OK. First of all, it is very inter­est­ing that you assume that I am angry at you. Yes, I’m offen­ded by your nudes, and yes, I don’t think they’re artistic. As you said your­self, art is sub­ject­ive. There is no abso­lute role for every­one to feel the same pos­it­ive way on the same object­ive. I see no reason that yours should be an excep­tion. As this can hap­pen to any­body in any­where, I didn’t feel that I should con­tact you to approve my dis­like. Plus I find those two pho­tos I linked are quite artistic, espe­cially the one of a preg­nant woman. Let’s not focus on the one you call ‘blurry’ and ‘poorly done’ because you know about pho­to­graph, it is arrog­ant, too.
This is neither the anger towards you ruin­ing Korean women’s repu­ta­tion nor racism. You didn’t do any­thing illegal and I didn’t say you did. I even men­tioned that it is pos­sible that you con­sider them ser­i­ously and they’re just not for my taste. For your inform­a­tion, it is because your pho­tos remind me of those low lev­elled ones reflect­ing ori­ental fantasy on ‘Asian chicks’. As an Asian woman, I don’t find it very respect­ful but a naïve view of west­ern­ers, you may not happy about it but that’s between you and me, it’s not sub­ject­ive to asso­ci­ate with Korean mas­sage par­lour or word-cup incid­ent.
I didn’t say you have no right to post your own work on your own blog. Here are my points of the art­icle. I don’t find your work artistic and I explained why. And it is not com­mon at all for Korean girls to agree their nudes being pub­lished online (the word pub­lish usu­ally means on the paper in Korean, which made me won­der if they knew it could also be online access­ible by almost any­one who uses web). It is good that you made con­tract with them, men­tion­ing how much they got paid is still bit off the sub­ject because you have all the rights of those pho­tos as long as you hold con­tract with mod­els, regard­less of pay­ment. That was my ques­tion on the mat­ter, not an assump­tion.
The last para­graph of my art­icle is a ques­tion about if Koreans you work and social­ise with knew it and accep­ted it, would it be because my coun­try has become so open for such mat­ters or because you’re a for­eigner. Do you see the point? I am actu­ally point­ing out Koreans being so gen­er­ous on for­eign­ers (west­ern­ers, to be pre­cise) for the mat­ters that can prob­lem­atic. I know my coun­try is not ready to accept a per­son, who has proven to will­ingly pho­to­graph nudes and teach under-aged in “any pos­sible way”. I wrote so because I found Koreans being racists against their own people, not being fair. So where is the racism for you?
For the last, your com­ment on Korea’s cor­rup­tion, eco­nomic fail­ure, and sexual per­ver­sions are very irrel­ev­ant and almost child­ish. Are you say­ing that I don’t have a right to dis­like your pho­to­graphs and dare to talk about your fine work and your blog because my gov­ern­ment and its policies work poorly and my people suf­fer? I didn’t know that. Common now, if I was from one of few coun­tries with great gov­ern­ment and economic/social envir­on­ment in your stand­ards, I could com­ment on your pho­tos? That sounds very close to racism you’ve been accus­ing me of, no?
My post­ings are pub­lished in Igloos.com and can also be found through web search­ing. How would you explain that almost non-comment on my art­icle, if it is so pro­vok­ing? You seem to know the neg­at­ive side of Korean net­izens, so you sure know it can cause many of them actu­ally visit your blog and leave bad com­ments, not to men­tion email attack and what not. It didn’t hap­pen because what I wrote is clearly my own opin­ion and people just read it and let it go. I don’t under­stand why you had to come up with all of those to defend your­self and prove me wrong. Being a good pho­to­graph is also to con­nect with view­ers, not only to people who know a bit or more about it. I gave you a cri­tique and it is up to you how to handle it. But such gen­er­al­isa­tion and insult on the whole nation for my very per­sonal art­icle doesn’t seem ‘cool’, does it?

**I live in Malaysia; you would know it and my point of view on racism if you tried my art­icles (since you some­how can under­stand Korean). Guess i wasn’t the only per­son who omit­ted other entries of a blog.

Posted by Mannoya on 6 October 2008 @ 5am

firstly, i have good reason to be con­cerned about korean net­izens (of which you are one). there is a his­tory of net­izens tar­get­ing for­eign­ers. i can provide links to stor­ies where for­eign­ers have been har­rassed due to net­izen mob mentality.

secondly, i don’t speak korean. so i rely heav­ily on trans­la­tion pro­grams to know what you wrote. you clearly speak eng­lish, yet exclude me from your con­ver­sa­tion by doing so in a lan­guage it’s safe to assume i don’t understand.

besides, you didn’t answer my ques­tions. where is your evid­ence that i have belittled or insul­ted korean women on other web­sites? i think you have a respons­ib­il­ity to provide verification.

if you were cri­ti­cising my pho­to­graphs, then i can handle that. i have no prob­lem with the concept of art and porn. if you want an intel­li­gent, aca­demic debate … or even just a friendly dis­cus­sion … i’d hap­pily enter­tain it. but you were talk­ing about me, not to me. and you were judging me based on issues you have no know­ledge about; such as whether the mod­els knew their pic­tures were being released on the inter­net … the answer to that ques­tion, frankly, is none of your business.

and yes, i removed my pho­tos. why???? because i wish to limit the oppor­tun­it­ies for korean net­izens to copy those images and spread them across the inter­net without my con­sent. those images belong to me and i don’t want them to be used in some kind of hate cam­paign. i’m pro­tect­ing myself.

gen­er­ally (and i mean face to face) koreans are won­der­ful, giv­ing people. how­ever on the inter­net, i am usu­ally con­fron­ted by koreans who use their anonym­ity as a weapon.

my point about korean social prob­lems, des­pite your retort, is very rel­ev­ant. you can­not dis­miss it off­han­dedly. it’s com­mon­place for koreans to aim their anger at out­side influ­ences, rather than internal ones. anma par­lours are an example. my pho­to­graphs hurt nobody … if you want to spend time on the inter­net air­ing your griev­ances, why not be con­struct­ive and point at more ser­i­ous social issues. one pho­to­grapher with 20 nude images is hardly cor­rupt­ing korea.

and finally, yes, i am angry. i think i have a right to be. you named me on your site. you poin­ted to my blog. you said that i was a teacher. you focused on the con­cepts of por­no­graphy and eth­ics. you do not cri­tique my pho­tos, you cri­tique my pro­fes­sion­al­ism and my repu­ta­tion. you talked about me. you accused me. and you did so on a korean blog, pro­tec­ted by your anonymity.

i think that jus­ti­fies my anger.

if you’d writ­ten about my pho­tos only. if you’d dis­cussed the line between pho­to­graphy and por­no­graphy, i would have been delighted to chat with you. i have many friends and i love to argue such points of mor­al­ity and ethics.

you did no such thing. you attacked me and labeled me as uneth­ical. then you lied and stated that i make nasty com­ments on other sites … which you ignored and have not justified.

those are my reas­ons for feel­ing hurt, angry and defensive.

by the way … you are hid­ing behind your blog. your blog may be pub­lic, but your iden­tity is kept secret. what do you have to hide?? why don’t you tell me your name and dis­cuss this with me openly??

you didn’t have any­thing to say to me until i labeled you a cow­ard, racist and liar. it hurts to be labeled by someone who knows noth­ing about you, doesn’t it!!

Posted by David on 6 October 2008 @ 10am

Hi, my hubby told me it was use­less to get involved in inter­net argu­ments, but I felt com­pelled to make some cla­ri­fic­a­tions as my post about a col­lege pro­fessor who led a double life as a porn star triggered Mannoya’s post about you.

Her first com­ment on you degrad­ing Korean women on other sites was part of her explan­a­tion on how she found your blog in the first place. If it is true that you never made such com­ment, per­haps she con­fused someone else’s com­ment with yours on whatever that con­tro­ver­sial video clip it was on that other web­site. At any rate, it was under that con­text that she found your blog, which, I’m afraid, might have had an influ­ence on how she viewed your nude pho­tos. Not fair to you, of course, and well, artistic sense is such a slip­pery concept any­way. I per­son­ally dis­agree with her opin­ion on your pho­tos, (was actu­ally some­what happy to see actual Korean women con­fid­ent with their body, as you prob­ably know how the cul­ture represses us) but that’s besides the point.

Whether it is art or not, what is true is that Koreans have double stand­ards on most things, and one of the vic­tims of extreme con­ser­vat­ist scru­tiny is teach­ers. For some reason, the Cofucianist cul­ture demands a lot of respect for teach­ers (so you don’t dare step on your teacher’s shadow, for example), and like­wise, have high expect­a­tions of people per­form­ing that role of a teacher. The per­son recently elec­ted to be in charge of pub­lic edu­ca­tion in Seoul, for example, had prom­ised to ban dat­ing in pub­lic schools. Anything even remotely sex-related is just that much of a taboo in open quar­ters espe­cially when it involves edu­ca­tion in Korea. (And what those men do at night are not that well pub­li­cized so that not many women raised in “nor­mal” homes have no clue about that aspect of real­ity in Korea… until they get mar­ried to one of those men.)

So what Mannoya was try­ing to get at in her ori­ginal post was cit­ing you as an example of someone who does things that nor­mally would get you ostra­cized among Koreans, and won­der­ing if you get away with it because you’re a for­eigner. It is unfor­tu­nate that while doing so, she was cri­ti­ciz­ing your work and ques­tion­ing your eth­ics, but she is entitled to her own opin­ions, just as you are of her blog­ging prac­tices. But that wasn’t really her main con­cern of her ori­ginal post. She was ques­tion­ing the double stand­ard of Koreans who blindly praise and accept for­eign­ers (of developed coun­tries) and yet keep enfor­cing hypo­critic tra­di­tions among themselves.

I don’t know what I’m try­ing to accom­plish with this reply, but I feel bad about what happened, and hoped to increase under­stand­ing. Yes, Korean cul­ture does not make a whole lot of sense, but it is the default per­spect­ive for many Koreans, and they will react emo­tion­ally to some­thing they think is offend­ing to them even if it is totally accept­able in your cul­ture. Many of them will not go the extra mile to do some research and find out that it is ok in your cul­ture and just be offen­ded. I think you are brave to live in my coun­try where there’s plenty of such short-tempered people.

Posted by Semilla on 6 October 2008 @ 1pm

semilla

thanks for your reasoned response. this issue has hit me from quite a shock­ing angle. i’m con­fused as to what is going on and how i’m sud­denly involved. col­lege pro­fess­ors?? porn stars?? what????

as i stated, i would like to know how she found my site. i don’t believe that i would degrade women (espe­cially korean women) since i live here and enjoy liv­ing here. i was quite offen­ded by that accus­a­tion. espe­cially with no jus­ti­fic­a­tion (links or quotes).

if mannoya’s point was not being crit­ical of me, then i am afraid that i don’t see it. i under­stand your view, that per­haps for­eign­ers can do things that koreans would be rep­rim­anded for … but that def­in­itely was not clear in her post.

per­haps i am brave to live in korea (this coun­try has given me a fair share of highs and lows) but i genu­inely have a good time and i genu­inely like korean cul­ture and its people … iron­ic­ally, as i write this, there’s a pho­to­graph in the side­bar of men pour­ing soju (a cus­tom i par­tic­u­larly enjoy).

the crux of my hos­til­ity was being attacked for present­ing those pho­tos. man­noya admit­ted that there was a double stand­ard (foreigner/korean women) and this double stand­ard presen­ted itself as a racist point of view.

i was quite hurt and deeply offen­ded that some­thing so innoc­u­ous was caus­ing so much drama.

how­ever, as i said ini­tially, i always wel­come reasoned dis­cus­sion. it’s never been my inten­tion to be rude or offens­ive. i don’t like to throw the word ‘racism’ around.

i will hap­pily apo­lo­gise to man­noya or any­one if my state­ments were undeserved. i’m an open and hon­est per­son. i give my respect eas­ily to oth­ers and only ask for the same respect in return. i’m happy to talk more about this … it need not be another inter­net argu­ment … as long as i’m not in a pos­i­tion where i have to defend myself on moral grounds.

thanks again for your message.

david

Posted by David on 6 October 2008 @ 1pm

My thanks to Semilla, she really well poin­ted what I was talk­ing about in my ori­ginal post. I do speak English but what I use is for Koreans, that’s why I wrote in Korean. As you may know, web-translator is not trust worthy for any lan­guage. So now I see why you mixed all.

I found your web like over a month or ago. I know it wasn’t about Korean women and I didn’t say so, don’t worry. There were some people mak­ing sexual jokes and I do not remem­ber what you said. It is rather obsess­ive to remem­ber that I crossed such a time ago. But it is true that my impres­sion on you is based on this incid­ent and I don’t deny that it prob­ably had impact on how I viewed on your pho­tos. I saw and heard a lot worse than those. If I was really con­vinced that you were a hor­rible dev­il­ish per­son for­eigner, it is very easy to lead people to see only what i want them to see. But I have noth­ing to gain from doing it.

I don’t feel like to add some­thing more as Semilla did it really good and you look under­stood. Consider what I men­tioned about your work is a cri­tique, and she also proves it does not affect oth­ers to think in my way. So please relax, I don’t like such an argu­ment either.

Posted by Mannoya on 6 October 2008 @ 5pm

The post on the porn star prof was actu­ally a response to another post at someone else’s blog. That blog­ger has a daugh­ter in high school, and some of the the teach­ers’ pho­tos on the fac­ulty page of the school’s web­site were dec­ades old, so she had wrote how she shot one of the teach­ers, pho­toshopped the image, and gave it back so he could update his online pro­file.
That post about teach­ers with old pho­tos on their web­site reminded me of this pro­fessor, whom I’ve not met but heard from other pro­fess­ors, that after he left my school and went to another school, one of my cur­rent pro­fess­ors found out that he was also a gay porn star. So my pro­fessor wondered how he kept the two iden­tit­ies sep­ar­ate, and when he went to the fac­ulty page of that prof’s new school, what he found was a photo of when he was 13, at his Bar Mitzvar.

Then, read­ing my post, Mannoya was reminded of another per­son in the teach­ing pos­i­tion, you, post­ing ques­tion­able (in her point of view, and also, pos­sibly in most Korean point of view) pho­tos on your blog, and won­der­ing what stand­ards we have for teachers.

I guess at first you might have felt that you were being tar­geted for one of those net­izen attacks and I guess, had Mannoya’s post been on D******* or N**** type of Korean online com­munit­ies, some people could have jumped to con­clu­sions and ral­lied for another witch hunt, con­demning you as a streo­typ­ical white guy tak­ing advant­age of gull­ible Korean girls who just want to study English or whatever.

I don’t think that was Mannoya’s goal, she was cer­tainly look­ing at your pho­tos from an offen­ded per­spect­ive, and was ask­ing other Korean read­ers what they thought (and only I respon­ded, say­ing that the pho­tos look genu­ine, and sorry about my assump­tions about what you might have wrote on other web­sites on degrad­ing Asian women), and whether it was because you’re for­eign that you still have a job as a teacher.

At any rate, sorry for the unpleas­ant exper­i­ence. And thanks for being patient with my people and enjoy­ing our cul­ture. After all, people like you help us see more clearly the bigotry of our tra­di­tions and hope for bet­ter changes.

Posted by Semilla on 7 October 2008 @ 5am

After read­ing this,im still con­fused. I’m sure all of you are open,cause’ i need to ask some ques­tion out of curi­os­ity.
Are Koreans racist? I found research say­ing that most Koreans do not like black people(since im an Asian,malay,i think im con­sidered black). Please reply and explain to me fur­ther. Anyone includ­ing Koreans are wel­come to reply too. Thank you.

Posted by deal on 28 January 2010 @ 8pm

Ok, not all the korean are racists,
I am a Korean but I do not have any hatred in black nor for­eign people

But I do think that racists are really one of the worst,

I go to inter­na­tional schools now, but I never thought they are bad just because they are from other countries.

Yeah, we can’t hate each other just because they are dif­fer­ent from us.

Saying people from a coun­try is a racist also means that you are a racists too, if one people is bad, than are all people in that coun­try bad?

If one of them is a thief, that are all the people in that coun­try a thief?

Posted by Blue Lizard on 3 March 2010 @ 10pm