Just When You Thought it's All Over ...

Let's face it; some men are naturally gorgeous. They are mouth-watering, perhaps even scrumptious; whether they have just been pulled out of a wrecked car (Connery), pulled through a hedge backwards (Depp) or just simply pulled with Elizabeth Debicki (Hiddleston). 

A moment of rare prescience which we all failed to appreciate in 1964;

Goldfinger apologises to Bond for the caddying shortcomings of his henchman Oddjob -

"Golf is not yet the national game of Korea, eh ?"

Johnny Depp, timeless as Edward Scissorhands in 1990 

2017's The Night Manager: 

Debicki and Hiddleston: "Phwoor" and "Phwoorer" 

Then at the other end of the spectrum are the guys with "the perfect face for radio". Or as a friend put it rather less charitably; "You've all the looks of a tennis ball that's been chewed by yer mutt for the best part of 30 years". Always looking for the silver lining, I interpreted this as his warmest wish that my four-pawed buddy would achieve such privileged longevity.


It has to be said there are very few of us 'tennis balls' in Korea and most of us are indeed foreigners. South Korean men and women are for the most part strikingly good looking, with each generation successively increasing the average height of the population. During the course of a normal business day in Seoul it is not unusual to meet Korean men and women-in-heels who approach 6ft in height, sporting thick, dark hair, flawless skin and very well-toned, slender, athletic physiques. Young South Koreans at least have broken out of the mould of the short, stooped, Asian shopkeeper.

Meanwhile the scarce data which exists suggests that poverty and famine have combined to such a degree that North Koreans have already fallen behind their South Korean cousins by at least 3" in only 65 years since the end of the Korean war. Exactly how much varies according to sources; anything from 3" according to Seoul's Sungkyunkwan University

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17774210

Or 6" according to Christopher Hitchens

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/02/kim-jong-il-s-regime-is-even-weirder-and-more-despicable-than-you-thought.html

Back to John McCain's 3"

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/short-north-koreans-and-americans/


Whichever is correct, the pursuit of movie-star looks and extended youth are powerfully fueling the economy and the media. In 2018 the Korean beauty market was estimated to be worth US$13bn, a little less than the opening cost of 2 new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset. Sadly there are no prizes for guessing which of these will rapidly outpace the other, much to the chagrin of the British electricity consumer.

http://www.mintel.com/press-centre/beauty-and-personal-care/a-bright-future-south-korea-ranks-among-the-top-10-beauty-markets-globally

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/11/health/korean-makeup-beauty-health-benefits/index.html


Of course beauty products are no longer aimed exclusively at the female consumer. Anything a woman can do, a man can do better, vanity not excluded. Korean men are now increasingly the target of new product launches; for example 'Boy de Chanel' which selected South Korea for its initial worldwide release.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiffanyleigh/2018/08/27/chanel-debuts-boy-de-chanel-male-makeup-collection/#6c9a4cfee3c5


In this simple move Chanel confers to the Korean men's cosmetic market the same importance as the movie industry would if it held the worldwide premier of the next Bond movie in Seoul. And not surprisingly the soundbites are just as corny as any quip by Roger Moore's 007;

"For Chanel, 

beauty is not a matter of gender; 

it is a matter of style. 

This new range allows men in their beauty routines to 

have the tools necessary to feel better about themselves. 

Moreover, men should be free to use makeup products 

to correct their appearance, 

without calling into question their masculinity." 

So all praise to Chanel for delivering unto us the tools we need to hide the zit under our chin to give us the confidence to travel under the glaring, unforgiving lighting of public transport.

With military service being compulsory in South Korea it is reassuring to know the cosmetics industry can still support with products such as; 

'Dandy Guy 4-Colour Camo Cream'

which is not only 'non-sensitive' but also 'without harsh chemicals'.

"Men have every right to protect their skin" - while they are presumably protecting their country.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/korean-men-makeup-cosmetics-mainstream-1.4552761


It is important to note that the current reinvention of Korean masculinity is driven largely by female preference rather than male re-positioning and is not in any way linked to an expression of sexuality. K-Pop, TV and film have become launchpads for a softer, androgynous Korean male image which departs from previous rugged stereotypes.

https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/fashion-luxury/article/2103854/cutting-edge-beauty-male-plastic-surgery-south-korea

Yesterday's boyfriend material: ByungHun Lee as the ultimate assassin ChoBai Han.Rugged machismo with the necessary firepower to (almost) dispatch
Bruce Willis and John Malkovich in 2013's Red 2: "The Best Never Rest"

World famous BTS; with the necessary eyebrows to make your knees tremble.
Guys that nice girls dream of bringing home to meet the parents.Helping to launch a UNICEF youth campaign at the United Nations on 24 Sept;
“No matter who you are, where you’re from, your skin colour, your gender identity,
just speak yourself,”

The elephant in the room is always that come the zombie apocalypse, a devastating meteor strike or having to recreate the Normandy landings for every post-Brexit shopping sortie to France, who do you want to watch your back ? Someone who can lock and load a GAU17A machine gun, someone who can jump start an amphibious military landing craft or someone who needs 3 technicians to conceal his concealer ?

Hair today, gone tomorrow
It has been known for more than a decade that metabolised products from recreational drugs can be monitored in London's Thames during the week to back-calculate the number of doses of cocaine and ecstasy used in the capital during the previous weekend.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/06/european-eels-on-cocaine-polluted-rivers-science-environment-animals/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1502321/River-of-cocaine.html

A similar exercise in Korea would instead show an alarming spike in black hair dye products flushed into the waterways on the last weekend of every month. As each month progresses one can clearly see small, distinguished flecks of grey, silver and white quickly sprouting in all the usual places on one's colleagues; the side burns, around the hair parting, the top of the neck, etc. These are natural signs of experience, wisdom and maturity. However suddenly, on the first Monday of the month, all will vanish completely as colleagues report for work looking 20 years younger than they looked the previous Friday. In some cases they look barely a day older than their own kids in the college graduation photos proudly displayed on their desks. Apart from the appearance of eternal youth, this is partly a response to the rapid increase of 'twilight divorces' and consequently 'second careers'.

In the 12 years to 2013 divorce rates fell by 25% in Korea but  among those married for more than 20 years rates soared 31%, now accounting for one quarter of all divorces. The trigger is typically when the husband reaches retirement age or is retired early. This is when wives have the sudden epiphany that their husband's long working hours were in fact the best feature of their marriage and that to be together all day every day will be insufferable. With recent changes in the law and favourable judgements setting legal precedents wives are now promptly filing for divorce and taking half of everything with them.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-divorce/its-never-too-late-twilight-divorce-in-south-korea-at-record-idUSKCN0T12KV20151112

http://koreabizwire.com/twilight-divorces-and-national-pension-splits-both-on-the-rise/114140

In such a climate it now becomes imperative for each husband to preserve his dashing good looks to minimise the risk of being retired early and indeed, should the worst occur, to trade on his experience to start a 'second career' as a senior consultant in a smaller company, just when you think it's all over. 


http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=252860

Anything but the quiet life.

Stairway to Heaven

Here in Korea it's 'Chuseok' again; that chaotic time of year when families everywhere criss-cross the peninsular to visit the husband's parents the wife's parents, the grand parents and the shrines of their parents to leave ritual offerings and say prayers for their ancestors through time immemorial.

This year the autumn equinox harvest festival is a little unusual; stretching over a full 10 days and set to the distant rhythm of war drums beating across the Pacific. The holiday begins innocently enough by exchanging boxes of spam, extra virgin olive oil, or possibly war survival kits, if you subscribe to the ominous portents of the conservative media. 

War survival kits, now a popular alternative to traditional spam or olive oil at Chuseok

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170925000797&ACE_SEARCH=1

Rapidly the vacation becomes fraught as record numbers jostle elbow-to-elbow through airports, tailgate for tedious hours along the highways and pack the trains to capacity. 

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20171001000143&ACE_SEARCH=1

For some the pressure is too much, with divorces in the weeks before and after Chuseok rising to twice the daily average.

http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/phone/news/view.jsp?req_newsidx=237244

In the western world the concept of god or divinity has undergone some major revisions over the centuries, much like we now roll out new software updates for our computers. The first humans probably huddled around camp fires, nervously asking each other how to prepare for the hereafter, desperately hoping that the answer wouldn't be more nerve-racking than preparing for a first mammoth hunt or perhaps even worse, a first date. 

Seemingly the first holy men recognised an opportunity to improve their social status and quickly launched to market Divinity 1.0, based on visible, mortal, tangible god-kings like the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. The pharaohs evidently believed the afterlife to be rather empty and ill-furnished; they therefore spent a lifetime arranging to store plenty of food, luxuries and concubines to take with them when they passed over. Meanwhile the peasants could only take the rags they stood up in. All in all, this was not a very equitable belief system for the great unwashed.

Egyptian Pharaohs - leaving no creature comfort behind in their journey to the Afterlife 

The next roll-out, Divinity 2.0, featured a whole host of new, improved, more ethereal gods; this time invisible and immortal, with dominion over each aspect of earthly life. Greek, Roman and Norse priests gave us a god for everything from love to harvests and from war to volcanoes. 

Greek gods; one available for every occasion, all sacrifices gratefully received

As before, each god required devotion and sacrifices in return for delivery from evil. It all sounded wonderful but as the centuries ticked by we slowly realised that protection from war, famine, pestilence, etc could not be bought with any amount of prayer or sacrifice.

The wisest holy men foresaw their high social status being utterly ruined by unsatisfied customers and so, analysing the flaws in their model, they rushed out Divinity 3.0 even before Divinity 2.0 was abandoned. This time just one single Great Omnipotent Deity requiring devotion and sacrifice. Cleverly, our devotion this time would not earn us tangible rewards in this lifetime but virtual rewards in the next life - which we would need to take on faith, of course. Finally a bullet-proof deity concept which could survive the most intense customer scrutiny !  

Local variations of Divinity 3.0 were rolled out around the Mediterranean in quick succession including Judaism, Christianity and Islam - although in some parts of the world the latter is still arguably considered even less user friendly than Windows Vista ever was.

Meanwhile Korea was surviving happily on a simple diet of shamanism, or the worship of nature spirits, until Buddhism was introduced in the late 4th century. Since Buddhist and shamanistic teachings were not contradictory and since Buddhism tended more towards philosophy than deity worship, Koreans found it possible to integrate the two and follow both doctrines together. 

The spirits of the trees, mountains and animals are highly revered in shamanism

Korean Buddhism largely went unchallenged for a full millennium until the late 14th century when neo-Confucians supported a military coup, winning themselves the opportunity to try to displace Buddhist mysticism with a traditional and deeply hierarchical Confucian rationalism which included ancestor worship.  Therefore the modern Chuseok vacation reflects an ancient fusion of  Buddhist and Shamanistic concepts overlaid by more recent Confucian reverence for one's ancestors.

Although Korea undoubtedly had its own versions of Divinity 1.0 and 2.0, little was known about western divinity until books by Portuguese Jesuit Matteo Ricci were brought over from Beijing in the early 1600s. However even then the Chinese translations  limited the Christian doctrine to a relatively small, wealthy, educated overclass. It was not until the 1780s, when the literature was re-printed in simplified Korean Hangul script, that Christianity became accessible to the masses.

After centuries of Buddhism and Confucianism which both reinforce rigid social hierarchies, with little upward mobility within the system, Christianity eventually started to win followers through its message that all men are equal under god and reward is ultimately based on effort and merit not birthright. Current figures suggest that among Koreans, 20% identify as Protestant, 8% as Catholic and 15% as Buddhist, leaving about 55% following  non-organised worship including shamanistic or Confucian rituals.

For those with faith, the stairway to heaven is, somewhat predictably, earned by putting in long and regular hours. Gentle inquiries show it is not unusual for a family to dedicate their entire Sunday to promoting church business. Given the lack of family time available during the week, this means that a devoted Christian family can regularly spend half the weekend (or half of its entire weekly family time) serving the church. This ardent presenteeism suggests that entry to the Afterlife may be controlled by a celestial Human Resources Dept. which values time-keeping over productivity in the same way that we see here in this life every day.

Robert De Niro as Louis Cyphre in Angel Heart:
"They say there's enough religion in the world to make men hate each other,
but not enough to make them love.
The future isn't what it used to be, Mr Angel."