nanoomi

The Korea Times reports that the Fair Trade Commission has taken action that “bans sexualizing teen stars:”

Government officials are attempting to prevent the revealing styles of teenage pop idols as they warn against the media’s portrayal of young women as sex objects.

The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) Friday announced a new guideline for standard contract terms between production companies and artists, which include preventing underage singers from dressing in excessively sexual clothing. Management shouldn’t deprive the boys and girls in showbiz from their educational opportunities either, the FTC said, and needs to protect them from long working hours.

Well, announcing a guideline ought to put a stop to all of this. Now entertainment companies won’t have their teen stars wear skirts so short they show off their underwear, and the media will stop portraying “young women as sex objects.”

Such as this Joongang Ilbo article which was at the top of Naver awhile ago titled “Chinese netizens go wild over Son Yeon-jae,” which gave a matter-of-fact account of what Chinese netizens were writing about the girl known in Korea as the ‘gymnastics pixie’ (much as Kim Yuna was once the ‘figure pixie’). It was mostly stuff like “A Korean girl like a dream,” “absolutely perfect,” “a Korean body you can’t help but dream about.”

Much the same thing happened when Son appeared at the ‘LG Whisen Rhythmic All Star 2011′ gala show last Sunday, with Asia Gyeongje publishing a slew of photos from the show with titles like “Son Yeon-jae’s captivating look – her ‘pixie’ image disappears,” “Son Yeon-jae’s seductive beckoning,” “Son Yeon-jae shows off her S line,” and “Son Yeon-jae’s stand out s line“:

I suppose someone could point out she just turned 17 and that headlines like that might be inappropriate, but then, she is four years older than the age of consent, so perhaps it’s all okay after all. Besides, according to this, she may have wanted to get a reaction:

“I’ve always been seen with a cute and youthful image but now I want to show a transformed me.”

Mission accomplished. One wonders if that’s something she wants – or if its more her management’s idea. At any rate, being cute and known for your ‘S-line’ will probably ultimately mean more advertising contracts. As for the performance, the training video shows some ho-hum ’sexy’ dancing, but I’m more impressed by the ‘human windmill’ thing she does at 0:55.

You can read the original post at Gusts of Popular Feeling.

According to the JoongAng Ilbo, corporal punishment is to be phased out in Gyeonggi-do schools.

In Gyeonggi, students who were to receive corporal punishment will instead receive “knowledge and virtue-based punishments,” such as writing book reports, completing community service projects or doing extra assignments.

They’re also to be phased out in Seoul schools as well, but no concrete steps have been taken in this direction. This is interesting:

Examination of students’ belongings without prior notice, regulation of hair length, verbal abuse and school violence will be prohibited. The teacher’s duty to monitor students’ dress code and conduct of behavior at school gates will be removed. Measures will be taken to raise awareness of student rights and student councils will be given greater autonomy.

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By Gabriel Sylvian with Iwazaru

Editors:  Click here to read part 1

Last year, in honor of the 20th anniversary of poet Gi Hyeong-do’s death (1960-1989), a collection of writings on Gi’s life, art and legacy was published by Munhakgwa jiseongsa, including essays by several who knew Gi personally: poets, friends, and colleagues. Not surprisingly, the words “gay” or “homosexual” make no appearance in the book’s 476 pages. Then again, one might say, neither do those words appear in any of Gi’s own writings. Does this absence justify the continuing taboo on discussions of Gi’s sexuality? Do attempts to recuperate a voice from pre-LGBT Korean history (pre-1990s) for a present-day LGBT politics make any sense?

…

Gi’s death on a spring Tuesday morning at a gay sex venue—the only major venue available to gays in Seoul in the 1980s before the later commercial proliferation of saunas, bars and discos—was a shock to the Korean literary world, and later to the public following the posthumous printing of “The Black Leaf in My Mouth” (1989). The sensationalistic nature and timing of Gi’s death (just before his first collection of poems were to be published), importantly, has served to enshrine Gi as a “poet of death” rather than a “poet for life,” death always being a centerpoint in discussions of his work, at the expense of other (political) themes like social critique, secrecy, fear of aging, fear of mother, passive-aggression, and questions of gender.

Of course, it is absurd to imagine that Gi had already predicted his future death at the age of 29, or that he actually harbored a death wish. Gi’s poetry readily can, and probably should, also be read as the poetry of an intellectual actively and bravely articulating through poetic language, conflicts within and without him, who uniquely addressed issues relevant to the same-sex underground of his day, with clear reverberations in the present. For the richest testimony, we may turn to images from his life in the short video below and his verses, the poet’s locus of truth.

Jealousy, My Forte

After a very long stretch of time has passed
this powerless book cover will let its pages fall
Because my heart set up so many factories,
foolishly, there were too many things to record
Like a dog slowly roaming under clouds
I hesitated in mid-air, bloodied but unbowed.
With nothing to my name but my sighs
I blankly parked my youth on each evening street
But because I counted the days of my life with wonder
and because no one feared me
the content of my hope was only jealousy,
And so, to begin, I leave here a brief message
I spent my life wandering madly in search of love
but never once loved myself

질투는 나의 힘
아주 오랜 세월이 흐른 뒤에
힘 없는 책갈피는 이 종이를 떨어뜨리리
그때 내 마음은 너무나 많은 공장을 세웠으니
어리석게도 그토록 기록할 것이 많았구나
구름 밑을 천천히 쏘다니는 개 처럼
지칠 줄 모르고 공중에서 머뭇거렸구나
나 가진 것 탄식 밖에 없어
저녁 거리마다 물끄러미 청춘을 세워두고
살아온 날들을 신기하게 세어보았으니
그 누구도 나를 두려워하지 않았으니
내 희망의 내용은 질투 뿐이었구나
그리하여 나는 우선 여기에 짧은 글을 남겨둔다
나의 생은 미친 듯이 사랑을 찾아 헤매었으나
단 한 번도 스스로를 사랑하지 않았노라

See more of Gi’s poems and the full post here at The Three Wise Monkeys.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Gabriel Sylvian is the founder and torch-bearer of the Korean Gay Literature Project at Seoul National University where he conducts a study group called R/Z회. He was at Yonsei University (85-6) at the age of 19—the same year Gi graduated—and has been familiar with the Jongro underground same-sex scene for more than 25 years.

He earned an M.A. in Oriental Languages at UC Berkeley and came back to Korea in 2004 as a Fulbright scholar at SNU expressly charged by the Korean government with the task of doing the Project (“using literature as a tool for social change in respect to sexual minorities”). He has since earned an M.A. in Modern Korean Literature and is working on his doctorate.

He has translated Gi’s Complete Poems and is now seeking a publisher.
He can be contacted at rkngel(at)naver.com

By Gabriel Sylvian with Iwazaru

Gi Hyeong-do (1960-1989) is one of the most highly recognized names in modern Korean poetry. His poems are a staple in Korean literature textbooks, and the posthumously published volume of his poems The Black Leaf in My Mouth has gone through multiple printings in the two decades since his untimely death.

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