Newsgroups: soc.culture.korean
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 01:06:04 -0500 
From: Woncheal Choi <wc1q+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Orange-jok
	<1992Dec14.142940.16233@news.columbia.edu>

I apologize my late response. I will make some of points in my previous
posting clear.

1) Comparison between Mahattan and Seoul

    Think about the relative influence of Mahattan to USA and Seoul to
Korea. How much people in California care about what the people are
doing in NY city?  While Mahattan is just a part in USA (of couse it has
financial important meaning), Seoul is not a just big city, almost all
cultural, educational, financial and political system is concentrated in
Seoul.  Even though there are minor systems in local areas, still they
are strongly depend on systems in Seoul.  Also one fourth of Korean
people live in Seoul.  Thus, the problems in Seoul is not just urban
problems, it is more likely  problems of korean society. That is another
problem in Korea.
 
   Anyway, the point I was tring to make was that OJs and other rich
people's influence to other korean people are more serious than those of
rich people in USA



2) Dirty culture and Rap music


    There were some misunderstanding because of my poor writing.

There are good aspects in korean tradition. The dirty culture I
mentioned are things that spoil those good points like drugs, sexisms,
money worship.

    I used Rap music to illustarate that how OJs can effectively affect
to general society not to show an example of 'dirty culture'. Rap music
is an expression of black people's feeling or emotion. I was wondering
how those black people can make such a natural and nice rhythm and music
out of talking and noises! I think that is because black people have
their own unique rhythm which other races don't have. However, just a
superficial copy of those black people's rhythm is quite successful in
Korea. If you like rap musics, watch 'Hyeon Jin Young', the guy I
mentioned, and see how is it like. Then, was the REAL raps popular in
Korea before those guys appear?  The only place you can hear rap music
so often was the disco clubs where most OJs main life is going on. The
point is HOW has the rap become so popular in korea these days.

    Then, do I regard rap music as the 'dirty culture'? 
That's another interesting issue which I would like to talk about.
Specially about music. Some people talked about chinese influence in
korean culture to justify importing foreign cultures.  So was the result
desirable by having been using chinese charater and parasited to China? 


3) Average normal korean

    This is quite vague term but the point is that I believe there are
still more people in korea who has traditional ways of thinking and
their idea build the main stream of korean ethic and mentality. Before
you judge whether that is good or bad, it is true that the new ideology
or way of thinking have been viewed more than it is. How many real
korean people are like the ones shown in korean 'Soap-Opera'? ( I am
just talking about their level of life, but also their the mentality). I
wanted to more emphasize on people who are in the shadow of fancy neon
lights and who are . 


4) How to guide the in-flux culture

   That is very tough question. One thing I am sure is that the
government or another high authority are not the ones who should lead.
In what direction the guide should be done?  Also another difficult
question. Some people claim 'Min-Joong' oriented culture is the ideal
direction which our culture should go. Some people say "take good part
of foreign culture and use of merits of traditional culture blar blar
blar..". Kim Yong-Ok addressed interesting points about this issure but
I don't remember in detail, sorry.


5) Side comments

    I found some attitudes in the posting that 'All the big cities have
same problems', 'I don't care what rich people do.' 'If someone is doing
wrong, then it is his personal problem'. Korean government has been
successfully using these ideas to control korean people. In some sence,
korean people have 'Ja-gi po-gi sim-li'(Sorry, lack of vocabulary). Even
in election, people take it granted the government's controling the
election as ' ruling party premiem '. When 'Park  Jong Chul' incident
happened, the government just covered up everything as a personal crime.


Andy Kim wrote:

>OJ is not a problem by itself, it is a symptom.  

I agree


Woncheol ( who is not a christian and hates to go church.)