Welcome to the third episode of 폭탄영어, where we provide you with real English conversation and a transcript (대본) to help you use our podcast in your English studies. This week’s topic is light because of the Lunar New Year’s holiday, and since Yunji could not be with us, Jennifer and I simply talk about some good places to hear other views on Korea that can also help you improve your English skills.

 

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Show Links (sites mentioned in the podcast):
The Marmot’s Hole
ROK Drop
Scribblings of the Metropolitician
Where the Hell Am I?
Gusts of Popular Feeling
Korea Beat

Some Key Words and Phrases

“Say it ain’t so!” = 설마! or an expression of disbelief

a “shout out” = a greeting over the radio

“The mother of all XXX” = the biggest of XXX

to “toot one’s own horn” = to talk or brag about oneself

to “let off steam” = to release negative energy or anger, like releasing steam pressure in a machine

“there’s a lot of testosterone…” = to be very manly or masculine (English often uses scientific expressions idiomatically)

“blogosphere” = a new word meaning the “world of blogs”

to “have an ax to grind” = to have a “chip on one’s shoulder” or some issue that one always talks about

“That’s a whole other story!” = “that’s an entire, long separate conversation”

to “think with one’s stomach” = to always be thinking about food, making plans around food

“schlep” = to make a difficult journey

“hand-fed” = sometimes used literally, to mean that somebody puts food directly in another person’s mouth by hand (or chopsticks, or fork, or spoon, or whatever), and sometimes figuratively to mean that somebody makes something very, very easy for somebody else to do.

폭탄영어#3 – Foreign Perspectives on Korea (TRANSCRIPT)

Michael: Welcome to ‘Bomb English.’ (We da bomb!) With hosts Michael and Jennifer podcasting direct from Seoul.
Jennifer: Real people, real topics, real English. Hello and welcome to episode 3 of ‘Bomb English.’ I’m Jennifer.
Michael: And I’m Michael – and Yunji is not with us today.
Jennifer: Where is she?
Michael: She ran away.
Jennifer: Huh! I’m not surprised.
Michael: She went to 부산.
Jennifer: Smart girl.
Michael: Um….
Jennifer: Why is she in 부산?
Michael: She is in 부산 because of 설날, the big New Year’s holiday called ‘Lunar New Years’ but a lot of people call it ‘Chinese New Years’ in America.
Jennifer: It’s…yeah, most Americans know it as ‘Chinese New Year.’
Michael: Yes, and since the official holiday comes on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; and Monday and Tuesday are workdays, some places, in fact many places, just cancelled the sandwich days so you can leave on…(Meow) That’s my cat! He he. Shut up. So, the sandwich days some places, they got rid of those days so you could have left on Friday to go on some vacation.
Jennifer: Sandwich days?
Michael: Yeah, so basically when the work-week ended last Friday, some people already went on vacation because their work cancelled Monday and Tuesday to hook up with the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off.
Jennifer: So lucky.
Michael: I know! So it’s a week’s vacation for some people.
Jennifer: I had to go to school yesterday and today.
Michael: Ha ha. I worked… So we’re going to keep it light this week, but um… You know, many Koreans asked me “What the hell do you do during national holidays like 추석, which is the national Thanksgiving day, or 설날, which is ‘Lunar New Years’?” And foreigners just don’t disappear.
Jennifer: I do. (Poof!)
Michael: He he. Or we don’t just go to our “foreigner storage box” and shut down.
Jennifer: Shhhhh. You’re revealing trade secrets, Michael!
Michael: Trade secrets, ohhh! I will be killed. But, umm, I love Korean holidays.
Jennifer: Any particular reason?
Michael: Um, because…
Jennifer: You like 떡국?
Michael: No. Ha ha ha ha.
Jennifer: You like 제삿밥?
Michael: I don’t like, I don’t like doing anything with Korean people.
Jennifer: That’s um… Wow! Friendly, aren’t we?
Michael: No, but those holidays are perfect if you don’t have to go do, you know, visiting the relatives, traditional stuff, and you know, if there’s many foreigners, you know, don’t have family connections, we’re, you know, thankfully saved from all that stuff.
Jennifer: That’s kind of weird ‘cause I like going and getting 인사 and doing traditional stuff, and…
Michael: And cooking?
Jennifer: Well, I’m not considered competent to cook. So I sit on the…
Michael: You’re la~zy.
Jennifer: Yeah, I sit in the kitchen and get hand-fed bits of whatever they’re cooking.
Michael: Just like a man.
Jennifer: No! I’m better than a man ‘cause I keep them company.
Michael: Ah, you actually sit in the kitchen!
Jennifer: I sit in the kitchen.
Michael: And watch them cook!
Jennifer: I am the official taste-tester and occasionally I get promoted to putting things on toothpicks.
Michael: Oh good! I’m glad your skills are so advanced.
Jennifer: Um, I have a Korean host family that I used to live with back in the day when I lived in 안동. And I got to be really close with my host family, so most major holidays I try and go visit them. So I go all the way down to 안동 so that I can get in the car and we go to 대구 to visit 큰아버지’s 집.
Michael: No thanks. What I do is, I don’t have anything to do. I go to the many restaurants that are open, many things are open…
Jennifer: Are they?
Michael: Yeah, these days. In places where there are lots of people. I use my home theater, I have little parties, and enjoy not doing anything!
Jennifer: Who comes to your parties if everybody’s busy giving 인사?
Michael: Actually, foreign friends but also Korean friends who sneak out of their houses.
Jennifer: Huh! Say it ain’t so!
Michael: Well you know, depending on your family you may do everything on one day and nothing on the other two days. And, um, depending on what you do, yes.
Jennifer: The only people who have time to do nothing during major holidays in Korea are men.
Michael: No no no no. So outside of the actual day of celebrating, many young people just escape. So this podcast wants to insert a foreigner’s point-of-view, and that’s something, I think, Koreans, many Koreans are interested in. And we wanted to talk about some good resources to get a taste of what many foreigners are talking about.
Jennifer: What are foreigners talking about?
Michael: In, um… Just the same things that Koreans are often talking about. The overseas foreign community is very active on their blogs.
Jennifer: Expats love to talk about being expats.
Michael: Yeah, but they also want to talk about the same things that Koreans talk about. Which is the new president, policies, um, things going in society, you know, good places to party. The same things, you know, many Koreans want to know about or talk about a lot. So, in our show links we want to give the links to some of the places we’ll mention today.
Jennifer: Some “shout outs.”
Michael: Some shout outs. So the first place we’d like to mention is ‘The Marmot’s Hole.’
Jennifer: Isn’t a marmot a small Midwestern animal that lives in…
Michael: Holes?
Jennifer: Yeah, basically. On the prairie.
Michael: Yeah, but there’s a man who calls himself the Marmot.
Jennifer: Does he live in a hole?
Michael: He does not. He lives in a house. But his blog is the biggest and most influential site for foreign people, I think here.
Jennifer: Oh, it’s definitely the biggest. When CNN and other major news networks are tracking stories on Korea often times, they look…
Michael: They read the Marmot.
Jennifer: They read the Marmot!
Michael: In fact the Korean media reads the Marmot and watches, you know, what are foreigners talking about, what are some stories? And, um, there are several, I think what, almost 15, 20 writers who…It’s almost like a newspaper. So basically…
Jennifer: I didn’t realize there were that many.
Michael: Yes, there are…Some post more than others but these are foreigners who have lived in Korea, generally for a long time, they speak Korean, and they read the Korean newspapers, they watch Korean television, and they keep up with the culture. So these foreigners are like translating for many of the other foreigners who don’t read Korean or can’t read the newspaper or understand the television news. They translate the information so that, you know, a lot of foreigners do keep up with what’s going on in Korean society and know very much about it and have opinions about it. And the Korean English language newspapers are good enough, they do have information… But often they’re not as quickly updated and the information is a little bit censored, or monitored for the foreign community. So the ‘Marmot’s Hole’ is a very raw and direct and frank…
Jennifer: And big resource.
Michael: Big resource.
Jennifer: Pretty much the big blog to end all blogs about Korea in English.
Michael: The mother of all blogs!
Jennifer: ‘The Marmot’s Hole!’
Michael: Yes… (딴딴딴) And then, another interesting point-of-view which we will talk about later in another podcast, the ‘ROK Drop.’
Jennifer: ‘Rock Drop?’
Michael: ‘ROK Drop!’
Jennifer: Do they drop rocks on people?
Michael: They drop rocks!
Jennifer: That sounds fun, but painful and possibly illegal.
Michael: Sort of like dropped into the ROK, Republic Of Korea. So this is what’s known as a mil-blogger, this is a mil-blog.
Jennifer: Mil blog?
Michael: Military blog.
Jennifer: Ah~ M-I-L. Mil? Military?
Michael: Yes. And frankly, I’m a civilian – I don’t know what’s going on and I find his point-of-view very interesting. I don’t agree with all of his politics, but I read his blog everyday. Yeah, he has interesting things to say and you will find many interesting things at ‘ROK Drop’ if you want to go there.
Jennifer: I’m going to toot Michael’s horn for him (뚜뚜뚜뚜!) not because I don’t think that he won’t toot his own horn…
Michael: She hates~ me.
Jennifer: You’re pushing it man, you’re pushing it!
Michael: OK, I’m going to shut up now.
Jennifer: Not because Michael won’t toot his own horn, but because I want to beat him to the punch. Mike runs what’s another one of the biggest blogs on Korea, ‘Metropolitician!’
Michael: Yeah! That’s me! If you read my blog, you’ll see that my blogging point-of-view and style is very different from my podcasting style. It’s very critical, and sometimes very angry, sometimes silly, but it’s a social criticism blog.
Jennifer: It’s how Michael lets off steam.
Michael: Yes, I also de-stress. I let out my stress about certain things.
Jennifer: The other thing about Mike’s blog is that many of the other blogs in English tend to lean a bit right, politically, and Mike’s leans a bit left, which is…
Michael: Very left. A lot of the blogs tend to be a little bit, I guess, from the American point-of-view, kind of male.
Jennifer: That’s the other thing I wanted to talk about. Another good blog is called ‘Where The Hell Am I?’
Michael: Where the hell am I?
Jennifer: That’s a question I constantly ask myself. This blog is great too because there’s a lot of testosterone in the Korea blogosphere.
Michael: Testosterone, a male hormone.
Jennifer: Yes, and if you’re female you’re going to choke on it (Ew!) because nearly all the bloggers out there are male. But one of the very good female bloggers runs ‘Where The Hell Am I?’
Michael: Yes.
Jennifer: And it has some really unique perspectives. Not only is she female but she’s African American, too.
Michael: She offers a point-of-view that in a mostly white male, or Korean-American male, expat blogosphere, it’s pretty rare.
Jennifer: Another really unique blog with a unique perspective and point-of-view is ‘Gusts Of Popular Feeling’ which takes a very, sort of, academic…
Michael: A little more academic…
Jennifer: …and very historical view of what’s happening, including contemporary events. And it’s very very thoughtful and well-researched and its comment section is remarkably civil.
Michael: Yes, it is. And, um, he just is a very neutral person interested in certain topics. He’s also interested very much in Korean urban development.
Jennifer: Right. He puts up fabulous pictures.
Michael: I think a lot of Korean folks who don’t know very much about the city of Seoul could learn a lot from that blog. There’s a lot of interesting history of the city in there.
Jennifer: Right.
Michael: Another blog that is not necessarily, it doesn’t have very much perspective at all, um, in terms of the commentary but it translates Korean news stories into English. It’s called ‘Korea Beat.’ And ‘Korea Beat’ is a useful window for foreigners into what Korean news media is talking about.
Jennifer: And that’s just it! What Korean news media reports in Korean is sometimes very different than what’s going on in the English media produced by the Korean media. So foreigners sometimes have this sort of skewed perspective on what’s going on and what Koreans think because many foreigners rely on the English news media.
Michael: Yes, and often times certain stories don’t get translated into the English language Korean newspapers.
Jennifer: Right.
Michael: And often times the stories that are about foreigners, he he he. And on my blog, the ‘Metropolitician’ blog, one of my personal gripes, the ax that I have to grind…
Jennifer: He has many, many axes and he runs…
Michael: I have a whole set in my closet!
Jennifer: He keeps running out of millstones.
Michael: He he he. So I have many axes to grind.
Jennifer: Do you grind on a millstone?
Michael: No, I just grind on my brain.
Jennifer: Grind on a grindstone, you grind on a grindstone!
Michael: He he. Um, is about the very skewed and biased and very prejudiced representation of foreigners in the Korean media. Because the foreigners you hear about are…
Jennifer: Drunk.
Michael: Pot-smoking.
Jennifer: Canadian.
Michael: Aids-having.
Jennifer: White.
Michael: Korean-women-deceiving.
Jennifer: Men!
Michael: Who have fake degrees, and much much, more. And depending on the administration foreign bad guys have changed. Before, if you were foreigner, you’d not want to be mistaken for a military GI. But now the GIs don’t, don’t, right? They don’t want to be mistaken for an English teacher! Because English teachers have the bad reputation. So anyway, these are some of the perspectives. There’s a whole different way of looking at Korea that I think a lot of Koreans might find interesting. So, one example of this difference of point-of-view, it has to do with 김치.
Jennifer: What about 김치?
Michael: Um there are certain things that are just annoying, irritating to hear. And it’s not that someone’s right or wrong, it’s just irritating to me. It irritates me when people ask me, after knowing I’ve lived in Korea for 5 years, “Do you eat 김치?”
Jennifer: Ahhhhh I hate that question!
Michael: Can you eat 김치?
Jennifer: No, I’m physically incapable. I get a rash when I think about it. Ah, I just hate that question.
Michael: Ah. Or “Oh, You use chopsticks well.”
Jennifer: We have chopsticks in America, too. It’s like being surprised…
Michael: And most people can use them, somewhat.
Jennifer: Yeah, it’s like being surprised that a Korean person could use a fork.
Michael: Yes, I say, “Wow, Korean friend, you use forks well.”
Jennifer: You call your friends ‘Korean friend?’ It’s like in ‘Ratatouille,’ “Hey, tiny chef!”
Michael: But, he he he he. But I think that’s what people are thinking about. They say, “Hey, foreign man! You can do something unexpected well.” And I think, from the foreigners’ point of view, how can you not eat 김치 if you live in Korea, or are in Korea?
Jennifer: Especially since it’s going to be served to you at every meal!
Michael: Yes, um, or…
Jennifer: Well, when people visit my apartment they’re always really surprised because I have a Korean roommate. And they come into our room and they see a bed and a 요. And they look in our refrigerator and they see, you know, 김치, different 반찬, different vegetables and things and then they see, you know, yogurt and ketchup.
Michael: And what do they assume?
Jennifer: And they assume that my Korean roommate is the one sleeping on the 요, eating the 김치, making the 볶음밥, and it turns out that it’s entirely backwards. I sleep on the 요, there are multiple reasons for this. Mostly I sleep on the 요 because I think it’s comfortable and I think it’s more comfortable than the western-style beds I’ve slept on in Korea.
Michael: In Korea.
Jennifer: And maybe not at home. I like my bed at home. But, you know, in Korea, it’s just, it’s more comfortable.
Michael: Yeah.
Jennifer: And my roommate can’t cook most Korean foods.
Michael: Your…
Jennifer: She, well, she doesn’t cook much at all but she really can’t cook Korean food. So if you come to her house and you have 된장찌개 or 김치볶음밥, I’m probably the one who made it, and…
Michael: And you make it pretty well.
Jennifer: Yeah, well a couple reasons for that, once again. First of all, if I try and make western food in Korea, you can’t. I don’t have an oven, the ingredients aren’t the same. If I make western food it tastes really strange and very bad. And, you know, I learned to cook. Most people learn to cook in America when they’re college age or just out of college. Well, when I was in college and just out of college, I was spending a lot of time in Korea, so I learned to cook Korean food. But people don’t make that assumption when they visit my apartment. And it’s not to brag and be like “I’m more Korean than my roommate,” it’s…
Michael: Well the one thing is, we, both you and I, have lived the majority of our adult lives in Korea.
Jennifer: Right.
Michael: I’ve lived as an adult longer in Korea than I have in America. And one thing that I think is a constant assumption or constant way of looking at foreigners is that foreigners are “perpetual tourists” in Korea.
Jennifer: Right.
Michael: And I wish people would see that even someone living here from a year can become very familiar with this culture, um…
Jennifer: And comfortable in it in a lot of ways.
Michael: Yes, and people see me often as a foreigner first and are surprised when I can do basic things such as direct the taxi driver, I tell the taxi driver to go, turn left, I tell the taxi driver to turn left outside my house and the taxi drivers all say, “Oh, but you can’t go through that alley! There’s no exit!” And I say, “Just turn left” and they’re like, when they go through the alley and realize I’m right – because I live here, I live in this area, I’ve lived in this area for 5 years, they’re so surprised, “How do you know? You know traffic so well! You’re a foreigner, how can you know better than me?!”
Jennifer: Duh, you lived here.
Michael: Yeah, I live in this area. You know, this is my neighborhood. And, you know, it’s very difficult to see me as a person who is just another person in Korea who happens to be a foreigner. Not “You are a perpetual tourist.”
Jennifer: Yeah, it’s always assumed that we are here short term.
Michael: Yeah, and the mistake that I think a lot of the Seoul city government makes is it cannot see foreigners as anything other than tourists and temporary visitors. So they spend more money on having clean bathrooms or more effort…
Jennifer: Now personally, I appreciate the clean bathrooms very much.
Michael: Sure. But…
Jennifer: Keep up the good clean bathroom work.
Michael: But I would rather not have some silly program designed for so-called foreigners, I’d rather have Korean websites recognize my foreigner identification number.
Jennifer: Oh god!
Michael: That’s a whole other story!
Jennifer: That’s a whole other story that we’ll get into someday about how tragic our lives are because the Korean internet is basically closed to us.
Michael: Exactly. And the, it’s all from perspective because no one makes policies or plans, it seems, based on looking as foreigners as people living here as opposed to “Oh, you’re all tourists! We’ll smile for you, we’ll accept your money, but we don’t think of you as neighbors.”
Jennifer: It kinds of reminds me. I grew up in Oregon and for awhile Oregon had this sort of crazy motto for the tourists. Went something along the lines of “Welcome to Oregon, have a great visit and then go home!” I’m very loosely paraphrasing it but the gist was thanks for the visit, now go on your way.
Michael: Well I think that the Korean, the Korean unstated motto is “Thanks for coming to Korea, spend a lot of money, and please leave.”
Jennifer: I don’t know that it’s so much “please leave” as it is “Eh? You would want to stay?”
Michael: Yeah, people ask me all the time, “When are you going back to America?” And I say, “I don’t know, when I go!” But there’s this assumption that I don’t make my home here.
Jennifer: Right.
Michael: Yeah, um…And you know a lot of frustration amongst foreigners comes from that fact. I wanna say to a lot of Korean government officials or, you know, people I meet, “Hey, you don’t have to treat me any differently, you don’t have to give me special, you know, clean bathroom campaigns…”
Jennifer: You can give his clean bathrooms to me! I will accept them happily.
Michael: But I’d rather have basic things, I want to be able to um…
Jennifer: Use the Internet, get a credit card, make train reservations…
Michael: I can’t make a Cyworld page! You can make one but you have to copy your foreigner’s identification number…
Jennifer: I have a Cyworld page because I made it before they realized that many foreigners would want Cyworld pages and made extra requirements.
Michael: Yes, so now to get a Cyworld page, I have to send my foreigner’s identification card, copy of my passport, and fax it to them and wait for them to look at it. I think finding out about what foreigners are thinking is, can be a very interesting thing for Koreans to do and this is one thing our podcast wants to help along.
Jennifer: So Mike, what will you actually do this ‘Lunar New Year’ break?
Michael: Um, I’m going to watch movies, do some work, and go to lots of restaurants, and enjoy the silence.
Jennifer: So, so it’ll be a typical week for you, plus you’ll be doing some work.
Michael: Yes, not much change except, well, the streets will be far less busy, so…So what are you going to do?
Jennifer: Well, usually I would go down south to 경상도 and spend the holiday with my host family and extended family, but I’ve become very much like all the young women I hang out with here in 서울, and instead of going home I’m going to go to Shanghai this holiday.
Michael: Ahh, China!
Jennifer: Well, my college friend is getting married so I’m going to go to her wedding.
Michael: Oh, nice!
Jennifer: It will be nice, I’ve never been to China before. I’ve got kicked out of China once but…
Michael: That’s another story.
Jennifer: That’s another story.
Michael: So, that should wrap things up for this week!
Jennifer: That will indeed wrap them up! We’d like to remind everybody that links to all the blogs we’ve mentioned today will be available on the website.
Michael: Under our show links.
Jennifer: Under our show links, and also in the transcript.
Michael: Yes.
Jennifer: One more thing we’d like to mention in this podcast before we sign-off is that if you have a study group of 5 or more members…
Michael: 5 or more, please.
Jennifer: Feel free to contact us about having an in-person consultation with your study group. What does that mean? It means Mike or I will schlepp out to where you are or you will maybe schlepp to where we are…
Michael: Yes, and maybe…
Jennifer: Mike is lazy.
Michael: And maybe while having dinner (hint hint) we can talk about how to better use this podcast with your study group.
Jennifer: Michael thinks with his stomach.
Michael: He he he he. And one person on the site asked, “What do you guys get out of this?”
Jennifer: Do we get money?
Michael: No, we don’t get money. But we do want to help promote the podcast and if that means happy listeners who will be very eager to tell their friends and their colleagues, “Listen to this podcast, it’s a good resource, it’s helping us.” That helps our podcast as well.
Jennifer: So check the links, check the comments, let us know what you think. This is BombEnglish.com signing out.
Michael: Signing out until after the holiday ends, and we’ll come back with some more substantial interviews and content for you.
Jennifer: Happy New Year!
Michael: Happy New Year!
Jennifer: 새해 복 많이 받으세요!
Michael: 네~

Transcription by Eun-Gyuhl Bae