I know I said I would write about school in this post but I’ve decided to put that off until Danny finishes his first week of teaching. Instead, there’s something far more pressing to talk about: young Koreans want to be gangsters. Or, at least, they want to wear watered-down versions of white peoples’ interpretations of 1990s-era rapper fashion…I think. Blinged-out hats, graphic tees with random combinations of English words like ‘yo’, ‘chill’, ‘bro’, and randomly, ‘happy beach time’, and LOTS of tattoos. American hip-hop and rap music is HUGE here and it comes up in the oddest places, i.e.: 8am, sitting at a café, Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” pairs beautifully with my morning grog and a latte. When it’s followed by Biggie’s “Fuckin You Tonight” I glance up at the very buttoned-up baristas and doubt that either of them really registers the line, “ Remember when I used to play between yo legs, you begged for me to stop because you know where it would head, straight to yo mother’s bed.” That brings up another observation: there is a very strange undercurrent of sexual humor that I don’t totally understand yet. I guess it comes as a surprise because I think most foreigners imagine Korea to have a very traditional and conservative surface appearance. Watching several K-pop music videos from my stool at a bar called ‘Lady Bug’ last night I noticed that all included groups of scantily clad, sexy dancing ladies and an excessive amount of ass-close ups. Looking around however, all of the young Korean women in the bar were very well dressed, even over-dressed for the location by American standards. I can certainly see some parallels to the way American women are portrayed in our media and the strange contrast to the way they actually behave in real life (a bit prudish according to some European friends). Lastly, a related story. According to Danny, who has an impressive amount of Asian-cultural knowledge, mainly gleaned from Anime, pervy old men are a hilarious joke in TV and real life. Yesterday, as we were riding the very-full metro back from a quick errand to Seoul, an elderly Korean man was so inspired by my “exotic” appearance he insisted on expressing his admiration through art. Image 1, for your viewing pleasure: Kinda cool right? He handed it to me and said it was a gift. Touched, we thanked him, repeatedly and proudly since ‘Kamsahamnida’ is one of the few Korean words we know well. Then he hands us another picture, this one of a lady. Nice. We thank him again. Then he hands us another, and another until finally… ...his pièce de résistance: At that point we stopped making eye contact and moved down the train. I’m in the process of finding out what all the writing with each image means, anyone who can decipher it and translate please feel free to confirm my hunch that it’s a dirty story.
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