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21. Deauwand Myers

Cultural appropriation

Is cultural appropriation appreciation? Elvis Presley. Katy Perry in Geisha attire or cornrows. Iggy Azalea's rap career. Eminem. Every other K-pop singer. It would take a month of Sundays listing all the artists subscribing to traditionally African-American music and culture, often becoming more successful than the black artists they copied from.

2016-01-11 17:09

Are you still in Korea?

America: Land of bigness. The hamburger. The television. The endless fields of wheat and corn and suburbia stretching out in all directions. The country is a marvel; our beautiful scenery; our vastness. It's a pleasure to be home.

2015-12-28 17:03

What is terrorism?

Remember the good old days? Where you didn’t have to take off your shoes or surrender your hand lotion when traveling by air? Remember how passing through airport security was once a brief encounter? I miss those days. After 9/11, we expect the long wait and the slow strip tease: no shoes, no belt, no jewelry, no jacket. Security agents may pat you down, spread your legs, pass a wand under here, over there.

2015-12-14 18:07

Guns and governance

Recently, gun murders in Korea have rocked the nation. Loss of human life should always be mourned, and certainly, murders are newsworthy, yet the amount of attention the few incidents garnered in the national media was surprising at first, at least to this American. But that surprise quickly dissipated when I remembered a few social statistics.

2015-11-30 16:57

Welcome to Korea II

“I Seoul You” has been roundly criticized as a rather trite slogan for the city’s tourism sector. I’m non-committal about it.

2015-11-16 16:13

A pope who really cares

Pope Francis visited Korea in the spring of 2014. As with his recent trip to the United States, a massive fanfare and news coverage accompanied his arrival. The Catholic Church, recently buffeted by child sex abuse scandals, has emerged as a more appreciated institution because of Pope Francis's take on Christianity.

2015-10-19 17:05

Etch-a-sketch foreign policy

Asian countries have long memories, famously attributed to China, for example. Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, India and Japan also have had societies for thousands of years.

2015-10-05 17:02

My country's better than yours

By Deauwand MyersAs an American expat, I’m sometimes surprised at how other countries view the United States. With a mix of inferiority and superiority complexes, some countries take issue with how they feel they’re viewed by the global community juxtaposed to America.Korea is concerned with national identity and national pride. Understandably, North Korea looms large in the shaping of how Koreans view themselves. Plenty of Koreans who travel abroad are shocked and saddened to find folks asking them “are you from North Korea?” or confusing the two countries as if they...

2015-09-21 16:55

The Korean Dream/Myth

China's President Xi will make a splash soon in his first state visit to America. Of course, as often is the case, some of journalists covering China and previewing Xi’s visit are rather ethnocentric and Eurocentric in their views of Asia. They think Xi’s vision of the “Chinese Dream” is a reinterpretation of the American Dream. As with Korea, China has had a kind of national vision of a successful society thousands of years ago, long before there was a United States of America, long before the English language, in fact. Harmony, with the state as its center, is a good, albeit simplistic, en...

2015-09-07 16:35

To Japan: Just apologize (2)

In my earlier piece, I briefly explored the atrocities Imperial Japan committed before and during World War II. Further, I explained that particularly for Japan's closest neighbors, Korea and China (countries most victimized by Japan during this time) Prime Minister Abe's actions continually and needlessly strain diplomatic and economic ties with these nations.

2015-08-24 17:17

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