A Korean Invasion into the Japanese Mainstream
It was a bizarre footage. Local television viewers were at first intrigued and then amazed at the huge Japanese crowd in Tokyo or other cities. The Japanese folks, mostly women, were waiting in line to have an audience with Yonsama (the nickname for Mr. Yong Joon Bai), the major character of a television tearjerker (Love Song of the Winter). It was the very moment that a Korean invasion into the Japanese mainstream, albeit cultural, by the name of Hallyu (the Korea Wave) came true.
The landscape of Japanese women mobbing a specific Korean actor seemed so strange to me. That's because all things Japanese which used to be symbolic of the country--swords, Samurais, Yakujas, the Pearl Harbor Incident, the loyal army soldiers charging up the hill and the women kneeling before their master husbands--are bound to invoke in you the emotion of otherworldliness. Fear and terror still run in the Korean veins when you mention the chilly moniker of Japan.
Worries and apprehensions arise. What if the male populace of the archipelago should feel their pride wounded by those wayward outings of the female brethren? There are expectations, too. Will the shift of the macho climate into feministic atmosphere assuredly contribute to ameliorating Japan's hitherto hostile militancy toward neighborly countries? If so, it's partly indebted to Uncle Sam, for plots and subtle expressions in dramatic developments have been learned and loaned from Western movies and dramas.
Predators in Nature
*Born to the kill, men and women of today are predators in nature. They might be in for stabs. literal or otherwise. A serial killer, nabbed and on his way for the spot checks of the burial of the abused and truncated bodies, admitted that he had murdered 22 people.
**Members of rival political camps are at each other's throats. National Assemblymen of the ruling party are engaged in throwing mud slings at representatives of the opposition party, branding them pro-Japanese collaborators, whereas the opposition groups took issue with identity of the ruling party, calling their left-leaning ideologies to question.
***Trust might become a museum thing. Infidelities between spouses and amorous folks are common. A young bride-to-be, who was asked to buy lottery tickets, with her lover's money, and fill in six combinations of two-digit numbers which he had dictated, finding that the ticket had hit the jackpot of 5.4 billion won (about 4 million dollars), made off with the prize money. She isn't able to get away with it, is she? She is still at large.
****The North Korean Human Rights Act has passed the U.S. House of Representatives. Audacious and auspicious adventure worthy of a global acclaim and gratitude from the Korean government and its people. It's time we the Korean people braced ourselves for the downfall of Kim Jong Il and collapse of its regime.
BoA, the Icon of Japan
An 18-year-old Korean miss by the name of BoA (pronounced close to bower) has gripped the imagination of the Japanese, gaining hearts and minds of the archipelago. She spends most of the time there singing and dancing, making a great fortune in the process, probably having the time of her life. Her pro-Japanese life style has been being contrasted with her retroactive motherland, where the ruling party and its government have been engaged in a belated national homework assignment to "liquidate the Koreans' collaboration activities" during the Japanese colonial domination.
She is an epitome of power shift of the new era. She has done an honorable shift--the shift from shell fires to friendly handshakes and from tirades of blame to melodious tunes. Not as an invading army but as a civilian of weaker sex, she has not seized the capital of the enemy country but made it to the grand stage of an allied nation. She stands out in the middle, taking the stage light, with audiences welcoming her in standing ovation.
She is not a fixture on the stage any more that her predecessors had been. She is every second on the move--vivace espressivo, vivace mosso. Lyrics are not inaudible in pitch volume or with some aid of gizmos. You find yourself out of breath whereas she is not. Choreography is rather flashy. When she holds her arms high up in the air, with her navel bare, her audiences arise in delirium. When she thumps the stage floor with her foot, her audiences roar with ecstasy. But, when she explores her own body up from bosom down 'oh oh' crevices, you find yourself gasping and blushing.
Imagine
Imagine a nation one of whose resources has been a huge population. Its recourse to demographic changes--the removal and redeployment of demographic condition has been a terror to neighborly countries. Imagine a nation whose very presence has been a threat to countries around her. Imagine a nation who has had no sense of shame but brazen impudence that she is the Middle Kingdom from the point of which any incursion and the subsequent vandalism and plunder have been justified.
Report has it that an army officer belonging to the big country's Liberation Army has gone berserk with major computers of Korean national agencies. The international online incursion by the name of computer hacking is an invasion and infringement on the sovereignty of the nation. I imagine and feel my country and people besieged by the surge of 'human sea wave,' again after the Korean War.
Imagine the nation of greedy fishermen and their dependents stuffing lobsters and crabs heading for Korean ports, under cover of night, overly confident of the protection of the sovereignty of a mighty country, with pieces of lead, giggling, not taking into consideration an iota the health of the people who would consume them. Think of a nation which used to dare adulterate any export, ranging from coloration of farming produce to falsification of foreign masterpieces.
Beware of the Beast, America. The United States of America, stop the advance of the Leviathan southward. If this monstrous nation of 1.3 billion people armed with nukes and missiles were to annex Taiwan (the Free China) it would pose a great threat to the peace of the U.S. and of the world. Uncle Sam, speak loud and clear to the ears of the Monster, "Don't get us wrong." The rest of the Asian people want badly that the U.S. might get her messages right that China should leave Taiwan safe and free. And you should say, "Let Hong Kong go her own way. Don't get her chained. After all, get your dirty ass off from the Korean peninsula for good. Period."
The Craze for Bamboo Wives
There has been social taste for bamboos. Bamboo trees, along with pine trees, have been known to be symbols of purity, integrity, and loyalty in the Korean society. Bamboo plants and their byproducts have been long favored by the common and the high society people as well.
Major broadcasting stations have reported about an eerie trend one of these days that the young people have opted for zookbooin (죽부인:竹夫人: bamboo wives) during hot summer seasons. Eerie because bamboo wives had been designed out of consideration for the elderly, not for the young. They had usually been "filial gifts for their widowed dads" as comfort coolers for the elderly people to fight the humidity of the season. Today they have turned out to be nothing other than alternatives for air-conditioners during hot summer nights.
How does it look like? It's a cylinder-type bamboo frame with 120 to 130cm height and 50cm to 60cm width. It's tightly and delicately netted with bamboo pieces torn apart from the tree trunk with enough hexagonal holes onto it to facilitate the draft of fresh air. It looks like a human shape with no limbs if it is looked at with gawkish eyes.
I am not being facetious. But, they have had hilarious yet serious aspects about them, that is, their uses and taboos and treatment after the owner and master's death. I am duly afraid that people might not be able to parry your questions, stumbling for apt words, if you asked them questions about, say, their concrete functions.
Mote Syndrome?
My feeling is that the whole society of Korea is suffering from perfectionist complex. They can't stand any legal speck, nor tolerate any blemish of others. Hours and days keep going wrangling over the legality, justification and rationality of a shady behavior or remark of a public figure, in the press, in the broadcasting studios and in the online media.
Why are they so controversial over nothing? Is that because they are the gentlemen and ladies of high moral caliber? No way. In fact, the other way round. The nation is full of robbers and thiefs, con-men and corrupt politicos.
Fact is that they are infested with social maladies, say, mote syndrome. They are eager to see motes in another's eyes, but they do not or refuse to see their own. They are so soft on themselves and so harsh on the others. Which testifies to a sign that society is sick.
Round Is Square
Round is square;
Square is round.
Long is short;
Short is long.
Far is near;
Near is far.
Right is wrong;
Wrong is right.
Strong is weak;
Weak is strong.
Loving is hateful;
Hateful is loving.
Important is trivial;
Trivial is important.
