nation: South Korea

In the U.S., Spam is usually considered a food for poor people; people make fun of it as an inexplicable meat. In contrast, Spam is very popular in South Korea. Spam was introduced to Korea during the Korean War (1950-1953) and today it is a popular food item loved by all walks of life. Growing up in Korea, I distinctly remember that it was “cool” to bring a slice of Spam in a lunch box when I was kids. Even today whenever I go home, my friends take me to eat a spicy Spam stew; it’s a special occasion.

Not at all considered a food for the poor or the “trashy,” as it commonly is in the U.S., in Korea Spam is a luxury item. Spam can be a great gift for your boss or your business clients. The photo below shows Spam for sale at a luxury hotel. The set on the top shelf cost about $60 and the set on the second sells for about $42.

Perceptions of Spam, then, are cultural. From an American perspective, the popularity and prestige of Spam in Korea may seem weird. But from a Korean perspective, it is perfectly sensible… and with boiled rice and kim-chi, totally delicious.

Sangyoub Park is an assistant professor of sociology at Washburn University, where he teaches Social Demography, Generations in the U.S. and Sociology of East Asia. His research interests include social capital, demographic trends, and post-Generation Y.

 

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Deeb K. sent in a story from the New York Times about who does unpaid work — that is, the housework, carework, and volunteering that people do without financial compensation. Based on time-use surveys by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), this chart shows how many more minutes per day women in various nations spend doing such activities compared to men:

Childcare stuck out as an area with a particularly large gap:

On child care in particular, mothers spend more than twice as much time per day as fathers do: 1 hour 40 minutes for mothers, on average, compared to 42 minutes for fathers…On average, working fathers spend only 10 minutes more per day on child care when they are not working, whereas working mothers spend nearly twice as much time (144 minutes vs. 74) when not working.

The full OECD report breaks down types of unpaid work (this is overall, including data for both men and women):

The study also found that non-working fathers spend less time on childcare than working mothers in almost every country in the study (p. 19). And mothers and fathers do different types of childcare, with dads doing more of what we might think of as the “fun stuff” (p. 20):

Source: Miranda, V. 2011. “Cooking, Caring and Volunteering: Unpaid Work around the World.” OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. 116. OECD Publishing.

An infographic accompanying an article at the New York Times reveals how “advanced economies” compare on various measures of equality, well-being, educational attainment, and more.  To illustrate this, for each measure countries that rank well are coded tan, countries that rank poorly and very poorly are coded orange and red respectively, and countries that are in the middle are grey.  The countries are then ranked from best to worst overall, with Australia coming in #1 and the United States coming in last.  You might be surprised how some of these countries measure up.

Thanks to Dmitriy T.M. for the link.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

This image, found at International Networks, depicts the globe at night.  The areas bathed in electricity reveal “the global spread of industrialization, as evidenced by the lights of human civilization”:

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I think it’s interesting to compare this image with a world population map (link):

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At first the two maps seem to overlap pretty nicely, but if you look closely there are plenty of interesting discrepancies, especially in Africa.

Thanks to Toban B. for the link that got me to the graphic that inspired this post.

NEW (Apr. ’10)!  In the comments, Brendon linked to this great image of the Korean peninsula at night that reveals an amazing difference between North and South Korea:

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Chris S. sent in a link to a post at Korea Beat about a town in South Korea that now has parking spots designated for women only. My first thought was that maybe they were for pregnant women–when I lived in Utah I’d sometimes see parking spots that were reserved for expectant mothers. But no. These are just for women in general. Here’s a photo:

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Part of the English translation of the original article, from Korea Beat:

The “pink lines”, painted pink, are 2.5 meters wide rather than the standard 2.3, offering aid to women drivers unskilled at parking.

This in a city chosen by a South Korean official as “the first woman-friendly city.”

I wonder if there’s any evidence that female drivers in South Korea are involved in more accidents or have a harder time parking than men. What, exactly, led to this? I don’t know a ton about South Korean culture; for those of you who do, is there a good reason we’d expect women to be less skilled at driving/parking than men? Are women generally discouraged from driving or something? Insights will be greatly appreciated.

NEW! (July ’10): Majd Al-Shihabi sent us a photo of similar parking spaces in Croatia. They are next to the parking spaces for those with disabilities and are about 50% wider than standard spaces:

Percent of internet users by region (from internetworldstats):

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Akamai offers moment-to-moment data on internet use.  This is a screenshot from 11:34:55pm Pacific Standard Time:

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You can choose any region to highlight.  Here are the United States and China, South Korea, and Japan:

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Hits per second by region:

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Via Graphic Sociology.

This Korean ad for a newspaper nicely illustrates the social constructedness of “breakfast” food. That is, that there is nothing inherently a.m. about eggs, bacon, or toast. But coffee, well that’s another story.

Text:

The smell of coffee? The taste of your favorite breakfast? Whatever wakes you up… have it with The Korea Times!

Found at MultiCultClassics.