My friend Joe, who recently returned home to Los Angeles after teaching for a year in Korea, posted a link on his site to almost all of the sets from the Incheon Korean Music Wave Festival. If you care to see what all the fuss was about from my last post, check out this link. PS. Happy Un-Labor Day Monday from Korea! (AllKPop via Joseph Gutierrez)

Last Sunday there was a fairly large K-Pop concert in south Incheon. The Incheon Korean Music Wave Festival 2010 was held in the World Cup Soccer Stadium where the local team, Incheon United FC, also happens to play.  It’s something I would generally never pay money to see, but it was free for English teachers in the EPIK Program. Even if we did have to pay for it , it would have only been 5,000 won (I can’t imagine a show in the U.S. like this costing less than $50).

Something like 15 acts were on stage for three hours playing about two songs each. Well, they didn’t really “play” any songs because most of the bands are manufactured by big conglomerates and investors and are driven by drum machines and autotune. Most acts don’t have much skill beyond looking pretty and being able to dance. In fact, all the songs at the show sounded exactly as they do on YouTube or the radio.  It was a lot like when YouTube had the vuvuzela button during the World Cup. It was the same music, but with crowd noise.

I know the photo at the top is crappy (cameraphone), but you should be able to make out a tiny stage in front and the four glowing rectangles. Those are the stages. During each two-song set the next band/act gets into position. There’s really no delay; it was a pretty fluid experience.  A few bands actually play their own music, but most of them are boy/girl bands with 2-9 members that just dance with one or two who actually sing (or lipsync, sometimes they don’t even hide the fact that they don’t sing on stage.)  The one thing they all do well is look really attractive.

The crowds, mostly made up of young girls, was really into everything (as each group only played their two most popular songs). It was supposedly a sell-out crowd, but the rain earlier in the afternoon likely kept some people out.  I didn’t stay for the entire show (I had a long bus ride home), but I did see most of it.

K-Pop is like an extreme version of the Top 40 music scene in the US. Bands can come and go in a matter of weeks. Songs get overplayed  (worse than Ke$ha) everywhere. Grocery stores, bars, cell phone shops, restaurants, you name it. It’s musical junk food. It will fill you up now, but in 20 minutes you’ll be hungry for something more satisfying.

For an example, here is one band I saw, called “After School.” As you can probably see, it’s like the Pussycat Dolls, except the backup singers are even more superfluous.

Military service is required for all males in Korea. Men must complete two years of service (it includes a wide-range of possible jobs) before the age of 30.

So, as a result, there are a plethora of bases and uniformed (albeit unarmed) military men around Korea. Ever since the rising tensions of the ROKS Cheonan incident in March, the military base literally next to my apartment has had an increase of drills with camouflaged artillery.

They don’t do any firing with them, although I have heard small-arms fire from time-to-time, I think they are practicing the set-up, tear-down and movement of the equipment. Sometimes I just sit, watch and wonder if taking pictures is a breach of some sort of security code.

Military service is required for all males in Korea. Men must complete two years of service (it includes a wide-range of possible jobs) before the age of 30.

So, as a result, there are a plethora of bases and uniformed (albeit unarmed) military men around Korea. Ever since the rising tensions of the ROKS Cheonan incident in March, the military base literally next to my apartment has had an increase of drills with camouflaged artillery.

They don’t do any firing with them, although I have heard small-arms fire from time-to-time, I think they are practicing the set-up, tear-down and movement of the equipment. Sometimes I just sit, watch and wonder if taking pictures is a breach of some sort of security code.

“…Eating barbecued iguana.”

Oh, how I love the pop-synth sounds of Wall of Voodoo’s 1982 border buster radio track, “Mexican Radio.”

Plus, I actually do miss hanging out in Tijuana and crossing that border.

So for the last week or so I’ve been getting back into teaching mode by showing them a lot of my pictures from Mongolia, having them ask questions about my trip and then flipping things around and asking them about their trips. Pretty easy stuff.

Most of my students are from working-class families and don’t get to travel a whole lot. I had a lot of students who didn’t leave Incheon during their break (I have one student who’s never been to Seoul, only 20KM away).  Two students went on a tour to Europe; one student spent ten days in Osaka, Japan for a Taekwondo competition and the rest who left Korea went to what my teachers calls the “Southern Islands.” These islands, which Koreans seem to think they own, are the Philippines. And judging from the stories a lot of people told me about their trips to the Philippines, Koreans are everywhere.The rest of the students who left Incheon went to east coast cities and spent time in the Sea of Japan.

Anyway, having asked the students what kind of activities you can do at these places, I got some surprisingly coherent responses:

Swimming! Hiking! SCUBA diving! Rock climbing! Play at PC-room! Ride a boat! Sleep! Relax! Commit suicide!

The last one got a gale of laughter from all the students (and even my teacher). Then, another student immediately said,

“Suicide,  only one time, not like swimming!”

It wouldn’t be so funny if it weren’t for the fact that Korea’s suicide rate is the highest in the world, according to the OECD. Even for women, the suicide rate is four-to-five times higher than that of the next country. The worst part is, in 2008, a high-profile suicide was linked to almost 1,000 suicides the following month. Basically, suicides are commonplace.

It’s not uncommon for a kid to come to schoo having lost sleep the night before because somebody jumped from their apartment building. They didn’t lose sleep because somebody took their life, they told me, it because of all the noise brought on by emergency vehicles.  It’s too common, I guess, for them to not think of it anymore than as an annoyance or joke.