Asia Blog: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam

The guy has so many names: Jung Ji-Hoon and 鄭智薰. I didn’t particularly like it, but some might.

Harisu, the famous male to female transgender singer, model and actress, married her boyfriend on May 19, 2007. Her boyfriend Mickey Jung is four years younger than her, as Harisu was born in 1975. He’s an aspiring Korean rapper.

Here are the photos from their wedding:

It doesn’t make sense to most people why someone would want to become a girl–Harisu was an average-looking boy before she had surgery–given the life of complications, surgeries, drugs, and emotional trauma it would bring. However, for Harisu and her new husband, I wish them the best of luck!

This is non-news, but Korea is pondering installing a nude beach to stimulate tourism. Unfortunately, this is probably too radical, and too silly to ever be implimented. The proposal puts a bad light on tourism in the country, and has little internal support:

Residents and fishermen on the east coast are expected to protest strongly against it, citing the possibility of the beach creating an environment unsuitable for local adolescents.

I was in Korea this Spring Break and I noticed one of my younger cousins was memorizing a 19*19 multiplication table. I don’t know about North America, but when I was in Korea, I had to memorize 9*9 multiplication tables almost religiously. I wasn’t the most mathematically gifted student and I didn’t particularly like memorizing in general, so it was especially tortuous for me. So I sympathized with the youngsters of today who had to memorize 19*19 tables. A lot of people agree with me.

19*19 table seems to be a bit of an overkill, even in the educationally competitive country like Korea. A lot of people think that children are tortured enough with education as it is. Keep in mind, a lot of these kids are 1st and 2nd graders. Plus, memorizing more will just reinforce the notion that math is blind computation rather than concepts to be grasped and applied. The proponents of the new mulitiplication table argue that 19*19 table allows for faster computation and higher levels of confidence among students.

I think faster computation is a perk, but not a necessity. If you pursue math long enough and far enough, faster computation comes with the territory. As for higher levels of confidence, if it helps the students feel better about themselves because they have a slight edge over other students or because they can finish problems faster, then sure, go ahead. But if the 19*19 tables become widely used, which seems to be the trend, then the average speed of computation will settle at a higher level than before and the new tables will just be another tool to edge out people who are not inclined towards memorizing long list of numbers and more interested in solving problems creatively.

Our family has never been a big fan of Korean drama shows. In the last seven years that we’ve been in Canada, homesickness has never expressed itself in the form of wanting to watch Korean TV shows. There are reasons besides just our lack of interest. Videotapes of TV shows are hard to come by where we live and until recently, the consensus was that K-drama just wasn’t all that good.

Recently though, my parents have been watching some K-drama. Perhaps it’s the lack of entertainment, or rather, headache my sister and I used to provide for my parents since we both left for college. Also, there’s been a lot of buzz surrounding a show called “Winter Sonata”. It has been a huge hit in Japan, and maybe that bit of international recognition sparked my parents’ interest. So my dad came home with 5 episodes of “Winter Sonata” on videotape. After playing with our VCR, which hadn’t been used since we got a DVD player, we finally sat down to watch “Winter Sonata”. And I must say, I was utterly disappointed.

Basically the story goes like this. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy gets hit by a car and dies. Few years later, girl is engaged to a childhood friend. But wait, her new client looks just like her first love! And he’s going out with her childhood friend who seems intent on ruining our poor heroine’s life for some odd reason. So far, that’s all I’ve watched, but I can guess the rest.

It wasn’t just that I didn’t like the show. I was starting to get mad and frustrated at the show. I could forgive the overused plot, the stereotypical characterizations and half-decent acting. What I couldn’t get over was the heroine. I know I was supposed to sympathize with her, but I was wanting to smack her. She was wimpy, passive and couldn’t stand up for herself. At least, that’s how I saw her character. The writers of the show probably wanted to portray her as a hardworking, intelligent career woman, but the number of scenes devoted to making her look capable is miniscule compared to the number of scenes that made me want to smack some sense into her. I would have been rooting for the villain had she not been so manipulating. The villain had character traits that I would have liked. Aside from her horrible hair and evil schemes, she seemed independent and actually went after the things she wanted. At any rate, to break the glass ceiling, which I would imagine is lower and thicker in Korea, people like our heroine wouldn’t stand a chance.

The show could have been so much more. The characters could have been more complex than just good and evil. The story could have moved much faster. I could probably get the gist of it from the first 2 episodes and the last 2 episodes.

Keep in mind that I’ve only watched the first 5 out of 20 episodes. My dad claimed that I “didn’t get it” because I had become too much of a banana – yellow outside, white inside. Still, I’m not sure I want to “get it” if it involves not saying what I want to say or having to swallow indignant situations. Especially if “it” involves being a silent, dainty lady who doesn’t seem to mind being stepped on.