15 Responses for "This…Is…SPEKTRA!!!"

1. MissKoco April 2nd, 2008 at 1:15 am 1

   Love the makeover. Looks like the FMS crew is having lots of good times. Party on!

2. FMS April 2nd, 2008 at 1:22 am 2

   MissKoco, we miss you! It’s not nearly as fun without you! 보고 싶어! 너없이 노는 게 재미없어! ㅠㅠ

3. Yoomz April 2nd, 2008 at 1:46 am 3

   This looks awesome! Reminds me of the raves we used to go to in HS when I was in LA. I’ll have to keep my eye out for spektra parties post Korea move!

4. FMS April 2nd, 2008 at 5:42 am 4

   Yoomz, we expect you to join us in the Spektra party scene — as we would like all our FMS members to do. We’ll get a table and talk and drink the night away! Oh, and shake our asses, too.

5. joanna April 2nd, 2008 at 11:59 am 5

   amazing pictures, amazing party, great great post. i will never not go to a party in seoul again. i LOVE the glittery dark blue tights that girl is rockin. jealous jealous jealous!!!!!!! i;m glad u guys had a great time though

6. ExpatJane April 3rd, 2008 at 11:27 am 6

   It was a fun, fun, fun party.

   We’re in touch with divine Sarah and when Club Spektra is set to happen again, we’ll be sure to let FMS readers know

7. ROK Drop Weekly Linklets - 06APR08 April 6th, 2008 at 11:52 am 7

   [...] Korean kids wish they were not Korean. -  Those of you who like to party might want to find out where this place is. -  "Annoying" suicides in Korea. -  Hyundai has released a new car for the "Lucky [...]

8. Aniitaz April 24th, 2008 at 3:46 am 8

   This really looks so fun =]
   Parties rock ma life~!

9. lovelyprincess August 25th, 2008 at 11:28 am 9

   What is so great about these peoples’ clothing? You can see this stuff in any major city. I thought Club Answer was a “club” not a strip club. The girl dancing around in her bra makes a bad statement for women everywhere. No wonder many Koreas think all western girls are whores. Geez.

10. FMS August 25th, 2008 at 3:36 pm 10

    Well, one of the things I found interesting to document is just how quickly Seoul (and by extension, Korean) culture is broadening, since wilder parties in high-class venues (this was a private, “brand” party that rented out the club for their event) were unheard of until recently. And the extent to which Koreans “let their hair down” is also pretty new — case in point being the girl who stripped down to her bra all on her own — she’s Korean, not American.

    I don’t think you need to take a few pictures and make generalizations that support other generalizations that people shouldn’t have in the first place. For those who are familiar with Seoul party culture, events such as Spektra’s are a big change.

    If we’re just going to compare everything in Korea to LA, well, then LA wins, right? Big parties, real glitzy stars, the ground zero for many kinds of world trends and fashions; HOWEVER, if we take Seoul for what it is — SEOUL — and look at it in context, this kind of open partying is new, and considering the ways women have been attacked in Korean culture for stepping outside their rigid gender norms and roles (the cyberstalking of “dog poop girl”, the image of the “된장녀”, or the way several women were cyber-attacked online for being seen dancing lasciviously with white guys), these are brave steps, and I give much respect to the woman who decided to take off her shirt and dance around.

    Was it the wisest thing in the world to do? Or the best way to represent all of womanhood? Probably not. But one should at least acknowledge that things happening in a Spektra party shouldn’t be just compared to LA as a standard for everything.

    And I wonder about your own assumptions in even assuming that the girl in the picture must have been “western” in the first place. Using that logic, are all Korean women hookers, then? Obviously not. You should be offended by either assumption, rather than take it as evidence for their truth, I think.

11. lovelyprincess August 25th, 2008 at 6:48 pm 11

    While we are on the subject can you tell me what your perception of 된장녀 is? I’ve heard it can be a woman who can’t do anything for herself, or she acts like she can’t. I’ve also heard it referred to as a woman who gives money to a guy she is seeing. I’ve also heard it is the new “princess”. Can you enlighten me with your interpretation? Thanks.

12. impolite one August 26th, 2008 at 4:55 am 12

    lprincess - a 된장녀 is a girl who hoards all of her money by living off 된장찌개 and maybe the financing of her boyfriend(s) to fund a lifestyle of brand-name goods. A bit different than what’s going on here.

13. FMS August 26th, 2008 at 5:40 am 13

    Well, yes, that’s what the image is — but it’s also a loaded term, one that is part of the “social disciplining” that goes on in recent years, and one of the images created of young women who step outside of their expected social roles.

    One of the reasons this term is actually an attack upon women, and is seen by feminists here in this way, is that the image ostensibly describes the “bad girl” — the one who has has the wrong values, uses money for her own selfish consumption, is sexually powerful/promiscuous, and whose very existence is a threat to male power itself.

    If you think about the image of the girl who saves her money during the day by buying 3,000 won bean paste soup (된장찌개) and then saves the difference to buy herself a Gucci bag or whatnot (the origin of the term), one might see a financially independent woman who 1) has a job, and 2) control over her consumption and does what she sees fit to do. She has the ability to pick and choose among men, and she’ll throw a “scrub” back into the pool. She’s the average joe’s ultimate nightmare, and her very existence is hated.

    But she’s a straw woman, and a product of rapidly changing gender roles and the backlash of men who don’t like women stepping outside of their former roles. Just like the “dog poop girl,” the additional heat of societal anger with the woman who wouldn’t clean up after her little doggie and used the tissue an ajumma gave her to wipe its ass comes from the fact she WAS a woman. There wold be no “dog poop man” — because there’s no public discourse or rage about “snotty” young MEN, who have little white dogs that are the very symbol of excess, who symbolizes the type of person who sets aside money and mental energy to raise a useless pooch and sasses one’s elders, who breaks just about every social norm, who pushed every cultural red hot button that she could push related to being “bad.” It’s only women who are on the firing end of this loaded term — not men.

    The same is true for the Korean woman who was cyberstalked for having appeared dancing with two white guys in the Hongdae clubs, which spurred another round of “social disciplining” of Korean women, with Korean (male) netizens warning Korean women to stay away, lest they share that woman’s fate.

    In the end, all these cases, these public images of the “bad girl” — point to sensitivities and fissure points in the culture, surrounding women’s increasing financial, sexual, and general social power. With that, divorce rates has risen to nearly 50% in Korea, since the economy requires two incomes now, and Korean society has grudgingly come to accept that. The roles of women and the family are being rocked now, and this is reflected in such images. Don’t take the “bean paste stew girl” image at face value — it’s a loaded image that itself reflects a social backlash against increasing women’s power.

    Similar things happened in the US in the 1970’s, when women were essentially forced into the workforce by the weakening power of men to financially back their being the social head of the household (spurred by inflation and the weakened economy), and one had already seen major battles over the meaning of women’s roles in society as spurred by the civil and women’s rights movements. But I place more stock in the economy than active agents of social change, and one must remember that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) never passed in the US, at the very time when it probably had the best chance to. No, as Slick Willie Clinton said, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

    By the time the 80’s roll around, you get the “backlash” style image of the “sexual bitch” that Susan Faludi talked about in her book of the same name, with the iconic image of Glenn Close’s character — the beautiful, single, financially independent woman who sexually tempts otherwise good men and destroys their nuclear family. If you think back to all the movies of this trope — Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Hand that Rocks the Cradle, Single White Female, and all the imitators — the pattern is pretty clear, and identifies a point of worry and stress (esp. on the part of men) in the culture.

    A similar thing is happening in Korea right now, I believe, and the image of the “bad girl” as juxtaposed against the “good, traditional girl” is definitely being made all around. There’s kind of a cultural war going on right now over where women should fit in as women’s incomes rise, the average age of marriage has shot way up, divorce rates increase, and women start to claim the right to sexually assert themselves.

    Just on a personal anecdote, from someone who came here in 1994 — women could only buy tampons and men condoms in a PHARMACY, since only “sluts” had any reason to use them, and no decent woman would dare be caught buying them, anyway, had they been available. Before coming to Korea, my program’s handbook explicitly told women to bring several months’ supply of tampons.

    Or asking for a condom meant you were a “playboy,” or the present fact that even today, many gynecologists still only recommend the first exam at marriage (which today, could be in the 30’s, long past when people should have gotten an exam), and any record of gynecological care as a single woman in Korea may be taken as a record of being a “bad girl.”

    After all — why would a single woman ever need to see a gynecologist, right? Unless she’s “bad.”

    That’s where “bean paste stew girls” fit into the picture. It’s part of the straw man image of the “bad girl” that is part of a backlash response to the many women these days who are bucking their formerly defined gender roles. There’s a lot of contestation and cultural battles being fought over these roles, and such images are part of that whole thing.

    That’s the way I’m thinking about it, and how I was talking about the issue in my comments.

14. lovelyprincess August 26th, 2008 at 8:15 am 14

    I was wondering because I heard another meaning for a 된장녀 . I know a girl whose Mom is like in her 50s and can pull guys as young as 25, not because she is hot or anything, but because she gives these guys money to take care of her. She was referred to by the soybean paste term. Maybe it can take on different meanings. hahaha…

15. tinaxxe August 26th, 2008 at 1:16 pm 15

    hey FMS! thanks for the explanation and discussion of women in seoul… and education a US girl like me!