Pretty Men and other Koreanisms

I teach a vocabulary class in which we focus on collocations – these are words that go together and sound natural to the native speaker; for instance, one makes a friend, but not a girlfriend -- you get a girlfriend; you take a photo, you don’t make a photo; he’s a handsome man, not a pretty man.

Okay, the latter doesn’t necessarily count in Korea. Korea not only boasts with handsome men, it also has many pretty men. Speaking about the topic, I only had to mention “Flower Boys” to my students and all of them understood why I said some men in Korea are not handsome, they are pretty. I was referring to the Korean drama Boys before Flowers (read more on Wikipedia). I haven’t actually seen any episodes (I don’t own a TV), but I have seen many posters and pictures, featuring the dazzling male actors to whom the word “handsome” just doesn’t apply.

This “pretty boy” phenomenon in Korea doesn’t come without its problems. One of my Korean friends once told me of such a pretty boy with whom he was in the military with. The poor guy was constantly (sexually) harassed because he looked so much like a girl. Recently in the news (via The Grand Narrative), a member of the Korean boy band D-NA, named Karam, admitted to having had frequent negative experiences with older men harassing him.

I haven’t actually seen anything by D-NA at all (I try to avoid K-Pop as much as possible), but I can only guess that some of their dancing is probably quite provocative. In Korea, like much of the world, pop idol bands are marketed on a high dose of sexual innuendo. However, in Korea these pop idol band members are often quite young, making me wonder whether or not this borders on the sexual exploitation of children. Then again, in a country where consensual sex with a thirteen year old is legal, a couple of kids performing dance moves is probably not that big a deal. That is, until old men start harassing them.

The video below features Karam: