::A Geek in Korea::

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3DJrSP5S9A[/video]

There is a television show called “TV Ngels” that runs late at night. This is an ongoing series, so the full title of the show at the moment is “TV Ngels Season 3: Korea vs Japan Sexy Battle”. With a title like that, how can you NOT watch it?

The concept of the show is this: Two teams of women, one set from Japan, one set from Korea, go to Thailand and compete in a bunch of elaborate male fantasy games. These games are basically as close as you can get to soft core porn without nudity, and are an excuse to put pretty women in skimpy clothes on television late at night.

The clip above is from the “Sexy Battle” section of the game. This takes up the most time of the show. The male stars are hooked up to heart monitors and monitoring devices, and when they reach certain points, or break eye contact, they have cold water dumped on their heads. The women dress up in various costumes and put on an elaborate show to get one of the two male stars to break these rules. One of the men that have to endure the woman’s shows is from Japan, the other from Korea. The hosts are a Korean man, and a woman that can also speak Japanese.

Between the pseudo-fetish strip tease shows, the girls compete in lamer mini-games. For example, they hide bikini tops and bottoms around the house, and two of the women race around in a scavenger hunt to find them. The women never wear anything more than bikinis anyway, so what’s the point of them finding MORE clothes?

Another game had the women swimming in skin tight jeans, then forced them to hop out of a pool, remove the pants, then ringing a bell before their competitor. *(The Korean women on the show swim like rocks with concrete feet.)

Winning the games gets them lame prizes. The prize for the first show I watched was 30,000 won to spend at a local market in Thailand. Imagine all the bananas you could buy! Talk about a cheap game show gift. They didn’t even offer the home version. (Running around in a bathroom in a bikini I guess.)

I’ve only seen the show twice with my wife. We were surfing channels and stopped to watch because of it’s ridiculous name. I think they were wise to invoke nationalism while trying to sell some T&A. Invoking nationalistic feelings with mediocre entertainment seems to work at times in this country.

As far as we can tell, they don’t “vote” any of the members of the team off. Is there a point system? Do people switch? Does it matter? There is no real point between the competition except the pretext for having women in bikinis do things on camera and the elaborate strip teases. The women may not be able to swim, but they look good in front of the camera, so no one is going home if their team loses a round(?).

The “behind the scenes” footage they show had a casting selection process where they told the women to audition for the part by dancing, singing, and basically shaking their bodies for the camera. It’s basically “Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball 2: The Television Program” sans actual volleyball.

People will got to elaborate lengths for what amounts to soft core porn in this country.

Our new curriculum has added more wonderful books from “American” classrooms. I’m not a history major, but a lot of what I’m teaching are very bold sorts of lies. Lies of omission, lies of simplification, lies of revision. I know the books are targeted at second grade students in the United States, but wow, it’s pretty crappy to have to teach to a bunch of Korean children.

Not every lesson is filled with historical whoppers. There are units about communities, neighbors, as well as map reading and other practical lessons that aren’t bad. I’d be fine with teaching those sorts of lessons if that’s what we did the entire book.

It’s just when they brush over the history of the colonies and indigenous populations I take issue. There is a page with a beseeching Pocohantas protecting an injured settler from an American Indian about to smash him on the head a second time. Pocahontas has her hand up in protest as she cradles the settler’s head on her knee. According to the book, Pocahontas made the American Indians “friends” with the English settlers because she could speak English. They follow it up with a question like this:

“A new friend in school can’t speak English. What will you do to help her?”

Subtle. People need to speak English to be helpful. People that don’t speak English will probably bash you in the head. Nice. Simple as that. Who wouldn’t want to be friends with English speaker? Only someone that tries to hit people in the head with a club. This is what American second graders learn?

I know Koreans are indoctrinated in propaganda extra early in their “Society” classes as well. Young students tell me that Japanese people (or Americans, or Afghani…) people are nothing more than baby eating savages depending on the political climate of the country at the time.

When things get heated, I just try to keep my baby consumption to moderate levels until the crisis at hand blows over. Once the teachers in their elementary schools have a more politically viable target, I can go back to my barbecue baby back ribs in peace. (What…that’s what they are, aren’t they?)

It’s sick, and I hate that sort of indoctrination, but living in a country with an overwhelmingly dominant homogeneous culture, it’s not exactly surprising that minority and outside opinions sometimes getting less than a fair shake. Students have this coming at them from all sides, and I don’t feel good about participating in it, even if I soften the blow from time to time by calling the Pilgrims, “Funny hat people”.

The book isn’t all bad. There are interesting profiles of minorities and other people in history that made a difference in shaping America politically. None of that is very relevant to Korean students. It’s also so simplified and so revision friendly that all context is destroyed. Of course, that’s not what the book was designed for since it wasn’t explicitly made for export, so to expect anything relevant is pointless anyway. I do the best I can with the “good” materials, try to work the best I can with the “bad” materials, and simply ignore anything completely pointless or down right bad.

There were a lack of options when choosing a book for this level with this topic, so I should be happy I have any materials at all. At least I grew up with the history they’ve doctored in the book. My Canadian coworker has extra problems trying to swallow the stuff they throw in since they have their own cultural ideologies embodied in their own historical retelling.

If someone is going to teach lies about America to small impressionable children, it might as well be me.