Opinion - The Korea Times

I black. You, me, same!

By Jason Lim He might be better remembered as the tiny guy yelling, “Do you know, do you know, do you know?” in Nike commercials with Michael Jordan, but Spike Lee provided one of the most seminal moments of my youth growing up in New York City. His movie, “Do the Right Thing,” drove home, for the first time in my life, a dawning awareness that there were tensions among the various ethnic communities in the melting pot. No, it was more fundamental than that. It made me realize that there was more to the world than my family and school friends. That there were other people around me who were invisible to me until then. I still remember cringing in my theater seat as Sonny, the Korean grocer in “Do the Right Thing,” tried to hold off the angry mob with a broom by shouting in a quivering voice, "I no white! I black! You, me, same! We same!" The mob backed off in the movie, more out of pity than anything else. I cringed then because even I didn’t believe Sonny when he said that “I black. You, me, same!” I knew that I certainly wasn’t white, but, then again, I wasn’t black

Jan 19, 2011By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Its my brain, stupid

By Jason Lim The ritual stays the same year after year. As the New Year’s approaches, I grimace and muster up the courage to dig up my previous year’s resolutions and see how I am doing on the achievement meter. Of course, without fail, I am not even close to meeting the high hopes and expectations that I started the year with. But armed with the gift of self-delusion and short memory, I begin the heroic task of putting down a new set of New Year’s resolutions, which looks amazingly like the one from the year before. And the resolutions from the year before look disturbingly like the ones from the year prior. And the year before that. And so on for the years that I actually kept a record of my New Year’s resolutions. In fact, my New Year’s resolutions have remained basically unchanged in the last 10 years, giving truth to the well-known Korean saying, “A decision lasts for only three days,” that so accurately describes my pitiful lack of willpower. This sad state of affairs could have led me to a ghastly bout of self-introspection. However, I was saved by recent spate

Jan 5, 2011By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Merry Crassmas

By Jason Lim The luxurious Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi is taking flak for setting up a Christmas tree estimated to worth $11 million. And it’s not even a real tree. The fake fir tree is decorated with real gold, diamonds, rubies, pearls, and other precious jewels. When accused of overdoing it, the hotel did manage to sound defensive, explaining that the jeweled decorations were on loan from a local jeweler, and the whole thing was a stunt to win the “Most expensively dressed tree” title in the Guinness Book of World Records. Perhaps the record should be retitled, “Most Crass Conspicuous Consumption Resulting in the Worst Distortion of the Christmas Spirit.” But who am I kidding. Trying to find a modicum of genuine Christmas spirit in the materialistic orgy that is today’s Christmas is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. What usually passes for generosity is dropping a dollar bill in the Salvation Army kettle on your way to the holiday sale in the mall. The Abu Dhabi tree is just the latest and one of the most egregious examples of material crassness that perv

Dec 22, 2010By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Korean ninjas in America

By Jason Lim Perhaps it was a part of the renegotiated KORUS FTA package, but until recently, I hadn’t realized that Korean male actors had to transform themselves into ninjas before being allowed to land a movie role in America. But apparently so, judging from Rain’s “Ninja Assassin,” Lee Byung-heon’s “Rise of the Cobra,” and, most recently, Jang Dong-gun’s “The Warrior’s Way.” To tell you the truth, they all did a fabulous job, and the amount of work that they put in to make themselves seem authentic to the role is certainly admirable. So I wasn’t in the least bit surprised when rumors surfaced about Rain being the leading contender to play the role of Bruce Lee in the remake of the “Return of the Dragon.” Although each movie will experience varying degrees of mainstream commercial success, there is no doubt that Korean male actors are breaking new grounds when it comes to Asian actors in Hollywood. Or, are they? On second thought, maybe not; in essence, they are just tramping on the same path that pioneers such as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan have already blazed. More pr

Dec 10, 2010By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Man in the mirror leadership

By Jason Lim Can it be over 20 years already? I still remember it like yesterday seeing Michael Jackson perform his mega hit, ``Man in the Mirror,” during the 1988 Grammy’s with such power and dynamism that left those watching, including me, alternatively holding their breath and gasping for air. Therefore, I was glad to see the song brought back into the spotlight recently in Korea by John Park during his impressive second place run in the wildly popular “Superstar K2,” Korea’s version of “American Idol.” Listening to the song again also got me thinking about the lyrics and how powerfully they resonated with me back then and even now because the song spoke about change. More precisely, change within me. In the last 25 years, leadership studies have become a multibillion dollar industry in the U.S. Books such as “Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman, “Leadership On the Line” by Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky, “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, among countless others, have become perennial bestsellers not just in the U.S. but across the globe. Despite the boom in the

Nov 24, 2010By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Koreas collective neurosis

By Jason Lim I recently went into a discount furniture outlet near where I live and immediately found a petite Indian woman on my heels armed with the nice smile and predatory gaze of a typical sales person. In making small talk, she asked me whether I was Chinese. I said no. How about Vietnamese? I said no again. Then you must be Japanese? She was less certain. No, I told her, finally giving up. I am Korean. Then her face lit up a ton, and I knew what was coming. Actually, I dreaded what was coming. But she was going to ask it anyway. Are you a North Korean or South Korean? She was filled with the self-importance of knowledge, proud that she knew that there were two Koreas that I could be from. I guess that she wasn’t entirely wrong. But since there are about 3 million immigrants from South Korea (give or take a half-million of so) and 100 North Korean refugees who have resettled in the States, chances are that any random Korean in America is originally from South Korea. Not to mention the fact that a North Korean would have to risk torture, death, starvation, freezing col

Nov 8, 2010By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

When our children dont look Korean

By Jason Lim One of the enduring founding myths in Korea is that Korean people are ethnically ― and exclusively ― homogenous. Which is nonsense, of course. Korea was peopled by an organic and complex mixture of various groups from both North and South Asia. Recent studies show that Koreans have genetic affinities with Manchurians, Yunnan-Chinese from southern China, and Vietnamese, which all goes to show that humans have been migrating for thousands of years and intermixing with local populations to create new ones. However, until now, migrations have been a slow and incremental process. This gave different population groups time to blend into one another genetically, physically, and culturally, giving rise to a new group self-identity to evolve over time. Not anymore. Economic globalization and mass transportation have conspired to drive large numbers of different peoples to various places around the world in years, not centuries. America is no longer the only melting pot. In the last decade, Europe has seen a dramatic rise in immigrant populations with South Asians in Bri

Oct 25, 2010By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Pornographization of Tablo

By Jason Lim For the last few weeks, Korean news media has been filled with long, intellectual, and often smug social essays on what happened to Tablo. Just in case you live under a rock, let me summarize. Eric Lee, better known as Tablo of the Korean hip-hop group Epik High, had been accused by members of a specific portal site group of falsely claiming that he got his bachelors and masters from Stanford in five years. Tablo ignored the accusation at first; he probably didn’t want to give validity to the accusations by addressing it in any way, especially since it was so patently ridiculous. However, the accusation soon resonated among South Korean netizens, and Tablo was forced to produce a diploma, transcript, and other documents testifying to his academic credentials. Unfortunately for Tablo, mere proof wasn’t enough to put the malicious rumors to rest, as they were continually fanned by the portal site group dogging his every move and inventing problems with any evidence that Tablo proffered. Eventually, he had to take a TV news crew to the Stanford Campus and visited

Oct 11, 2010By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Mainstreaming Korea

By Jason Lim Today, the bustling streets of Manhattan are filled with a ubiquitous Korean presence, whether they be young and fresh exchange students on their way to Columbia, NYU, or Parsons, well-heeled Deli owners ordering around their employees, or call taxi drivers along Broadway and 32nd gesturing at random pedestrians to hop in. And it’s not just New York City. Drive a few hours south and you’ll find Washington, D.C.’s streets also filled with a lively Korean cultural presence. Step into a local California Pizza Kitchen and you will find a special menu item featuring a Bulgogi Taco. Step out into K-street during business lunch hours and you might have to stand in line for a bibimbap cart or a rice bar cart featuring the spiciest Korean food this side of DuPont Circle. This is especially noteworthy because it tells me that Korean culture is no longer defined by its ``Koreanness” as much as by its appeal to the main stream American consumers. Korean food is no longer an exotic something that you have to go to a special place to try out. Korean food is becoming somethi

Sep 27, 2010By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Kollaboration in DC, Yeah!

By Jason Lim I just heard that Margaret Cho, the original Korean American standup comedienne, will star in the hit reality TV show, ``Dancing with the Stars.” I had totally lost track of her more than 15 years ago and found her rather strange when she became the underground Queen of San Francisco, transforming her act into an outlandish combination of black-robed ``The Cure” and the foul-mouthed Sam Kinison with a sadomasochistic twist. But I know that I will be pulling for her on ``Dancing with the Stars” because she was one of my heroes growing up. She was one of the first Asian Americans, let alone Koreans, who forced the mainstream media to take notice through the sheer power of her talent. Although her sitcom lasted less than a season, I still remember sitting glued to the TV and watching in amazement as Margaret Cho, so obviously Korean by her looks, captivated a mostly white mainstream audience and had them rolling with laughter. ``I’m Korean,” she would muse in her opening act, pausing and letting the audience fully take in her Korean face. ``But I don’t own a

Sep 13, 2010By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Read more

I black. You, me, same!

Its my brain, stupid

Merry Crassmas

Korean ninjas in America

Man in the mirror leadership

Koreas collective neurosis

When our children dont look Korean

Pornographization of Tablo

Mainstreaming Korea

Kollaboration in DC, Yeah!

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