Category Archives: Korea

“Borderless Economics”: World Peace, Nirvana and other Economic Models

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Author @TheEconomist

The thing that you have to understand about Economists is that they’re generally an optimistic bunch, but they’re really annoyed by the complications of…reality. They love models: models are perfect and simple. Because they omit externalities and oddities, they work perfectly. The simplest of models involve but two variables: wine and cheese, money and time, socks and shoes, and so on. As you progress further in your studies of the dismal science, you must heartbreakingly accept that in the real world, there is almost no application for a two-variable model.

It’s heartbreaking because in the sterile simplicity of Economics, the world works perfectly. Everyone who wants a job, has one; everyone who wants to borrow money, can; if you want time off work, you just work fewer hours. In the world of Economics we are all Utility Calculators, and we’re very good at what we do. We scan the job market for opportunities, spot them, and train to be the next Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, or Homer Simpson, depending our utility/salary demands (shockingly, no one ever chooses to be homeless, or a drug addict, or unemployed in this model).

In the world of Economic models, not only do we all have jobs, but we all have jobs that we’re good at, so we make a lot of money. On top of that, we enjoy our jobs. In other words, if you simplify the model enough, you can actually create the conditions for perfect Human Capital Allocation.

My point is this: there are a few differences between the skills in this world, and where they are most needed (likewise, the low-skill human labor, and where that’s needed). It’s just of a pain in the butt that these two groups can’t find each other more easily. If they could, so theorizes Robert Guest, we could solve most if not all of the world’s problems. In a perfect Economic World, every product has the perfect price, there is no Economic profit, and everyone is maximizing their happiness. How adorable. Continue reading →

“Whistling Vivaldi”: How Stereotypes Affect Us

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As a white man working around Asia, places like China, Korea and Japan, and wishing to stay here, I absolutely have to deal with the issue of race and stereotype. What may seem trivial now, as a single caucasian man, may at some point (eg. getting married, raising biracial children) become an issue for me and my family. And for anyone not living in Asia, there are class and racial divisions all over the world, as students and co-workers form cliques along predictable lines.

I remember in University, taking an Intermediate Mandarin class, where all the different ethnic and social groups would–unknowingly– cluster together perfectly: there were the white kids, the Chinese born Canadians, the Hong Kong kids, the Bi-racial kids, the Koreans, and some Philippinos. It was only several weeks into the class that I noticed these convenient groupings (I had done the exact same with my white friends). Were we racist? Were we trying to reject the other classmembers (and the Chinese teacher!)? Not at all. We enjoyed the arrangement, subconscious though it may have been.

But I do remember another class I took (briefly). It was an Asian studies course. There was one other white person in the class (phew!), and the goal of the class was to research the rich Asian influences in our community. This was a heavy course, and considered high-end credit, meaning very intensive projects. I was almost certain to be working later in Asia (that’s why I signed up in the first place), but I felt like I shouldn’t be there, and I felt like a fraud, that my research would be scrutinized, and my ‘findings’ would be immediately dismissed, as they were coming from a Caucasian student. The professor and the other students couldn’t have been more open and kind, but it wasn’t them I was responding to, it was something else. It was a subtle pang of anxiety I felt in the class, which led me to dropping the class before the end of the second week. Admittedly, I justified it by predicting academic demise, and felt sorry for the other white student who must be going through panic attacks in that class.Years later, I wonder if he ever finished the course, or politely dropped out after I did.

Make no mistake, my goal in reviewing this book was to identify techniques to alleviate, overcome, and adapt to living in foreign countries where I feel (and expect to feel) stereotypes and discrimination. So what are people really afraid of? What is this anxiety I keep mentioning. Are my Shanghainese neighbours afraid of me? Are whites in the US really afraid of Black people? In many cases, not even slightly. What I’m talking about are nice, friendly, ambitious, successful, otherwise, well-rounded people who still feel uncomfortable around certain groups–certain races, certain genders, certain cliques. Some of the research in this book brings forward a fascinating concept: people are generally agitated by what has been dubbed “stereotype threat”.

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“As Much as a Rat’s Tail: Korean Slang” Dictionary of Quirky, Crude and Hilarious Korean Slang

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Author @exilepress

I have been through the usual textbooks for Korean learning: I got the Pimsleur Audio course on iTunes; I got some very stiff textbooks at the Incheon Airport Bookstore, I’ve watched many of the hit Korean comedies from the last 10 years (subtitled, obviously), and I even (briefly) joined a Korean language Institute (before they doubled the hourly fee!).

So why was I so drawn to this book? Because the author came right out and declared that you really can’t get a handle of Korean life from those stiff old textbooks, that the answers I was looking for are not found through repetition of grammatical structures, but that the culture was a wildly different thing from anything in the West, and would have to be paced through gradually. In other words, slang was part of the education, it was not an optional aspect of language, but integral, and require learning for anyone with even a passing interest in the Korean language. Basically, this book, ostensibly a dictionary of racy, zany, hilarious Korean slang (with mini dialogues for each word, many of which are incredibly funny) was going to be my next step in further understanding Korean pop culture.
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