[UPDATED] Blackface sketch gives hallyu a black eye

Oh, dear God! This is 2012, isn't it? There is absolutely no excuse for this kind of thing at all.

It being funny is not an excuse (it's not funny; it's puerile and juvenile). Them portraying comic book characters is not an excuse (the comic book portrayal is itself racist). And certainly being ignorant of how offensive this is to people in a lot of other countries is no longer an excuse.

That last point was already covered (by me and others) in the past. Specifically, I made the point that while some portrayals of black face may indeed be innocent, enough of these cases have hit the fan of global media that they can no longer be construed as innocent, just ignorant. And if you are trying to make your brand loved around the world, as LG is trying to do, and I assume MBC is trying to do with the Hallyu Korean wave, then you have to stop this. Not now, but yesterday.

Other than that, Eat Your Kimchi says pretty much all that needs to be said about this.

Stupid. Stupid Stupid.

Take a look while you can, because if they have even an ounce of smarts to them, MBC will take that down forthwith.

UPDATE:
MBC has gotten the message and apologized for this. Meanwhile, Roboseyo has a lengthy post on this as well.

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Korean hip-hop going global, says dying magazine

Newsweek (can you get any more 1980s than that?) has an article on Korean hip-hop going global (which also reminds me of the 1980s):

East Asia’s music industry is being astutely tailored for a global audience in the digital age. “There is no line between Korean, Japanese, or international music since YouTube,” explains 2NE1’s lead rapper, CL. “It’s just the whole world through the Internet.”

K-pop groups have certainly found success abroad: bands like Girls’ Generation and TVXQ draw impressive crowds at shows in New York and L.A. Now K-hop is getting in on the act: Internet exposure helped boy band Big Bang win the World Wide Act award at the MTV Europe Music Awards last June, and MTV Iggy just crowned 2NE1 the Best New Band in the World.

While some critics still question whether K-hop will ever make waves on mainstream U.S. radio, Korean-American producers such as Teddy Park (of 2NE1) and Jae Chong (of Aziatix) are hoping that the genre will be the true crossover hit, with its ties to hip-hop, soul, and electronica. Park grew up in New Jersey and California on a diet of Queen and the Wu-Tang Clan. The 33-year-old, who has overseen 2NE1’s career from its inception, always wondered why the world music scene was missing a big global Asian act.

Um, well, for starters, non-Asian women have tended (note that this is a generalization with many, many exceptions) to not see Asian men as heartthrobs. But that is changing, as Asian media giants get to choose who to put up on stage instead of having to rely on Hollywood to put up someone sexier than Hiro from Heroes.

I have no pithy point to make about all this. This post is a five-minute hit piece while I eat a quickie dinner and get back to the academic salt mines. But I will say, to all you naysaying hatahs who said that Hallyu would never make it out of the backyard: Boo yah, bitches!

Frankly, I have no idea if that made any sense. I hate hip-hop. Korean, American, or otherwise. I just find the whole thing about Korean soft power increasing because of a sudden love of Korean movies, dramas, and lately music and dancing, a very interesting phenomenon.

I have no idea who these people are. Nor do I care.

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Kids react (the way Kushibo does) to K-pop

So while I'm waiting to be picked up at Honolulu's Hawaiian Air Terminal the other day, I'm checking out this video, suggested by a Yonsei alumna friend on her Facebook page, about the plight of one Russell Green, an adoptee who wasn't fully adopted and now faces deportation...



... and that's when YouTube suggested I also check out "Kids React to K-Pop," because forced deportation of a Korea-born adoptee is naturally associated with American kids making funny faces at the silliness that is K-pop.



I guess they'd have the same keywords: kids, Korean, US, freaked out.

Anyway, I was intrigued by the K-pop video just because the kids' attitude is pretty much my own when it comes to the monster that K-pop has become.

Don't get me wrong: I'm thrilled that Korea is developing so much soft power with its pop culture offerings lately, primarily in the form of movies, music, and dramas, but I'm just not into pop music at all. I love Korean movies and have a whole bunch in my Netflix queue. Though I don't watch as many Korean television programs as I used to (my ex-fiancée and I used to do that as one of our things, but since we broke up it just wasn't fun anymore and I got out of the habit), I am happy that hulu has gone hallyu.

But I never got into the whole music scene, of any country. There are too many made-for-TV pop idols whose major claim to fame is that they wear hot pants and dance around looking cutesy and act aegyotistical. I'd rather find age- and behavior-appropriate women in real life, so I have about as much interest in The Wonder Girls as I do Miley Cyrus. Sure, if I have a chance to meet with them and chat them up or more, I will, but it's just not something I spend a lot of time on.

Anyway, it seems that K-pop has become a thing in the US, with people even reacting to the reaction. About five years ago, the Korea-bashing naysayers were questioning whether K-pop or hallyu could make a dent outside of Korea, but now we've seen it wash over the rest of East Asia, including Japan, and now it seems to be getting a serious foothold in the United States and Europe. I never had the confidence that this would happen, but I certainly wasn't pooh-poohing the idea, either.

Frankly, as long as it doesn't attract horny folks to Korea who think that teaching in a secondary school would be like a smorgasbord, I'm all for this expansion of South Korean soft power. Heck, I someday see the potential for the love of Girls' Generation, along with the NBA, to bring together Kim Jong-un and some current or future American POTUS or Secretary of State.

And finally, remember Russell Green. There's something fundamentally wrong when his video has barely a thousand hits and the "Kids React to K-pop" video gets a million or so.

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Do you know Hallyu? asks the Economist

It looks like the Economist has discovered the Korean Wave:

But Mr Prum isn’t aping Western fashion. Like many Asian youngsters, he considers the trends of North America (and Japan) to be insipid relics. “In Cambodia we watch Korean dramas, listen to Korean music, and take our fashion from South Korea,” he says. He names the South Korean singer Rain and the Korean soap opera “Full House” as his favourites. Next year he hopes to attend film school in Seoul, and eventually to bring more of their artistic nous to South-East Asia.

The Koreans have a word for Mr Prum’s infatuation: hallyu, or the love of South Korean cultural exports. An international phenomenon, hallyu is driving Seoul’s nascent but growing influence across Asia. South Korean popular culture rose from relative obscurity in the late 1990s when, after decades of draconian internal censorship came to an end in the 1980s, its television dramas began to be broadcast widely in China, Japan and South-East Asia. Exports of Korean video games, television dramas and popular music (“K-pop”) have all doubled since 1999, while the total number of cultural products exported since then has increased almost threefold, to $1.8 billion in 2008. In terms of market share, these numbers still rank modestly against the Japanese comic-book industry, which dominates 80% of the worldwide market, but sales of Japanese manga have halved since reaching their apex in 1995.

Some scholars find an explanation for hallyu in the family-friendly, Confucian teachings typical of South Korean dramas; these values, they say, appeal to Asians more than does the usual Western fare. But this explanation seems to require imputing a uniform mentality to at least two billion people. Michael Shin of Cornell University argues instead that by their rags-to-riches storylines these dramas are able to speak directly to audiences who have lived the Asian economic boom of the past two decades. Popular characters often abandon monotonous middle-class jobs to seek fame, or a “dream job”—perhaps suggesting that many Asians feel dissatisfied with their careers, despite the prosperity that has come with growth.

Good job, Economist. And only a decade late.

A veritable epidemic

This morning I wake up and the first new post I see is at Brian in Chŏllanam-do's website, announcing the tragic news that actress Jang Ja-yeon (장자연, chang chayŏn), who plays Sunny on "Boys Over Flowers," has committed suicide (I'm still looking for an English-language news source to link, but the Drama Beans blog has a good write-up). 

This tragedy (and I tend to label any suicide of a healthy person as a tragedy) is not an isolated event, but a string of such incidents that can rightly be considered an epidemic within the celebrity community. 

Most notable among these is the death of Choi Jin-sil (최진실, ch'oé chinshil), but there have been plenty of others, including the death of "Brotherhood" lead actress Lee Eunju (이은주, yi ŭnju). This site on Korean pop culture has a post following a celebrity suicide last year, which talks about the so-called "Werther Effect" as a factor in this string of deaths. 

I have never seen "Boys Over Flowers," but I have heard plenty about the so-called "ubiquidrama." My greater concern is that suicide among these performers ends up modeling "acceptable" behaviors for everyday people in South Korea, where suicide is already at astronomical rates. 

In other words, these public suicides of well-known figures have the disturbing effect of making the killing of oneself seem favorable and normative. And for people already not thinking straight, normative and normal seem to overlap. 

In all seriousness, the entertainment industry in Korea needs to face this problem head on. Set up a task force or something and make sure that all the people who go on stage are checked for psychological problems and have easy and non-judgmental access to mental health care. 

That last part is the hard part. Even more so than in the West, there is a tremendous stigma associated with seeing a mental health professional. The solution itself may have to rely on media images to make this brave act itself normative: Perhaps get a celebrity who knows she/he needs help and do a reality program where she/he seeks and gets the help that is needed and comes out the other end much better. 

It would have to be a brave person, because if the program backfired, it could be a career killer. If it worked and this type of program became a catalyst for other celebrities and regular folk seeking help instead of committing suicide, the celebrity would be praised as a hero. Hmm... instead of talking about what other people should do, maybe I should use my own professional resources to get this done myself. 

Then perhaps some good can come out of this latest tragedy.

Jang Ja-yeon et al, requiescant in pace. 

UPDATE:
Seoulfull reports that Ms Chung had made a phone call at 2:30 p.m. that day, stating that she couldn't handle the pressure of contract and work problems and that she wanted to die. 

One thing that must be made crystal clear: If someone calls you and tells you they want to die, take it seriously. Always take it seriously. It is better to be embarrassed for overreacting to that than to feel tragedy for the rest of your life thinking you could have stopped it.

For the person thinking about suicide, that kind of call is a cry for help. It's often a desperate, feet-on-the-ledge cry for help that should not be ignored. (And in case you're wondering, yes, I have been in that call-receiving position. I was a teenager at the time and didn't fully understand what was happening, although in the end tragedy was averted.)

Sadly, though, even if someone takes that call and tries to help their suicidal friend or loved one, too few people know of what resources are available to them in South Korea, and that perceived humiliation associated with mental health services prevents people from going even if they do know how to get it. As I've said, the Korean media needs to do something — right away — to end that impression.