Thursday, May 04, 2006

Back to my roots...

I just got the opportunity to go to Korea in June or July...I have been there four times...Last time I was there was over 13 years ago...My Mom's got an apartment in Seoul...Things have definitely changed or so I've been told...I have heard from people like Bom5 and Ink that hiphop has swept the country and they would both live there...When I was there last, I was in a missionary program (though I'm not exactly religious and was bordering on agnosticism then) that turned out to be an activist organization educating our group on the four major activist movements: the students' movement (was about 10% of the student population), the teachers' movement, the farmers' movement and finally the urban dwellers' movement...We met family members of victims of the demonstrations and self-immolations, learned traditional instruments (I played the drums), worked in the fields (I passed out from heat exhaustion in the tobacco fields), hung out at brothels observing the prostitutes and GI's...South Korea was the first place that had a suicuide hotline specifically for farmers because all the women left and moved to the cities where they worked in sweatshops for not such a better life...The farmers were given a bunch of US cows by the government in an effort to appease them when they were unable to sell their products in the market because the government had imported products from other countries...They demonstrated and got ripped up the riot police...The next time they demonstrated, the farmers got wise and put the cows amongst the people so the police could not use tear gas and water cannons...The last time I was in Korea, I learned a lot about the massacre that occurred in Dongduchun just ten years before I had stayed there when I was 13...Women, children...it was awful...Anyways, I love their subway...

Update: Okay, so I was skeptical, but Drunken Tiger and Seo Tai-Ji are worth listening to...

No comments: