The Iceberg

Last night I posted some photos of the girl group Jewelry – a successful group in the Korean market. But for every successful group or singer rolled off the assembly line there are about fifty or so who, for one reason or another, aren’t.

I met a girl four years ago who was a member of one such group. Her name is Kim D.H. (I won’t use her full name here because I know her personally and she’s no longer in the public eye). When I first met her, she and the other members of her group were preparing for the release of their debut CD. The girls had known each other for just a few months. They were individually selected from among hundreds of aspiring performers at a set of tryouts and then introduced to one another. The managing agency provided an apartment for them in southern Seoul and ordered the girls to move in together in order to build a rapport with each other.

Over the next few months the girls recorded pre-written songs and learned pre-choreographed dance moves for their debut. They attended promotional events together. Oh, and they took lessons. Singing, dancing, grace, public speaking, and even English – all paid for by the record company. On weekends, they usually went home to spend time with their families.

Alas, success was not theirs to be had. According to D.H., the managers squabbled over the group’s image and sound, the girls’ hearts were not entirely into it, and in the end the record label ran into financial trouble. About a year after its creation, the group broke up. D.H. returned to her family’s home and enrolled in university. I haven’t spoken to her for about four months but the last I heard she was close to receiving a degree in computer programming. She still keeps in touch with the other girls but said she wants nothing more to do with the entertainment business.

Occidentalism reports on the president of the Intercontinental Hotel in Seoul (I believe his name is 노브렌) likening one variation of the Korean “bomb” drink (폭탄주) to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in front of the Japanese ambassador to Seoul.

Obviously this goes beyond tactless behavior, but I’ll leave discussion of the inappropriateness of his remarks to other bloggers. What jumps out at me is the wackiness of a public presentation on pounding alcohol by the president of a major company. Who does this guy think he is? John Belushi?

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been known to imbibe on occasion and have nothing against it. I just think that the head of a corporation might want to think twice before revealing himself as a suit-wearing Bluto from Animal House. Maybe for his next presentation he’ll lecture the foreign community on how to make a beer bong. Or drink a glass of soju with no hands. Or crush beer cans on one’s forehead. Or how to avoid your own vomit when you pass out on the sidewalk. I suspect he’s working on his next speech as I write.

Stolen from KBS World Radio Website

You may not have heard this, but kimchi is one of the world’s healthiest foods. In addition to fighting cancer, it also prevents SARS, AIDS, menstrual cramps, athlete’s foot, jock itch, anal warts, and domestic violence.

So it only makes sense that you find a way to cook kimchi into every dish. One of the more creative items to date is the Pastry Cream Kimchi Mille-feuille. There are twelve steps to preparing this delicacy including:

Drain the diced candied kimchi cabbage and combine with 500 g of the cooled pastry cream. Whisk the whipping cream until soft peaks form and fold it gently into the pastry cream. Transfer to a piping bag fitted with a large plain nozzle.

Tell me that doesn’t make your mouth water. But in case it doesn’t, KBS World Radio also provides a recipe for Chocolate Cake with kimchi. Mmmmm!

This inspired me to ponder what other delectable treats await the magical touch of kimchi. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

Kimchi candied apples
Kimchi taffy
Kimchi gum
Kimchi cotton candy
Kimchi marshmallows
Kimchi Kool-aid
Kimchi eclairs
Kimchi maple bars
Kimchi pancakes
Kimchi nasal spray

Feel free to contribute your own inspirations.

The “MT” is one of the most common events in Korean culture. For the few of you who have never heard of it, an MT (membership training) is basically a weekend retreat for university students or company employees. Participants usually leave on a Friday night for a resort or campground outside of town and return home late Saturday or early Sunday. I have often heard about MTs and when I ask what takes place the common response is “lots of drinking”. Surprise, surprise!

A couple of years ago an ex-girlfriend told me she had to attend an MT with her co-workers. I gave it very little thought and simply told her to have a good time. That weekend, when I mentioned to some Korean acquaintances that my girlfriend was on an MT, you would have thought that I had told them I had cancer. In a very concerned tone they asked me why I allowed her to go. I answered that she would only be gone a couple of days, I trusted her, and besides, I had no right to tell her she couldn’t go. To which they responded, “A Korean man would NEVER allow his girlfriend to go on an MT.” Naturally, I came away from this conversation feeling a bit unnerved and, sure enough, within a couple of weeks of the MT we broke up. (I must mention though, that this could have been purely coincidence.) Since then I have always had a strong curiosity to experience firsthand the atmosphere of an MT.

Last weekend, I finally had a chance to quell that curiosity. I was invited to participate in a retreat for English majors from a local university. I couldn’t refuse. The mysteries of the MT were soon to be revealed before my very eyes. What follows is an account of the weekend’s activities.

I met a small group of foreigners in front of the university early Saturday morning. We boarded a chartered bus and headed for the Muju Ski Resort. The students had left the night before, so there were actually more foreigners on the bus than Koreans. Three hours and two rest stops later, we pulled into the resort.

(Note: Muju Resort is a beautiful place. I intended to take photos and write a separate post on it, but it rained the entire weekend and I wasn’t able to get out and explore. I’ll just tell you that there are a large number of Swiss-style chalets and mini villages strewn along the mountainside, lending a sort of “Disneyland meets the Shining” feel to the resort.)

The bus stopped outside of a cafeteria. Our group got off the bus and went inside. I expected to see students swilling soju and hurling kimchi at one another, but I was disappointed to find that the cafeteria was empty. The head of the English department instructed us to grab a tray and get our food. We ate our bulgogi and kimchi chigae, quietly wondering what shenanigans the students were up to.

After lunch we were taken to our quarters. We stayed three to a “room”, but the rooms were more like small apartments. Each consisted of a decent-sized kitchen, a large living room, two bedrooms and two separate bathrooms - more than enough space for three. I later learned that the students were separated into teams of eight or nine and two teams stayed in one apartment. Young men and women! Together! Egads!!

We learned that many of the students were sleeping off a Friday night full of activities and so we had some time to kill before events got started. I asked the veterans in the group what they did on these retreats in previous years. Their answer? You guessed it: drinking. Someone fetched a few beers from the mini-mart and we sat around drinking Hite and watching Spiderman on OCN.

Late in the afternoon the department head put each of us in charge of a team of students and instructed us to help them put together an English skit and a song and dance routine for a show to be held in the evening. Though some groups mixed in a little alcohol consumption with their rehearsal, my group was particularly diligent and worked until dinner to perfect their routines (we took first prize in the song and dance - largely due to my singing; I’m sure of it). Finally we wrapped up our preparations and feasted on more bulgogi. Foreigners like bulgogi, you know.

After dinner we gathered in a large conference room for the evening competition and sat through three hours of quizzes, singing, dancing, and incoherent skits. I asked the students on my team if this was normal for an MT. They told me that it wasn’t. This was more like an English camp. Drat! I suspected I would never get to the heart of the MT culture. Hiding my disappointment, I found pleasure in watching the teams who had been drinking before dinner stumble through their dance routines.

At around 11:30 the competition mercifully came to an end. Now it was back to our rooms for the main event. Younger students sat on the floors of their rooms while the older students retrieved boxes and boxes of soju and beer. The amount of alcohol carried into the rooms was staggering. I got the impression they thought they were catering a Las Vegas convention. For about an hour people remained with the other members of their teams, sitting in circles and playing drinking games in rapid fire succession. After a sufficient amount of fuel had been consumed, the floor of the hotel where we stayed turned into one massive all-night party.

I wandered from room to room witnessing young men and women playing drinking games everywhere. In each case I noticed a common theme: certain members seemed to be specifically targeted to drink. One girl informed me that she was trying to “kill” a guy (with soju) because she hated him. With her friends she challenged him to a drinking contest. The catch: the girls were drinking water from soju bottles. Fortunately, the object of her hatred was still alive in the morning and seemed to be on good terms with his would-be assassin. In fact, there seemed to be quite a few more couples in the morning than the previous night. A few of them severely hung over.

While riding back to Yeosu on the foreigner bus, I had time to ponder what I had learned. On the surface, MTs are set up to bring “the group” closer together through a shared experience. Anyone familiar with Korean culture would not be surprised by that. There are plenty of activities that members are “encouraged” to take part in. But on an individual level, these weekend getaways are seen as an opportunity to bond with that someone that you’ve been eyeing at school or work. And what better way to do it than a couple of days (and nights) in a room together with a truckload of alcohol? There really is no mystery in that.

Club dancing in Korea has come a long way. Many many years ago, Korean songs were accompanied by their own choreographed dance that native clubbers would rehearse at home before taking their act to the dance floor. The result was that you’d see hundreds of people dancing in unison like performers in a Michael Jackson video. After a set of about five or six Korean hits the DJ would play an English-language dance song, which signaled dancers to sit down and sip their Cokes. They wouldn’t dance to the music because, well, there wasn’t a dance for it. A couple of years later Koreans finally gave up the choreography and started to dance freely to the rhythm of the music.

But that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been trends. Choreographed dancing evolved into free-style dancing. Free-style dancing was (unfortunately) interrupted by techno. (Those of you who’ve been in Korea for awhile surely remember seeing people turning their heads back and forth while waving their hand in front of their face. The “Look, I’m slapping myself” dance.) Then hip hop dancing squeezed its way onto the scene. And currently, Koreans are going gaga over the Boobi Boobi Dance (two boobis naturally being better than one).

What is the Boobi Boobi dance? I’m glad you asked. Though singer Yoon Eun-hye (Banana Girl, no joke) is often credited with introducing the dance to Korean culture, it’s essentially an ass-grinding extension of hip hop inspired by performers like Beyonce or Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas. Or perhaps it was Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell.

So now that we’ve been introduced to the background of the dance, let’s dive face-first into the Boobi Boobi scene. We’ll start with the basic Boobi Boobi. Kudos to these two girls for cranking up their computer speakers to show us how to move. Moving on from there we can see Boobi Boobi has firmly established itself in the nightclubs. Once clubbers grabbed hold of the Boobi Boobi trend, it wasn’t long before it bounced its way onto television, where amateurs either taught us how to make a Boobi Boobi sandwich or confused it with the Booty Booty. Of course, when the Boobi Boobi is exposed to television audiences, then celebrities want to get in on the act. Though this lovely lady wasn’t exactly doing the Boobi Boobi, she deserves an “A” for effort. Later, the true professionals took over and put the boobi in the Boobi Boobi dance. Lastly the transgenders produced a somewhat artificial version of the Boobi Boobi. (Check out Harisu’s man voice).

That’s it. Your guided tour of the Boobi Boobi dance is over. Now get out there and show everyone your Boobi Boobi.

NOTE: Some of the links have changed since I first posted this. What can I say? Sorry.

More Boobi Boobi

BB1 BB2 BB3

Yahoo US has run an AP story reporting that now middle-aged women in the U.S. are into Korean dramas. Don’t believe me? Here it is.

Scoff no more. Health Magazine listed Korean kimchi among its top-five healthiest foods.

Kimchi was chosen due to its possession of essential vitamins (A,B,C) and a healthy bacteria called lactobacilli - which helps with digestion.

However, no matter what any Korean might tell you, there is still no scientific evidence that kimchi prevents SARS. Read more on kimchi and SARS at The Party Pooper’s blog.

Click photo for video

I know I’m stating the obvious, but Yeosu certainly cannot compete with Seoul when it comes to nightlife. Though I can’t say I’ve been out and about enough to start a travel guide, so far I’ve only come across two bars that wouldn’t fall under the category of “hof”. The same is true for nightclubs as well. There is no shortage of nightclubs, but the only ones I’ve seen are of the “booking” variety. That said, I visited one Friday night and discovered a performer doing a passable rendition of Hyori’s “Get Ya”. I apologize in advance for the excessive movement of the camera. I blame it on the alcohol.

Click Homer!

Did you know that much of the animation for the Simpsons is done in Korea? Okay, so maybe you did. Here’s a nice Reuters article (via MSNBC) on South Korea’s AKOM Production Co., the company that does the animation. Check it out.

Korea’s magical run in the World Baseball Classic came to a crashing halt, losing 6-0 in the semi-finals to archrival Japan.  Kim Byung-hyun reverted to his World Series form in the seventh inning, giving up two hits and three runs, including a home run to pinch hitter Kosuki Fukudome.  Wasted was a fine performance by Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Jay Seo, who allowed just three hits and no runs in five innings of work.

This was the third meeting of the tournament between the two teams with Korea winning the first two.  Because of a whacked out tournament format, however, Korea will head home with a 6-1 record while Japan advances to the title game with four wins and three losses.  This needs to be fixed for the next tournament in 2009.

That said, I hope the Korean media don’t try to turn this into another conspiracy theory.  The tourney format was decided long before anyone knew that Korea would manage to put together a string of wins to advance to the semi-finals.  The bottom line is that these were the rules and the media must honor the fantastic effort of Team Korea by gracefully accepting the result.