The Korean Dancing Obsession

It's a really nice day, so I think I should go out and enjoy the sunshine before work. It has been raining cats and dogs all weekend, so I feel obligated to take advantage of the sun.

However, I have time for a short entry, to relate to you one of the many bizarre facets of Korean culture: The Korean Dancing Obsession.

When I arrived in Seoul International Airport last month, I made my way quickly to my departure gate (to Busan). There wasn't a whole lot to do to kill time, but there was a TV. I didn't understand any of what was being said, of course, but it hardly mattered since content isn't really the focus of Korean television anyway. I'm willing to gamble that television studios spend more money per show on post-production than production. There are colors and effects and text, and sound effects constantly flying across the screen in an ADD extravaganza. If you think western television is catered to people with a low attention span, as Randy Bachman would say, "you seen nothing yet."

Of course, you cannot make a TV show on obnoxious effects alone. The other staple, for all types of shows and especially commercials, is the synchronized dance routine, wherein some number of attractive, young Korean women orchestrate their limbs in tandem to some invariably ridiculous, cutesy-wutesy, children's pop song.

Not least among the disconcerting qualities of the Korean Dancing Obsession is the juxtaposition of female sexuality and children's themes. This is what happens when a country has modernized, westernized, but has yet to have a sexual revolution: sexuality squeezed out of the cracks, wherever it can, in the strangest of ways.

You may laugh. You may think that the Korean Dancing Obsession is just a harmless tactic for corporations to sell soju and cell-phones. But you would be naive to think so! In Tongyeong, there are currently elections going on. Instead of campaigners doing the sensible thing and rallying, handing out buttons, and that sort of thing, the candidates have some douche bag drive around in a truck with a bill-board style ad on the trailer. There is also a loudspeaker that is constantly blaring some invariably ridiculous, cutesy-wutesy, children's pop song. But in Korea, what would some invariably ridiculous, cutesy-wutesy, children's pop song be without synchronized dancing? That's right, the billboard wagons will stop at a given block to to blare their music and dancers will materialize seemingly from nowhere and engage in synchronized dance routines. Rain or fucking shine.

But it doesn't stop there...and I feel like I'm about to tell my parents that I'm gay, or tell a girl I that I've given her the clap...my school is forcing us teachers to learn a synchronized dance routine for "Sports Day." What an English hagwan has to do with sports beats the hell out of me. What an English hagwan or "Sports Day" has to do with synchronized dancing to some invariably ridiculous, cutesy-wutesy, children's pop song, similarly beats the hell out of me. Oh well, if this doesn't deflate my ego, I suppose nothing will.

After practicing for half an hour with the rest of the staff (and countless tiny children), I turned to my co-teacher Greg and said,
"I think I've just lost my dignity." To which he replied,
"I kinda think that every day working at a hagwan makes you lose your dignity."
Sage words my friend, sage words.