Saturday, May 27, 2006

'beautiful' North Korean women

These days, South Koreans put a great 'emphasis' on appearence, many wanting to look like celebrities, undergoing many plastic surgeries, going on diet, working out etc. With these "booms" came along such creation of phrases like 'ul-zzhang' and 'mome-zzhang'. 'Zzhang' means 'super' and basically those phrases mean' beautiful face' and 'nice body'.
The use of these expressions have become rather ridiculous with people naming certain convicted female criminal as 'ul-zzhang gang do', where 'gang do' means 'burglar'. And now people have also named some North Korean female soldier, policewoman etc. as 'ul-zzhang', where pictures of these so-called 'ul-zzhang' North Korean women have spread through internet with people commenting on their looks, comparing them to South Korean women and so on. I think it's ludicrous and also disconcerting in that such prevalence reflects to a degree where some South Korean people's minds are on the issue of North-South Korean relations.

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