From Their Mouth: Adultery

One of the biggest advantages of teaching adults is that I gain a relatively more in-depth view into Korean mentality and logic. The students feel more relaxed when they're in class with me. The cultural barriers are down. They know that I'm not Korean and I won’t judge them by the same shaming criteria that their colleagues, friends and family do, so they tend to vent a lot and really articulate themselves without any restrictions. I have heard the most incongruous things in my time in front of these classes as well as some really remarkable stories as well.

"From Their Mouth" is their completely candid and unfiltered stories. It's a collection of stories, opinions, experiences and statements with a little research and my take on it. I changed the names slightly.

Kim Dong-jun, 44, is a single, successful man who loves his life. He regularly travels all over the world on both business and pleasure, but really loves to spend time in Macau. He likes to go there for one reason: sex. He loves Chinese prostitutes and takes weeklong trips down to the Southern port more than six times a year. I asked him why he didn't frequent any of the Korean brothels that blanket Seoul and he said that the Chinese girls were "less inhibited". Of course I was interested in what meant by that and he explained it to me as "strong sex". That indicated to me that he could get rough with his Chinese hookers and that was his thing.

As the exchange continued, I figured out that he was in a long-term relationship (9 years) and he plans on marrying her within the next couple years. Naturally, I was a tad perplexed since this information was discovered immediately after he revealed he frequented China for rough sex with prostitutes.

"Does your girlfriend know what you do in Macau." I asked.

"Yeah, but she can't do anything about it."

"Why not? Couldn't she leave you?" I was undoubtedly taken back by his cavalier attitude.

"Only Korean people can appreciate why a man needs more than one woman. It's our history. Women know, but ignore it."

I thought this was a great response and let him continue talking. He mentioned that all of his friends frequented all sorts of girl bars ranging from sexy, bikini bars to massage parlors and even full-blown brothels. He told me a story about a Korean-Canadian couple that he once knew who moved to Korea on business. Dong-jun took his new buddy to some of these places and his friend loved them. Together, they started going to these places several times a week. Dong-jun claims he never sleeps with any of the Korean girls who work at those places, but his new friend certainly did. Ultimately, the Canadian-Korean's wife found out what was going on and was livid. She divorced him and went back to Canada. Dong-jun almost laughed this detail off while offering this up as evidence for his outrageous "only Koreans understand" declaration.

"How many Korean men IN KOREA participate in this type of thing?"

"I'd say 90%." He replied as he casually leaned back in his chair.

"You mean 9%?"

"No, 90%...at least."

"And you think that's okay?" I was hoping for him to admit that it’s a pretty shitty thing to crow about.

"It's our culture."

He claims that 90% of Korean men have been unfaithful to their wife or girlfriend. That's an enormous number for any nation and especially from a country where it's still illegal and jail-able to have an affair. There was a case that concluded recently where a Korean actress was caught having an ongoing affair for ten years with two men. Here's that story.

"A district court in Goyang, near Seoul, handed Ok a suspended eight-month jail sentence, South Korean media reported, meaning she will not have to serve time. Ok's lover received a six-month suspended term."

Her second lover was an Italian chef who has since fled the country. Any crime that involves a foreigner and a Korean woman, especially when sex is involved, is considered an aggravating factor in that crime (much like carrying or using a weapon in a robbery) and usually perused much more aggressively.

That's not the point of this post though. I wanted to know if Mr. Kim was even close to being accurate and according to Cho Joo-hee of ABC News, he was pretty damn close.

"Extra-marital affairs are nothing new in South Korea. In an online survey last year by monthly women's magazine Woman Sense, 79 percent of married men and 15.5 percent of married women in their 30s and 40s admitted adultery."

I did see another article that said the number was closer to 65% and since this survey was conducted by an online women’s magazine, some of those "male respondents" might actually be bitter wives. Still, it's a high number and even if women are pretending to be their cheating husbands which might suggest that they are at least aware of what is going on.

Cho (a Korean woman) seems to excuse this behavior though.

"But ironically having affairs is seen in a different light in Korea. In fact, my married Korean friends openly talk about girlfriends or boyfriends, moreso of "wanting" a lover rather than confessing to an ongoing relationship. But conceptually an affair is more often considered a rebelliously courageous and romantic act than a morally despicable betrayal. That is assuming that the would-be lovers in question are dutifully playing their roles as husbands and wives -- making money to support the family, taking care of the kids and spending time with the in-laws."

Cho apparently believes that marriage in Korea is not based on love, compatibility or romance, but more on the duty of being a husband or wife. Those roles, of course, are very gender-specific.
If both women and men are content with this arrangement, then Kim Dong-jun’s behavior is totally acceptable and his estimation could very well be accurate.

It’s not my place to say it’s wrong though. After all, I can’t understand.

Christmas Abroad

After three months of hiding in the mud, The Clam is back. I have been keeping myself busy though, but being away from the keyboard this long has left me confused about how to get started here again. I was so consumed with the US election that I started my second blog, not to mention the family one and now I don't know what to write on all three.

Regardless, in my three months away, I started a new job, learned how to play guitar, grew a sweet mustache and made some solid plans for the next couple years. You could say it was productive, but in reality I filled it with too many hungover mornings. Still, I'm back now and I figured I'd start out with a couple thoughts on my third Christmas abroad.

As you'll recall, I was in Cambodia two years ago for Christmas. Western holidays aren't widely celebrated in Asia of course and Cambodia is no exception. It's almost like they go out of their way to avoid it actually. Rather than a turkey, ham or figgy puddy (I'm actually not sure what the hell that is, but Brits seem to get excited about it) they brought out their street food staple: fried tarantula.



There was so f*cking way I was eating that arachnid, but there were some expats digging right in. Good for them. I'm willing to try seahorse and scorpion in China because I don't have a lot of first-hand experience with such creatures, so the exocitism of the experience takes over there, but a spider is just way too close to home. All in all, it was a nice Christmas because there was no mention of it. We exchanged presents under the pretext of the holiday, but Camboida itself could care less from what I witnessed. They understood that Cambodia as a nation does not celebrate the holiday. As much as they try to globalize and compete in the region, they know that mimicing the West is not the way to do it.

Korea, on the other hand, tries so hard to celebrate Christmas and, for that matter, mimic everything that the US does. Yet, they claim it to be uniquely Korean. The gaudy trees that are never decorated well come out at just the right time, techno verisions of "Last Christmas" replace the classics and millions of Koreans walk thoughtlessly past the Salvation Army Santa. And of course, the worst part of the whole thing is how Christmas is equated to romance. It's Valentines Day in December. People buy gifts for significant others and usually leave family and friends in the cold. Like Valentine's Day, the absurd Christmas holiday is just another excuse to merchandise more useless crap.

It's unfortunate.

G20 Snubbing

This is just about one the greatest things I have seen...



This isn't the "bully that no one likes". This is the "drunk uncle that stole money from your grandmother". Watch it again.

The Long Road

Simon Rosenberg lays out just how out of touch the GOP has become.

At this point, I really believe there is a strong argument to be made that the GOP is further from power, more discredited and more out of touch with the American people than any time since the days of FDR and Truman. The GOP's challenge isn't a moderate-conservative one, a North-South one, a black-white-brown one - it is a forward/backward one. They succeeded in dislodging the Democrats in the late 20th century. They blew their shot in this decade to build a durable majority. Their government failed at a level that has done grave and lasting damage to their brand, and their leaders seem firmly grounded in an old politics that is simply no longer credible in this new day. They are going to have to go through a total overhaul. They will have to develop a new argument that meets the emerging challenges of the new century head on; a new electoral map; a new coalition that at some point begins to accept our fast-growing, non-white population; and competency in a whole new set of media and tech tools. They will have to shed the exploitation of race that has been at the core of their domestic politics; shed their raging intolerance of people not like them; of their comfort with politics and theater over governing; of the binary simplicity of the Cold War and the limitations of free market fundamentalism; and of a whole generation of leaders from Karl Rove to Mitch McConnell to Grover Norquist, who were schooled and evangelized in this breed of politics. This task is a big and complex one, harder perhaps than anything the right has had to do since the founding of the National Review in 1955.

A GOP that accepts non-Whites? Right.

Obama reaffirms his Gitmo position

Let's hope he sticks to this statement from 60 Minutes:

Kroft: There are a number of different things that you could do early pertaining to executive orders. One of them is to shutdown Guantanamo Bay. Another is to change interrogation methods that are used by U.S. troops. Are those things that you plan to take early action on?

Mr. Obama: Yes. I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture. And I'm gonna make sure that we don't torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world.

This would be such an excellent way to start bridging the gap that Bush put between us and the world.

The Center-Right of Reality

It seems the fashionable thing to do if you are a conservative whose political ideology was just given the biggest beating since 1993 is to deny that it was an actual smack-down but rather more of a referendum on Bush. Tod Linberg at WaPo points out that the recent attempts to deny the clear electorate movement away from conservatism is simply ludicrous, but since this is coming from the party that praised Sarah Palin for her know-nothingness, I’m not surprised in the least.

The chant that we are hearing is that despite being handed a devastating defeat in both 2006 and 2008; America is still a center-right nation. If that is true, then why would Americans overwhelmingly elect someone that McCain-Palin called “the most liberal senator” ever or a “socialist”? If America is so staunchly center-right, why would they give full power to the left? How about the McCain attack “Redistributor in Chief” or the fact that 56% of the voters thought that Obama would handle taxed better? The last two months of the GOP ticket was solely focused on painting Obama as a radical left-wing nut job who, along with Pelosi and Reid, would in no uncertain terms, spell the end to “America the Free”. One can only assume that this is their political version of the Kübler-Ross model. And it seems that they are still just at level one of the five stages of grief: denial. That’s fine though. The longer they are living is their disillusioned world, the deeper the progressive roots get.

“Here's the stark reality: It is now harder for the Republican presidential candidate to get to 50.1 percent than for the Democrat. My Hoover Institution colleague David Brady and Douglas Rivers of the research firm YouGovPolimetrix have been analyzing data from online interviews with 12,000 people in both 2004 and 2008. It shows an overall shift to the Democrats of six percentage points. As they write in the forthcoming edition of Policy Review, "The decline of Republican strength occurs by having strong Republicans become weak Republicans, weak Republicans becoming independents, and independents leaning more Democratic or even becoming Democrats." This is a portrait of an electorate moving from center-right to center-left.”

Whatever the right punditry wants to call it is fine, but when Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia flipped to blue, the GOP knew that they were going to have to find a way to survive in political darkness they created for themselves.

Clinton as Sec. of State?

I personally don't think she should accept this position. Chris Powers at Open Left thinks that it's a gamble, but one that could pay off.

"This is a high-risk, high-reward opportunity for Hillary Clinton. If she accepts, and serves out six or eight years in a popular Obama administration, then she is practically guaranteed the Presidency in 2016."

Powers also mentions that if Obama is unpopular or public opinion turns on her and she's replaced, then that would be the end of her public life. Her call. I think it would be wiser to stay out of the limelight for a few years and work on getting some solid health care reform under her belt. Both Kerry and Richardson are receiving some attention as well and I am not a fan of either one of them being in the top position. Kerry has no chance in my opinion. Obama would not look like the "Team of Rivals" man that he once claimed to be and Richardson just doesn't sit well with me either. The SoS job is one where you don't want a rival at the helms, but Kerry would rile up the right too much and they don't deserve any more attention for at least a decade.

Wes Clark would be the best choice, but my dreams have been dashed too many times to get worked up about this.

Poor Media Handling

While progressive apathy or indifference might prove to be a hindrance on a left shift in the electorate, there is no shortage of the conservatives in the nation who refuse to let go of their mindless detestation and narrow-mindedness.

The AP and other news organizations have been reporting on "threats" and "plots" directed towards Obama and his family, but have not really delved into anything beyond catchy phrases like "Racism looms" or "Traces of racism still remain in the South". I guess that's one way to dismiss a serious rift in the American electorate, but when I read stories like this one; I start to think that the media’s handling of these "threats" is actually overlooking the significance of such behavior since they’re choosing to report them with no insight, alarm or action.

Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting "Assassinate Obama." Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars. Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America. From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders.

When I read that second graders are chanting "Assassinate Obama!" it raises some serious questions regarding education. However, that can be answered here:

“The day after the vote hailed as a sign of a nation changed, black high school student Barbara Tyler of Marietta, Ga., said she heard hateful Obama comments from white students, and that teachers cut off discussion about Obama's victory.”

This is a time that the nation should be in deep self-reflection on what our past has been and where we can take it now. This type of behavior is inexcusable and the AP and MSM better get there shit together before their fluff pieces on race-relations translate into tangible violence.

Welcome Back

I'm welcoming myself back from a self-imposed break that was much needed and totally taken advantage of. I understand that the timing was somewhat peculiar. Why would I write about the election for over a year and then stop abruptly right before the election? Well, the morning of October 12th, I sat down to do my usual thing where I rail into the farce that was the McCain-Palin ticket and offer praise to my ticket and it hit me. I had become nearly mechanical in my support for the Obama-Biden ticket. To be fair, Obama ran a watertight campaign and I did and still do ardently support him. Still, I lost all ability to fairly scrutinize the ticket. I looked back at some of my primary posts and the tone was much different then. I couldn't figure out why though and that caused some serious derision within me which of course shattered all ambition to write about the election.

It wasn't until recently that I grasped what my problem was. There was this idea that if Obama won this election, we would be living in a new world. It would be a world where the issues of the past would be laid in their proper place. It was as if an Obama win (not an Obama presidency) would purify the nation of its sometimes malevolent past. I, too, had become so fanatical with an Obama win, that I stopped seriously thinking about his presidency.

McCain's "The One" ad comes to mind. Of course McCain was trying to paint an Obama as the anti-Christ, but there was some precision in there. People seemed to believe that an Obama win would be an end-all to their problems. They were anticipating some gust of wind to blow through the ghosts of their past life and open a new door where "hope" could subsist in the absence of empathy.

I remember when Bill Clinton said that Obama’s message was the "biggest fairy tale [he'd] ever heard” -that being, the idea that bipartisanship and most of Obama's campaign mantras would come to a head. He was right. It was a fairy tale prologue. Everything from the speeches to the supporters to the tears and finally the victory was a Cinderella story. Well now, we have all read the story, fallen asleep, had wonderful dreams and it's morning again.

Take this song by will.i.am. released on November 5th.



It's quite a positive song that highlights the remarkable progress that Americans seemed to have made with this election, but the line "I've been fighting for tomorrow for all my life" is particularly interesting to me. It sums up my fear that people were "changing" and "progressing" with Obama for November 4th and that the "tomorrow" he was referring to might not be the future, but simply the feeling of victory on the 5th. Obama was not calling for people to blindly accept his message and candidacy. He was not asking people to vote for him because of the historic nature of this election either. He was asking people to seriously support a progressive agenda and, in effect, help mark the end or at least diminution of American conservatism.

It is a brand new day in American political discourse. Let's just hope some recovering sheep like me stay focused on the message that we so fervently accepted and truly fight for an open and progressive America.

AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka on Racism and Obama

This is a great speech...

Palin Reads All of Them

That Couric interview reminds me of the Mary Poppins bag.



She reads all of them, huh? I guess that's where she got the information that people think Alaska is a foreign country. Couric is getting fed up with her dancing as well.

Palin and the Supreme Court

I'm looking forward to this.

Latest Palin Gaffe: Can't Name Supreme Court Case Other Than Roe V. Wade

She's either creating such low expecatations for the debate or intentionally trying to bury the campaign.

Palin and the Foreign Policy Debate

Apparently, it wouldn't be fair if the moderators asked too many foreign policy questions. Poor Sarah.



Personally, I don't think Palin has a strong area or a "fortay", so I'm fine with everything. She's getting training this week, so expect more one-liners than anything else.

Electorate Race: 9/28

From 538,



And here is another scenario breakdown,



Notice the Obama landslide increased 10 points from last week.

McCain v. Palin

According to McCain/Palin, we can't listen to people's "verbage" or words just because someone is "sticking a microphone [in] while conversations are being held."

"She would not…she understands and has stated repeatedly that we're not going to do anything except in America's national security interest," McCain told ABC's George Stephanopoulos of Palin. "In all due respect, people going around and… sticking a microphone while conversations are being held, and then all of a sudden that's—that's a person's position… This is a free country, but I don't think most Americans think that that's a definitve policy statement made by Governor Palin."

Thanks, John.

McCain's Wedding Stunt

The Times of London reports that a shotgun wedding is in the works for Bristol Palin.

"Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. “It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week."

I'm not sure what's worse: Forcing people to get married fro political gain or that a shotgun wedding has the potential to increase popularity. At this point in the game, I think most people see the McCain camp as a gimmick and know that this is yet another attention-grabbing stunt.

Post Debate Reaction

The trackers will be coming in all week, but here is the first round of reactions from the first debate. It's a clear win for Obama.

And here are some reactions to the issues discussed in the debate.

Looking good to me. Bottom line is that McCain didn't come close to winning the debate that he has been built to win. The rest will favor Obama.

Debate 1

The first debate was an interesting one. Barack Obama was collected, serious, not personable and very informed. McCain was condescending, easily irritated, increasingly tired looking and gave me the impression that was contemptuous of Obama for having the nerve to challenge him on foreign policy and the presidency. Apparently, he feels as if he is entitled to it.

Luckily, most viewers did not. The GOP thought McCain won. The Dems thought that Obama won and, luckily, the Indy's thought Obama won. That's actually pretty impressive. This was supposed to be an easy one for McCain. After all, it's his "speciality". The next two will be Obama territory and Palin might wet her pants.

This writer has an interesting take.

"The first presidential debate was more than a clash of ideology or temperaments. Barack Obama and John McCain did not even wrestle over the $700 billion economic bailout. Theirs was a generational collision, and at times it looked almost like a dramatic rendition of Freudian family tension: an older patriarch frustrated and even cranky when challenged by a would-be successor to the family business who thinks he can run it better."

From where I'm standing, every single news outlet, journalist and analyst is giving this one to Obama. Ouch for McCain, especially since it was his territory.

Next is Palin and I think that should sufficiently sink the ship.

***The polls that come out today will not reflect the debate. We'll need to wait a couple days for the reaction to filter in.

Pre-Debate Read

This guy is right on. Here's the whole article...

Sell! Sell! McCain is tanking!
By Dan Payne
September 26, 2008

JOHN MCCAIN'S move to suspend his campaign and TV spots and to dodge tonight's debate is a panic attack, not cagey tactics. Place your "sell" order now. His poll numbers are tanking, fewer and fewer Americans believe Sarah Palin is qualified, and his campaign manager has been exposed as a well-paid lobbyist for bankrupt Freddie Mac.


From strong to Depression in 10 days. Ten days ago McCain said the economy was fundamentally strong. Now he's decided it's so fundamentally weak he's needed in Washington ASAP. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin told Katie Couric on CBS if a bailout doesn't pass, "We're going to find ourselves in another Great Depression." How's that for a little reassurance?

For whom the polls fell. What changed about the financial bailout that prompted this bizarre behavior? McCain's poll numbers. They've been dropping like last week's Dow. In the key state of Pennsylvania, Obama now leads by 9. In Wisconsin, it's +7, Colorado +4, Michigan +4, Minnesota +2, and Virginia +3. Even in Florida it's +2.

The Washington Post/ABC poll shows Obama now leads the national horserace by 9 points, a turnaround of 11 points in two weeks. The poll found 79 percent of the American people are very worried about the national economy, and 60 percent are worried about their own finances. Obama is beating McCain by 14 points in understanding people's economic problems.

Democrats calling his bluff. Democrats have told the White House they will not vote for a bailout package unless it's one John McCain supports. They don't want to give him a chance to say no and grandstand as a "maverick" using the rejection as a chance to prove his independence from Bush and Wall Street.

Palin is failin'. In a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 49 percent say Palin is unqualified to be president if needed. By comparison, 64 percent say Joe Biden is qualified.

Palin on Couric. The entire time I'm watching Palin "answer" questions from Katie Couric, I'm thinking, what an airhead. We're in two wars, our financial markets are in collapse, unemployment is rising, global warming is getting worse, and this is who might become president?

Palin loves droppin' them g's. Talkin', takin', gettin', I'm thinkin' we got a grownup valley girl here runnin' for vice president.

Oh, Ricky. Rick Davis is McCain's campaign manager. He is also a highly paid lobbyist for Freddie Mac, the bailed-out mortgage giant. Davis received more than a quarter of a million dollars this year from Freddie Mac -- a firm that you and I as taxpayers now own. Asked when he last worked for Freddie, Davis lied and said it was three years ago. He's a poison pill for McCain.

Multitasking is part of the job. As Obama put it, a president has to do more than one thing at a time. He said we both have our own big jets that can fly us from D.C. to Mississippi in time for the debate.

The hothead. This McCain stunt is consistent with his being a notorious hothead that blows up and demeans anyone who displeases him. Asked by a high school student several months ago if he was too old to be president, he replied, "Thanks for the question, you little jerk."

McCain publicly cursed former GOP Senator Pete Domenici. Last year he blasted Senator John Cornyn over the budget. Cornyn's reply reveals how effective McCain will be with his colleagues on the bailout. "I've been sitting in here for all these negotiations and you just parachute in here on the last day. You're out of line." McCain struck back with an f-bomb.

Et tu, Cindy? Another semi-famous blowup came during his 2000 campaign when his wife, Cindy, joked about his losing his hair. (For his colorfully gross reply, Google "McCain top ten blowups.")

Respect the people's wishes. A quickie poll done by SurveyUSA shows that 90 percent of Americans want the debate to take place as scheduled.

Obama as president. In his press conference in response to McCain's panic attack, Obama was calm, cool, and collected. If the whole nation had been watching, people would have seen what President Obama would be like. They may get that chance tonight.

Zogby is Clueless

Pollster Prez, John Zogby is about 11 months too late on this one...

"John Zogby, president of Zogby International, told a group of businesspeople today that it’s up to Democratic Sen. Barack Obama to convince voters to go with him. If he’s not successful, the country will likely vote for “a comfortable old shoe”, that being Republican Sen. John McCain."

According to 538 (a composite pollster), that's pretty much impossible.



Pollsters need to stop being in the narrative-creating business. The MSM is more than enough for me.