(Seoul, Korea)

Out of curiosity, I decided to study the networks that my friends belong to on facebook. I broke up their affiliations into location, schools and workplace. Obviously, the numbers of American friends I have on facebook are over-represented as a proportion of my total ‘real’ friends. This is unsurprising considering the intense usage of facebook in America. On the other hand, my Asian friends are under-represented. Again, this is unsurprising given that facebook is not known to many of my friends in China or Japan.

What was surprising was the number of Europeans I have on facebook. They are over-represented proportional to the number of Europeans in my real-life network. This indicates to me that “facebook befriending” is subject to situational effects: most of the Europeans I meet are at conferences in Europe, and this makes them more likely to add someone on facebook. Also, attending an international conference might correlate with being more internationally minded, leading to the Europeans I met being more likely to have a facebook account.

Statistics:

Total number of networks friends belongs to: 434
Total number of friends as of today: 1117
Listed networks are those I have 5 or more friends in:

Company
* Deloitte (7)
* Goldman Sachs (8)
* McKinsey & Company (8)
* Microsoft (4)
* The Boston Consulting Group (4)
  * World Economic Forum (10)

School
  * Berkeley (10)
* Brown (5)
* Cambridge (5)
  * Columbia (15)
* Cornell (7)
* ESADE (5)
* Georgetown (8)
  * Harvard (31)
* HKU (8)
* HKUST (9)
* ITBA (6)
* LSE (9)
* National Taiwan University (9)
  * National University of Singapore (35)
* NYU (5)
* Queen’s University (5)
* Sciences Po (8)
  * Singapore Management (23)
  * Stanford (15)
* The University of Tokyo (5)
* Uni Köln (5)
  * Uni. St. Gallen (14)
* University of Melbourne (7)
* Università Bocconi (5)
* Waseda University (5)
* Washington University in St. Louis (5)
* Yale (5)
* UPenn (504)

Country
  * Argentina (11)
* Australia (8)
* Boston, MA (9)
* Chicago, IL (5)
  * China (21)
* France (12)
  * Germany (14)
  * Hong Kong (30)
* Italy (6)
  * Japan (21)
* London (9)
* Malaysia (8)
* Michigan (6)
* Netherlands (5)
  * New York, NY (51)
* North Jersey, NJ (5)
  * Philadelphia, PA (23)
* Russia (5)
  * San Francisco, CA (13)
  * Singapore (129)
* South Korea (17)
* Sweden (5)
  * Switzerland (13)
  * Taiwan (19)
* Toronto, ON (5)
* Vancouver, BC (5)
* Washington (5)
  * Washington, DC (12)

I managed to take some time off work to escape to Busan with Lynn (American), Dave (Canadian) and Maia (Thailand) whom I met at the hostel before moving to my current “prison-cell” room. Being able to see the sun, jog on the beach and put my Korean to good use there gave me fond memories.

The space-age Busan train station. We actually took the bus there and decided to try the train coming back. Unfortunately, the trains were packed and we ended up coming back at 3am in the morning.

Maia’s art work at the bus terminal before we left.

The subway system at Busan looks exactly like Seoul, except that it refuses to take the T-money fare cards of Seoul.

At the beach, where we spent a large part of our day. We ended up sleeping at a bathhouse in the night as it was the cheapest option.

Lynn suggested that I ask the restaurant owner what the most famous local food was. The owner recommended 장어. Not knowing what it was, we did the smart thing and ordered it. The owner brought out the dish pictured above, with the white strips still jerking around in the sauce. We though it was a squid-variant, and Maia, deciding to be the brave culturally-immersed foreigner, stands up with her chopsticks to try eating the “squid” while it was alive.

It turns out that it was eel. “What are you doing? It’s still moving!” The owner screamed horrified. She must be thinking “those foreigners with their weird habits of eating any and every thing.” The tables were turned on us. Instead of us joking about weird Korean foods, they were laughing at our strange habit of eating life eels.

We went to a fairground near the beach to try the Viking. Lynn was having second thoughts after buying the ticket. A girl awaits, pensively, for her turn to ride on it.

All ahoy! As the Viking reaches its peak, we looked out at the ocean that stretched out before us into the night.

Any reflection is a potential mirror for make-up in Seoul. Lynn and Maia poses for the camera.

The crowds at Haeyundae Beach.

Great memories…

(Pusan, South Korea)

This time in Seoul, I live in a “Kosiwon (고시원).” My translation for that is “only affordable room in Seoul with no windows and enough space to put feet on the floor.” I am of course discounting the more spacious prison cells. My American friend who introduced the place to me dropped by today to complain about fierce Korean aunties. He said that characterizing Korea as patriarchal has to take into account this domineering segment of the population.

While there is no denying that East Asian society is patriarchal, the way the term is viewed in the West is inappropriate for the East Asian context. I think the “patriarchy” that exists in East Asia is more of defined social roles that apply to both males and females. For example, men are expected to be breadwinners and thus take a central role in the work environment. Women are expected to be masters of the household, and East Asian dramas often depict husbands who are henpecked at home. Because of heavy social censure in East Asia, both genders face difficulties if they violate these well-defined boundaries.

(Seoul, Korea) Blazing my own path…

So it is finally official. I have dropped the Huntsman Program at Penn. Despite the well-meaning effort of friends, faculty and administrators to dissuade me, I completed the path I set out on after returning to Penn in 2007. What I learned from this process is that I should be willing to revisit my educational path to evaluate whether it meets my learning objectives. There is nothing to fear from change except the new opportunities it brings.

After spending summer working in China in 2007, I realized that the program I was in constrained my learning opportunities more than it supported them. While I am grateful to the amazing students and staffs who make up the program, and the support the Huntsman Program has given me, I realized that my interests were best pursued elsewhere. Once this dawned on me, the decision to switch my majors was quick. The takeaway is that inertia is a lousy excuse for sticking to a sub-optimal learning path.

There were friends who cited the prestige of the program as a good reason to stay in it. I think the problem with chasing prestige is that you end up living your life according to what others think is best for you, not what you think is best for yourself. Sticking to Huntsman for such a reason would have meant missing out the unique learning experience I had in structuring one of my majors around solving a healthcare problem.

(Seoul, Korea)

It is hard not to get caught up in the Olympic spirit these days with the big party up north of Seoul in Beijing. I was at my favorite low-cost eatery in Seoul (not many of them) and swimmer Park Tae Hwan was on the TV screen competing in the 400m freestyle. Everyone in the restaurant was cheering him on as he galloped on towards a gold medal. It was infectious.

(Dandong, China) Oh to make more of a difference!

Taking the opportunity to study Korean while I am in Seoul, I realized how nice it is to be able to communicate with someone in a foreign language. This made me regret the wasted opportunity I had in studying Chinese when I was younger. Back then, having never had the opportunity to venture beyond Singapore’s borders, I did not put in the effort into Chinese I should have.

Although I am still fluent in Chinese, having spent two summers working there, I still wish I could be able to handle more technical terms, and express myself more eloquently in the language. When I was working on my research on Harmonious Society and wrote op-eds on its implications for corporate social responsibility, I was able to reach a Western audience and get them to take my ideas seriously. However, I could not have the same impact in China because my Chinese language capacity still lags seriously behind my English language skills.

But I am going to change that in the next two semesters, and I plan to venture back into China next spring to do that. I intend study at Tsinghua University in Beijing after graduating at the end of this year.

(Pyongyang, North Korea)

That North Korea still maintains some level of academic exchanges with other countries often comes as a surprise to many of my friends. As with North Korea, the number of visiting students are low, but more than what people would guess (i.e. zero). So which countries have exchanges with North Korea?

The usual suspects, China, Vietnam and Russia have the largest student population in Pyongyang according to a source in the city. In China, some students attend special foreign languages colleges that are feeder programs into diplomatic work. For those assigned to covering Korea, students are required to spend a year studying in Pyongyang and another in Seoul. Aside from this group, Chinese students of Korean ancestry do study in Pyongyang, especially if they are unable to afford or enter a good South Korean or Chinese university.

Another group includes the European countries that maintained relationships with North Korea after the collapse of the communist bloc. I am not sure if Germany still has exchange students in North Korea (they used to), but I recently met a friend from the Czech Republic who mentioned that Czech students are still visiting North Korea. As a side note, that same friend was kidnapped by a Libyan ambassador when he was living in Pyongyang as a kid, because he got into a fight with the son of the Libyan ambassador.

Another major development is a newly built Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. Funded by Christian evangelists from South Korea and the US, the new university will take in its first class in spring 2009 – delayed for a while from its scheduled opening. According to the university, it will accept foreign students.

(Seoul, Korea)

I went to visit a law school friend, Lynn, who is interning in Seoul for the summer. My friend wanted some photos of the protests as souvenirs and dragged me along. While the crowds have dwindled after over two months of protests, the night was made interesting by watching the police strategy for dispersing the protestors. The police probably outnumbered protestors by at least 10 to 1, which might be why they are willing to disperse the crowds.

(Seoul, Korea) And the action begins…

The police had pushed the protestors to a four-way junction at the Samsung Securities Building beside Jonggak station. There were brief clashes there but it eventually led to a stalemate with the riot police blocking off two of the roads at the junction that led to City Hall. About an hour later, about 50 to 100 policemen started running in an opposite direction from this scene. Lynn and I found them trying to outflank protestors by coming from behind them through a backstreet. Some protestors found this ambush and blocked the passage with their cars.

(Seoul, Korea) End game…

However, it turned out that this was a decoy as about 15 minutes later, about 200 riot police rushed in from the main street behind the protestors - running for about 200 meters in full riot gear. The protestors were caught in a pincer maneuver and were pushed out of the main road onto the four corners of the junction by the police. They were dispersed and could not do much but stay on the sidelines. A protestor alleges that the tactic was done to make it seem as if there were no protestors (as they could not gather).

(Seoul, Korea) A blogger/web journalist reports onsite at a protest

Korea’s three largest papers, Chosun Ilbo, Joongang Ilbo and DongA Ilbo are all conservative dailies. However, I would estimate that 40 percent of Korea belongs to what would be considered the left in Korea. This begs the question of why the left is not adequately represented in the mainstream media. Only one print newspaper could claim a significant readership and call itself left-oriented, but it is still behind the three Ilbos in readership. So what does 40 percent of Korea read for their news?

I suspect that the dominance of the Ilbos stem from stronger advertising revenue streams. Printing and distributing hardcopy newspapers are expensive. As the chaebols, Korean family-run conglomerates, tend to be aligned with the right, they are much more willing to advertise in the Ilbos.

Without the main source of advertising dollars in Korea, left-leaning papers are forced to the fragmented (and cheap) corners of cyberspace. And they are well-represented there. A dispersed network of blogs, small independent news outfits and discussion forums comprise the left’s media channels. I recalled how I once wanted to learn when major protests were taking place in Seoul, and my friend went online to check blogs for this information.

I watched a sneak preview of Korean movie (with English subtitles) “Crossing” today. The show follows the life of Yong-soo, a fictional North Korean refugee, who crosses into China to find medicine for his ill wife. I do not know how to describe it in a way that does justice to this great firm, except to say that it is the first movie I cried at in the last 8 years.

For me, it’s the only Korean movie that is a must-watch. Catch it once it comes out with English subtitles. And spread the word, since the movie has yet to break even in Seoul.

Synopsis

Yong-soo lives in a small coal-mine village in North Korea with his wife and young son. Although living in extreme poverty, the family is happy just to be with each other. Then one day, Yong-soo’s pregnant wife becomes critically ill. Let alone medicine, Yong-soo can’t even find food for her in North Korea. So he secretly crosses the borders of China hoping to find the medicine for his wife. After many life threatening moments in China, Yong-soo is forced into South Korea, becoming an unwanted refugee prohibited to return to his family. Meanwhile, his wife passes away leaving their young son alone in desperation. With no one to turn to, his young son sets out to find his father not knowing where or how to find him.