ZenKimchi Korean Food & Travel
The ZenKimchi Korea Food & Travel Podcast goes beyond the usual travel lists to explore the food, neighborhoods, history, people, and peculiarities that make Korea worth knowing.
Host Joe McPherson, founder of ZenKimchi, has lived in Korea for more than twenty years, writing about its food and culture and creating travel experiences for visitors. Each episode offers practical advice, deeper context, and occasionally inconvenient opinions about Korean food and travel.
Whether you’re planning a trip or simply curious about life beyond the postcards, this is Korea from someone who has watched it change.
ZenKimchi Korean Food & Travel
Accidentally Omitted
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Guest: Shawn Morrissey (The Dark Side of Seoul Podcast) https://darksideofseoul.com/podcast
Shawn Morrissey (The Dark Side of Seoul Podcast) joins us to discuss foreign teachers being omitted from vaccination lists. Plus these amusing and sometimes hair-pulling stories:
- The K-gov again not anticipating things, like the Delta variant
- And that there are more 55-59-year-olds than there are vaccines
- Does a car-bound protest violate social distancing protesting rules?
- CNBC praises a 26-year-old ESL teacher for saving money on her meager salary
- Movers move the wrong apartment
- BTS accidentally promotes American butter instead of Korean food
- SM Entertainment warns stans to not be STANS
- A very racist Masterclass
--Please Follow--
Website: https://seoulpodcast.com
Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/960226
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kingsejong
Facebook: https://facebook.com/SeoulPodcast
Join us in the chat for LIVE recordings on Fridays at 7:30 p.m. (KST) by subscribing to our YouTube Channel.
YouTube: https://youtube.com/zenkimchi
Support us on Patreon to get more goodies
https://patreon.com/seoulpodcast
This is the Soul Podcast, The Shamwao of Asia. I am King Sage, reminding you that if you see a pesticide truck in your neighborhood, caution your children they only have a few seconds to frolic in the pesticide truck's magical gas cloud. And here are your hosts, Emma Kalka and Joe McPherson.
SPEAKER_09And welcome to the Soul Podcast. This is Joe.
SPEAKER_05And Emma.
SPEAKER_09And Emma's here, and this week we brought on Sean, Sean Morrissey from the Dark Side of Soul Podcast.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, like last minute.
SPEAKER_09Last minute. It's like Sean, you wanna you wanna join us? Yeah, I got nothing else to do. I got chips and dip.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's like it's gonna it's gonna watch you live anyway. It's like sure.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, this is this is how we do things. It's like it's like if you watch us live on YouTube, we can just uh like hey, you just want to just get on the show? Sure, because we're still not we've been we've been doing this show since what what what since 2008? What's my math? Uh that's a long time. Uh we still don't have a large enough audience. So which is good, less pressure. I can just screw around and say what I want. And and and later on, when I'm when I'm famous and old, someone's gonna find the archives and I'm gonna be canceled because of something I said. That's my long-term plan.
SPEAKER_03That's your long-term plan. Get canceled.
SPEAKER_09It is the duty of every white male to be canceled before they're 65.
SPEAKER_03Is that the new thing?
SPEAKER_09Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_03Okay. I'm on it. Yes.
SPEAKER_09I'm sorry uh for for the live people watching us for the f the friends watching us live. We were a bit late. Because it it became pizza night in the Zen Kimchi household, where my girls were making their own pizzas, and it was a wonderful time because I was teaching GM wanted to learn, my daughter wanted to learn how to toss pizza dough. And so I was teaching her, even though I suck at it. But I was teaching her how to do it. The girl, for the first time doing it, did pretty freaking well. In fact, yeah, I'm gonna post I'm gonna post this. Is actually the result. This is her pizza dough. She she used a fork and made little markings on it. Um, so I was making a few pizzas. This one is a brie pizza with honey and jalapenos and asparagus. This is the cool thing about me living out in Gimpo, is we have these uh farmers' co-ops called local food. And every now and then you go in there and it's it's it's it's just food grown by the local farmers, and has their pictures next to their pictures and their names next to their produce. And this one guy decided to experiment with growing asparagus, and he it was pretty decent price. I'm like, shoot, I'm grabbing all this fresh asparagus.
SPEAKER_03Like, yeah. My wife and I were talking tonight about how how expensive we're talking. How about so expensive everything is still from last from last summer?
SPEAKER_09When the egg prices go up, they never go down. Yeah, did you guys suffer an egg shortage? This is the most boring topic, but I'm gonna ask that. Did you guys suffer an egg shortage recently? Yeah, we're getting this like every every now and then we keep getting these egg shortages. I had to I had to order from coupon this week. Eggs.
SPEAKER_05I always order online, so I've never really noticed. There were a couple times where they didn't have like the big because I like to get like the big 15 eggs because I usually Yeah, we do the 30 eggs. Yeah, there were a couple times on Market Curly where they didn't have the big ones, but they had like small six packs.
SPEAKER_02So six packs.
SPEAKER_05I know it's because uh no, it well, it's because of like the avian flu.
SPEAKER_09They had to call a lot of oh again, again, we're getting that again. Oh man.
SPEAKER_05Uh no, well, that's why there was initially a shortage, but I'm assuming even though like it's died down, you can't just automatically regrow chickens.
SPEAKER_09It takes 30 days.
SPEAKER_05It's gonna take a while. It's gonna take a while to recover, I think.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, it does.
SPEAKER_05It stabilized a bit because they started importing eggs.
SPEAKER_09I didn't know that. I didn't even think about that. See, the uh people listening to us outside of Korea and Asia, yeah. We have to deal with bouts of the avian flu and swine flu still every now and then.
SPEAKER_03Up where I in Padua, where I am. They're here all the time. I always get warnings on my phone.
SPEAKER_09I get COVID and like hoof and you're still getting warnings, they stopped doing that for us. COVID warnings? Yeah, I haven't had one in a long time. I get them for like five today. Oh, but you're you're you're in dirty Itewan, of course.
SPEAKER_05No, they're none of them have been from Yongsen, it's been like Mafo, Mafo, Yongdumpo, Dongjak. I don't even know why. I don't even go to Dongjaku, but I've been getting alerts from them.
SPEAKER_09Hmm, okay. Well, it's in this general vicinity's donjak, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I get I get alerts from Yangju every day. And that's pretty far east of here. It's a good to drive, it's not all that far, so I guess it makes sense, but like I don't know. I don't go to Yangju.
SPEAKER_09Maybe Gimpo just gave up.
SPEAKER_05Who cares?
SPEAKER_09Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Outside of your own risk.
SPEAKER_09Bunch of gimps and gimbo. Yep, that's what we are. I live I live in like the weird-sounding gimbo in the neighborhood of Pumu Dong, which does sound like some type of venereal disease.
SPEAKER_03Did I tell you the one time like years ago, the the buses they they set up some buses coming from Gimpo to Quanghuamun, and they wrote in English Gimpo City, but they put them together and they kept this the C in City small, so it read Gimposity.
SPEAKER_09Gimposity! Oh my god, what an amazing okay. Is that is that domain available?
SPEAKER_03You and your gimposity.
SPEAKER_09I'm gonna gimbosity is a great name. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_03There you go. There you go. Yeah, do a blog about Gimpo. Call it Gimposity. Gimposity. Joe's Gimposity. Yeah. I wrote I rode the bus too just because of that. I was like, I'm getting on the Gimposity bus.
SPEAKER_09For the longest time, I actually owned the very valuable domain name that I never used. I used to own Koreamotels.com. Really? Yeah, but I never made a site for it. So I just kept paying for the domain every year. Never made a site. I was hoping to sell it or do something with it. Never did. And now these days I'm like, hmm, I could do something with it. Because now I know more about how startups work and how funding works, which sucks, but still now I know. And man, I could have come up with I could come up with that.
SPEAKER_03Do you still wait? So do you still have it?
SPEAKER_09Uh I I checked and I think I'll let it go. Okay. Finally. So like I got it back in 2007, 2008. What are you drinking tonight?
SPEAKER_03Uh I got um I'm drinking uh what is it? The uh Guinness uh ale, the their light their pale ale.
SPEAKER_09Guinness has a pale ale?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Hop what's it called? Hop, I keep thinking hop city. See now I'm thinking hoposity, gimposity, hopsity. So how is it?
SPEAKER_09Is it very hoppy? Is it bitter or is it like uh dry hoped?
SPEAKER_03Sorry, it's not an ale, it's a lager. Um no, no, so it's not. It's not it's not it's not dry hop, so it's not bitter? No, no, no, it's nice, it's a nice summer beer.
SPEAKER_09Does it have a uh nose to it? There's like a piney nose.
SPEAKER_03No, not really. No, no, no. So I I corrected myself. I said it's a lager, but uh just a lager, okay. Yeah, but it it's nice, flavorful, nice, nice uh aftertaste, very light, washes down your throat real nice. Finish. The snobs use the word finish. Snobs can kiss my hairy butt, Joe. All right.
SPEAKER_09My Emma, what are you drinking?
SPEAKER_05Oh, I just got whiskey. I've got whiskey and coke tonight. I just got whiskey.
SPEAKER_09I'm like, I would love to have whiskey.
SPEAKER_05I was it's not it's not like nice whiskey. It's like cheap stuff that you can get at the convenience store, which is why it's mixed with coke. Ah because it's not the whiskey you want to drink alone. Um I don't know.
SPEAKER_03I mean, do you think do you remember the the it may it may still be around, but it was um a terrible, terrible booze, and it was only available, I think, in in shops like corner stores. Modules called um it was called Captain Q.
SPEAKER_09I've seen that.
SPEAKER_03I never tried it.
SPEAKER_05Was it like a rim-off of Captain Morgan rum or something?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think it's supposed to be it's like rum-flavored booze. Um, so it's it's awful.
SPEAKER_09It's really so there was a thing in the early 80s, and it was in Korea, but I found out it wasn't just in Korea. Was a flavoring you could add to soju to make it taste like whiskey.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, yeah. I saw someone posted that maybe on the Korean Korea Times archive recently.
SPEAKER_09It was a Korean history thing, yeah. It was the Korean history thing. And Mike Seisemore, I think, looked it up, and yeah, it did exist. And it was it was not just in Korea's like in Taiwan and such. Is this this little tablets that you would drop into your alcohol to make it taste like whiskey?
SPEAKER_03You mentioned the commercial for that. Do you love drinking soju but can't stand the flavor? Well, we can't.
SPEAKER_05Maybe do you like drinking whiskey, but you can't afford it?
SPEAKER_03I mean, that one too. That's the second one that they came up with.
SPEAKER_09Anytime the whiteys complain about living here, we remind them there used to be the only whiskey you get was tablets dropped in really bad soju. Now, the soju back then was higher-proof, though.
SPEAKER_03I remember you couldn't even get cheese when I first came to Korea. Oh, yeah, I couldn't.
SPEAKER_09You go to the you you go to the the the black market in Dongdae Moon. Was it Dongde Moon? And I went out there to see, and they didn't have a refrigerator, they were frozen, and they would leave it out to thaw all day, and you would just hack off a piece of it. Oh my god. And it was I went there in summer and I saw it just it's just it was like half frosted and half melting. It was disgusting. By the way, I'm I'm drinking, I'm doing my usual playground, playground joker, pale ill, still my favorite.
SPEAKER_03Um, there used to be a black, well, it wasn't a black market. I I I think we thought it was a black market shop for a few years, but it turned out it wasn't. It was just the red door no no in Il Sun near near Geop Station. There there was um a place uh called Orange. Well, it was next to a place called Orange Mart. And um they yeah, they would have cheese there, but like in 2001, 2002, to get just a brick of cheese would be at that time would be like man o chanon 15,001. 15?
SPEAKER_08Okay.
SPEAKER_03So but then so now that'd be well with inflation, I don't know, but probably yeah, grocery inflation is going crazy.
SPEAKER_09I was reading articles today about how grocery inflation is going crazy, and I did not put that in the notes because I didn't think we'd talk about it. Because that's a boring topic.
SPEAKER_05You are price inflation, guys. It's a thing.
SPEAKER_03Who wants to talk about inflation? Well, talk about inflation. Let's hang out and talk about inflation and investments.
SPEAKER_09The big um uh the big article running around today is the usual business insider. Hey, Pippen, the usual business insider bull crap articles. I think it's business insider or one of those fake financial magazines that's always doing clickbait. They're talking about uh this this uh expat lives in Korea on just $25,000 a year or something like that. Well, it's in the notes.
SPEAKER_05I wanted to read that, but I didn't. I I I saw your comment on it though.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, it's funny because I made a little comment and it was like it was like like a lot of people liked it, and people people nitpicked my comment. I'm like, really, really? Because I think a lot of people when they see this, and even my when I was posting on LinkedIn, they kind of missed the point of they were like bragging, like, well, I could have lived on less than that. I'm like, that's not the point. It's like this is a four-year college graduate making twenty-four thousand dollars a year. Yes, of course, their shitty apartment is paid for, which I like people to know that is not much. Because we are those of us who have our own places, we get stipends that increases our salary if you're teaching, and it's not much more. The best you can hope for is maybe $36,000 a year. If you're just I'm just saying, if you're just teaching at a Hawan, yeah, if you're just doing that, and I'm like, you know, and okay, this is what gets me is like someone who graduated from an Ivy League school comes to Korea, makes less money than someone who graduated from Donguk, a much lower-tiered school, I must say you makes half the salary of someone who just graduated Dongook University, out straight out of college. Um, average salary of someone who comes out of the of the basic universities. Well, the SKY definitely make more than $50 million, $50,000 a year. Straight out. Um Dongook is is up there. So Dongook University, yeah. You'd expect to make around $40,000 to $50,000 a year, straight out of school. And then I'm sorry, I'm being a snob, but I'm just like the inflation. Uh it's like the the salaries are exactly the same as they were 15 years ago. And and you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. For hogwans, I'm using hogwans as an example.
SPEAKER_03I'm just trying to think. I left Hogwans probably in yeah, right around that time. But yeah, I guess um what was I making? When I first came to Korea, I was making 1.7 a month.
SPEAKER_091.9 for me. 1.9 for me. Right. What year was that? 2004.
SPEAKER_05I was making a lot more than that, but I was working at Berlitz in Samsung Dong.
SPEAKER_09Berlitz is a good school, though.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so I was definitely making a lot more than that, but I was also working my ass off because we had split shifts.
SPEAKER_09Oh, split shifts suck. Yeah, split shifts, split shifts for the the the golden salaries, but they're split shifts.
SPEAKER_05Right. And so any any classes that I took between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. were over time. And I got because Berlitz is an international company, I got paid at time and a half um for whatever hours. And being like a 22, 23-year-old, fresh out of college at a branch that had maybe three other women working there, and all of our most like 90% of our clients were of the Ajaci variety. Of course, I got requested a lot. And it had absolutely nothing to do with my teaching ability. I at first I was naive enough to think, like, wow, I must be a really great teacher. And then very quickly, I was like, hmm, has absolutely nothing to do with it. You were I got it probably because they were like, her name is Emma. Oh, it can make Emma Boeim jokes, and she's not gonna get it.
SPEAKER_03Make it what jokes? Emma, what jokes?
SPEAKER_05Emma Boeing jokes. I got so many references. Oh, very famous Korean movie named Emma. And I'm like, okay, whatever. And then somebody finally told me what it was, and I was like, so they would say that and they would like kind of laugh to themselves, like, ha ha ha, she doesn't know it. I'm like, oh, so you watch porn on regularly in class, and they were just like shit, she knows, she knows, abort, abort, she knows, she knows.
SPEAKER_03Abort joke, abort reference.
SPEAKER_05I was like, if you're gonna try and embarrass me, I'll just flip it right back on you. I don't care.
SPEAKER_09So if I was taking like like oh wow, if I was taking like uh Mandarin lessons from someone whose name Jade Cush, it'd be the same as that.
SPEAKER_03What are you talking about?
SPEAKER_09That flew over your head, didn't it?
SPEAKER_03Is that a porn star?
SPEAKER_09Yeah, Jade Cush, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay. She follows me.
SPEAKER_02She follows you or she follows Zen Kimchi. That's the Zen Kimchi. Okay.
SPEAKER_09Oh no, no, there's another porn, there's another porn actress who follows me. What's her name? Um, Lily Type.
unknownReally?
SPEAKER_09Lily Type.
SPEAKER_03Lily Ty. Follow my porn porn stars following me. Let's see.
SPEAKER_09I don't think so.
SPEAKER_06Wait a minute.
SPEAKER_09Porn and food, man, they go well. Let's see.
SPEAKER_04I can see that. I can see that.
SPEAKER_03Let's see. That's all friendly.
SPEAKER_09I did, I did, I did a silly little DM conversation with Did with Lily Thai once.
SPEAKER_03Here's uh here's one. Joe.
SPEAKER_09If I'm in Vegas, she said just contact me if you're in Vegas.
SPEAKER_05Oh my god, that portion follows you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. What? Yeah, yeah. He's Ron Jeremy. Ron Jeremy's buddy, Ron Jeremy's best friend.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, yeah. Um, no, my ex-wife will not release those tapes. Those that were lost in the divorce. I was very young, stupid, and better looking.
SPEAKER_03Well, at least you're a better looking.
SPEAKER_09Okay.
SPEAKER_03Oh my gosh. Emma takes a sip of her Captain Q.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I've got my Captain Q.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna go, go, mmm.
SPEAKER_03I didn't finish my Captain Q story, but it's it's passed.
SPEAKER_09It's not a Star Trek reference. That's why I kind of want I feel like that is a Star Trek reference.
SPEAKER_03No, it's awful. Yeah. Anyway, we can move on from Captain Q.
SPEAKER_09Really?
SPEAKER_05No longer exists for reason.
SPEAKER_09I'm busy eating my homemade pizzas. Um this week. Oh god. Oh no, this week. What? This year and a half, we've been talking about coronavirus like every show.
SPEAKER_05I know. Actually, a couple days ago, I was like, I hope something else happens in the news so we can talk about something other than COVID-19.
SPEAKER_09Even the presidential candidates have been boring this week. Yoon has been dropping in the polls. And so since he's dropping in the polls, the one the one poll company that that had him high in the polls stopped doing polls on him. I don't know, and they say it's a conspiracy. Like I'm I'm trying to figure that one out. Did you hear anything about that, Emma? I I didn't even post it because it's too confusing it's too confusing to me. It just seemed really petty bull crap. But anyway, you when when Yoon entered the race, who's this prosecutor guy who's been trying to make a name for himself by by by Uh uh going against the current administration. Uh it turns out that his family is quite corrupt and they're currently under investigation or they're going to trial for his mother-in-law, she's in jail.
SPEAKER_05His mother-in-law was convicted, and she is in jail for like three years or something.
SPEAKER_09So I'm like, he's following the grand Korean tradition of presidents of always having family members in jail. Um that's why I kept saying Moon Jaein. If Moon Jae In can just get through this without a serious scandal that ends up in a trial in jail, he'll end up on the 50 on the on the 100,001 bill when they come out with one. I mean, just to have one president without prison. Without a criminal.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, he's so focused on trying to make North Korea his legacy. And I'm like, dude, just it's done. Don't go to jail. And that's a pretty good legacy considering history.
SPEAKER_09It's a small bar. It's a relatively small bar.
SPEAKER_05He would go to jail because of the dictators, but yeah. Considering most wait, did he have did Kim Dai Jun is hit his family have a corruption?
SPEAKER_02I think there was something with him too, yeah. His wife, right? Not him, I think with it with his wife.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, very few. Only only only the the conservatives were directly involved in something, but the liberals tend to have family members. The the uh yeah, the buddy carters or whatever, the family members that were that got into trouble.
SPEAKER_05Right, because even like nobu Hun, he didn't actually have he wasn't directly involved, but it was his family that was his family was involved, and then he committed suicide to save his family.
SPEAKER_09Well, you know, you get enshrined if you commit suicide, so yeah. I totally forgot. I'm I've almost forgotten Nomo Young because I'm trying to think what's his legacy now. Um, what what policies, what accomplishments has he made that has lasted? He's he didn't he did no immortality project. There's no solo 20 whatever, and there's no islands on the stream, there's no grand canal, no chunggi chun.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, he he um he he avoided impeachment.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, yeah, right away he was he was getting they're trying to impeach him. That's when I first came to Korea, was they were trying to impeach him.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I I don't really know much about him because I got here in late 2007. So I'd been here for like a little over a month when I Bach was uh elected. And then a few months later, next thing I know, in like May, like my I had my best friend stayed over at my house. We um and then that in the next morning her phone is going off like crazy. We're hungover as hell, but it's her mom who wants to turn on the TV and me. I'm like, what's going on? That was a big deal. And it's all nobody heads all over the news, and she like sits down and like it's very like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_09And like, who in the world, how many ex-presidents commit suicide? Yeah, seriously. We've had we've had a mayor and a president commit suicide in the past 10 years.
SPEAKER_03A city mayor as well.
SPEAKER_09Park One soon kind of yeah, brought up on himself, nonetheless. Not should it's not a suicidable anyway. Anyway, uh, what am I saying? Um I'm having half thoughts right now. Um the other half's the last time. It's been over.
SPEAKER_05I didn't even realize it. His one-year anniversary passed, and none of us even noticed. It was July 9th.
SPEAKER_09Do we have a mayor right? Oh, yeah, we do have Ose Hun, right?
SPEAKER_05Ose Hun again. Oh, mayor again.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, unpopular, an unpopular mayor got re-elected.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, a guy who went on his knees and said, like, I suck as a mayor, then came back as mayor. Korea. Korea, I mean, I left Alabama because Alabama politics were just so crazy. Well, many reasons left Alabama, but but but okay, Alabama politics was always crazy. And this is just like Alabama politics. Korea, South Korea politics, soul politics is exactly like Alabama politics. Um, when I was active in in the late 90s, and I actually made I made Alabama's first political website. That's my my that that that is one guaranteed legacy I do have. In fact, I was contacted by some professor before I left for Korea asking if I he could archive my website because it was the significant it was the first political website in Alabama. Um I was documenting all the weird stuff our stupid politicians did. And one was there was a stalemate in the legislature where um the Democrats were now letting the Republicans get through some type of they were filibustering. And the lieutenant governor, who's kind of like the vice president, um, he presides over the legislature, and uh uh if he left the room, then the Democrats could take over and push through whatever they wanted. So there's CCTV video of our lieutenant governor trying to discreetly pee into a jar on the cent on the floor in Alabama.
SPEAKER_03Was it a long drive there? You could they couldn't pull over? You couldn't pull it up.
SPEAKER_09No, no, he's he's they're in there and they're like they've been debating for like hours, and they knew he knew that if he left the chambers to go pee, the Democrats would take over. So he stayed in the chambers and he peed in a mason jar.
SPEAKER_05I mean, he was dedicated to his job.
SPEAKER_09I mean, that that is dedication. It's hilarious.
SPEAKER_05I mean, don't I mean, don't lawmakers wear like adult diapers when they have to do filibusters?
SPEAKER_09Yeah, well, he wasn't prepared for that. He wasn't he was not prepared for that.
SPEAKER_05He was not prepared, he should have just gone with the adult diapers.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they should have some like there, like in a in like in a like in a closet or something.
SPEAKER_09And he was like, just excuse me, I gotta Yeah, we got a mason, we got mason jars.
SPEAKER_05I can still hear you. I just have to pee.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I'm just over here. Mason jars.
SPEAKER_01I'm behind the closet door.
SPEAKER_09The thing is, though, I'm sure it's something that always happened, but in the 90s there was CCTV and he was caught.
SPEAKER_05I kind of feel bad for the guy in a way because it was just it is an impossible decision.
SPEAKER_09I know, but I actually met him, he was douchebag.
SPEAKER_05Okay, well then in that case, it's okay.
SPEAKER_09He was with remember, he he he was in the same campus Roy Moore. Judge Roy Moore, the Ten Commandments guy. Yeah, if you ever heard of that guy, he's a he's a nut.
SPEAKER_03Wasn't that the guy who was uh doesn't he have some sort of um pedophile, not like a oh yeah, he yeah, he went after some girl, some young girl.
SPEAKER_09He tried to pick up some girl at a mall, some underage girl at a mall. And even that did not deter voters away from him.
SPEAKER_03That's fucking good. That's uh can you do you swear in swole podcasts? Um yeah, uh okay, good. That's fucking crazy.
SPEAKER_09But but see, that's when I left in Alabama, and I came back into it in Korea. There's so many similarities between Alabama and Korea. Uh, the religion the crazy religion dominates people's lives. And I wouldn't say crazy, but um just the extreme religion. Extreme, proselytizing, fundamentalist, uh top talent, top-down author authoritarian fire and brimstone religion. The dark side of the force dominates here.
SPEAKER_03And which is so weird because rel when you look at like statist statistically, most Koreans are not religious. It's well under 50%.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, but like just like Alabama, it's like the people who are that crazy control the microphones.
SPEAKER_03Right, or they're the loudest, they're they're the Bill O'Reilly's of religious groups, minority opinion, but loud.
SPEAKER_09I think Emma would cook would would agree with me on this. Whenever news organizations, especially Yankee news organizations, came down to the South, they would pick the biggest po-dunk redneck to speak in front of the camera. Because I was like, no one, none of my neighbors speak like those people that are on the camera. Yeah. Anyway, my joke.
SPEAKER_05I mean, yeah, like dog. Sorry. I have the trouble. The dog that doesn't cause trouble is in the office with me, and he just yanked down one of my lights off the table.
SPEAKER_09Wow.
SPEAKER_05Morgan. What? Oh, now he's gonna run away. Anyway, yeah, I I grew up in a small town, you know, my mom's family is from the Ozarks. Not a lot of them made it farther than high school. But I'm like, they even my family doesn't sound like that. Where do you find these people? But even then, it was enough like, I mean, I well, okay, so I was born in northwest Arkansas in the Ozark region, but my mom, her family, like I said, is from southern Missouri side of the Ozarks.
SPEAKER_08Oh my god.
SPEAKER_05So my mother spent most of her life in northwest Arkansas and used to have a pretty thick Arkansas Ozark accent. When we moved to Missouri, uh to Kansas City, she actually tried really hard to get away, get rid of it because again, like having that southern accent, no matter how strong it is, just having it. A lot of people are like, Oh, you you must not be that smart. I mean, they don't do that, but they throw your IQ. First thing that my mom did was try to get rid of it.
SPEAKER_09This is one of those microaggressions Southerners deal with is those of us who cover up our accents and we then we finally admit where we're from, they're like, You don't sound like you're from Alabama. I'm like, I'm sorry, did I not fit your stereotype? That's kind of funny.
SPEAKER_05Do I need to speak a little bit slower so you know exactly where I'm from?
SPEAKER_09Or anytime. Oh my god. I mean everyone still thinks it is politically correct when someone says they're from Alabama that you can make a joke about someone marrying their sister. My sister takes offense to that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it yeah, that's cousin from our yeah, it's all the incest jokes. So appropriate because we all marry our cousins. That's what we do.
SPEAKER_09So you can't do it. Newfoundlanders get that in Canada. Newfies get it too.
SPEAKER_03And and I still have my accent, but I and I didn't actively try to get rid of it. But when I moved first from Newfoundland to Ontario, and where my sister was living at the time, in a place called Sudbury, the armpit of Canada, I I um I I went to get a haircut, and the woman didn't understand me.
SPEAKER_05But Newfoundland pretty clearly, and I'm like, what?
SPEAKER_03But but I mean, but I mean from that point, it's like Jesus, uh if I can't get a haircut, I better not I didn't want to get rid of it, but I learned how to tame it. Um so but if I if you catch me drunk, or if I'm back home or talking to anyone from back home, my accent comes right back out.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, it'll come back out for me too.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, um, so it noise us most was this is not how I actually sound.
SPEAKER_09Well it noticed us most was like how Hollywood would do really bad Southern accents, like Dan Atcoyd and Driving Miss Daisy was awful. But what was funny was Tom Hanks did an exaggerated but pretty good Alabama accent. And now I found out much later how he got that accent was this is how great an actor and what a beautiful, humble man Tom Hanks is. The boy that played the young Forrest Gump. He he saw he saw his yeah, he's no no that's not that was the cat, that was the son. I got yeah, no, the young the guy that played young forest gump uh never acted before. He he was just a southern kid that they just got to just fill in these parts. Um and Tom Hanks watched watched him, he actually went on set. He didn't have to be on set, he went on set and watched him perform. And Tom Hanks copied his accent. The boy in Forrest Gump, he's not doing a put-on accent, that's his real accent. And Tom Hanks copied his accent, the little boy's accent. That's how he got a really accurate, like southern drawl. And I mean, you got a weird to say Greenbow, Alabama, it actually kind of is wire, it's almost a wire grass Birmingham accent he has. It's kind of weird. You don't hear it that often, but it was a definitely an Alabama accent he had. It's pretty funny.
SPEAKER_05Actually, that's why I really liked um the film adaptation of August Osage County, because Meryl Street, the Queen, the Queen was the first time I think I I had actually heard an authentic Oklahoma accent in the movie. Like there's been a lot of movies, and I know it's like a minor thing, but we do there is a specific Oklahoma accent. You can hear it if you're from Oklahoma, you recognize it in other people, and you recognize it very quickly in movies that are supposed to be set in Oklahoma, and you're like, that is not what we sound like, and but I think because it's such a because it's such it's an accent, it sounds so similar to like the Texas accent that I people I think people just kind of look it over and they're like, oh, whatever. It's not as strong as like an Arkansas accent or an Alabama accent, or yeah, you didn't like Great of Wrath, did you? And so it's it's just a lot of times when people are supposed to be from Oklahoma or they set a movie in Oklahoma, they just do a very generic southern accent, which is a pretty shitty southern accent. And I mean, but with that one, you know, Merrill Street, she had it, and I'm like, I am listening to my grandmother right this minute. Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_09I'll be honest, I'll be honest, I do not know what an Oklahoma accent is.
SPEAKER_05Well, honestly, I mean, I know what it is. My accent is like I've I think I've said this before, it's a really weird conglomeration of different accents because you know, I was very I was partly raised by my mom's family, so it's a bit of like an Ozark Northwest Arkansas Oklahoma accent kind of all mixed up together. Um so I'm not even sure if like my natural accent when it comes out, I'm not even sure if that's like a proper Oklahoma accent.
SPEAKER_09Do you heavily pronounce your Rs?
SPEAKER_05Uh I'm not sure. I have to think about it. I have to think about what my I have to think about what my dad sounds sounds like because my dad is like Oklahoma born and bred, like small town Oklahoma. So he's definitely, he and my my grandmother and my grandfather and everybody in his family, they all have like that Oklahoma accent. And my little brother had it too. Um, I think my sister has it a bit, but she's lived in Florida for so long. I'm not quite sure if her accent's still straight up Oklahoma.
SPEAKER_09Oh, yeah, Florida's just hybrids.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, there's just everybody from everywhere goes to Florida, and I don't know what the only thing is.
SPEAKER_09Northern Florida is Alabama wire grass accent.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I was about to say in the panhandle, you do get a pretty strong accent, but she's in Orlando, so I don't think Orlando has it's an LA accent. Yeah.
SPEAKER_09But if um the further south you go, the more New York it sounds.
SPEAKER_05Right, right. But like in Oklahoma, they just they speak, they speak very slow, um, which I never realized until I went to college. I went to college in northwest Arkansas, but my roommate was from Seattle, Washington. And like the first weekend, I took her home with me because I only live like two hours away. So I'm like, I'm home for the weekend. You want to come with? And like a bunch of girls just came with me. And she was like, Why does your family speak so slow? And I was like, excuse me. And then my grandma, my marmar, she heard it, and she kind of whipped her head around. She's like, excuse me, why do you speak so fast?
SPEAKER_08Oh, are you are you gonna rest somewhere? You got somewhere to go, too?
SPEAKER_05No, no, we're just gonna sit here and chat. Why do you need to speak so fast? God bless you, Graham's.
SPEAKER_09That's awesome. That that's a great story.
SPEAKER_05Oh, wait, no, that was Marmar. Sorry, that wasn't Graham's, that was Marmar. Marmar's the Oklahoma one. Grants is the Ozark one.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, we got yeah, anyway. Accents and all that. Um, we got we got distracted. We're doing a soul podcast and we're talking about Alabama Oklahoma accents and New Cleveland accents.
SPEAKER_05Sorry. Something soul related again, Korea related.
SPEAKER_09All right, now that we filtered all the rest of everyone out. I'm about to sneeze, by the way, because I have Snaceation. Um has to go trash money. Yeah, I'm about to sneeze. Hold on. Oh god you. Oh, damn, I hate this.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Bless you again.
SPEAKER_09When I eat good food, this is what happens to me. It's a symptom. Yeah, yeah. So I was listening to this. I was listening to this trivia podcast, and it's actually one of the questions. And that's how I found out there's a condition for what I have.
SPEAKER_06Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I sneeze like crazy when I eat really good food. In fact, in my first year here, before I was just starting the food blog, people were like, You should rate restaurants on how many sneezes. Yeah, good.
SPEAKER_05That would be great. I've never seen that before. So, like the more sneezes, the better the food is. There you go.
SPEAKER_09Something like that. It's just, it's just, it's just it's based on how stimulated it makes my body. And this is really good. And so where the what it does.
SPEAKER_08Okay, if you uh grocery out, wow. Uh excuse me.
SPEAKER_03What did I miss? I did a beer run.
SPEAKER_09How it happens is um when when I'm really when I'm eating, all my glands are extremely stimulated, and that includes my my mucus glands in my nose. And so that triggers the sneeze hairs. And yeah.
SPEAKER_03Joe, I gotta say, every single word you just said I've heard before, but I've never put all those words, I've never heard anyone put all those words together in a sentence. Yes. And it and it tickles your nose, sneeze hairs.
SPEAKER_08Yep. That's exactly what happens.
SPEAKER_09It's like when you salivate, people most people salivate when they have really good food or they smell really good food. I go one step further, I get a running nose.
SPEAKER_03Emma Celebate. Emma, you you have to put that in a book somewhere. One of your characters has to say that.
SPEAKER_05Ah, yes. That's good. And every time he gets around good food, he just like starts sneezing like crazy.
SPEAKER_09Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And I know that would be great for like a first date scene.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, right. Yes, there you go. Right, right.
SPEAKER_05I mean, the character goes on a first date, and then like the guy just like starts sneezing like crazy, and she's like, Oh my god, do I need to help you? Do you do you need an epi pen? Like, what's going on? Like, no, the mood is just really good.
SPEAKER_08That's too that's too true to life for me when you say that. That's real.
SPEAKER_01There you go. So there you go.
SPEAKER_05Joe is going into a future book.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05I'm kind of writing like a romance story-ish right now, but they haven't had their first date yet. I might actually use that for the first date scene.
SPEAKER_03There you go.
SPEAKER_05He just starts thinking like crazy. Yes.
SPEAKER_03That is good timing. Yeah. All of your loses, don't give up any experience. Use every single experience in life in your fiction.
SPEAKER_09Someone someone should bring the condition of snatiation to the forefront so we can raise money to cure snatiation.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, there you go. And you've got a word for it. Like if you're if we're titling chapters, the chapter when they go in their first date, that's the chapter of the first date. Because most people are reading like, what the hell is that? And then it's explained.
SPEAKER_04And then they're like, oh, I get it now.
SPEAKER_09And then it's SEO because there are not that many websites to say snatiation, so boom. It's SEO.
SPEAKER_05Joe, you've you've been giving me so many good ideas. We like he helped me plot out an idea for like a screenplay the other night.
SPEAKER_09I'm so happy. I'm so happy.
SPEAKER_05But yeah, that one, that's gonna be good. That one's completely different from anything I've ever written. So I'm excited to get started on that one.
SPEAKER_09I want to feel useful. Thank you. Um, I'm trying to think of a transition to talk about what's actually happening in the news.
SPEAKER_03Think of a transition. Just jump in.
SPEAKER_05All right, you know who's you know who's not useful? The government.
SPEAKER_09The Korean government.
SPEAKER_05That's not a good transition.
SPEAKER_09I know, but I feel that every time I start doing like complaining about the Korean government, I sound like, oh, I hate the government, I'm gonna get my bunker with my baked beans. And you know, I'm always scared of that. I'm always scared, like whenever I complain at the government, I'm just like sound like some conspiracy theorist. But no, it's just a pattern that most Korean organizations, in this case the government, tend to do is um, as Michael Breen has said, uh, author of The Koreans and the New Koreans, um, uh, Koreans tend to be really good at tactics, but not so good at strategy. As um not as good at planning ahead, but good at fixing things once shit hits the fan. Baddy body.
SPEAKER_05Well they haven't fixed vaccines yet.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's definitely that's a massive.
SPEAKER_05Part of it is not completely the government's fault because there is a shortage worldwide that we're dealing with.
SPEAKER_09There is a worldwide shortage, and I I did throw a I did throw a link in the show notes saying that all of Asia's scrambling for vaccines right now. I keep reposting this one Wall Street Journal article pointing out from back last November how the Korean government stated publicly that they could wait on a vaccine. Yeah, there's no hurry. We don't remember, we got everything under control. As if what could go wrong. So that was you br uh Sean, you know Brandt. Brandt, I get I get a lot of my quotes about Korean organizations from Brandt, and that was my first year in Korea. Uh, is this um is like one of the big mistakes Korea always makes is they always have this attitude of what could go wrong?
SPEAKER_05Oh god. If you ever hear that, that's when you're like that might be the time to get into the bunker.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, yeah. And it's always the attitude. You see, you see any from Hogwan to government, this is it. What could go wrong? Oh, we don't plan ahead for this. Oh, seatbelts and seat belts in the Hogwan bus. Why? Our drivers have not gotten in any accidents this month, you know, things like that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it was something that struck me a couple days ago, I think when the numbers went above 1600. Um, I thought, oh man, this is our second summer with COVID. And last summer, everyone was saying, Oh, I can't wait, you know, in a year everything will be fine. I know it'll be everything would be okay. But here we are in Korea at the worst it's ever been.
SPEAKER_05I know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05We're like next summer is gonna be better. The music festivals are gonna be back, we're gonna be able to go out and enjoy stuff, we'll be vaccinated, everything will be fine.
SPEAKER_09Uh well, the Korean government said we don't we're not in a hurry. We can wait and see.
SPEAKER_03I I'm okay with hating on the government. And anyone who listens to the dark side of soul podcasts, they know I hate on authority a lot. I have no problem stating on authority.
SPEAKER_09Nonetheless, I it for me it's not it's not party related. It doesn't matter what party is in power, they're all in fact. I would I would I would go even further and say that the other party was in power would be even worse. I would say be worse. The only other thing I would say about like the current party in power, which is the liberal the liberals, is unlike liberals in the western world, the liberals in Korea tend to be a little more xenophobic, so they tend to be a little Korea first, uh Koreans first, uh fuck the foreigners. Foreigners are a disease to our nation. Um well, no, not not that to that extreme. Um well, E.
SPEAKER_03J. Myung is E.
SPEAKER_09J. Myung. I knew you were gonna that's what I was leaning towards. Yeah, the governor of Gyeungy Province. The governor of Gungi Province, who is running for president, has a chance, who philosophically on many issues, I'm kind of on board with him. Except the xenophobia.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, he's a piece of shit.
SPEAKER_09Because he's all about he's all about uh he's a guaranteed income and all that. Um yeah, I get these. I got this week. I just got a we got a message from Gyongi province saying, like, hey, don't worry, if you lose your job or if you haven't struggled, we got you got you cover, we're gonna give you money.
SPEAKER_03So but he's just he's a he's the pseudo I call them the unleft. It's kind of like they're kind of like the undead, dead, but not really. So um, so he's just not really like yeah, like dead, but yeah, so left, but not really. And um which drives I'm I'm very progressive, and it drives me nuts that there are centrists who are posing as progressives, like him, like Justin Trudeau, right? One of the first things Trudeau said when he came in and when he became prime minister was like, gonna, you know, open up the reconciliation and work things out with the First Nations. Yeah, and here we are discovering all these mass graves of children, right? Across across Canada. So yeah, you get all these leftists who are just running, they're gonna say all these things, you know, guaranteed income and stuff like that, but he's not gonna do that. In many ways, people are people still falling for that?
SPEAKER_09I still say uh I've been saying that in Korea uh right is left and left is right in some ways. Um because under the conservative administrations, it pains me to say this, but they came out with more helpful programs for foreigners under conservative administrations than they have under liberal it threw me, it that threw me out the window. It drove me nuts that actually Ose Hun and I Myon Bach supported the Seoul Global Center.
SPEAKER_03And Pakune Pakune had systems set up to to uh support um uh uh families, so like like ours.
SPEAKER_05So it uh uh family families married non-Koreans married into Koreans, and then it was under the Pak Gunhei administration that requirements for residency visas were actually eased up so that more people could get the F27s and the F299s, and there you go. Um E7 E7 visas were actually made a lot easier under her administration as well. That was the visa that I was on for years and years.
SPEAKER_09But this is what gets me. Um this is why I'm so confused here. It's like yeah, every fiber of my being says I don't want to support these people, but they've actually they've been better for foreigners than the other guys have. It kills me. It's like my mind is blowing up all the time, like uh oh my god, like in scanners, it's is it's going nuts.
SPEAKER_03Well, what I've done is just I don't support any of them, I don't trust any of them, and I they they'll always come up with something that's that indicates that they're not trustworthy at all. So um I hold my my left progressive values, uh, but I don't trust any leftist politician.
SPEAKER_09Because our politicians I come from Alabama, so I got a weird thing.
SPEAKER_03Remember what Lemmy never forget what Lemmy said. From from Motorhead? From Motorhead. Every politician in the world is a son of a bitch. That's what Lemmy said. And he wrote this except well, he turned out to be okay. It's all over. I'm just saying bender as well.
SPEAKER_09The people, the people that I knew personally, they call me on the phone at my house personally. Right.
SPEAKER_05Yes, rub that in our face.
SPEAKER_09No, not rubbing it. I just I just thought it was kind of funny. It's like this guy called me.
SPEAKER_05It was kind of funny. That was a great story, though. I was just thinking, like, yeah, but I mean, regardless of who's in power, like right now, things are a little bit twisted when it comes with vaccines, and especially in terms of foreigners. I mean, I get that there's a vaccine shortage, I understand that. But drawing the line at having schools bring in their teachers, all of their teachers, Korean and foreign, to get vaccinated, and being like, oh, wait, nope, sorry, foreign teachers, you gotta go. I mean, it really there's no logic in that.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, so this is the thing, is so they moved ahead teachers to get vaccinated in July so that they would be fully vaccinated by the time school goes back in session in late August. And what's come out this week is it's time, this is the time for the teachers to get vaccinated. And foreigners in certain districts, it's not been countrywide, it's not been citywide, it's just it's just at the goo level. Um, at the district level. Foreigners have been finding they're not on the rolls. They're not on the list to get vaccinated, foreign teachers. And and so that's where the logic goes out the window because the reasoning, the logic for getting the teachers vaccinated is because they're around children. And what, they don't think foreigners will be near children? It's this thing uh of this the this the Korea first, the min joke first mentality. Um minjok is the word I would use. Minjoke means like the folk in the same way that the Nazis use the word folk. The Minjoke mentality. Uh uh of of the this faux populism. Stop. I'm I'm I'm talking I'm trying to tickle Sean's ears right now.
SPEAKER_05Please, I'm trying to make you laugh, and you're not laughing.
SPEAKER_09No, no. I'm I'm just trying to I'm just trying to throw throw throw his language.
SPEAKER_03She keeps saying folk, min joke, folk. I'm a folklorist.
SPEAKER_09Oh, but I'm talking about the min joke, but I'm talking about the faux populism of the min joke people. Uh this is what's going on.
SPEAKER_05It's like well, and it goes completely against like what the government at like the central government has said from the very beginning, which is like they kind of over-insured that you know foreign residents will be able to get vaccinations too. You know, foreigners living in Korea will be able to get vaccinations too. I mean, I think they even want to smart to say like undocumented migrant workers will also be able to get vaccinations too. Yeah, the ultimate goal is to have herd immunity to you know stop the spread. And then now it's coming to a point where we're seeing like the first major group, I think, of foreigners that are getting vaccinated. I mean, I'm not sure how many elderly foreigners, I don't think is the foreign elderly.
SPEAKER_09I got a few friends who got vaccinated recently in their 50s, which is another that's another issue we could talk about is the how they screwed up the 50-year-olds. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um, I mean, I think, you know, and I've I've heard of like friends who are foreigners who were able to get in with like the no-shows or the leftover vaccines through the app. Um, but then now we're seeing that I think this is like the first time we're seeing we're actually seeing foreigners literally being told, oh no, you can't get vaccinated because they're being Because you're a foreigner. Yeah, they are going in like they're either their their appointments are either not being confirmed or they're being outright denied. So they go in, and I think what it is is like schools are just making like a blanket, okay, this is the day we're bringing in all of our teachers on this day to get vaccinated, and Zuba's like, okay, cool. And then they're literally telling just the foreign teachers that they can't get vaccinated. Um, and it's just like okay, like at first I was like, well, maybe this is just a few places, but then like, you know, Joe, like Joe started, uh like I actually had a friend, somebody came to me directly, a friend of mine came to me directly to tell me what was going on with her school. And then there's a thread on Facebook where people are like, hey, this is happening where I am. Is it happening with you? And some people are like, No, we went in and got vaccinated. And then some people are like, Yep, definitely happening with us too. That's when they were like, Oh, it's must be happening at the district level. And apparently, like SochoGu also kind of like accidentally deleted or something, forgot to include foreign teachers on their list as well. I don't know.
SPEAKER_09Socho is a gangnam is in the gangnam area, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Was it yeah, Kangnam Soch uh Socho. I'm just like, this does not bode very well for next month when they open it up to the general population, which a majority of foreigners who are not teachers are gonna be getting vaccinated. So it's just like great. So when I make my am I gonna be able to make an appointment or am I just gonna have to sit and wait until November to get vaccinated? Yeah, I want to get vaccinated, guys. I want to do my part. I'm already doing my part by not going out of my house except to go to work. Can I please get vaccinated?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05I mean, my friend, yeah, my friend that I was talking to about this, she has asthma and another another uh respiratory medical situation. So she probably should have been in the very first group of people that got vaccinated when they were doing like severe respiratory issues. She should have been vaccinated a lot earlier than this, but because she's a foreigner, you know, she didn't know, like, oh, maybe I could, she didn't know that she could have signed up at that time. I was like, I mean, I'm I told her, I'm like, well, depending on how severe your respiratory issues are, you probably could have gotten in way earlier than this to get vaccinated. Like the very at the very least, you could have at least tried. And then the worst they would say is like, oh no, we're only looking for these specific respiratory issues.
SPEAKER_09But yeah, no, I also want to clarify a bit about the the the Koreans first thing is like of course a country should put their own citizens as the priority. Um, but in this case, the the reasons the teachers were put in for July was for public health reasons. It wasn't some special favor to the foreigners, it was to make sure that the children were safe. That's the point. If it was about trying to appease foreign to visa visa holders, I don't care about that. That does not bother me at all. No, no, seriously. Um I I'm totally for like, yeah, Koreans should be priority in a lot of things. Uh, this was a case uh for the public health in general.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, I agree with that. Like, of course, like if I was in competition with a Korean in Korea for a job, then the Korean should get the job. I agree with that.
SPEAKER_09In fact, we're doing that with my company right now. It's killing me because we're trying to hire some positions, and it's you know what? Facebook killed our job ad because we're asking for native Koreans.
SPEAKER_02Um that's racist.
SPEAKER_09It's racist. Well, I said Native Koreans or F series visas. And Facebook said that no, we that that violates our rules. Well, but we can't legally we can't hire anyone but those types.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_05All right, because you can't sponsor visas.
SPEAKER_09We can't sponsor visas, and Vance Book is like, still, that doesn't that no, that's that doesn't pass our so our job at got killed on on Facebook. It's like we're trying to hire more native Koreans at our company. Instead, I'm getting applications from people wanting visa visa sponsorship. I'm like, I say in there, we're not sponsoring visas.
SPEAKER_03Anyway, yeah, so like I agree, of course, like the Korea in Korea, Koreans get priority for for everything. But this isn't a Korean issue, this is a global issue. This is a this is a a global pandemic. So everyone should be in the same tier, everyone should be in the same the same uh uh uh same level of eligibility. Completis.
SPEAKER_09This is where I call about the naivete, is like whenever Korea, anytime Korea wants to be global, it's always to be the hub of something. The hub of something. The globalization. So it's it's it's always about taking foreign money, taking foreign business, taking foreign trade, but not giving anything in return when it talks about hubs and talks about globalization, global, anything global.
SPEAKER_05You're trying to be a vaccine hub.
SPEAKER_09Well, yeah, we're trying to be a vaccine hub right now. How's that working out? Try harder. How's that working out? Try a lot harder. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05I don't know. They've got something like I think there's five vaccines, five COVID-19 vaccines actually, that are in I want to say, I think they're in clinical trials. But they're before that, I think they're focusing more on trying to get more deals with producing um vaccines that from other countries.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, they're they're they're they're pretty they're they're doing the franchise vaccines.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so they're franchise vaccines first, but at the same time they're trying to develop um local vaccines, which I think uh somebody mm somebody much smarter than me actually posted about this on Facebook recently where they're like, oh, in the beginning they were trying to focus on they put too much focus on local vaccines instead of the vaccines that were being developed overseas that were actually being developed much faster. But I kind of you know I can see the argument there. I mean I understand why Korea was like well let's just if we can make our own vaccine we'll be good. We can just make all the vaccines that we need but you know they just weren't fast enough compared to like Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson Johnson, all the other companies AstraZeneca.
SPEAKER_03I spoke to a bunch of Koreans about that just this week actually in the last couple of days and we're talking about how you know there's a shortage and whatnot and how it's not just in Korea as well. But Korea was really slow to get on uh vaccines and start making deals and every Korean I spoke to I spoke to about 60 people this is when I do I do the qualitative research mostly for my folklore and heritage research but I bring up politics now and again um and I brought this up and uh every single person was upset with how the government responded to the vaccine and how how poorly they did in the beginning.
SPEAKER_09That's not a pool of people but this this is in the Korean vernacular press is is people saying why why does the government never see the obvious signs of what's coming you know if it feels like a Godzilla movie where you see the obvious signs that Godzilla is about to get out of the ocean and attack the city and doesn't do anything until Godzilla's stomping right there in Nansan uh it's a horrible analogy.
SPEAKER_05I'm sorry it's a horrible analogy not very close to the sea at all are we really standing there staring at Godzilla for that whole time a horrible horrible analogy.
SPEAKER_09What's going on like what? Oh what is that why is it getting bigger no but this is this this there's actually a there's actually a Korean vernacular quote uh is there's a pattern to be noticed here our leaders keep denying and refuse to acknowledge the signals until it is too late I'm like yes someone's new to the country i've i've noticed this for the last past 17 years I've lived here is no matter any any institution it's always you never notice the obvious things until it's too late um I would even go back to the first hog one I taught at was there was one classroom where the ceiling tile was was obviously stained because there's a leaky pipe and was starting to sag. And we kept warning management that this is not good. We should do something about this and then one day in the middle of class the ceiling collapsed and the manager was like we didn't know that was going to happen there was no sign at all none or we kept we we kept saying that the the the doorknob were really poorly installed and so we said we really need to come up with newer doorknobs or we need to get these repaired and then we ended up with so much class time being wasted because you know kids are always playing slam the door before in between classes they're always running in slamming the door which drives me nuts when I'm teaching they do that and then suddenly they find out they can't open the door back up again they've locked themselves in their classroom and they don't they're stuck and that I have to get a screwdriver and it and so by by that time we end up with four classrooms with no doorknobs not to mention like that's a huge fire hazard what if somebody accidentally slams oh my oh no no no but you're fire and nobody this is the pattern this is the pattern we do not anticipate anything bad happening because what could go wrong what could go wrong with a sagging wet ceiling what could go wrong with the doorknobs spontaneously locking all the time locking kids in the classroom all the time what could go wrong until it's there and the ceiling collapses or you have to remove the doorknob this is the pattern this is what always has happened and the government's doing the same thing it's always been what could go wrong yes Korea was given lots of kudos for how it quickly enacted controls after coronavirus entered the country this was two months after they got warning that it was coming to Korea they got noticed there is records that they that they had meetings in January that they knew coronavirus this new virus was coming to Korea from China Korea was one of the first countries targeted outside China for this did nothing until Shinchunji did nothing until Shinsunji not until was it patient number 26 I think it was infected a shit ton of people did nothing until the shit hit the fan did nothing and then came up with the Bali Bali system put everything together everyone cooperated for a while and then rested on its laurels thought nothing could go wrong just like the person on the highway on going uh 90 kilometers an hour like like one meter behind another car thinking that the car in front will not suddenly slam on its brakes always assuming that everything is gonna go smoothly and so that that's why in November they're saying publicly to the press eh we're not gonna worry about the vaccination we're gonna we're gonna wait till we get the prices right we're gonna wait to see if America if if they're if it's safe we're gonna make sure we're not gonna we're gonna fight for the vaccine we're just gonna wait for the rest of the world to do it because we got everything controlled here nothing can go wrong here. It's this pattern the pattern with the I've said it before with the Olympics it's it was the Olympics of the trains they spent all this time getting all the trains ready to take people to Pyonchang they forgot about how they were going to get back. Well no it never occurred to them no one ever knew because because Korea was trying for 10 years to get the Pyoncheng Olympics because I was involved in in getting the Pyonchang Olympics here in the campaigns tried for 10 years to get the Pyonchang Olympics here and no one it didn't occur to anyone that the Pyonchen Olympics happened at the same time as Sola when the whole country is taking trains. And so never even anticipated that all these foreign spectators coming in from around the world well Korean is a center stage that they reserved train tickets and then found out when they got to the station that their train tickets weren't valid because solal people got the tickets ahead of them didn't anticipate that didn't anticipate the buses or anything about people trying to get back from venues or anything until the shit had already hit the fan you had 10 fucking years to anticipate this. And it's not like it's the first Olympics in the world it's not like it's the first Olympics Korea's ever done but still did not anticipate anything it's not like the IOC showed up one month before and said hey Korea can you host the Olympics for us? Oh yeah okay we'll get things together no 10 years they had time to prepare for this until they dropped the ball with transportation and logistics as if the Olympics was just supposed to exist for the local population okay sorry rant it was like you feel better now did you get that off your chat yeah yeah sorry guys but no but no it's it's an institutional thing when I'm saying it's an institutional thing it's a group thing thing it's not an individual individual thing you get people individually everyone's like fine fine fine but then you get this is the thing I'm trying to examine is like why does this happen when people get into a group no one anticipates bad events no one anticipates worst case scenarios no one anticipates that anything could possibly go wrong no one ever uses strategic thinking when they're in a group I don't get that well and it's I mean it does like we were saying it does we have lots of examples because we lived in Korea for the last few decades so we this is what we've seen firsthand.
SPEAKER_05But it's not like it's Korean it's a pattern. But like I mean it's yeah but like even with the pandemic like this was something that we we saw happening all over the world. It wasn't just Korea.
SPEAKER_09Oh I agree with that. I mean I agree with there there are many levels of incompetency everywhere around the world but I'm trying to think of like the thing that is very much a pattern in Korea. And we did things we did things great and I was so proud of being here. I was so proud of being here because the way we reacted yeah we were late but things happened and they happened fast yeah did well so proud I was bragging to all my American friends my American friends were like Joe shut up you traitor living outside the US are so much because Americans still think of uh people who left the US as traitors um and so like they got tired of me talking about how Korea was so much better than the US and now I'm having to eat my words most uh most places in America just gave up yeah but I think I think we are too we're I feel actually yeah that's kind of what I feel I feel like it's at a moment where we're just kind of giving up I feel like it's like go ahead well there's nothing we can do about it let's just whatever until we can get people vaccinated it's like we had 13 MCU movies saying that you know predicting that Thanos was going to come didn't do anything about Thanos until he showed up trying to rush and trying to predict prevent Thanos from doing anything and now I'm at the point like I give up just do the snap just kill half of us we're done we're not worth saving I know we had 13 movies to prepare for Thanos didn't do anything. We knew he was coming yeah and what did we do I mean it's it's like it's like the Korean government didn't watch the post credit scenes didn't know it was coming but my joke is like it's like it's like no Korean official has ever watched a single zombie movie because that that's the latest quotes coming from them is saying like well a month ago the delta the delta variant was under control we thought we had this under control so we're gonna open things up for everyone's only nine percent zombie movie what was that Emma I didn't hear I didn't hear oh there's a really great Korean zombie movie too yeah it's like it's like there was like saying like oh the zombie virus was only on this one train so we didn't have to worry about anything it couldn't spread because it was on this one train and then you got trained to boost on two and there's no Korea left.
SPEAKER_05Oh yeah that's right wait is that has that come out yet it came out but no one ever noticed it's on Netflix now peninsula oh is it uh yeah that's right it's called Peninsula I still haven't seen the but now that I have my VPN and I can watch American Netflix and actually get it with English subtitles I will do that.
SPEAKER_09Because uh yeah movies movies and TV shows are still difficult for me to follow unless I have subtitles well yeah I have to like stop go back and be like okay no I got it what's funny what's funny though is I is like my wait a second Joe sorry sorry sorry Joe and Emma I'll recommend far better films than trained Busan there is Sean's thing he will do that oh yeah no yeah I want to hear your recommendations I know you've probably got some good ones he's got great ones that movie sucks go ahead Joe okay um no but I have noticed that my Korean as much as I criticize my own Korean it's gotten to the level now that oh what is it oh okay yeah okay so I was watching Stranger Things um my wife had not watched season three of Stranger Things and we got caught up on it last week she loved it and it it's a fun fun mindless uh pastime it was great it was a bonding experience for both of us so we're watching Netflix with um Korean subtitles and it was kind of funny was sometimes the audio gets muddied and the only way I could understand what anyone was saying was reading the Korean subtitles damn I'm kicking ass right now just wait something will happen you'll be like shit I don't know anything no but I felt better because I've been I've been really down on my Korean lately I'm doing so well and then they're usually followed by no no but that's what it is if it's passive Korean I usually can understand it. If I'm like listening to someone else's conversations I'm able to follow along and then as soon as they turn to me and speak Korean to me the mind goes blank yeah it's like direct to you and you're like oh I have to respond oh yeah like oh now the pressure's on when you're just kind of passively listening to somebody else being like oh no maybe respond um congenital uh uh nah nah that there's that there's that one from Grumpy Aliens I've been showing lately is that is the haircut one the me at the hair salon that's exactly me at the hair salon is like this poor girl with the shaved head with only bangs and it says um uh hair salon I'd be at the hair salon and me just going neh consumida nah because they're always asking tons of questions and no Korean class no Korean textbook teaches you hair salon Korean so you don't know what to say I know like to say short but I really don't know the nuance of what how to instruct a hairstylist in Korean of exactly how I want my hair done. So what I do is I just I have a few words I say a few phrases I say and then I just go nah nah nah and I get they get to a point where they're like oh yeah so I can go back home and fix whatever they did. A stopping point and I go home and I fix it. Yeah I don't think I've ever I used to say disaster a trim and now I can't remember how to say that I've I've lost that I have no idea because I've started shaving my head since COVID started yeah yeah so you got it easier it's like like I I want to shave my head but EJ but my my daughter my Gian cries every time I do that so I don't want to cry because I have your head too I don't know I discovered a salon about eight years ago with an owner who trained in the US and I mean English Korean I don't have to say anything I just walk in sit down she does my hair and I love it and I'm just like that's amazing because every time I find a salon like that then the person who did my hair great quits the next time I show she owns it it's like hers.
SPEAKER_05She opened it and it's been here for eight years or or it goes out of business or that it's I have a curse it's like restaurants. Every time I find a good restaurant it goes out of business oh my favorite restaurant clothes not get your hair cut at my place because I what's your favorite restaurant clothes which one Sean the one below I used to take the soul hike oh that one after yeah yeah that sucks yeah yeah yeah just reminded me sorry sorry I didn't mean to cut you off I just Joe reminded I was just saying Joe you're not allowed to go to where my salon because if everywhere you go they quit or they close down and like no you're not allowed you can't go there. Alright I won't go I want it to stay open and well you can go after I move after I move back to the states next year then you can go actually no don't go because I don't want it to ever shut down because I want her to always be successful.
SPEAKER_09So sorry you can't go there ever I'm the curse I'm the curse and you're the curse you're not on the other thing I mean we were we were just we were just we were complaining about foreigners but the big other complaint was for the 56 to 59 year olds were scheduled to scheduled to make reservations this week so they weren't scheduled to get their shots this week they were scheduled to make their reservations like Paul McCartney technics tickets this week and this was nuts was Monday was it Monday at midnight they opened it up and in in just over 12 hours they shut it down because they thought they were afraid that they were gonna run out of vaccines that's yeah um okay for one thing yeah I'll I'll like okay this is simple logic because I'm not great at math but this is the math I have if like um if column A is the amount of vaccines you have column B is the amount of people between 56 and 59 if A is less than B don't fucking open it up to everyone some of the stories were like really shocking too like like the uh there was one woman who waited by her computer she didn't really know how to use it her daughter was helping her I ready to go to work and but so her mother's just waiting by the computer for like 13 hours and she had she had no idea she had to refresh the page oh no yeah so then her she called her daughter eventually and she's like Mom you have to refresh the page and so she over the phone she did it and then it was closed. I'm so sorry that that made me really sad when I read that that really upset me that's when I went on the internet after that after I read that I went on Twitter and just saying like it's like the government the government knows that it only has 20 cookies it could possibly get more but it only has 20 cookies then it goes and calls up 100 people and says hey why don't you come over here for cookies on Saturday and so Saturday comes along and 100 people show up and after the first 15 people walk in they close the door and say sorry no one else can come in do you invite me yeah why did you invite all these people if you knew you only had 20 cookies this is something I'm curious about how many government officials and elite people who are 56 to 59 got did get their vaccine and didn't have to wait. Well Sean I can answer your question by looking at a map a map of new coronavirus uh new coronavirus reported infections this week the entire map has been read except for one blue spot and that is seizong city the government center there you go seizung hasn't had very they're still in love they're allowed to stay they're one of like uh four places that are allowed to stay in level one I believe I mean I'm not I'm not big on conspiracy theories theories I mean I'm hearing of Sejong City it is a ghost town no one goes out because basically it's a new town so it's just franchise restaurants shitty shitty restaurants uh uh run by uh Pekjungwan um so they're all closed down so there's nothing to do in Sejong City and it's a bedroom community because everyone that works in Sejong City lives in Seoul but it's the whole name blue spot and uh uh uh country of red island and so it does spawn conspiracy theories.
SPEAKER_03No, I don't think so. Uh like I'm certain government officials got their their vaccines first, even though other people were said to be um uh more eligible oh prior or or priority.
SPEAKER_05No, no, we're still very much supposed to be like the non-troublesome one and he's sitting over here barking like what's going on we're very we're still very much a young bond society.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Oh absolutely well everywhere is everywhere is an is is all about the aristocracy. Yeah you can be pretty you can be pretty damn sure that that uh jeff bezos got a vaccine on day one yeah right right bill gates certainly did the e family in samsung most certainly god damn got their vaccine they got their luxury shots they didn't get no shitty AstraZeneca they got their Modernas right yeah probably and and probably probably paid for them to get their their themselves just themselves they have so much money they probably was like well let's contact the company and buy some of the vaccines yeah they got it themselves they had a little vaccine party yeah so yeah yeah eat the rich man and then they went into the prison and gave Puckinha her vaccine too I wouldn't be surprised anyway because one of the first priority groups were people in detention centers.
SPEAKER_05That does make sense yeah okay yeah that is true that is true yeah so whether or not like if she got any favors she still would have been vaccinated before a majority of people could just because she's in a detention center.
SPEAKER_09Wow okay that makes sense even though she has no contact with anyone as far as I know they well she's in the the big detention the one that had like a massive outbreak where like a thousand inmates ended up getting COVID 19 a few months ago that was where they've been keeping her and in buck oh really sole detention center yeah right uh before vaccination started happening the sole detention center oh really yeah that's where Puck and Hay and email Bach are being are being held so and so you are saying are you young child are really young chou as well yeah the serial killer he's probably been vaccinated too so so so you're telling me are you telling me Puckinhay that the detention center had an emergency crisis and the government was slow to respond to it I'm holding let me chew on the irony a little bit let me chew on that was nice a little bit um yeah okay I'm gonna we're talking a lot about different things um I I was gonna talk about I thought the funny the funniest thing to come this week was the um um the the protest the the the cars only protest of small business owners oh yeah and the government trying to figure out if it was illegal or not because technically they weren't all gathered together they were there were no more than two people per car. This is the re this the reason for the law was for social distancing why people couldn't get together for protesting was for social distancing preventing the virus from spreading. And one thing I will credit Korea for is like Westerns come to Korea and say like Korea's a lawless society they don't follow the rules I'm like no no they follow the rules when the circumstance requires the rules to do it. You know it's like if if if it's two o'clock in the morning and there's a red light and there's no other cars there, fucking run the red light. It's fine. It's okay. It's not you're not gonna kill any it's not you know it's not you know it's not that bad. It depends on the circumstances um this is very much what we call unique situations it was a big line of unique situations. It was um people gathering but only in cars and they were socially distancing technically breaking the law against assembling but the reason but they were in within the spirit of the law that's what credit Korea for Korea Korea's always been about the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law how about that Korea's always been better about the spirit of the law than the letter of the law and westerners tend to be about the letter of the law so but Emma you said that because I I I I don't know but you said that it was just two people per car well yeah because uh when was yeah starting on Monday is when after 6 p.m no more than two people are allowed to gather so they followed it they followed all the guidelines you know there were and you were there because that's where you work as where as Yoido where they were doing it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah but I was already at home oh okay I wasn't there they started no did they was that yo no it was yoido totally in wasn't Jongno right they moved it went up to Jongno but they started in Yoido oh yeah that's right they started in Yoido and they went to Jongno no I was already home by this time um but yeah I mean they stuck with social distancing they followed there was no more than two there were no more than two people per car as far as I'm aware so technically they were following social distancing guidelines they just had a protest rally in the car.
SPEAKER_09I love that I love that that was to me that was that was the perfect Korean way of of go skirting around the rules finding a loophole and going through with it and they did it right I love that's why I love the story so much and the government's like ah crap we didn't think of that right and they're like still they're still trying to find ways to like probably like well technically you're not supposed to have a rally and they're like well technically we weren't we were following all the rules that's it it's like if it was America they would get them on the technicality but this is Korea where it's all about the spirit of the law rather than the letter so it's like it's like uh what as far as I'm aware I don't believe anybody's been prosecuted yet because of it so yeah just let that one go let that one go I mean they were disrupting traffic but so what I mean it was it wasn't the even it wasn't during was it during rush hour? I don't think so I mean the government's been the government's been really shitty to small businesses I had this little debate with my wife uh recently protest I was talking about that recently with my wife and and and she was kind of like um why are the small businesses angry you know that you know if they go out of business is their problem I'm like yeah but the government told them they had to close down they can't make money to pay their rent and and she's like well I mean and like the government's not giving them compensation she's like well why should the government give them compensation because they're not working and I'm like but the government told them not to work if if they did that out of their own volition if they voluntarily closed down yeah okay but the government forced them to close forced them to and they're not doing anything to stave off the the the landlords from collecting their rents and all the other taxes and shit and and and then at the same time they're raising the minimum wage which I'm I'm all for maybe raising the minimum wage bad timing for this I would say um well hopefully it doesn't go into effect until January so hopefully things will maybe be better. Yeah I don't know what we said last summer remember Emma but it's kind of funny it's like it's like I'm supporting this protest.
SPEAKER_05Maybe I don't know I just like I feel really bad because I know like there are so many places that just keep shutting down and like you know I live in a neighborhood that is completely built out of small businesses and it's just like now that we're in level four and not only level four and you can't have more than two people together after six.
SPEAKER_09I mean is there any really any real point in all these restaurants and places staying open after six and that's like yeah it's I feel like we're gonna see a lot um I feel like I'm probably gonna see a lot of like business small businesses who've been mainstays of this neighborhood for 20 years might be shutting down because they might be doing nothing it might be and and if you listen to the Dark Side of Soul podcast about the history of Tabon part two you'll find out also a lot of rich celebrities bought up a lot of those buildings in your area and they're real asshole landlords to their tenants. I heard and they won't they won't give them they won't give them uh breaks when it comes to their rent being assholes what yeah but celebrities and yeah why this is a new concept this is this is a thing this this is a thing is I didn't realize this before so one of my friends she's my age she's Korean um and she has a son who's grown up and she's trying to she's a po she's a single mother she's you know your son's in college about to graduate college and um someone actually says something to her the sense of if you really loved your son you would buy a building for him and I'm like wow that is a total level of the bubble I am not in is yeah that that is the level that's we're talking about the dirt spoons and the gold spoons is like that's considered normal is if you love your child you will buy them a building so they don't have to work. There might say do you know the the old Irish song called Purple Heather no the lyric the lyrics in that are I will build my love a tower and but the the the the point of that is that he can't he actually can't build her a tower but he tries really hard to build her a tower uh huh and and he he just does it through love and through through uh dedication uh and and it represents the the common class right that's the whole point of that of that that type of love song and then when you hear something like that if you really love your son you'll buy him a building fuck off yeah yeah because you know you know that that really creates character is passive income at a young age where you don't have to work or humble yourself for anyone that that creates great character it's just we're gonna the next generation is a bunch of King Joffreys that's what it is that's what it is um okay so some some silly stuff and then we're gonna wrap it up I'm gonna I'm I'm off the covet shit um uh it's a little bit of old news but I thought this was hilarious I was telling everyone about this was um uh this this guy woke up one day and he had his stuff in storage next to his apartment and all of his stuff was gone this is crazy all of his stuff was gone all of his stuff was gone and then he went they went and checked in the CCTV and they found out it was a mover moving his stuff out so what happened was an older man in the same uh complex was moving to a city out in Gangwondo he'd already moved out there and so the movers are coming back to get all of his stuff and they went to the wrong storage unit and moved this poor guy's stuff out all the way to Gongwando good grief I never heard about that what was this this was a couple of weeks ago was it a couple weeks oh wasn't yeah it was last week you sent it to me last week I think yeah like last I saw that and I was like that poor that poor guy oh my gosh like I know it was stuff that was in storage so thankfully I don't think it was stuff that he needed like absolutely right now but yeah that would have been hilarious if you if it was his apartment and you walked his apartment one day and all the stuff was moved out Jesus Christ I mean it's like it's like no one checks anything no one checks they always assume nothing could go wrong never checks double checks anything have you heard an update did he get his stuff back yeah yeah I mean now now they figured out what had happened he's he got his stuff back supposedly right yeah uh that's I mean it's hilarious story um it's a hilarious story you feel really bad but you kind of have to laugh just a little bit yeah well the guy was laughing he yeah I remember he had a good humor about it like so guess what kind of whatever happened to you today I win because this is what happened to me yeah it was funny it was funny it's one of those things it's it's one of those oh oh Korea types of things um another thing in the news k-pop news is it's hilarious because we know BTS's big summer hit was butter and so the American Butter Institute praised BTS for increasing their sales oh for fuck's sakes are you kidding me really this is hilarious I find this hilarious because I've been personally involved well actually from a peripheral watching the Korean government divert all this funding for promoting Korean food to go to K-pop groups to promote Korean food like CM Blue and the Wonder Girls and they had these horrible campaigns to promote fit milk and romantic mushrooms all failed all this money that could have been spent on me who was actually promoting Korean food and actually having results but you know these these silly campaigns that were being embarrassed in the international media uh so they're doing all that and they're spending all this money and then BTS comes through American Butter Institute paid zero dollars and a K-pop group promoted their product promoted well didn't promote a brand well okay yeah it's not really their product it promoted because the reason the Korean government was they didn't promote a brand they were promoting they're trying to promote Korean agriculture as in fit milk I heard 10 seconds of that song and I turned it off so I oh butter oh butter's not honestly butter's not uh honestly BTS is you could do worse than BTS honestly but yeah um I guess you could yeah you could the pretty the pretty low pretty low yeah you could do worse I just thought that was just the biggest irony after all that money the Korean government spent on celebrity endorsements to promote Korean food the one the one Korean celebrity group that made it through the big time promoted American butter by accident that's funny because because like Koreans use the word butter I remember like well they say nukie which means like greasy but like uh I remember years ago Koreans would say oh butter butter and like they were using butter the English word butter to reference the Korean word nukie oh really person and that being a very negative comment yeah because it means oily and greasy in a bad way greasy yeah so like oh no so I like that's like that's the big that's the big comment Koreans give for French cuisine yeah I always fry in butter mostly I cooked asparagus and butter tonight yeah um yeah I'm just gonna wrap up SM Entertainment's just warning their fans against inappropriate actions um yeah um k-pop fans are crazy uh SM Entertainment kind of created this they made their bed they got asleep in it but but nonetheless I I kind of agree these artists should not be stalked as heavily as they are no no of course not I no they're their humanity should be respected well they shouldn't join the k-pop industry also if they want to be considered human if they want to be treated like humans because that's a shit industry that's a garbage industry yeah even even my my 10 year old daughter who has a great singing voice pretty above average singing voice would was like do you want to be a k-pop do you want to go into k pop no I don't want my life ruined yeah no of course not it's funny is it's like it's like now it used to be like 10 years ago yes kids in elementary school what do you want to be when you grow up I want to be a kpop star I want to be a kpop star these days no I want to be an influencer that's what they want to be I want to be a pro gamer I want to be an influencer they can be their own managers yeah but they don't want to go through the K-pop system they do not they know they know it they don't want to go through it anyway I'm gonna wrap up we've had a good we've had a good talk it's been really fun it was a good chat my my throat my throat is sore from my stupid rants that I'm gonna get canceled for it's fine it's canceled as um the violinist Zuckerman whatever his name is just just take just take it like Ricky Gervaise does it's all good it's all good yeah canceled like uh ping chas zuckerman who said that it is not Korean it's not in it's impossible it's not in Koreans DNA to be good singers which shows a ignorance of Korean singing because Koreans are great singers and B well you actually make DNA actually has a you know a whole country's DNA that's has an effect on this yeah that's it was a very archy bunker it's this yeah violinist is apologizing like crazy he's being canceled as we speak it was an online master class done by the hosted by the Manhattan School of Music and this he did it in a master class he did in a master class teaching violin and said if you want to be great at violin you have to be a great singer because you got to sing the violin and he says but Asians can't do that because Asians aren't good singers. And he and and and I thought okay okay one off remark maybe come back in and and don't double but then he doubled down on it because there were two Asians in his class and he was like um yeah you can't do this because you're Korean and they go well we're Japanese and he goes oh Japanese are horrible singers too they can't do this you can't do this because it's it's not in Koreans it's not in your DNA really oh he doubled down on this he doubled down it was it wasn't a low low a a weak mistake or just talking off the cuff the guy obviously has thought long and yeah he thought long and hard about it obviously he's gone on whiskey ridden rants on this and he actually violently believes this to his soul to say something like this even in the face of the people themselves saying because of your race you can't play violin well because you your race can't sing that's in your DNA that's a pretty shitty thing to say man.
SPEAKER_03Yeah I know man wow what I think but what I think people should do is is um if you want to listen to Korean music that actually meant something to a zeitgeist of Koreans go listen to some Pakwan Suung hy And their song Gendi, which is about weed. But smoking weed. But smoking weed's not about butter, it's about smoking weed in the 1970s. Yeah. When Korean when Korean music had balls. Korean mainstream music. Yeah. Mainstream music had balls.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I was about to say there's still some Korean music that has balls that you probably hear the mainstream anymore.
SPEAKER_03What was the there was the one punk band? Um well this crying nut, of course, but um Dumbo Shit. There was a punk band named Dumbo Shit. They were fun. There was a fan a fantastic uh uh uh band called Fren uh uh Frenzy, I think. God were they good. They were such a good band. And they broke up because the drummer went to Europe and then India to study percussion. And that's years ago, that's like 10 years ago. I don't know what it I don't know if he came back, but what a good band. I'm not sure if I I used to go see them live, but I have no idea if they recorded anything. Um yeah, but if anyone can find the band Frenzy, the Korean band Frenzy, look them up.
SPEAKER_09I'd say Enachi and uh what was it? The the dance company, I can't I can't remember their name, but they did Bomb Narunda Gum Nerunda, sorry, Gumn, not Bomb. Gum Narunda, the the the bear is coming, the the Pan Sorti pop song. You guys don't know. Come on, man, it's everywhere.
SPEAKER_07Oh no, I don't know you're not but I don't know the name.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I know that too. I don't like that. I don't like that, yeah. Oh, really? I like it. No, I'd rather just listen to Pan Swordie. Yeah.
SPEAKER_09Well, I do like Pan Sorti, but I think that's a fun song.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_09And a fun video.
SPEAKER_03It's from a couple of years ago, right? It got really popular recently, but it's I'm late.
SPEAKER_09I'm late, I'm late to it.
SPEAKER_03No, no, it became it became popular like in the last year because it was used in commercials and stuff.
SPEAKER_09Ambiguous Dance Company. There they are. The Inachi.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, they did uh they recently did a music video with Coldplay.
SPEAKER_03Oh really? Oh, right, that's right, that's right. I s I read that too, yeah. Yeah, because Coldplay came here to film, right? To film a music video.
SPEAKER_07I think so.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_07That's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_09All right, man, it's been the longest episode we've done in a long time.
SPEAKER_03Joe's got a lot of editing to do. Yeah, maybe definitely Joe's like, I'm not having Sean on ever again.
SPEAKER_09Thank you, Sean. No, Sean, this is great. This is fun. Sean, if this is a normal night, we would have eaten a lot into our Dark Side of Soul time.
SPEAKER_03Well, we wouldn't have done it. Yeah, we'd have to.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I hope, yeah, I would have been normally we would have started earlier and then ended at 8 30 like we usually do.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, um yeah, and we're doing Dark Side tomorrow night. With a great with a great guest, but it's a surprise. Surprise.
SPEAKER_04Not me. And it's not me.
SPEAKER_03But you would be great, you would be a great guest.
SPEAKER_05I want to come on and talk about scary shit.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_05You promise me, I'm still waiting.
SPEAKER_03Talk about the time you came on the tour, the first time we met.
SPEAKER_05Not right now, I have to keep, but we'll do that on dark side.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_09Awesome. Thank you, Sean, for joining. Thank you, Emma. Until next time. Be safe out there. Good night.
SPEAKER_00The Soul Podcast is a production of Zen Kimchi International, Copyright 2021, under the Creative Commons license. Parts of this podcast may be used for non-commercial purposes if you remember to give us credit. You can contact us at seejong at soulpodcast.com. That's S-E-J-O-N-G at soulpodcast.com. Follow us on Twitter at KingSejong and on Facebook at facebook.com slash soulpodcast. For a transcript of this episode, listen to it again and write down what you hear. See you next week. Until then, may you find a publisher for that book you've been writing about an ESL teacher in Korea who gets mixed up in the Korean underworld.
People on this episode
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.
