Author: Emily Singh

Finding Fletcher—Or Losing Her Audience? From Sapphic Icon to the Queerbaiting/Biphobia Divide

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For longtime subscribers to Real Koreans, hello! It’s Emily—it’s been a while. As you may know, I started this blog to write about things I was passionate about, which was mainly feminism, youth rights, and LGBT community updates in South Korea. I’ve stopped writing for a while, because I was unsure what I had to say about Korea, having moved away in 2014.In my 11th year abroad, I finally know what I have to say, which is the same as back then: writing about things I care about, which will include Korea, but also many other topics, like analysing my favourite arts & culture scenes (like today), how to deal with anti-Asian racism in Europe, and my experiences working in global nonprofits. The sapphic Internet has been up in flames the past three days over a new release from FLETCHER, in which the lesbian icon confesses to being in love with a man. While she last alluded to seeing someone in an interview June last year, there was no build-up to this major pivot in …

The Racism in Government-Funded Korean Language Course Material

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Looking to Learn Korean for Free? Well, Be Prepared for Some Racism I was going through Sejong Institute’s YouTube playlist to find useful material for my Korean tutoring classes. Then I found this. Let me take you down Racist Hill. Commentary at the bottom. The trope of Jeongnam, the Korean master of condescension, ends with him looking at the two black men’s shirts and pointing out “So, you’re the older brother? You look like it”. Here, the narrative is that the black men chose to play the Black Big Brother Trope. Although Jeongnam treats the three group of foreigners in the same condescending way, it is striking how explicitly racist the script is. Let’s look at the three groups of foreigners he interacts with. First, he meets the white American soldiers. With whom he has a brief exchange. This is done in informal/non-honorific language (반말). Second, he meets the Turkish man, “Abdul”. Although Abdul has a considerably more complex script compared to the other three groups, Jeongnam condescends him by (a) Telling him to fix his …

My first racist ‘attack’ in Europe and what I learned from it

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Image source: Daum Blog Caption: Choose the wrong option. (the artist is mocking the idea of racism by using a multiple-choice question format popular in Korean education) Last Friday, I was leaving a supermarket when a group of young, white, mostly male, Dutch people ran up to me, took a photo of me, then ran away laughing. I froze, ran into MediaMarkt, the electronics store next door, which I was headed to originally, and stayed there for a good fifteen minutes before I went outside, looked around and made sure they were gone, got on my bike and pedaled back home. I asked myself if what had happened had really just happened. Yes. I saw the flash. I heard them laugh. I was sure. Back home, I sat down and wrote an angry and descriptive post along the lines of: “To the white, male, Dutch youth who just took a picture of me in front of the supermarket on this street, go fuck yourselves, go get cancer, go crash into a train. Same to the people who have …

Korean Feminism Reins In the Collective Power of the Internet

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, Korean feminism takes advantage of the country’s telecommunications infrastructure and satiric humour to combat misogyny An emerging Feminist movement finds power in the collective power of the Internet Founded on August 6th, 2015, the independent website Megalian.com brands a new type of feminism – one that uses the country’s world-class ICT infrastructure to promote gender equality and to humorously bash misogyny on the Korean web. The name, currently filed for trademark registration by one of its users, is a neologism combining ‘MERS gallery’, the web forum where the movement was born, and ‘Egalia’, of Gerd Brantenberg‘s satiric novel ‘Egalia’s Daughters‘. Megalian.com operates strictly on an anonymous basis, with all members posting under the same nickname, except for notices regarding server maintenance by the site’s administrators, who nevertheless remain anonymous (As of December 2015, the few interviews conducted with its members or admins have not revealed any personal information). The collective movement began in June 2015, when women began to ‘mirror’ the misogynic comments made by male members on DCInside.com, a popular web forum. What was conceived as a minor page dedicated to sharing …

Short post: Books from North Korea

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I recently visited a professor of history and he had some real copies of North Korean history books circulated inside the country. Thought it might be interesting to share. I am guessing the books are not illegal for possession if it’s for academic and research purposes. Complete History of Kim Il-sung History of Joseon (note: North Korea refers to them as “Joseon” while South Korea uses “Hanguk”)

From Joseon to Today: Koreans Women’s sexuality, repressed

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Cruise-themed party at a club in Gangnam Image source: Club Octagon Thought there’d be no slut culture in Korea because of the Neo-Confucianism and the Protestants? Think again! See the clubs at Itaewon, Hongdae and Gangnam lined up with girls wearing dresses barely covering their crotch area! See the couples make out in dark alleys shamelessly! See my neighbour dry-hump by the security gate on the first floor! (No, actually, don’t, it’s painful enough for the other residents as is) I live in a university area. Most students live in “one-rooms”, studios as they are called here. Since the students who live alone mostly do so because their home is far away, it means that for the first time in their lives, they are free to run their lives as they see fit. And this is when people sometimes go crazy, especially women who are sexually suppressed and taught to “be discreet” for the first 19 years of their lives. Story 1: A girl in my building (we took some courses together at university) lives with her …

No! You’re Not Allowed To Talk About Colonization

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[Image description: Koreans rejoice by waving their flags on August 15th, 1945.] Unless you come from a country that was once colonized. It’s like this: I had Stage 4 cancer, and miraculously came back to life after extensive surgery and chemo that took all my hair, health, and life. My partner of 5 years also left me because he couldn’t handle the pain I was in. And then you say “Hey, you used to be overweight, now you’re all thin! Looking great, mate, you should totally get a better guy now, forget about that loser!”. I now reserve the right to slap you with my hand, which shall be studded with sharp metal rings. Some real life examples for you: “Yes, but Japan did bring modern law and railways, which really helped the Korean economy”. You can’t say “But now that Indians all speak English well and all, isn’t it better? You guys can all go to Silicon Valley and work, as soon as you get a job and a visa!”. You can’t say “You …

Where do North Korea and Porn meet on the Internet? On an South Korean IP!

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The pop-up screen from the National Police Agency (May 2014) Early March, I went to a launch party for an NGO called Arirang Institute. It’s mostly Americans and some Koreans working on cultural and reunification studies. What was fascinating was that the NGO is legally registered in the US, and that most members are not Korean. Oh, I should clarify, accessing information on North Korea here is illegal – if you try to access NK-based websites, you will see a screen with a police badge that says “You were stopped from accessing this site because either (1) You are breaching national security; or (2) You are accessing porn sites, or gambling sites” (Yes, it’s illegal to access porn!). One of the founders, who is studying for a PhD at the North Korean Studies University in Seoul, told me that the library does have all those books from North Korea (about Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il’s ideology, propaganda textbooks, and such) but no one is allowed to bring the books out or make personal copies – they are open for …

Why Korean Soldiers Are Banned From Reading Noam Chomsky and Ha-joon Chang

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    Left: Guerrillas of the Samsung Empire, Pressian Books, 2008 Right: Bad Samaritans, Ha-Joon Chang, 2007 In 2008, the National Ministry of Defence was found to have produced a list of 23 “Anti-governmental” books and officially banned them from  the military. An investigation found that under this regulation, all Korean soldiers are banned from reading and/or possessing them, and are subject to having their belongings searched when returning from a holiday (Pressian) (Reminder: All Korean men above the age of 18 must serve in the military for 2 years). The Seoul Central District Court ruled against the first lawsuit filed by 11 publishers and 11 authors in 2012, and they lost their appeal at the Seoul High Court the following year (News1). In both cases, the publishers and authors claimed 200 million KRW (200,000 USD) in damages caused by this censorship. The Seoul High Court’s reasoning is that this action could not be classified as an act of censorship nor as a violation of the freedom of press, since (a) the books were not banned …