Opinion - The Korea Times

Korea and Kakao: '503 service temporarily unavailable'

By Jason LimMy elderly parents moved into an apartment condo in New Jersey a few years ago when they found that they couldn't upkeep a single-family house any longer due to increasing frailty. Before they moved in, they had some renovations done to their kitchen and bathrooms to make them modern, clean, and stylish. Recently, however, they started smelling a foul odor coming from their bathrooms. Despite multiple tries, they couldn't diagnose the source of the problem and had to tolerate the sewage-smelling odor until the latest batch of plumbers discovered that the former contractor hadn't connected the toilet pipes correctly and that human waste had literally been piling up. In short, while the outside of the apartment looked spic and span, the underlying infrastructure was shoddy. As I write this, Kakao services are still down due to a fire in the SK data center that many large IT companies in Korea use to house their data. While the fire was extinguished fairly quickly, it still takes time to bring the power back up. After a few hours, the co-heads of Kakao posted a message that

Oct 16, 2022By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Everything everywhere all at once

By Jason LimIt seems as if everything is going to hell all at once. You have the Russia-Ukraine war, with the always constant threat of a catastrophic nuclear exchange just below the horizon. You have Iranian women and young people violently pushing back against the suffocating rule of a fundamentalist theocracy. You have the Chinese being locked up in their own houses for months at a time, often not able to provide for their basic necessities, at the mercy of a central government hellbent on an unrealistic “zero COVID” policy. In the same country, you have the ongoing suppression and destruction of the Uighur people, which the U.N. documented in its recent report. You also have the stateless Rohingya refugees, forgotten by the world, eking out an existence in no man's land in Bangladesh, not able to educate their children and give them a future. You have the ongoing military coup d'etat in Myanmar that is brutally suppressing its people and executing democracy activists with seeming impunity. You have Burkina Faso with its second military coup d'etat in less than a year

Oct 2, 2022By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

I look at myself but I can't see me

By Jason LimA few years ago, my little boy and I were talking over dinner about how our respective days went. He was trying to narrate a story and was differentiating himself from the other kids in his class. He used a word that I never forgot. He said, “Not me, that was for the real American kids.” I feebly protested, “But you are a real American, too.” He nodded, somewhat impatiently. “I know, but you know.” And I did. We always taught our boy that he was a full American although he is a hyphenated American: Korean-American. I don't think he's confused about his Americanness. But when he said, “real American kids,” we both knew he meant the white kids that made up the bulk of his classmates. He didn't mean anything by it. It was just a descriptor he used because he picked up through various social and cultural cues that white kids were more authentically American than someone who looked like him, despite the best efforts of his parents and the school. That exchange took me back to when I was growing up in the Bronx, going to a private

Sep 4, 2022By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

We are all toxic

By Jason LimWhen I first landed in Queens, New York City, as a 12-year-old immigrant, the only time I saw the word, “toxic,” was on a warning label affixed to a drain opener plastic container in a supermarket. In a similar vein, the imagery that I associated with “toxic” was the skull and crossbones icon used to denote something as poisonous. In a word, “toxic” was something that was serious, lethal and rare. Moreover, things were toxic, not humans. Today, I encounter toxicity everywhere I turn, especially in the context of relationships advice. A friend of mine posted a link to an article in The Atlantic by Kaitlyn Tiffany titled, “That's it. You're dead to me,” that really resonated because it articulated the discomfort that I had been subconsciously feeling in the last few years as the U.S. and the rest of the world seemed to careen into deepening sociopolitical division and contempt of our fellow citizens. Tiffany writes, “I don't know who needs to hear this, a tweet will begin, suggesting that almost anyone might need to hear

Aug 21, 2022By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Brain freeze in two languages

By Jason LimI was born and raised in Seoul until I was nine years old. Then we emigrated to Asuncion, Paraguay and spent about two-and-a-half years there before landing in New York City where I grew into young adulthood. So, that means that I was immersed in three different languages in the first twenty years of my life with little exposure to the other languages when submerged in the culture of the dominant language. Naturally, I have been fascinated by how different languages play within my own brain. So, this is where I stand today several decades later. As far as Spanish goes, I can't understand it or speak it. I only lived in Paraguay for a little over 2 years, so it wasn't long enough for me to become fluent. Also, as Paraguay was a stopover to America, I went to school only about half the time I was there, spending the final year before our departure studying English in a private school. Strangely enough, however, I feel emotionally at home hearing spoken Spanish. I don't understand what's being said and certainly can't speak it, but the rhythm and sound of the language as the

Aug 7, 2022By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

North Korean fishermen or murderers?

By Jason Lim The first legitimate political bombshell of the new Yoon administration is here. It's about the forced repatriation of the two North Korean squid fishermen who confessed to killing 16 of their fellow crew members after being captured by the South Korean Navy in November 2019. After a three-day investigation by South Korean authorities, the two North Korean men were sent back to North Korea for having committed “heinous crimes.” Although there is criticism over the hurried nature of the investigation and decision to repatriate, most seem to agree even now that these two men, by their own admission, committed heinous crimes. The crux of the controversy is less about the fact of the crimes than about due process. Here is where the Republic of Korea's Constitution comes in, especially three places that are particularly interesting when seen in the context of this issue. One, the Preamble reads, “We, the people of Korea, proud of a resplendent history and traditions dating from time immemorial, upholding the cause of the Provisional Republic of Korea Go

Jul 24, 2022By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Abe and Ito

By Jason LimIn his Friday article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Shinzo Abe Shooting Recalls Japan's Prewar History of Political Violence,” Peter Landers writes, “The shooting recalls Japan's turbulent pre-World War II era, when assassinations occurred more frequently and were used as a political tool. One of Japan's most influential and longest-serving prime ministers, Hirobumi Ito, was killed in 1909 ― after he had left office ― at a train station in what is now northeast China. The assassin was a Korean nationalist who objected to Japan's colonization of the Korean peninsula, which the Tokyo government completed the following year.”On the surface, the facts are accurate. Both Abe and Ito were former prime ministers who were shot to death by a lone gunman who had issues with their actions. Ah, but what a difference context makes. You don't need to say his name out loud to know that the Korean nationalist assassin was Ahn Jung-geun, one of the primary heroes of Korea's independence lore of the early 20th century. He is a household name in Korea and well-r

Jul 10, 2022By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

AI can never be human

By Jason LimThe world is often filled with imprecise words in such numbers that I often feel that I am drowning in the verbose inanities of language. But we must communicate for that's what makes us human. As such, we bravely dive into the foaming sea of words and grasp those few to which we choose to imbue certain meanings, as people utter them at us, twisting them with the inherent biases and mental constructs that are uniquely our own. Which, needless to say, are different from the biases and mental constructs of the person who uttered those words to us in the first place. It's a wonder we can understand each other at all. Perhaps that's why we end up saying stupid things to each other most of the time. “Out, out brief candle. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” Thank you, Macbeth. You were underappreciated. All this is to say that human beings are, first and foremost, meaning making beings. That's what defines who we are, why we live, whom we love, whom we kill…etc. If we are honest, our lives are insufferably predictable and boring.

Jun 26, 2022By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Renormalizing Seoul

By Jason LimI spent these past few days on a business trip to Seoul. It was interesting timing in that it feels to me that Korea is just starting to come out of many of its COVID-19 restrictions and renormalize. On the surface, it was the same Seoul that I have always known: very crowded. The sheer number of people in the subways, streets and shops comes at you with an almost physical force. You have to walk sideways and pick your way through the crowd to get to places. You have to think of pre-positioning your location while waiting for the subway or crossing a street so as to facilitate the next movement as efficiently as possible. With the crowd comes the urgency and almost aggressive intent of physical movement that's very focused with little mental space to look around. You can't be lost. You can't waver. You have to know where you want to go all the time. Seoul doesn't allow for mental, physical or emotional idleness. You have to be constantly on the move, with specific intent. Seoul aspires to be very rich. The ostentatiousness of wealth is difficult to ignore. I have seen mor

Jun 12, 2022By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

'Depp sadness'

By Jason LimIt's always jarring to see the idols of your youth turn into an unfortunate spectacle right in front of your eyes. This happened to ― among many others ― Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and now, Johnny Depp. I was too young to experience Elvis and Michael as they were at the beginning of their careers, except for snippets of old videos on Ed Sullivan shows and Jackson Five performances. So, when they turned into unrecognizable, larger-than-life caricatures ― more akin to bad modern art than actual, relatable people ― it was more of a rubbernecking exercise than anything else. However, I consumed Johnny Depp as a pop culture product when he became the star of “21 Jump Street” in the 1980s. He was a part of my youth. I felt emotionally invested in Johnny Depp as an actor, as he took on different roles and was a famous person of my times, as my life and his marched on through the same decades. This isn't unlike the many pop culture heroes that we all experience when young that we track throughout the ups and downs of their careers. In short, I liked him. That was

May 29, 2022By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Read more

Korea and Kakao: '503 service temporarily unavailable'

Everything everywhere all at once

I look at myself but I can't see me

We are all toxic

Brain freeze in two languages

North Korean fishermen or murderers?

Abe and Ito

AI can never be human

Renormalizing Seoul

'Depp sadness'

Top 5 stories