Stop letting 'em in. Save your culture.
Monday, January 06, 2025
3 comments:
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Bit of a one-sided look at my hometown. But what I really don't understand is how you can post such stuff when at any moment someone could turn around and say "alas, poor Seoul, stop letting 'em in" and not renew our visas? You're perfectly entitled to your views, but I struggle to reconcile them with the fact that you yourself are living as a (temporary? semi-permanent?) immigrant here in Korea. I know technically you are here on an F4 visa (reverse chain migration?). but essentially you came back for the economic opportunities. It strikes me as being somewhat hypocritic that you slap up posts decrying multi-culturalism and various forms of immigration and supporting conservative policies while living here as an economic migrant and enjoying this country's cheap semi-socialised healthcare every time you have a health scare.
ReplyDeleteMy reply was too long! So...
Delete[Part 1]
posts decrying multi-culturalism
Where did PJW decry multiculturalism? Maybe you don't understand the larger, culturally rightie argument: it's not immigration from non-Western countries that's inherently bad, nor is diversity inherently bad: it's illegal immigration by people who then refuse to embrace their new home's cultural norms (see France, for example, where unassimilated Muslims in no-go zones of the banlieue around Paris refuse to integrate with French culture—for generations—and have effectively become a bloc unto themselves, which is not a reference to all Muslims in France, obviously). If all you see from PJW (or whomever) is a bigoted "dirty foreigners" argument, then you may need to think again.
As much as I complain about aspects of Korea that rub me the wrong way, I've also publicly affirmed, on multiple occasions, that in my experience, the good outweighs the bad, which is why I remain. When I'm outside of my domicile, I don't go around blustering and insisting that everything be done the American way; I recognize I'm in a foreign country, and that I need to practice a measure of acceptance. It's just that I don't go around virtue-signaling about how much I accept. (On the flip side, I also have no desire to do the pretentious thing and "go native.") Also: I know that, were I to move back to America, or move to France (where I speak the language fluently), I'd end up chafing at all the nonsense there, too. Meanwhile, this blog has been around long enough to span a few years of my time in the States (roughly 2008-2013); feel free to go back and see how serene I was about life, work, and culture in Virginia. You'll find plenty of bitching.
cheap semi-socialised healthcare
That's not what this article (scroll down to the addendum) says. If anything, it argues that the Korean system is more free-market and privatized than the American system, which is what makes it cheaper (the article I'd quoted back then seems, alas, to be the victim of link rot).
Bit of a one-sided look at my hometown.
At least PJW is honest and up-front about his biases, unlike the mainstream media, which falsely tries to paint itself as somehow neutral and objective.
If the complaint about the rightie/conservative POV is its tendency to unquestioningly value the past (heavily implied in PJW's rant... and the man is always ranting), the complaint about the leftie/liberal view is its tendency to blindly view change and difference as an unqualified good, even at the expense of societal integrity. That seems to be at least one ingredient in the left/right impasse. Truth is probably somewhere in between.
[Part 2]
Deletereverse chain migration?
Google's all-wise AI says:
Chain migration is a social process where immigrants from a specific area follow others from that area to a new destination. In the United States, it refers to the ability of immigrants to sponsor family members for green cards, which can lead to a chain of migration.
I can't remember, but I may have been inspired by other gyopos to come to Korea to find out more about my roots, as well as to continue with what was then my love of teaching—just not teaching in US high schools. If I'm an "economic migrant," I'd say that that condition came about years after I'd arrived for what were originally utterly different reasons. And as I said above, I've been back and forth between the US and the ROK. Does economic migration explain that?
Frankly, I don't see what pleasure you get out of visiting my blog, Paul. What's your endgame? If you think you can change my basic stance, well, I think that's as likely as my changing yours, which is why I never try; I merely defend myself after you've once again, for whatever compulsive reason, put me on my back foot. Why keep visiting if it's only to carp, complain, correct, and point out perceived hypocrisies? Visiting this blog must be a weirdly delicious form of hell for you. I mean, you could fall back on the "Hey, I'm just having a discussion" excuse, but if you're getting personal by insinuating I'm acting hypocritically, then I'd venture there's an emotional investment that keeps you coming back. Could you please explain that?
PS: I've also explained many times that I have little desire to return to the States unless it's to live somewhere where the population density is very low. Please factor that into why I remain in Korea.