U-Mun Hyeon-Dab

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Hi Korean,

I heard that there is make-up for men in Korea. Is this true? I wouldnt be surprised, since many Korean male actors wears some sort of make-up and Korean men really do care about their appearances. Many the Koreans guys I've known are very effiminate. They like to take pictures of themselves and they say to others that they are handsome.

Alice

Dear Alice,

There is no reason for you to recognize the title. The Korean will not explain it - it's going to be an inside joke for those who understand. If the readers are curious, please email the Korean and ask what that means.

To answer your question, sure, there are cosmetics for men in Korea. (Here is an example.) There are cosmetics for men in America too. (Here is another example.) In fact, the Korean would seriously doubt that there is any country in the world that does not have cosmetics for men. Every country (that is rich enough so that its male citizens can afford to care about his looks) would at least have moisturizing lotion and aftershave.

That said, the concept of masculinity is different in different cultures. For example, the Mexican has explained how Mexican men's show of manliness is to play grab-ass with other men, since that shows that they have conquered all women around them and moved onto men.

So Korean men may take pictures of themselves and comment on each other's look, but such actions are only effeminate in American standards. On the flip side, certain actions by American men would be considered highly effeminate for Koreans - like not beating their wives.

(I keed, I keed.)

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Looking for Korean Men?

Sunday, February 25, 2007

If you had noticed, there is a little tag on the bottom of the tool bar on the right, called "sitemeter". Sitemeter is this neat thing where the Korean may track how many visitors Ask A Korean! has had, and so on.

One of the features of Sitemeter is that the Korean can see what terms people searched on Google or Yahoo to get to this blog. Overwhelming majority of the search terms, obviously, is "ask a korean" or "ask a korean blog". A search term that keeps on showing up, albeit in small numbers, is "korean fucking". If you were looking for Korean porn and ended up here, the Korean apologizes for disappointing you. But shame on you for employing such a primitive method to search for Korean porn, which is so prevalent all over the Internet it's impossible to miss.

(It is slightly disturbing that there are people specifically looking for Korean porn, as opposed to Asian porn. Let's move on.)

But somehow the next most common search term for people who got here is "Korean men". The Korean doesn't really understand why or how, since when the Korean googled "Korean men," this blog did not show up in the first 10 pages of results. These must be some really persistent people. It is also interesting that a lot of these searchers are from Taiwan, Singapore, Philippines, etc. (Sitemeter also tells the Korean where a visitor is logging in from.)

Well, if you have any questions about Korean men, this is the place to be. The Korean doesn't care how bad your English is -- just ask the Korean! Click on the link on top right, and let's hear from you, Korean-men-seekers.

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On Diddling Foreign Beings

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Dear Korean,

I am a gringa who recently visited Korea with a teaching group and spent time with some Korean college students. Of course, all of our cracker boys had huge crushes on the small, dainty, ultra-feminine Korean women. I never expected the reverse to be true. Compared to the cute little Korean girls, us Americans felt like huge amazon women. But, one of the Korean guys told me that they all lusted after western girls. Since returning to the US, I have heard from other Korean men that western girls are too big and hairy for them. Was the first Korean telling the truth or was he just trying to take advantage of a stereotypically loose American?

Gringa

Dear Gringa,

All the Koreans you spoke to told 100 percent truth. You made a classic mistake in dealing with immigrant minorities -- thinking that those in America are the same with those in the motherland. Korean Americans are a very different species from Koreans in Korea, and the same principle applies to every minority in the U.S. who immigrated from somewhere else.

Korean American men, after all, live in America. They have seen, dated, and (hopefully) had sex with all different kinds of women. Majority of Korean American men, in the Korean's experience, do prefer Korean or Asian women. The Korean thinks it's really more about familiarity; the first people that all of us ever see are our parents, so we are more used to people who look like us. (Disclaimer: The Korean is an equal opportunity dater, although the Korean Girlfriend is, in fact, Korean.) But certainly, plenty of Korean men say they don't like white women because they are too big and hairy.

Koreans men in Korea are a different story, and the lesson here is this: men are the same everywhere. When you visit any American porn site (No link. Find your own.) there is always a separate category for "Asians". Well, guess what? If you visit any Asian porn stie, they always have a tab that says "white". In fact, the Korean is convinced that if we met an extraterrestrial being tomorrow, there will be alien porn on the Internet the day after. Men are fascinated by the idea of dipping their pen into all kinds of different inks, and this runs true across time and space. As much as there is yellow fever in America, there is white fever in Asia.

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You're not a Man until You Survived Military

Friday, December 15, 2006

Dear Korean,

Why is it that every time I see a Korean at the rifle range he has at least one assault rifle? Is there some sort of rule that if a Korean owns a gun it has to be an AK-47?

Unsigned

Dear Anonymous Coward,

The Korean is one of those people who think the 2nd Amendment became obsolete when the U.S. government began to own tanks and fighter jets. So naturally the Korean does not have much experience in guns; the Korean fired a gun only in one occasion, at the LAPD Police Academy. But that's another story.

Here's a guess: (almost) all Korean men have been through the military, and that experience makes them more familiar with assault rifles rather than puny handguns.

You cannot talk about how Korean men are without talking about their military experience. Currently, standard length of the military draft in Korea is 2 years and 4 months. If one is assigned at a non-combat position (i.e. JAG officer, medics, secretarial duties, etc.,) the length is 3 years. I can try to explain what the usual military experience entails, but I'll let the following picture do the talking.

I'm sure you get the idea. (That pose is called Wonsan pok-gyok, which translates to "bombing of Wonsan." Wonsan is a port city in North Korea. This punishment is applied liberally for various causes, such as being slow in marching, losing a soccer game, or overcooking sarge's ramen.)

Having been through this experience for more than 2 years, post-military Korean men become completely insufferable. Imagine your most insufferable Red Sox fan (pre-World Series win) bitching about his misery and multiply by 100, that's your typical Korean man. I have had the worst experience! My ssibal ("fucking") sarge made me eat food out of a trash can! I ran 10 miles a day wearing full gear every day! Of course, attendant to the horror stories are their own stories of heroics. I may be out of shape now, but I was fucking fast when I was in the military. I was the striker for our platoon soccer team, and I once caught a wild boar with my bare hands! Put some Korean men together with some booze, and goondae ("military") will be ALL they will talk about. (All the stories above are the real ones that the Korean heard with his own ears.)

Do you have a good goondae story? The Korean would absolutely love to hear it. If you send in a good one, it will be posted.

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Ask away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

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Ask A Korean! News: Portrait of Mail-Order Brides

Sunday, November 12, 2006

First, a call for help. The Korean is somewhat discouraged by the slow flow of questions. Send in questions! Tell your friends! Thank you so much :)

Remember in one of the last Ask A Korean! News that I would talk more about the mail-order brides? Well here it is. Below is some excerpt from the report by Presidential Advisory Committee on Correcting Wealth Gap and Discrminiation, titled "International Marriage Brokerage System: Field Study at Vietnam".

At 2004, 11.4 percent of all marriages in Korea were between a Korean and a non-Korean. The number is as high as 27 percent in rural areas. Vietnamese women are a major subject of such marriages between Korean men and foreign women.

Usually Korean men are flown out to Vietnam for as long as 7 days or as short as 3 days, during which meeting, wedding, and honeymoon all take place. Korean men meet as few as 20~30 women or as many as 200~300 women per meeting. Between 5 to 10 Vietnamese women file into a room, the Korean man picks one among them, and the process is repeated for second and third round until one is chosen. Only at the last stage the man learns the age, edcuation, home town, family members, occupation, height, weight of the woman; the woman learns the man's occupation, economic standing and marriage history.

One Korean man who went through the process said: "it was very difficult to choose one among so many women after seeing them just for a moment. I was so nervous and no one really stood out. I was so hesitating that the marriage broker just picked one for me."

From the woman's side, it is virtually impossible to reject the marriage since being chosen already entails stiff competition; if she ever rejects, the "brokers" disadvantage her by never arranging her to meet another man. She also has to risk false information from the man's side about his occupation, etc. One woman recounted being told that her husband was a machinist earning $2,000 a month, only to find out that he was a daily laborer at a construction site when she came to Korea.

It is illegal in Vietnam to broker marriage for profit. Therefore this entire process is done underground. Smaller operations have around 15~30 women, and larger ones have 60~100 women. The women who are recruited are mostly from the southern, rural parts of Vietnam and generally are 19 to 25 year old primary school graduates. All women live together in a dormitory run by the broker. The women are charged with the cost of the dormitory, to be paid by their future husbands. The meeting takes place the day after the Korean man arrives Vietnam; the women (again, as many as 300 of them) are transported very early morning to avoid police detection. However, if the police ever catches them, it is their individual responsibility to run as best as she can, since the broker will assume no responsibility.

Officially the whole process costs around $10,000 (the Korean said in the earlier post that the cost was around $2,000. The Korean apologizes to the disappointed prospective buyers) for a Korean man to take a Vietnamese woman. The Korean brokerage company takes $6,500 and the rest goes to the Vietnamese brokers. Usually the Korean man gives to the bride's parents $500 as a dowery. But after taking out brokerage fee and so on, the actual amount that goes to the parents is about $180.

It takes 2~3 months for the women to obtain the entry visa for Korea. During that time the women learn Korean language, cooking Korean food and Korean manners. The cost of those lessons are again charged on the women.

Once the Vietnamese women come to Korea, they often suffer from domestic violence and jealous husbands who fear that they would run away. One woman said "As soon as I arrived at Korea my husband took away my passport and choked me. I am so afraid of him." Another woman said "I was hit by my husband three days after I entered the country. He demanded sex after coming home drunk; when I refused, he hit me in the face, pulled my hair and spat on my face."

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Ask away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

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Korean Men Will Drink Anything with Alcohol

Thursday, November 2, 2006

Dear Korean,

Why do Korean men love scotch so much? Why not vodka or beer?

- Unsigned

Dear Anonymous Coward,

What you have to realize is that Korean men will drink piss and sewage water as long as there is alcohol in it. So that might be a clue as to why Koreans love scotch - because it's the only liquor they have.

Of course it's not true anymore, but back in the day (around 70s~80s), Korea had three kinds of liquor: scotch, soju, and beer. Soju is dirt cheap, and fucks you up fast (around 25% back in the day, now around 20~21% alcohol.) Beer is great, but it's expensive and doesn't get you drunk fast enough while making you feel full. So scotch is an alternative to soju really; you get fucked up quick, plus you feel like a big shot spending a lot of money. Vodka was not available in Korea because it would have had to come from Russia or other communist countries and, well, there are still many South Koreans who would love to torture you for information just for stepping a foot in Prague. (The Korean Father told the Korean before his European backpacking trip that the Korean should look out for communist kidnappers - true story.)

As an aside, this trajectory of loving scotch happened earlier in Japan as well. Johnny Walker made a fortunate by coming up with the new "labels" that are inordinately expensive without the attendant increase in quality. Johnny Blue is specifically tailored toward Asian consumers who really don't know any better - in the Korean's opinion, it is only marginally better than the Black. The Korean likes scotch, but prefers single malt. Lagavulin 16 years is the Korean's favorite.

(The picture came from a result of Google image search for: worst whiskey ever. Apparently it's a single malt produced from Goa, India. The link that talks about it is rather funny: http://www.celticmalts.com/journal-c4.htm)

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