by Gord Sellar<\/p>\n
People stopped me in the street
\nto suggest to me this Jeonbuk treat,
\nthey say it to everyone who\u2019s new,
\n\u201cYou gotta visit the Jeonju Jew.\u201d<\/p>\n
I saw him in my mind, a lone Jew, all Hasidic:
\nringlets and interjections, acerbically acidic;
\nwalking through the shijangs, emitting shouts of \u201cOy!\u201d
\nThe Jeonju Jew won\u2019t notice me,
\nI\u2019m just another bloody goy.<\/p>\n
It took a while to penetrate
\nthe accent, but I got it straight
\na few weeks later. Then I knew
\nthey meant not Jew but Jeonju zoo.<\/p>\n
They took me there in soopah style,
\ninside an airconn\u2019d Tiko, while
\nthe weather was both bright and fair.
\nI wish they\u2019d never brought me there.<\/p>\n
An elephant without a trunk,
\na balding obese chimpanzee,
\ntwo tigers sulking, in a funk,
\nnothing much to see.<\/p>\n
A wolf lacking a lower jaw,
\na quadriplegic polar bear,
\none featherless, schitzoid macaw,
\nyou\u2019re better off not going there.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not good for you\u2026! (x3)
\nTo go to the Jeonju Zoo!<\/p>\n
I\u2019d rather go to Gyeongijeong
\nwhen I\u2019ve got nowt to do,
\nand wander through the crowd down there,
\nand hunt for the Jeonju Jew.<\/p>\n
I see him in my mind, a lone Jew, all Hasidic\u2026 etc.
\n\u2026 emitting shouts of joy\u2026<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just not good for you. (x3)
\nTo go to the Jeonju Zoo.<\/p>\n
– 2003, Jeonju, South Korea<\/p>\n
Before taking offense, allow me to explain one pertinent detail: the Korean language lacks the “z” phoneme we take for granted in English. Therefore, when Koreans attempt to pronounce the word “zoo” it often sounds like “Jew.” After I was asked a few times whether I’d visited the Jeonju Jew, I realized people were talking about a zoo. Which, by its reputation, I truly did not want to visit. <\/p>\n
This poem was turned into the lyrics for a song which was recorded and often performed by the band I was in at the time, Dabang Band. You can hear the song here<\/a>, or see the song lyric version here<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Gord Sellar People stopped me in the street to suggest to me this Jeonbuk treat, they say it to everyone who\u2019s new, \u201cYou gotta visit the Jeonju Jew.\u201d I saw him in my mind, a lone Jew, all Hasidic: ringlets and interjections, acerbically acidic; walking through the shijangs, emitting shouts of \u201cOy!\u201d The Jeonju […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems-kr"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xIep-24","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions\/130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}