Memo to Myself: Never Blog About Samsung

Michael Breen

(Image from LA Times)

I sure don't want to blog on this story! According to John M. Glionna, "Samsung doesn't find satirical spoof amusing" (Los Angeles Times, May 10, 2010), the British journalist Michael Breen is being sued by Samsung for libel over a satirical article that he wrote last Christmas for the Korea Times:

In his Christmas Day 2009 column for the Korea Times, Michael Breen decided to lampoon such national newsmakers as President Lee Myung-bak and the pop idol Rain.

Headlined "What People Got for Christmas," the English-language column also poked fun at global technology giant Samsung Electronics, referring to past bribery scandals as well as perceptions that its leaders are arrogant.

The piece was meant as a satirical spoof, the columnist says, but Samsung wasn't laughing.

Breen's column ran as local media reported that President Lee would soon pardon Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee on a 2008 conviction for tax evasion. Chairman Lee, 68, had already received a federal pardon in the 1990s on a conviction for bribing two former presidents while he was with the firm.

On Dec. 29, the day of Lee's pardon, Samsung sued the freelance columnist, the newspaper and its top editor for $1 million, claiming damage to its reputation and potential earnings. After the Korea Times ran clarifications, the newspaper and its editor were dropped from the suit.

What's Samsung's official legal position? The LA Times informs us:

Samsung said the comments go beyond the definition of satire allowed under South Korean law.

The lawsuit refers to Breen as a Korean "specialist" with wide-ranging influence. Since 80% of its revenues are from overseas, the firm is sensitive to any "minor accident or mistake" that could adversely affect its international reputation, the suit said.

"Even though anyone who read or heard of this article knows that this is not true, they can mention this as a joke, which can be spread easily, so its damage is very serious," the lawsuit read.

Given Samsung's hardline position about its tender feelings, I definitely won't do any posting on this topic, and certainly not a post focused on pointing out that a suit of this sort making the news in a major, globally read paper like the LA Times is likely to incur far more ridicule than an otherwise forgetable spoof in a small Korean paper that few people read anyway.

In short, no blog post from the Gypsy Scholar on this story -- I wouldn't want Samsung to take any remarks of mine the wrong way.

UPDATE: The Marmot says the suit has just been dropped, so it's now bloggable . . . though perhaps no longer blogworthy.

The "Money Punishment Possibility" Revisited

The Author

"so naive, or so lazy"?

(Image from Korea Times)

Last week, the Korea Times published an article that I had spun off from a blog entry of several weeks ago. For some reason, the newspaper neglected to inform me, and I only found out yesterday when one of my Ewha colleagues greeted me with the words, "I liked your article." I had no idea what he was referring to until he mentioned the title, "Money Punishment Possibility," so here it is, for your reading pleasure:

'Money Punishment Possibility'

October 24, 2008

By Horace Jeffery Hodges

Among other subjects, I teach writing, and my students at times leave me baffled by the labyrinthine turns of their errant literary wanderings. I am occasionally not simply baffled but even impressed. Recently, a student turned in an essay with this astonishing if not entirely grammatical passage in stream-of-consciousness literary style:

By the way, recently from the worldwide various nations numerous people is pushed into Korea and entirely the multiracial culture that is unfamiliar is formed. It accomplishes a rapid development and to Korea which is a country which now lives in opulence comes the money punishment possibility it is quickly and a dream to hold until the industrial trainee who comes in and the illegal employment sleeping field continuously it is coming in flocks. Yes from the day when it meets the foreigner from the road was already generalized.

I think that this student is telling us that Korea has become rich and is now paying the price for its great wealth. To Korea "comes the money punishment possibility!" This is such a weirdly appealing turn of a phrase that it nearly transcends its obscurity in a no less obscure passage. I also love "continuously it is coming in flocks" and "when it meets the foreigner from the road." Whatever is being expressed in these three clauses is being said with style!

Was the student perhaps ungrammatically channeling James Joyce, possibly Finnegan's Wake? As did Joyce, then again makes my student a useless odyssey? Oh, through the "sleeping field continuously it is coming in flocks!" Joycean though the student's writing may sound, it is linguistically very Korean, and a labor of reconstruction looms before me if I am to dam this stream of Eastern consciousness up into pools of limpid English to clarify an obscure object of desire. Something of the original charm, however, will be lost, for the student's consciousness shall no longer stream. Yet, my duty calls. I now therefore make these thoughts grammatically and "punctuationally" my own, expressing them in a more anglicized, far more Western manner:

Numerous people from various nations around the world have recently pushed their way into Korea, and an entirely unfamiliar multiethnic culture is being formed. This is accomplishing rapid development, but Korea's wealth is quickly bringing with it the possibility of new problems. Industrial trainees arrive bearing their dreams but may find themselves illegally employed and continuously sleeping in fields. Such problems will soon be innumerable. In fact, the day that one meets foreigners on the road is already here.

Whether or not the student meant precisely this, the reconstructed passage is definitely far more clear, perhaps lamentably so, for all of the weird, quirky charm has been lost in my functional prose.

Perhaps this also is happening to Korea through the very infusion of foreigners that the student describes. Koreans are changing, and so is the way that many of them think. Over 10 years ago, during my first stay on the peninsula, I encountered countless Koreans who were astonished to meet a foreigner.

In turn, I learned from them many astonishing things. Our minds are located in our chests, primarily in the vicinity of the heart, and that is where we do our thinking. At death, the king of hell judges whether we go above or below, and this apparent "devil" is a qualified, fair-minded judge. Charged with a sufficient quantity of a certain metaphysical energy called "ki," a person can float cross-legged in the air. Over 4,000 years ago, the first Korean appeared as the offspring of a bear-woman and a god-man.

Most astounding of all, I learned that students should not even come close to stepping on my shadow, for I was "The Teacher." Despite my great amazement at finding not merely my person but even my umbral qualities so highly regarded, Koreans appeared to accept that high-stepping belief as implicitly as they accepted those other great if astonishing truths.

Lesser truths also puzzled me. Some of my female students would express a wish to be called "Pumpkin" rather than by their Korean names. A student with pronunciation problems insisted that he had a "short tongue" even though it looked long enough to my eyes. People warned me against writing my signature in red but had no qualms about stamping their names in red ink. Electric fans blowing all night in a closed room would kill a person. Cats were evil. Dogs were food. I had a lot to learn.

But I now have a lot to forget, as many younger Koreans come to question these folkways and folk beliefs and as years of instruction in private academies by native speakers of English are gradually transforming younger Koreans into partially-Westernized citizens of the world.

Probably, this has been largely inevitable, and perhaps for the better, but the quirky charm of my first Korean students is mostly gone, their thinking increasingly rendered ever more functional . . . except for those times that I receive the occasional student essay offering a passage like the eccentrically impressive one above, whereupon I again turn to reflect upon the money punishment possibility continuously coming in flocks when it meets the foreigner from the road.

The writer is currently employed full-time at Ewha Womans University, teaching courses on essay composition, research papers, and cultural issues. He can be contacted through his blog, Gypsy Scholar.

A few readers commented, one of them -- identified as "sierra48" -- kindly pointing out how "naive" I was to think that the student actually wrote that paragraph:

Mr. Hogdes, how long have you been in Korea? Don't you know that your student's writing was NOT stream-of-consciousness English, it was Korean fed into a computer translation program, possibly babelfish.yahoo.com. It's astonishing that anyone who is paid to teach writing at a prestigious university is so naive, or so lazy, as to let his students fob him off with this dishonest garbage.

I think that "sierra48" meant to call me "Mr. Hodges," but I'm not certain. At any rate, the commenter left a second comment:

On re-reading, it looks like an article fished out of a newspaper, and not even the original Korean text was the student's own creation. Unfortunately, this kind of thing would be perfectly acceptable to her Korean professors, most of whom wouldn't even bother reading anything their students submit.

Actually, I agree with "sierra48." This was also my first thought, for the paragraph was different in style from the other paragraphs, which is always a sign of plagiarism, and I strongly suspected that the student had borrowed the passage from a Korean article about the emerging multiethnic Korea and had simply put it through Google Translate, but Babelfish is certainly a possibility -- as my friend Charles La Shure also suggested when I first blogged on this passage. Unfortunately, I had no proof, so I made no accusation in this case, but I did tell the student that the paragraph was incoherent, and the grade given was quite low. The student thus has a lot of rewriting to do to bring her grade up to a respectable one.

Therefore, "sierra48," generous with helpful advice, need not be too alarmed that I'm letting my students fob me off with dishonest 'work'. I've been in Korea too long to be fooled by the pervasive plagiarism . . . as readers of this blog will readily recall.

But whether Babelfish, Google Translate, or some other translation program, the passage had a certain charm, at least for me, and did remind me of quirky writing that I received from my Korean students during my initial stay in Korea, back in 1995, and that memory led to my nostalgic reflections.

The Korea Times: "Soaking Up Sun in Mt. Seorak"

Photo by Sun-Ae Hwang

(Image from The Korea Times)

I've already reported in this blog on the vacation trip with my family to Soraksan Nature Reserve, but I'm reporting again today because the Korea Times asked me to rewrite that piece for its Arts & Living section.

Originally, I had titled my article "Soaking Up Sun in Seoraksan" because I liked the wordplay, but an editor must have preferred "Soaking Up Sun in Mt. Seoraksan" because that's what appears:

Soaking Up Sun in Mt. Seorak

By Horace Jeffery Hodges
Contributing writer

After a wonderful trip with my family two years ago to rugged, volcanic Ulleung Island, I told friends that I had found South Korea's most beautiful vacation spot, but a recent family excursion to Mt. Seorak Nature Reserve on South Korea's northeast coast has persuaded me otherwise. Despite our brief visit -- three nights and four days -- we had just enough time for a half-day's strenuous hike in the natural reserve and a full day's indolent recovery in a nearby health spa.

Since ours was a family trip with two preteen children, my wife and I elected to hike the approximately 3.6-kilometer trail from the reserve's main entrance on the east to Geumgang Cave high up on the rocky face of Janggunbong Peak, one of the easier trails. Even though it skirts a rushing mountain stream, it maintains a relatively gentle slope until reaching the base of Janggunbong around the end of the third kilometer, where it immediately turns arduous as it heads up a very steep incline for about half a kilometer.

That part of the hike, although hard, does have its advantages. One vantage point came with a stunning view of a mountain valley far below. We were by this time quite far up on our elevated hike to Geumgang Cave, where the famous seventh-century Buddhist monk Wonhyo stayed alone to meditate upon the Four Noble Truths of suffering. This man was not only an adept in the practice of Buddhist meditation but also a great Buddhist scholar.

He is popularly remembered, however, for the story that relates his startling moment of enlightenment, which also occurred in a cave, though not the one toward which we were ascending. Caught at night in a drenching rainstorm during a journey to China, Ven. Wonhyo took shelter in a nearby grotto, where he found what he took to be a gourd filled with fresh water from which he drank to quench his thirst. Daybreak, however, revealed the convenient "gourd'' to be a human skull and the "fresh'' water to be repellently foul. At this moment, he experienced enlightenment, utterly convinced that all existence is nothing but consciousness, for his own conscious mind had transformed brackish water from a skull into fresh water from a gourd.

Perhaps Ven. Wonhyo also reached Geumgang Cave through the power of his mind. How he might otherwise have managed it would have required quite a feat of rock climbing, for the cave opens onto the face of a sheer rock cliff that we could scale only by carefully ascending the long, steep, metal stairs bolted onto the mountain's rocky face. The effect is yet more impressive in reality, when one is literally staring down what looks like a nearly vertical drop, though the precipitous steps are not quite a ladder. They gave me that impression as I was clinging to them tightly to steady myself.

Despite the exhilarating climb up that long series of steps, we reached Ven. Wonhyo's mountain cave safely and rested there for about half an hour, looking at the three Buddha statues in the back area of the grotto, gazing out upon the valley and surrounding peaks, and even quaffing a refreshing, earth-smelling drink called "chikjeup'' (arrowroot juice). I doubt that any of those roots were found upon that mountain cliff that keeps Geumgang Cave so recalcitrantly accessible, but already impressive enough was the fact that a vendor had lugged such homemade refreshment up the entire way we had come and was standing there to greet us with smiles as we entered.

We also encountered in that sacred grotto a Spaniard. His name was Alex, from the Spanish Basque region. He worked as an amateur filmmaker, and he was traveling alone in Korea, getting by despite limited English skills not only on the part of the Koreans whom he encountered but on his own part, too. Koreans were treating him very well, he reported, and I agreed with him that Koreans are generally very friendly and helpful despite language barriers. We also found ourselves sharing the opinion that the view from Geumgang Cave was simply stunning. My newfound friend Alex left the cave before my family and I did, and I later regretted that I had not taken his photo, for he was only the second Spanish Basque whom I have ever met, and I never would have expected to encounter one within a Buddhist grotto situated high up on the sheer face of a remote mountain in South Korea.

Soon after his exit came the time for us to also leave Ven. Wonhyo's cave and brave the trip down the mountainside. After all, we had to get back to our hotel in Sokcho, spruce up to enjoy a fresh seafood dinner on the coast, and make ourselves ready for that spa relief scheduled to begin the very next morning, an entire, languorous day planned for soothing sore muscles in variously flavored hot tubs.

The writer is currently employed full-time at Ewha Womans University, teaching courses on essay composition, research papers, and cultural issues. He obtained a doctorate in history of science at U.C. Berkeley. He can be contacted at his blog.

Other than that aforementioned alteration in the title, most of the editing is acceptable, even quite professional. Take the monk Wonhyo. The term "Ven." (meaning "Venerable") was added to the monk's name, precisely as the term "Rev." (for "Reverend") would be added to a minister's name, and I especially liked that bit of editing.

That's all for today, folks. I've got a tough schedule every Friday -- teaching from 8:00 a.m. until 6:40 p.m., with a break from 12:15 until 2:00 and another from 4:30 to 5:00 -- so I'd best prepare my lessons and myself.

"Keeping Georgia on Your Mind"

"Keeping Georgia on Your Mind"
Korea Times, September 3, 2008
(Image from Korea Times)

The Korea Times recently asked me to write a column for its "Foreign Community" section, which meant that the paper wanted an article on some Korean topic or other. I'm not sure why I was asked, for unlike many other foreigners living and working in this country, I don't actually know much about this place. Perhaps someone noticed my language column published in the "Expat Living" section of the Korea Herald, or my wide-ranging meanderings in this Gypsy Scholar blog, and thought that I might have something to say.

I wasn't sure what the editors were looking for, but I tried to write a piece on the foreign policy implications that Russia's actions in Georgia have for Korea. The Korea Times has published my article . . . but not in its "Foreign Policy" section. Rather, as I was informed yesterday, it appeared in the "Opinion" section.

Keeping Georgia on Your Mind

By Horace Jeffery Hodges

Small states bordered by great powers require more distant, more powerful friends. This truism of foreign policy has implications being spelled out before our eyes in Georgia, a small state bordered by the great power Russia.

In fact, from 1800 till 1991, excepting a brief three years following the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia's border encompassed Georgia entirely.

Only in 1991, with the collapse of the Russian-dominated Soviet Union, did Georgia reemerge as a sovereign nation, and it immediately looked to the West for a powerful friend, thinking to find one in the United States.

Every such friendship, however, comes with a price. Georgia's price? Contributing about 2,000 troops to the American coalition in Iraq, but in turn receiving military training from U.S. instructors. Not a bad tradeoff, perhaps.

Still, the Georgian nation desired stronger guarantees, naturally, and applied for inclusion within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

America supported the Georgians, but France and Germany blocked NATO from offering membership to that nation. Given Georgia's instability due to its ethnic complexity in an ethnically diverse region where Russia claims legitimate national interests, opposition by France and Germany was understandable.

That rejected application left Georgia with a still hostile Russia, a putative American friend, and no formal military alliance.

Had Russia remained economically weakened for a longer period, Georgia might have found sufficient time for strengthening its bonds with the West and might even have formalized a military alliance, if not with NATO then with the United States.

Russia, however, because of its rich gas and oil fields, has benefited from the European need for energy and the worldwide rise in fuel prices, enabling it to regain some of its former power.

It still lacks any convincing ability to project hard power globally, but across its own borders, it can again project significant military power.

Georgia, therefore, has discovered itself in an unenviable position of weakness facing Russian power and would have done better to avoid reacting to separatist provocations in the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

The Georgian military's attack upon Ossetian separatists has provided Russia with the justification required for intervention, and we now see the surely foreseeable result in Georgia's effective loss of South Ossetia, as well as in its profound humiliation, a denigrated status that it shares with the United States.

What does all of this mean for South Korea? Presumably, Russia has no revanchist aim on any part of Korea, so territorial claims are not an issue in relations with Russia. However, some local great powers might have issues about territory, and the Korean Peninsula remains divided, leaving South Korea relatively small and weak as a country.

Koreans dispute Dokdo with Japan, but China is the rising great power in this East Asian region, and while it might have no expressed territorial claims upon Korea, it has in times past dominated Korea through its political, economic, and military power, even going so far as to claim Korea as a vassal state.

Moreover, China even now claims for itself the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo, against Korean protests, and an impartial observer can hardly fail to notice that Goguryeo's territory extended more than halfway down the Korean Peninsula, thereby encompassing all of North Korea, a small, economically weak state profoundly dependent upon China.

That ought to focus South Korea's long-term geopolitical reflections regardless of what China might have in mind.

The Georgian case, therefore, ought to remind Koreans of the foreign policy truism noted above and move them to nurture their longstanding alliance with their powerful, distant friend, the United States.

Americans have national interests in the Korean Peninsula, of course, or they would not be here ― and interests of state are a positive thing, for they promote stable relations ― but none of those interests even remotely includes territorial claims. Indeed, the U.S. strongly supports Korean reunification.

Americans thus find themselves perplexed by many Koreans' insistence that the United States opposes reunification. Equally perplexing has been the recent brouhaha over American beef.

Why so many Koreans believed that the American ranchers were shipping to Korea the beef that American consumers supposedly refused to eat was mystifying to Americans. And I prefer not even to broach the issue of that excessive anti-Americanism that I observed in the autumn and winter of 2001 or in the late summer and autumn of 2002.

In the face of such Korean beliefs and attitudes about the United States, Americans could be forgiven for inferring that many if not most Koreans would prefer to have no military alliance with America.

Probably, this inference is not correct, but if Koreans truly want that alliance, this desire could surely be made clearer on the part of all South Koreans. How? By maintaining a steady focus on South Korea's national interests. In what way? Just keep Georgia on your mind.

The writer is currently employed full-time at Ewha Womans University, teaching courses on essay composition, research papers, and cultural issues. He obtained a doctorate in history of science at U.C. Berkeley . . . . The views expressed in the above article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of The Korea Times.

That's what I wrote, and it's rather banal, admittedly not my best writing. I had thought that it dealt sufficiently with Korean issues to meet the needs of the "Foreign Community" section, but the managing editor, who knows better than I what the Korea Times needs, has sent me an email suggesting that I write on some "current Korean issue, not op-ed but straight story for 'Foreign Community' page."

I will try, but I strongly suspect . . . no, I fully know that many other expats here in Korea would have far more interesting things to say in a straight story focused on Korea.

By the way, I didn't pick the cartoon, an image that I find interesting for what it depicts . . . and for what it does not depict. The EU likely does feel intimidated by Russia, but the US would be the more obvious object of Russian anger . . . and South Korea should be looking on from a distance.

But perhaps that would be overly complicated to illustrate.

William Kapoun Needs Help

William Kapoun

Before the fire.

(Image from Metropolitician)

I don't know William Kapoun personally, but the fire that trapped him in his apartment and burned him over some two-thirds of his body has reminded me of a danger that most of us, whether foreigner or native, face through living in Korea.

William Kapoun

After the fire.
(Image from Metropolitician)

As reported by Kang Shin-who, writing for The Korea Times, the twenty-six-year-old teacher "lived in an unsafe apartment" in which there was "no sprinkler system or fire alarm and he had only one exit, which was blocked by the fire." Lest one imagine that Mr. Kapoun freely chose this fire-trap apartment, note that these are the conditions under which very many people live in Korea, despite the otherwise modern conditions in this high-tech country.

The apartment that my family and I live in is only scarcely better, and I'm relieved that we live only on the second floor, from which we can safely leap if necessary.

I discovered Mr. Kapoun's plight through reading of him at Mike Hurt's blog, Scribblings of the Metropolitician, as well as at Robert Koehler's blog, The Marmot's Hole. I know Robert and have met Mike, and both of them link to the same website set up by Mr. Kapoun's family and friends requesting help with the cost.

My understanding is that originally, Mr. Kapoun was without insurance because his employer had no policy to cover him but that national insurance has been extended to cover some of his costs, as noted by Matthew Lamers in a Korea Herald article.

Mr. Lamers is the man who invited me to write the language column for the Korea Herald's foreign section, Expat Living, and I received this email from him yesterday:

I am writing to all Expat Living writers to let you know, if you didn't already hear, of a tragedy that happened on Feb. 25. An English teacher, Bill Kapoun, was critically injured in an apartment fire and is currently in intensive care with third degree burns over much of his body. After you include the cost of a Medivac back to the U.S., costs to his family are likely to soar north of $200,000.

If you could use your extensive social networks to spread awareness, it could potentially do a lot of help for this young man, and his family, too. A lot of fundraising events are in the works. I wrote an article yesterday, attached, for more information.

This also raises a lot of important issues that we sometimes overlook because of the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, such as medical insurance, smoke detectors, an escape route, and fire extinguishers.

I had already considered blogging about Mr. Kapoun's circumstances, and Matt's email convinced me to do so even though I don't know that my social network is especially extensive, but every little bit helps. Sun-Ae and I have made a financial contribution.

If you can help, then make your checks payable to the Help Bill Fund, and mail them to:

Help Bill Fund
P.O. Box 283
Bloomington, IN 47402
USA

If you are living in Korea, then you can transfer funds directly into this account:

KB Bank
794002 04 03 1635
Warren Franklin-William Fund

More information is regularly forthcoming at the Save Bill Kapoun blog.

UPDATE: I regret to inform everyone that William Kapoun has passed away due to injuries sustained from the fire that left some two-thirds of his body burned. Apparently, he died yesterday (Saturday, March 8th) sometime after I had posted my blog entry. Details are available in this article from today's Korea Times (Kang Shin-who, "Foreign Teacher Dies of Injuries From Fire," Sunday, March 9, 2008). Thank you to any who may have contributed, for your generosity has helped Mr. Kapoun's family cover part of the hospital costs. According to the article, 60,000 dollars has been donated, which is a pretty substantial portion of the estimated cost of 80,000 dollars. I'm sure that the family would appreciate help in covering the remaining 20,000 if any readers can spare the money. Again, thank you.