While I've never considered myself a "Koreablogger" in the strictest sense, I've been part of many K-blogger lists compiled by others. I was looking at an old post the other day, and it listed a bunch of K-blogs that had been current years ago. So I began to wonder: Where are they now? Here's a reprint of that list, with one or more additions to round it out. If a blog name has an "X" by it, then it's no longer active and/or no longer in existence.
Incestuous Amplification ❌
Cathartidae ❌
Scribblings of the Metropolitician ❌
Ruminations in Korea ❌
North Korea Zone ❌
One Free Korea
GI Korea (ROK Drop)
KimcheeGI (moved to Twitter) ❌
Oranckay (moved to Twitter) ❌
Lost Nomad ❌
Flying Yangban ❌
The Infidel (suicide) ❌
Frog in a Well (exists, but barely, with 1-2 entries a year)
Gusts of Popular Feeling
Korea Life Blog/China Life Blog (Shawn killed himself) ❌
Gdimension ❌
Daejeon Daily Photo ❌
Zen Kimchi Korean Food Journal (currently glitching on my computer)
Space Nakji ❌
Big Hominid's Hairy Chasms
EFL Geek ❌
Yangpa ❌
Brian in Jeollanamdo ❌
There were, of course, way more blogs than this, and some Koreablogs still exist that aren't listed above. But if we think of the above as a random sample dating from about 2003 (when blogging became popular thanks to the Iraq War; I started my own blog on July 4, 2003) to now, we can consider the above a kind of random sample indicating a blog attrition rate from 2003 to 2025. There were 25 blogs at the outset; now, of those 25, only 5 remain. That's an 80% drop. I guess, over the decades, blogging has been a brutal business. It's too bad: many of the blogs that disappeared were well written, informative, provocative, and funny.
People move on from blogging for various reasons. Sometimes, life just gets in the way: people acquire families and develop more important concerns than just banging away at a keyboard every day. Other people, perhaps sensing the winds of change, abandon blogging for YouTube or TikTok or Twitter/X or full-on website creation. I'm not judging. But some of us barnacles have never moved on. For all I know, blogging is a dying medium as subscriber platforms like Substack have become more popular (I'm there, too). But for some of us, dogged and determined, blogging turned out to be such a perfect medium for our skill set and personality traits that we simply kept at it, even after all these years.
I miss quite a few of the bloggers who disappeared.
Yep, Lost Nomad and The Marmot were daily reads for me for years. Last I heard, Nomad was living in Tennessee, but I haven't heard from him in years. Thanks for the links to some other K-blogs I'd forgotten about. I'm going to check them out.
ReplyDeleteFrank visits your blog (I don't know how often) and leaves terse comments a few times a year, including this year. He hates me, though, ever since what he thought of as my blasé attitude toward COVID deaths. Turns out I was right, though: COVID's mortality rate was around 1-3%, mostly affecting the elderly and the neonatal, with a few statistical flukes thrown in. Can I expect a "You were right" or an "I'm sorry I was a dick" from him? Alas, no. It's so frustrating, too, because Frank was a nice guy (I met him once—quiet introvert) with a popular blog. At this point, I'm guessing he's a Never Trump conservative, i.e., an old-school neocon who never transcended the old thinking. Well, I guess you just cut your losses. You make friends; you lose friends. Of course, Frank was never a friend, per se—more like a friendly acquaintance. And since COVID, he's not even that... but not by my choice.
DeleteWow! I never knew that about Frank and his falling for the COVID scam. Sad. I know he would occasionally comment at LTG, but I don't recall seeing him recently. Maybe he didn't appreciate my references to the scamdemic. Still, like you, I'm proud that I didn't get suckered, even though I was forced to get the jab (Sinovac, so I should survive).
DeleteI'd like to think he didn't fall for the whole scam, but he did (at least initially) seem to fall for the propagandists' false statistics. I have no idea what he now believes.
DeleteInteresting list. I used to look at some when working in Korea, but havent really followed any Korea-centric blogs in a while. The ones I did peruse were more lifestyle or slice of life type blogs about non-political things happening in Korea. Turns out most of them were English teachers in hagwons. LOL Have to admit, some of them were pretty funny, but very transitory as they would be in Korea for a year, and then leave.
ReplyDeleteBrian