My note – Page 3 – 스마트 아줌마 Smart Ajumma

Ajumma fans at the concert, so what?

Fandom culture is very strong in Korea as well as other countries. A variety types of fan clubs are formed and those fans do many activities for their ‘stars’. Like other communities, fan clubs are considered as one of communities with people who got the similar interests each other. In this case, similar interest should be a ‘star’. A star could be sportswoman/man, actors, artists, singers, models, writers, filmmakers, politicians (maybe?), or even characters of animation or comic books whom are living in the imaginary space. Among these examples of fan club, I would like to talk about a case of one of band’s fan club in Korea.

Twitter is a sort of an intersection for people to share common or uncommon ideas and thoughts. I didn’t use tweeter for last few years but now I’m one of active users of tweeter. There are many reasons why I use twitter but one reason could be that it is useful to share information from other fans about my favourite singer. At the same time, we could share the concert review with each other after every concert. Actually I’m not a very active fan like other fans, but I could be an active fan through interactive communication with other fans on twitter whom I followed. Even though we never tweetup before but we meet almost everyday on twitter. It is so glad to know someone who have same interests with me and share our thoughts about the same thing together.

However, it happened few days ago. There is another online community website for this singer and a sort of a quarrel between fans was occurred. These fans argue about something related to the singer on the BBS. I have no interest in this online community website at all, so I didn’t know about this website that much. But one thing I knew about this website is that most of them who take very active roles are quite younger than other old fans of the singer. Anyway, there’s a quarrel between fans and one of fans wrote her or his thought on the BBS. I was outraged at the way she/he had written. Here is a sentence that makes me uncomfortable.

“Some of old fans are annoying and they’re mean towards younger fans, and you know what? The concert was teeming with ajumma fans!!!”

Well, it was interesting to me to know what younger people consider old woman (they think over 30s is ‘old’, she/he wrote). And it’s not shocking the way this kind of people think about ajummas or old woman because I’m a researcher or a sort of expert of ajumma research, so I know. But I was angry to read that sentence because of their old-fashioned mind or thinking about women, especially old women (over 30s is OLD? of course it is not young age but not too old yet?).

(Ajumma fans at the Yong Pil Cho‘s concert, image from: http://5505.ohmynews.com, or click the image to visit the website)

What’s wrong with old women? (over 30s?) Is there any law and regulations that old women (over 30s) are prohibited to come to the concert? And what’s wrong with ajummas? Okay, if they’re official ajummas, SO WHAT? You know what? The singers you like are over 30s too. Then, why do you think only female fans who are over 30s should be treated as annoying ajummas? As I mentioned in previous post, I think they have a sort of misogynistic perspective towards women, especially non-younger women.

According to them, I’m an ajumma because I’m over 30. But I will keep going and enjoying their concert as much as I can. I don’t care what others think about ajummas (women who are over 30s, they said). But one thing that I feel disappointed is their prejudiced and outdated view of ajummas. Oh, don’t forget! You’ll be an ajumma very soon, too.

Grandparenting (2)

Grandparenting is not an easy thing at all. But it is unavoidable to both parents and their married sons and daughters because of the poor childcare system for working parents in Korea. There are public and private childcare system that people can get in Korea, but they’re still insufficient to support those working parents. Besides, the reason why those working parents ask their parents to raise their children is because most of them believe that being raised by grandparents is more truthworthy in many ways than a babysitter from the list. I mean, grandparents are more reliable to place their children than babysitters for them. (Of course there are many wonderful babysitters!) Because of many reasons (I can’t write every single reason why people ask their parents to raise their children), grandparenting is becoming a very common thing in Korea and many of my neighbours are actually spend the most of the day time with their grandchildren, I can see. These grandparents are professional at childrearing or babysitting because they’ve already done before for their children. They are experienced parents so they should be better than first time parents (their son and daughter) in childrearing. However, there is a saying, ‘Ten years is an epoch’, various things were disappeared and newly created again and again. Childrearing is not an exception of being affected by the development of technology.

The fundamentals of childrearing is still the same, but the ways of childrearing and the tools for childrearing are evolved rapidly. In other words, grandparents are now making use of the new tools to get new ways of childrearing for their grandchildren. For example, they do mobile shopping to order baby goods, show mobile audio-visual programs for kids and to have mobile chat with their son and daughter about grandchild through using their smart devices (i.e. smartphones) It is called ‘Smart Parenting’. The photo below shows that a grandmother enjoy watching animation on Smart TV with her grandson. People can get various contents especially for their grandchild through Smart TV.

(Click the image then it goes direct to the webpage about Smart TV and grandparenting, image from http://vip.mk.co.kr/news/view/21/20/1397293.html)

According to the report of mobile shopping site, Tmon (http://tmon.co.kr), the analysis of the sales of babygoods by age group showed that customers who are aged over 50s are increased significantly compared with other age groups. The number 1 item they purchased is Podaegi (baby carrier), http://www.ticketmonster.co.kr. (click the link if you want to see that actual product they purchased)

(This is a podaegi in Korea, image from http://namyangi.com (click the image to see the original webpage))

Besides, the mobile shopping for grandchildren is not only limited to Korea. If you read this article on ‘grandparents.about.com‘ it tells you about ‘6 ways your smartphone can help you shop for grandchildren’. I will continue to talk more about ‘grandparenting’ and digital media in the next post.

Grandparenting (1)

It is busy in the morning because their grandson comes every morning around 8 am. A grandmother walks her grandson to the kindergarten by 9 am. Until 2pm, it is her free time. At 2 pm, she picks up her little grandson from the kindergarten, they head to home and a grandmother prepares snacks for him. They play together by watching TV, reading books, or playing game on a grandmother’s smartphone. At 6 pm, they have a dinner together and finally his parents come back home to pick up their son.

(image from Yonhapnews.co.kr)

This is a summary of daily life of a normal grandparent in Korea today. Of course, I don’t mean all Korean grandparents are doing ‘grandparenting’ now.But I can say that the number of grandparents are grandprenting for their sons and daughters, who are unable to childrearing because most of people in Korea are now two-career families. At the same time, the shortage of day care centres is a major obstacle for these working parents in Korea. For this reason, many of young parents (I mean younger generation than their parents’ generation- over 60 years old) ask their parents to take care of their children.

In my aunty’s case, she also does grandparenting during day time for 5 days a week. She knew how to take care of her grandchild because she already done with her children many years ago. But, the childrearing these days needs more variety.

need ideas

It is terrifying to wait for the result of my thesis but there’s nothing I can do for this time without just waiting for it. These days, I’m thinking what I can write for this blog and what I can do for the next research. Also, I should keep updating about ajummas and their own ways of mobile communicating by using smartphones or other digital devices. So far, I couldn’t find any ‘big’ differences from my findings that I’ve done 2 years ago for the thesis yet. The pattern’s of mobile communication in their online communities (mostly Kakao Talk’s group chat room) is still quite similar compared to 2 years ago. But I keep researching about them and their usage of smartphones.

need ideas! from Jung Moon on Vimeo.