(no subject)
So, I am going to have a son! Allegedly. In Korea, it is apparently still technically illegal to disclose the gender of your child to the parents, because it was not so very long ago that daughters were aborted at a much higher rate than sons. So our doctor pointed out a certain, um, aspect of our ultrasound, and Seunghyun asked, "Sooooo, it's a son?" and our doctor replied, "Well, it looks that way."
Of course, we are both happy, we were kinda hoping that we would have a son first and a daughter later (though I have no idea how I would deal with two sons...).
And of course, as worrying is my favorite hobby, I now have two concerns. One, what are we going to do about names? I mentioned this at least once before, but Korean boys' names rarely work as Western names, and the opposite is also true. It will need to be something that works with both alphabets, is only two syllables (harder than you'd think; "David" has four syllables in Korean), doesn't mean anything dumb, and makes sense when you pair it with "이," which is pronounced "E" at the beginning, and also "Lee" at the end.
So, it is kind of an interesting logic problem, with lifelong consequences. But I am fairly certain that there are Korean baby name books out there, which oughta help.
The second concern is about military service. Under current laws, our baby will be a dual citizen. But, unless he renounces Korean citizenship before the age of eighteen, he will have to complete military service. Of course, a lot can change in twenty years, so it may not be worth stressing about just yet.
In other news, I have been reading a lot about Korean protests, and it looks like movies have a huge effect on the general population's pissed-off-ness. A recent movie about corrupt judges favoring the rich and powerful sparked massive public outcry. And another movie, about sexual abused of the disabled living in a special care facility, has led to the disabled population in Korea demanding massive improvement in Korean disability laws.
So this all raises some questions for me. First, why do people get upset when movies come out, but not the original news stories? Is it because they don't watch the news, or it doesn't hit home the way movies do, or is the movie version actually more accurate? The last possibility may actually make sense. One of the big three Korean TV networks, MBC, recently went on strike, partly for higher pay, but largely because the new CEO was giving in to government pressure to censor its news content. The other two networks, SBS and KBS, did not report on the MBC strike at all. Whether this was proof that those networks were already censoring their material, I don't know, but I speculate that they are not exactly telling the whole truth.
But on the other hand, how do people know that the movies are not sensationalized versions of what really happened? If a director says 95% of a movie is factual, how can you believe it? Do people do their own research, too?
And why didn't the general public get so angry when the original victims came forward to tell their stories? Does it really take a movie to force people out of their complacency? Why are people's emotions more easily manipulated by film than by real people? This was something that really surprised me when I first came to Korea, that people often (though not always) take the view that, if something bad is happening to someone, and that person is not in my family, it is not my concern, and I will not get involved in any way. Have you ever watched security camera videos of two people fighting on a train in Seoul, everyone else will just stand there. The most they will do is mutter to their friends. But in America or England or something, usually someone will at least yell at them to knock it off, or watch their language, or SOMETHING. Of course, I am generalizing, and I assume there are no Good Samaritan laws in Korea, which surely makes a small difference.
But it is just really fascinating to me that of all the possible forms of inspiration for social change, movies are the medium that really spur Koreans into action.
Of course, we are both happy, we were kinda hoping that we would have a son first and a daughter later (though I have no idea how I would deal with two sons...).
And of course, as worrying is my favorite hobby, I now have two concerns. One, what are we going to do about names? I mentioned this at least once before, but Korean boys' names rarely work as Western names, and the opposite is also true. It will need to be something that works with both alphabets, is only two syllables (harder than you'd think; "David" has four syllables in Korean), doesn't mean anything dumb, and makes sense when you pair it with "이," which is pronounced "E" at the beginning, and also "Lee" at the end.
So, it is kind of an interesting logic problem, with lifelong consequences. But I am fairly certain that there are Korean baby name books out there, which oughta help.
The second concern is about military service. Under current laws, our baby will be a dual citizen. But, unless he renounces Korean citizenship before the age of eighteen, he will have to complete military service. Of course, a lot can change in twenty years, so it may not be worth stressing about just yet.
In other news, I have been reading a lot about Korean protests, and it looks like movies have a huge effect on the general population's pissed-off-ness. A recent movie about corrupt judges favoring the rich and powerful sparked massive public outcry. And another movie, about sexual abused of the disabled living in a special care facility, has led to the disabled population in Korea demanding massive improvement in Korean disability laws.
So this all raises some questions for me. First, why do people get upset when movies come out, but not the original news stories? Is it because they don't watch the news, or it doesn't hit home the way movies do, or is the movie version actually more accurate? The last possibility may actually make sense. One of the big three Korean TV networks, MBC, recently went on strike, partly for higher pay, but largely because the new CEO was giving in to government pressure to censor its news content. The other two networks, SBS and KBS, did not report on the MBC strike at all. Whether this was proof that those networks were already censoring their material, I don't know, but I speculate that they are not exactly telling the whole truth.
But on the other hand, how do people know that the movies are not sensationalized versions of what really happened? If a director says 95% of a movie is factual, how can you believe it? Do people do their own research, too?
And why didn't the general public get so angry when the original victims came forward to tell their stories? Does it really take a movie to force people out of their complacency? Why are people's emotions more easily manipulated by film than by real people? This was something that really surprised me when I first came to Korea, that people often (though not always) take the view that, if something bad is happening to someone, and that person is not in my family, it is not my concern, and I will not get involved in any way. Have you ever watched security camera videos of two people fighting on a train in Seoul, everyone else will just stand there. The most they will do is mutter to their friends. But in America or England or something, usually someone will at least yell at them to knock it off, or watch their language, or SOMETHING. Of course, I am generalizing, and I assume there are no Good Samaritan laws in Korea, which surely makes a small difference.
But it is just really fascinating to me that of all the possible forms of inspiration for social change, movies are the medium that really spur Koreans into action.