(I know, yet another southern Cal letter from Dan. Anyway,) I'm suspicious that a lot of the enmity about languages, cultures, and all that comes from a group of people who are not used to being in the minority, and are frightened by it. A part of that is the suspicion that people speaking another language nearby may be talking about [u]you[/u]! The obvious response is, well, learn some Spanish, and you'll inderstand at least of bit of what those folks are talking about (unless you're in Glendale and they're Armenian. Ooops).

I've seen a very interesting phenomenon in Koreatown - for those of you not familiar with LA, Koreatown is an area much like Chinatown where the first immigrants settled, which is still a big social and shopping center, if no longer residential. Anyway, in visiting the big groceries there, one can readily find Latinos working in the produce section or the meat counter. And to my amazement, these guys speak Korean, enough to answer customers' questions and discuss how the meat should be cut, that kind of thing. And they sound good - clear accents, adequate vocabulary. As an old Peace Corps/Korea volunteer, trust me, Korean is a ball-buster of a language. Yet here these guys are, speaking it pretty darn well, learning it who knows how - I should ask. It's amazing.

came with a little visit from Barry Goldwater, not from any Democrats.

at the time a high school teacher, was threatened with being sent off to be a 'comfort woman' for strongly disagreeing with a highly offensive policy implemented by her (Japanese) principal. She felt it necessary to leave that position and move halfway up the peninsula to avoid the man's vindictiveness.

A broader issue is that Japanese texts still color the occupation in a way to make it appear Korea benefited, that their government was incompetent and corrupt, and that Japan introduced helpful modernizations such as schools and railroads. All self-justifying baloney, but it is still a commonly held belief. My wife's great aunt and great-great aunt were the last and second-to-last ruling queens. Both were active in resisting the invasion and occupation, one was brutally assassinated and the other's husband, King Sunjong, was poisoned and left mentally damaged and sterile. Both these women, and my mother in law, were heroic in their resistance and were eventually recognized for that - making a good example for our daughter.

I'm a guy, and if requesting chocolate on my space voyage was an option, I certainly would.

Broader issue here is saying something about one group without a comparison, implying that that group is different without actually having to prove it.

are a real mix and turmoil right now. I read the LA TImes article this morning, and something that stood out for me was the subtle point that if farmers don't reproduce, nobody will farm, at least not on that particular farmer's land. That's nothing particularly Korean; it's a common theme in most farming cultures - "this land is what keeps us alive and feeds us; I provide for my children with the fruit of my land; this land will keep them fed after I die (or get old and infirm)."

I don't have a good sense of where that type of thinking will go; it appears it's still common for the time being. However, people are leaving the rural areas in droves, and for the usual reasons. To some extent, they don't know when they've got it good. I was in Korea in the Peace Corps in the early 70s, and while you didn't see serious deprivation, there were plenty of poor people, rural and urban. Farming was rice and vegetables to feed your house, then your village, then some left over to sell at local market if you had any. But when I visited in 1994 with my (Korean) wife, we went to her family area not far from where I'd served, and the farmers still did the rice & vegetables, but also had cash crops - fancy mushrooms in the pine woods, ginseng, tobacco - and were living much more comfortably. Good water & sewage, electricity, much better roads. Yet people were still leaving for the cities.

So what we have is a society that's not really Westernizing, but is urbanizing. It's urbanizing in an Asian fashion rather than a Western fashion, but there are common themes to such a move, among which is the change in gender roles. This article on purchasing foreign brides might reflect nothing more than the loss of young women from the Korean countryside, but it may also be about whether young women have any interest in being part of that rural, farming culture. I suspect most do not.

I hear from many Korean women, some my age who have divorced, that Korean men often buy into role stereotypes that can make marriages difficult. Some of the language reflects this. The words for wife include "house person", "inside person", and for husband terms like "Owner", "outside lord". We as foreigners living there heard that women truly had the power in the household, that they often dictated finances and made the major decisions, and there was some truth to this. Often, though, we saw and heard about husbands who expected unquestioning obedience, and often the woman with power, who ran things, was the husband's mother, who could be very dictatorial towards her daughters-in-law. This all becomes difficult to uphold in an urbanizing society where the both genders will have salaried jobs outside the home, although certainly the women earn lower pay, and where mothers-in-law may live some distance away, with diminished influence.

In short, it's interesting times in Korea - things like a woman prime minister juxtaposed with purchased brides from abroad. I'll watch to see what Korean media and Korean women have to say about this story.