few days ago i got a phone call from a lady who knew exactly which apartment i, well, my parents are living in. she said now KT’s putting a new network line into our complex (there are about 22 buildings in our complex) which meant that now we have a better Internet option - as we always do ;) actually, i think what the lady was talking about was FttH (fiber-to-the-home), which is not that new, really… it’s been widely deployed here since early last year.

i was about to feed my nephew so didn’t have enough time though i was quite interested to find out about this supposedely better connection. but the boy was crying and i really had to go, so i quickly said to her “we’re on a contract right now and we still have more than a year left with the current provider.” then immediately - much to my surprise - she said “oh, no problems. we’ll pay all the cost involved with switching including the penalty and (no doubt, same-day)installation. we’re also offering you free connection for the first three months plus a lot of gifts you can choose from.”

insane.

i thought.

these ‘gifts’ offered by ISPs are not a laughing matter here. they typically include things like an expresso machine, ipod, and cash. there was a report somewhere discussing the fierce competition in the Korean broadband market and how subscribers actually call their ISPs when they’re having problems with their computers (for example, i can expect my ISP to fix my Windows buggy/sillly behaviour that has nothing to do with the Internet or anything to do with networks). ISPs do whatever to please their subscribers to survive in this broadband jungle.

as i was feeding my nephew in my arms, i thought about the madness of this situation and also some major failures of global brands who tried to gain some share in this society with fast growing hyper-consumerist ethos (much of which can be attributed to the ppalippali/hurryhurry ethos).
some of the major examples include wal-mart and carrfour, the top two in the global food retail industry. USAToday reports:

“They failed to attract customers to the stores,” said S.K. Lee, a retail analyst at Hyundai Securities in Seoul, adding that housewives in particular were dissatisfied with food and beverage offerings.

Wal-Mart also has struggled in Japan, known for its finicky consumers, but has lately boosted its investment there. Last year, it made Seiyu Ltd., the nation’s fifth-largest chain with more than 400 stores, a subsidiary. But Seiyu said its loss widened in 2005 to 17.7 billion yen ($151 million).

Oh Seung-taek, an analyst at Hanwha Securities, says Britain-based Tesco PLC’s Home Plus chain, ranked No. 2 in South Korea, hired a Korean chief executive and made stores “friendly” to the needs of Korean shoppers, who don’t like a “warehouse-style” environment.

while i am all for local victories, i am curious and concerned about how korea’s going to fair in the global neo-liberal - or i could safely say, ‘western’ - model of economy, particularly how it’s isolating itself technologically on the Internet. it’s good to have fantastic locally developed and owned technologies, but what if they are monolingual and thus unable to communicate with non-local techs? is korea going to be an island? if so, how is it going to justify its existence as a node in the global network? i wonder.

original image from here

yep.

journal of happiness studies by springer.
i simply must have something published in there.
i cannot not.

i recently met up with two friends of mine in seoul.

we had drinks - koreans are heavy drinkers; you simply must come and experience it yourself to truly understand what i mean.

An investigation showed on Sept. 13 that South Koreans consumedan average of 4.5 liters of distilled liquor such as whisky and the nation’s most popular alcoholic beverage “Soju” in 2002, ranking fourth after Russia, Latvia and Romania. 
– full article from the Seoul Times here 

this time, though, my friends and i only moved once, which means we only did “2-cha.” cha is a counting suffix for the number of drinking places (be it a pub or a restaurant where you drink) you go in one night - or day, why not. it’s sort of like “rounds” - e.g. “oori uhje 5-cha gasseo” literally means “we went 5-cha yesterday (last night),” which means “we went to five different places to drink last night.” we koreans drink, drink, and drink… then consider moving to a different place for a change of scenery, and type of edible consumables, i suppose, and continue on. drinking is one of the biggest and most important cultures in korea.

anyway, we only did 2-cha and parted because first, it was getting late, and second, i was still hungover from the night before when i lost track of the number of cha’s, and third, we couldn’t afford to miss the last train. and most naturally i gave each of them a hug at the train station. what i got was, of course, eventually a hug in return, but what i got first was an utterance from my shocked friend k:

“what, you’re a westerner now?”

maybe she was just jealous that she wasn’t the first one to get my hug. haha. no, seriouly… compared to australia, i feel that korean culture involves much closer physical proximities in general. friends walk around holding hands, or arm-in-arm (not so much between men though) etc. such physical intimacy is quite evident in the food culture of korea, where almost all dishes are shared amongst the people on the table. you don’t get your own little portions in your own plates apart from your bowl of rice, and sometimes soup - though stews are shared. so basically, an unvited guest at dinner time is not a problem as all you need to provide them with are:

• a spoon
• a pair of chopsticks
• a bowl of rice
• and a bowl of soup, if having a soup, not a stew for that particular meal

yes, you dig in and double-, triple-, and howmanyevertimesyouwant-dip your spoon and chopsticks into various dishes on the table. of course there were gender-based traditions before - for example, women were not allowed to eat with the men in the family - but unless you’re from a really traditional family, you probaby don’t eat separately like that anymore.

now, back to the “hugging” part, i wonder what it is that makes “hugging” a surprisingly foreign practice in korea, especially when physical contacts in other ways and social ties are a lot more intimate and stronger in general. something to think about…