecessarily took educational opportunities away from children. Talk about Monday morning quarterbacking… COVID-19 is the only pandemic in more than a century, which means that practically no one currently alive ever had the experience of living through one before. Even if someone did, the socioeconomic norms that tacitly govern today's societies would be unrecognizable compared to those of 1918, when the Spanish flu killed over 50 million around the world. Therefore, anyone in a position of authority who had to make a decision that could literally impact the life and death of millions upon millions of people had to make that decision as one of the biggest unknowns in

Jun 27, 2021By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Hell Joseon comes home to roost

By Jason LimThis past week, Lee Jun-seok, 36, became the youngest ever to take the leadership of a main political party. Lee will now lead the conservative main opposition People Power Party (PPP), as it tries to win back the presidency next year. While Lee's been around for about 10 years ever since he was recruited by former President Park Geun-hye basically as window dressing for her appeal to younger voters, he has held his own since then against much more experienced and well-heeled politicians. Nevertheless, nobody expected a Lee victory this time around, especially against two well-entrenched veterans of party politics. His meteoric rise can be seen as an extension of the narrative that brought defeat to the ruling party during the April mayoral by-elections, and overwhelming disapproval of the status quo by the young male electorate against the current system. It was this same demographic that propelled Lee's victory this time around. It's almost as if the “Hell Joseon” that has been brewing over the last decade has come home to roost and caused this seismic disru

Jun 13, 2021By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Les Miserables Coreennes

By Jason LimIf you think I am talking about the famous novel by Victor Hugo, you are wrong. Rather, I am channeling another famous French man in Nostradamus by predicting the future state of Korea circa 2050: a country filled with a bunch of miserable, lonely old people surviving on alternative facts and conspiracy theories. In a Bloomberg article titled, “South Korea Crosses a Population Rubicon in Warning to the World,” Sam Kim recently wrote a wonderfully informative article about Korea's impending demographic doom. We have been forewarned about this for at least a decade, but Kim framed the problem in a way that really pops out: “The typical age of a new mother in South Korea is 32, according to the National Statistics Office. The number of births per woman sank to a record low of 0.84 last year, the lowest rate in the world; in Seoul the rate is 0.64. The United Nations estimates that by 2050, Korea's share of elderly people will become the largest of any country.”This being Bloomberg, the article then goes on to focus on the economic impacts of an ageing

May 30, 2021By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Metastasis of moral judgment

By Jason LimThe craziness came on suddenly. In northern Virginia, where I live, everything was normal on Tuesday. Coming back from a quick errand on Tuesday afternoon, my wife stopped by a local gas station to fill up. Nothing was amiss. By Tuesday evening, however, cars were lining up around the block to fill up not only their cars, but all manners of tanks, drums, and other creative storage vessels. Within hours, most of the gas stations near my neighborhood had hastily handwritten notes taped on their pumps, apologetically informing customers that they had run out of gasoline. Then we saw that it wasn't just us. In fact, it was worse down in the southeastern states, from Georgia to North Carolina. The mainstream news and social media alike were lit up with random videos of people panic-buying gas in huge bulk. Hardware stores must have made a killing selling gas canisters, because those red plastic containers certainly made lots of appearances everywhere. I even saw a guy basically fill up what looked like a hot-tub-sized tank on the bed of his pickup truck. I also watched incredu

May 16, 2021By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Academic wokeness, Korean style

By Jason LimIn a 2008 article titled, “Elite Korean Schools, Forging Ivy League Skills,” the New York Times wrote about how successful specialized South Korean high schools had been in developing high-performing students geared to getting accepted into top Ivy League schools in the U.S. How successful were they? If SAT scores are a key performance indicator, then, “Their (Daewon) average combined SAT score was 2203 out of 2400. By comparison, the average combined score at Phillips Exeter, the New Hampshire boarding school, is 2085. Sixty-seven Daewon graduates had perfect 800 math scores.”These high schools were pretty successful, I say. From the New York Times' descriptions of these schools ― Daewon Foreign Language High School and Korean Minjok Leadership Academy ― I get the impression that they are more of an Olympics-style training facility for gifted athletes, rather than what we would usually think of as “schools.” For many years, the academic excellence of these schools was a source of pride for Korea, until recently. In the past few days, i

May 2, 2021By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Raging helplessness of Sewol

By Jason LimMy social media page was covered with remembrances and self-condolences about the Sewol tragedy that happened seven years ago this week. I am sure that I am not an exception. Sewol occupies an outsized place in recent Korean history. It's only a slight exaggeration that the spectacular downfall of President Park Geun-hye's administration began with the sinking of the Sewol ferry and the recriminations following the government's botched and opaque response to the sinking. Who can forget the questions about the seven hours that Park was absent in the immediate aftermath? What is it about Sewol that has such a hold on the Korean psyche? It's not that Korea hasn't had its share of tragedies. The Sampoong Department Store collapse and Seongsu Bridge collapse in the mid-nineties were arguably more shocking and killed more people. In fact, the first half of the whole twentieth century that started with the Japanese subjugation and ended with the devastating fratricidal war was one long-running tragedy. But Sewol was different. Perhaps that's because it was the first tragedy that

Apr 18, 2021By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter'

By Jason LimThis is the movie that came to mind when I first heard about the whole brouhaha surrounding the cancellation of “Joseon Exorcist,” a K-drama that took extensive liberties with historical figures in the early decades of the 1392-1910 Joseon Kingdom. While I understand that King Sejong is one of the most revered figures in Korean history, Abraham Lincoln is probably not too far behind in the annals of American history. Yet, the movie about Abraham Lincoln hunting down and killing vampires was panned by the poor execution of the movie and not by the patently false premise. How is Sejong killing evil spirits more offensive to Koreans than Lincoln killing vampires? Yet, it was, and led to the cancellation of the series only after two airings. What's even more confounding is that the Netflix drama series “Kingdom” basically told a similar story of a Joseon prince leading a fight against zombies in the midst of palace intrigue. And that one was a huge hit. So, what was it about “Joseon Exorcist” that triggered this reaction among the Korean pu

Apr 4, 2021By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Read more

Korean men triggered by pinch symbol

Olympics and multiculturalism

From Korean War to armistice

We don't live on Planet Vulcan

Hell Joseon comes home to roost

Les Miserables Coreennes

Metastasis of moral judgment

Academic wokeness, Korean style

Raging helplessness of Sewol

'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter'

Top 5 stories