Koreabridge
What is/was your biggest challenge upon arriving in Korea?
A Mysterious Korean War Temple Case
Hello Again Everyone!! The other day I received an interesting email from a man named G. In it he told me how his father had served in the Korean War and how he had a couple pictures he wondered if I could help identify for him: “Hi Dale,Came across your website in doing research on my father’s military service during the Korean War. I have a few pictures of temples/shrines he took, was wondering if you would be willing to look at them and possibly tell me what they are?Thanks, G.” It was definitely an interesting proposal, and I honestly wondered if I could identify what he hoped I could do for him. There were a couple reasons for my initial hesitation. First, a lot of Korea was destroyed during the Korean War, so I didn’t even know if the temples or shrines even existed anymore. Another concern was a lot of Korea has undergone a lot of extensive reconstruction. But having a brother and father that have served in the military, I thought the least I could do was try and help G. with any information I could provide. So I told him to send the pictures that he had and that I would do my best.
“Hello G.,If there is any way that I can help you, I'm more than willing to help. With the pictures, if there's any information that you could send that would be appreciated like the area they were taken ex. city, province. It would go a long way in helping me help you. Sincerely, Dale.”
After initially looking at the pictures, I was unable to immediately identify either of the two pictures. At first, I thought one might be the famous Buseoksa Temple in Yeongju, Gyeongsangbuk-do. But after closer scrutiny, I dismissed this temple as a potential location. G.'s father during the Korean War in front of an unknown pavilion. So after eye-balling the two pictures thoroughly once more, I decided to look at the places that G. provided for the movements of his father during the Korean War: “...I can give you a summary of his movements across Korea in the early fluid years of the war. Landed at Inchon [Incheon] in October of 1950, then was convoyed down to Pusan [Busan]. From Pusan [Busan] he was shipped to another landing at Wonson. From Wonson went by road up to Hamhung/Hungnam area. After the Chinese entered the war, he was evacuated back to Ulsan. He spent the rest of his tour riding rail security on the eastern lines based around these towns as far as I know:
Kyongju [Gyeongju]
Yongchon [Yeongcheon]
Tague [Daegu]
He also would make runs up to Andong and Wonju.” Unfortunately, because of the large amount of area that G.’s father covered during the Korean War, which included two countries and three separate provinces, the location of G’s father’s movements didn’t help me all that much. So the next thing I decided to do was more closely scrutinize the details of the pavilion in the first picture. Instantly, I was drawn to the Chinese characters that hung on the second floor of the pavilion. At first, my wife attempted to read these Chinese characters, but she said they seemed a bit off. So the next thing I did was send the pictures off to a friend, who just so happens to be a Buddhist monk in Korea. With his colleagues, he was able to read two of the three characters. He was able to read the characters as __ 경 루. However, he was unsure that the pavilion matched the only pavilion with a similar name in Gyeongsang-do. The pavilion’s name that he thought it might be was: 찬경루 (Changyeongru). So plugging this result into Google Image, I came back with only one pavilion with a similar name in the entire two provinces of Gyeongsangnam-do and Gyeongsangbuk-do, which were the two provinces that G.’s father moved the most in during the Korean War. And while a lot had changed around the Changyeongru Pavilion, which I later found out was due to extensive renovations and reconstruction by the Shim family, it was the pavilion that I was looking for. The modern looking Changyeong-ru pavilion in Cheongsong, Gyeongsangbuk-do. So much has changed in and around this pavilion in present day Korea. With this knowledge in hand, I was able to provide G. with the following information: “Hello G, Wow, that was a difficult one, but I think I was able to one hundred percent identify the structure in the first picture. With a little help I was able to identify it as Changyeongru (Chan gyeong ru) or 찬경루 in Korean script. The first picture is not a temple, but instead, it’s a pavilion. The pavilion is in the city of Cheongsong in Gyeongsangbuk-do province. This pavilion was built by Magistrate Ha Dam in 1428, the 10th year of Joseon King Sejong’s reign. According to the chronicle of the pavilion’s construction, the pavilion was made and named in tribute to the progenitor of the Cheongsong Shim clan. It was built by her sons and is still currently owned by the family. The pavilion has undergone a lot of reconstruction and renovation through the years. From the Busan train station, it would take three hours and forty minutes by car. This is a distance of 188 kilometres. From Daegu it would take two hours and twenty minutes by car. This is a distance of 117 kilometres. I am less sure of the second picture. But I do believe that the two pictures were taken at two different places. However, if I’m to guess the proximity of Changyeongru to notable or even famous temples in the area, the only one that sticks out is Bogwangsa Temple (Bo gwang sa). The temple is only 2.9 kilometres away from Changyeongru pavilion, and it takes 13 minutes by car. A look at the main hall at modern day Bogwangsa Temple in Cheongsong, Gyeongsangbuk-do. Here’s a little history on the temple. It was built in the 7th century by the famous monk Uisang-daesa, who is a leading figure in Korean Buddhism. In the second picture that you sent me, it’s probably a main altar inside of the main hall. Sitting on the main altar, in the centre, is Amita-bul (The Buddha of the Western Paradise ). An amazing look into Korea's past. This is possibly the main altar at Bogwangsa Temple during the Korean War with Amita-bul (The Buddha of the Western Paradise) in the centre of the triad. I hope that helps you in knowing more about your father’s service. Sincerely, Dale.” G. was extremely happy that I was able to identify the pictures his father had taken some 60 years ago in a Korea that is barely recognizable to modern day Koreans. Perhaps his father didn’t even know the places he had travelled and the places he had taken pictures of so long ago. I asked G. to share his story to which he agreed. I’m glad he did because it’s a really unique story about how much foreign powers helped Korea, as well as to show just how much Korea has been able to pull itself up “by its bootstraps” to become the beautiful and modern country it is today.Log in
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House of Sharing 나눔의 집
This past Sunday I had the humbling and amazing opportunity to visit the House of Sharing in Gwangju, Gyeonggi-do province, about 45 minutes from Seoul. The House of Sharing is both a museum and home to former “Comfort Women” – survivors of sexual slavery at the hands of the Japanese military during the Asia-Pacific War (1932-1945). It is the world’s first human rights museum centered on the theme of sexual slavery.
Eight of these women live in the house today. They are called the halmonis (할머니), or grandmothers. During World War Two, they were what many called wee-an-bu (위안부) or “comfort women”, 200,000 of the girls and young women from all across Asia who were taken by the Japanese to work as sex slaves.
The term “comfort women” is obviously a euphemism used by the perpetrators in order to lessen the horrific reality of the situation. The official name for these women is ”Women drafted for military sexual slavery by Japan” or Cheong Sin Dae 정신대.
A bronze statue that represents what these women would have wanted from their life at the time – she wears a traditional marriage crown, on her right is a suitor and on her left is a family. The waves symbolize prosperity in childbirth. Across from the first bronze statue, a second one reflects the juxtaposition of their reality – bayonets rise from a Chrysanthemum flower (the official flower of Japan) and pierce her, ripping through the traditional Korean hanbok, falling doves reflect fallen hope while her right hand drops the rose of sharon (the official flower of Korea).Location of the Japanese Military “Comfort Stations” The First One
In 1990, amid rumors of sexual slavery by the Armed Forces before and during World War II, a Japanese official spoke at a session of the Japanese Diet. He denied any governmental involvement with the recruitment of comfort women. He denied the forced abduction of these women, claiming they were never forced against their will. The outright denial of what had happened finally provoked one woman to speak out, Kim Hak Soon 김학순.
She was born in old Manchuria, but grew up in Pyongyang. After her father passed away, she was adopted. When Hak Soon was 14 years old, her stepfather enrolled her at The Gisaeng School (an all-girls performing arts school ). It was here that she was sold to a Japanese platoon in Northern China. Eventually she married, and emotionally abused by her husband who repeatedly insulted her for the life she had had. His death and the 1990′s denial by Japan pushed her to submit an official testimony. She protested until her death in December of 1997.
“I was born as a woman but never lived as a woman….I suffer from a bitterness I do not know how to overcome. I only want to ask the Japanese government not to go to war again. I feel sick when I am close to a man. Not just Japanese men but all men–even my own husband, who saved me from the brothel–have made me feel this way. I shiver when I see the Japanese flag. Because it carried that flag, I hated the airplane I took to come to Japan. I’ve kept trying to disclose the facts….Why should I feel ashamed? I don’t have to feel ashamed.”
The last painting Kim Hak Soon vowed to make before her death, “Punish Those Responsible”.
The Protests
The Japanese government set up the Asia Women’s Fund in 1995 to compensate some comfort women, but it established the fund with private donations, not public money. Many of the survivors refused the “unofficial” offering. The following is a list of their demands:
7 Demands to the Japanese Government- Admit the drafting of Japanese military comfort women
- Make an official apology
- Reveal the truth about the crime and reveal all official documents
- Erect memorial tablets for the victims
- Pay restitution to the victims or their families
- Teach the truth in schools so that the same crime is not repeated
- Punish the war criminals
The Netherlands prosecuted some of the soldiers who had captured 35 Dutch women during World War II when the Japanese Army overran Dutch colonies in Asia. Those responsible were sentenced to prison. The Japanese government officially apologized for these women only.
The Korean Government ignored the sex-slavery issue in 1965 when it negotiated a treaty with Japan which settled other grievances due to war damage and colonialism. Interestingly enough, it was also mentioned during the tour that perhaps a reason the Korean government has not done more for these women is because they themselves have crossed that line – comfort stations were a reality during the Korean War.
Shortly after the war, the U.S. Government appears to have had knowledge of various Japanese war atrocities. They were aware that the Unit 731 biological warfare lab conducted experiments on human beings and “against entire populations and was responsible for anywhere from 3,000 to 200,000 deaths.” 7 The unit’s commanders were given amnesty in return for access to their research records. [Source]
Specifically, following WWII, the primary interest of the United States was to rebuild Japan into a strong ecopower to help in the Cold War fight against communism. Even as late as 2001, Washington actively opposed a class-action lawsuit filed in the U.S. by former comfort women demanding redress from Japan. [Source]
My ThoughtsIt was a lot to take in as I walked through the dark displays and cringed every time my boots clicked agains the purposely placed wooden floor. The questions that came to mind were:
- What were the responses of US and United Nations both at the time and presently?
- Has this issue become a platform for other groups to open the door of discussion to the current issues of sex slavery in Korea?
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What Really Happened to Robert Park in North Korea and Who Knows?
By John M. Rodgers
When 28-year-old Korean-American Robert Park crossed the frozen Tumen River that divides China and North Korea on Christmas Day 2009 somewhere near the northeastern North Korean city of Hoeryong, he carried a Bible and a few letters demanding that then-leader Kim Jong-il close all prison camps, release all prisoners and step down.
Robert Park before he walked into North Korea.
Just days earlier, Park told Reuters in an interview he requested be run after he’d entered the North, “My demand is that I do not want to be released. I don’t want President Obama to come and pay to get me out. But I want the North Korean people to be free. Until the concentration camps are liberated, I do not want to come out. If I have to die with them, I will…. And if he (Kim Jong-il) kills me, in a sense, I realize this is better. Then the governments of the world will become more prone to say something, and more embarrassed and more forced to make a statement.” Die he did not—he was released 43 days later on February 6—but what happened to him may have been a worse evil than death.
Park’s repeated hospitalizations in psychiatric hospitals and attempts to take his own life reveal a haunted and troubled young man. Yet the details of what happened to Park at the hands of the North remain mostly nebulous. In October of 2010, he told South Korean broadcaster KBS:
“The scars and wounds of the things that happened to me in North Korea are too intense,” he said. He added that to prevent him from divulging the details of his detention, the security forces carried out humiliating sexual torture. “As a result of what happened to me in North Korea, I’ve thrown away any kind of personal desire. I will never, you know, be able to have a marriage or any kind of relationship.” Allusions to torture and sexual abuse have repeatedly been made in interviews with or statements by Park since that release which the North said came as a result of its decision “to leniently forgive and release him, taking his admission and sincere repentance of his wrong doings into consideration.”
Whatever leniency the North provided, Parks statement that “What I have seen and heard [in North Korea] convinced me that I misunderstood it. So I seriously repent of the wrong I committed, taken in by the West’s false propaganda,” was clearly coerced, dictated and simply a way for him to escape North Korea’s macabre machine.
Park, an ordained missionary and human rights activist from Arizona, has since returned to South Korea and is continuing to call for justice for North Koreans. Op-eds by Park in the Washington Post (April 2011) and another in the Harvard International Review (December 2011) articulately present the plight of North Koreans and demand international action.
Just the Facts?
But despite all of this and the passing of two years, people have continued to wonder what it is Park went through during his 43 days inside North Korea. So when South Korea’s leading news service, Yonhap, published a story on February 8 with extensive details about Park’s experiences—supposedly straight from his mouth—it seemed Park had broken his silence and gone through a cathartic spell. The specifics were graphic and grim with things like “’Several North Korean women surrounded me and did the worst thing to me to try to make me commit suicide,’ the 31-year-old said in a recent interview with Yonhap News Agency. He claimed the women laughed at him in a brightly illuminated room as they beat his genitals repeatedly with a club to “make me not to have a baby and get married forever.” He claimed the women laughed at him in a brightly illuminated room as they beat his genitals repeatedly with a club to ‘make me not to have a baby and get married forever,’” “’I am not a man,’ he said as he sobbed, suggesting he has lost the ability to perform sexually,” and “’I can be liberated from the trauma only through death,’ he said, adding that North Korea committed acts he chooses not to disclose in public due to the shame and the humiliation they would bring.”
North Korean women with clubs beating his genitals? No longer a man? Liberated only through death? The article further claims Park opened up to “let the world how bad North Korea is and to persuade others to support an end to decades of human rights abuses in the North.” That paragraph is followed by a quote from Park saying, “I can say details of torture to lawyers and in a court of law.” However, these are details and rather vivid ones at that.
A more recent picture of Park during a protest.
Subsequent to the publishing of the Yonhap story came an article in Asia Times on February 11 from veteran journalist Donald Kirk highlighting Park’s furor over the publication of the Yonhap piece. Park calls it a “fabrication” and tells Kirk he demanded a retraction. Additionally, he accuses Yonhap of “corruption” for running the story and Kirk describes him as “near-suicidal again as a result of the article.” Park also tells Kirk he “never met the reporter who wrote the article.”
In response to questions about Park’s claims, the Yonhap reporter began, “I have many things to say re the article and Park, but I cannot tell u more because Park and I try to resolve the dispute over the article.” Thus a dispute was underway. In an email from Park to apparent members of Yonhap staff on February 9 obtained by 3WM, Park writes,
“You asked for my permission on the article. I refused. I sent three emails saying specifically I don’t permit for the article to be published.
Number one you never conducted a direct interview with me to get those quotes. I did not say those words to you directly.
Please retract the article and issue an apology.”
An additional inquiry to the author of the article was responded to with a reference to an advisory Yonhap posted regarding the dispute which reads:
SEOUL, Feb. 17 (Yonhap) — In a Feb. 8 story about Korean-American missionary Robert Park’s plan to sue North Korea over his sexual torture, Yonhap News Agency reported that Park made comments on the torture in an interview with Yonhap.
Yonhap had a face-to-face interview with Park in January, but it didn’t have another interview for the Feb. 8 story.
Yonhap quoted Park on the basis of an account provided by a person who attended the January interview, and showed the article to Park ahead of publication and obtained his confirmation, though he later asked that the story not be published.
An account “provided” by a “person” who “attended” the interview? Would that be a Yonhap journalist, the author of the article? “Showed,” “confirmation”—what is implied there? And what does “later” mean? If Yonhap was aiming for ambiguity, they succeeded. Clearly, Park’s request for an apology and retraction got short shrift. All attempts to reach Park failed and the Yonhap journalist ceased communication.
Out of the Blue and into the Black
Then on Saturday, February 18, at 2 p.m., activists and citizens gathered across the street from the Chinese Embassy in northern Seoul to ask for the release of some 30 North Korean defectors who are currently in the custody of Chinese authorities. This is directly connected to Park’s mission and he was to be there. The blustery afternoon saw some five police officers to each activist–less than 50 were in attendance–with more than ten police buses lining the streets around the embassy (three buses sat bumper to bumper in front of the embassy). But Park was not among the crowd and as the media swarmed around the scene—the AP, Reuters, YTN, KBS—it was clear people were waiting for him.
After the one-hour demonstration ended and the #Savemyfriend campaign—the group has a petition online and a Twitter page—was put out, David Kim, a recent Korean college graduate who joined the campaign because a friend’s sister is among the refugees in limbo in China, said Park was, “fluctuating” and couldn’t be reached. Reportedly, after attending the event, Park was set to start a hunger strike for the North Koreans. All of this and any further response to the Yonhap article halted without response. What Park went through in the North, what he is going through now and how Yonhap pieced together the article all remain a mystery. Perhaps journalist Donald Kirk said it best when he advised Park: “I reminded him he could do nothing about North Korea if he weren’t around to conduct his campaign. I also urged him to ‘forget the Yonhap story,’ telling him, ‘It doesn’t matter what they say, it’s what you think and know that counts.’” Nevertheless, it may be what he knows that won’t leave him alone two years after the North put him through hell.
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The Bright Side of SMOE English Teacher Layoffs
By Achilles
“I don’t like teaching English!” said “Sally” to the class. “Matt” said the same. And then “Lisa.” And so it continued for an entire week.
Korean middle and high school English teachers from the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) might be the most miserable people on the peninsula.
The big news for expats recently is the forthcoming move to cut hundreds of native English teachers from secondary schools here in Seoul. SMOE officials have cited budgetary issues coupled with “research” “showing” that having a native English teacher does little to improve English language skills in secondary students, as reasons for the shift in policy.
When this story broke, I was merely a semi-curious outsider. I have never taught in an SMOE school. And to the best of my knowledge I don’t have a friend who’s losing his/her job. I don’t have kin enrolled in an SMOE school. I do have an interest in education research and policy (I can’t read Hangul so I wasn’t about to go looking over the numbers). Overall my initial thoughts were two-fold:
1. From a policy standpoint, native English teacher market saturation makes it very easy for policy makers to cut teachers willy-nilly, because when the trend does swing back the other way, there will still be plenty of native speakers around to fill the void.
2. The Seoul citizenry that wanted to give 100% of its students free lunch last fall–because they have zero concept ofbig-picture city-wide budgetary consequences–have their first “victory”. I guess. Congrats bellwethers of “democracy.”
So that was that. The policy was made. The “research” trumpeted. Life moves on. I had nothing to add until a few weeks ago when I was outsourced to teach 60 authentic Korean SMOE middle and high school English teachers.
A third-party language outfit owned by an “ambitious” Korean (who probably spent six high school months in Buffalo, thus the assumed expertise) contracted me to teach a course on using drama in the secondary language classroom. I have been teaching for twelve years, and I have a strong theater background so I took on the class with relative optimism. I was scheduled to teach four different classes. Each would be three hours long. Each filled with 15 Korean teachers of English employed by SMOE.
Now for my “research” conclusions:
The good: attendance was fantastic, they chose mostly normal English names (save for Ocean), and a handful of them seemed above average in terms of niceness.
The bad: their collective English level was atrocious, they had very little concept of lesson planning or pedagogical language, they took less notes and asked less questions than a group of medicated seniors from a Daytona Beach high school.
The ugly: they didn’t like teaching English. Many said it (some several times in three hours). A large majority showed it consistently. And laughed about it. Many of them were women (of all ages) who plainly stated (some after 15-20 years of “teaching”) that they had no idea why they had become English teachers in the first place. “Sally,” “Jeremy,” “Amy,” “Lisa,” “Dan.” An army of people who hated their jobs. Yes, there was the culturally expected obligatory respect shown to me for my time, but as far as respect for teaching as a profession…next to none. And as far as respect toward their students…well if you harbor authentic distaste for what you do, I’ll go ahead and assume that your students can smell that from a mile away.
Maybe I had a bad batch? Maybe I caught them at a bad time? Maybe teaching English to Korean students doesn’t really matter anyway? I don’t know.
But to those native English teachers affected by the new SMOE policy I’d say this: You’re better off.
_________________________________________________________
Achilles has been a teacher for 12 years. He has lived in Korea for 5. He likes reading.
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17 Best Pinboards to follow on Pinterest if you love Korea
Pinterest is now the new social media tool in the league of Facebook, Flickr that can keep you hooked for minutes if not hours. And with so many users creating interesting pinboards it has become easier to explore, inspire, share and discover new aspects about your hobbies and interests. Since South Korea is in the list of must-visit places for lovers of Korean Culture it is obvious that one should follow some interesting pinboards about Korea.
Presenting below are the best 21 pinboards, which covers everything from Life in Korea, Places to Visit, K-Pop, Hallyu, Korean Fashion, Seoul and every other aspect of Korea. You can click the images below to view the pins (tip: right-click and select open in new window / tab).
Korean Love by Amber Matzke
Ambe Matzke’s pinboard spans across every aspect of Life in Korea and Korean Culture. Her pins covers Korean Food, Places in South Korea, Korean Fashion, Korean Kids, Korean Art, K-POP and Korean Celebrities.
Hallyu by Kixvix
Hallyu is the Korean Wave which took Korean Entertainment to a new level when it got popular not just in Korea but in neighboring countries like Japan, China, Malaysia, Phillipines, Thailand and many others. Hallyu was one of the reason which gave a boost to Korean Tourism coz people from all over the world started visiting Korea to get a slice of life in Korea and Korean celebrity-hood.
All About Korea and Korea Fashion by Kasia Kasinska
Kasia Kasinka is in love with Asian Culture specially Korean and Japan. She has an amazing collection of pinboards related to fashion, interiors, style, music, movies, furniture, food and designs from Korea.
Heart & Seoul by Nora Hexter
Heart & Seoul is about Nora and Jaemin a cute couple from New York and their love for Korea.
Korean by Carly
Korean Pinboard by Carly is about Korean Actors, Singers and some cute kids. Well I believe the title of the pinboard is misleading. It should me Korean Men because it’s just about Korean Boys, Korean Men, Korean Guys, Korean Lads, Korean Male Celebrities… over 500 plus of them. Lucky for you gals..
Travel Seoul Korea by Earl Kaka
In this pinboard you will find interesting pictures of architecture, art and interior decoration in Seoul.
Korea 3 by Hailey Rile
Another pinboard full of Korean Boys and a bit of Korea.
South-Korea by Lin Hong
Lin Hong is from China and he is on a mission to travel and visit all the places across the world including South Korea.
K.. POP by Om K
Now there is something for guys too.. KPOP celebrities but all gals.
Soul Seoul by Susan Park
Susan Park’s pinboard is about her nostalgia, her love and everything that she is missing about her city – Seoul.
KPOP 3 by Anthonia Yeo
You can either love them or hate them but just cannot ignore them if you are in Korea.
Places To Go in South Korea by Lindsay Jordan
Lindsay has managed to put together a decent list of places to visit if you are in Korea.
The Korea Guide Pins
And last but not the least.. or should we say bonus pinboards from – The Korea Guide – that you should follow.
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The Seoul Metro Project
What do you get when you mix 17 photographers, copious amounts of coffee and over 400 subway stations?
The Seoul Metro Project!
The Seoul Metro Project is a collaborative effort between 17 members of the Seoul Photo Club which photo documents over 400 stops comprising Seoul’s subway system. The club has been working on this project for years…literally. With all collaborative artworks, group commitment and solidity can sometimes have surface issues; however, the dedicated artists pulled through and realized none of the hiccups along the way could prevent this project from materializing.
The overall theme of the of the project is difference, “a term coined by the philosopher Jacques Derrida to combine two senses of the French verb differer (to differ, and to defer or postpone) in a noun which is spelt differently from difference but pronounced in the same way. The point of this neologism is to indicate simultaneously two senses in which language denies us the full presence of any meaning: first, that no linguistic element has a positive meaning, only an effect of meaning arising from its differences from other elements; second, that presence or fullness of meaning is always deferred from one sign to another in an endless sequence.”(Parker Pg.1, The Seoul Metro Project)
In addition to photographing assigned stations, each photographer submitted a first-person narrative about their experiences within the metro. Below, I have shared some quotes from a few of the contributing photographers’ written submissions:
“I do not fully understand the kindness of strangers, why someone would strike up a casual conversation with me simply for the joy of it or why someone would offer to show me a part of their country I have never seen, a place they are proud of, despite having only just met me and understanding little of who I am or where I am from.” – Flash Parker
“The interaction or sometimes conspicuous lack of interaction between people on the metro is fascinating. Vendors, passengers, buskers alike crowd the metro station, all interacting – or not interacting – en masse, day in and day out.” – Andrew Leonard
“Shortly thereafter, the ever-louder ‘clack-clack’clack’ of a cane being struck against the concrete announced the return of her husband, for whom she had evidently been patiently waiting. In reply, and I suppose to signal to him her location, she rapped her own cane loudly on the ground a few times. Reunited, the two boarded the next train.” – Sam Wigginton
“I was told once that at rush hour in Seoul, close to a million people would be underground riding the rails. I was also surprised to see that although there are so many people down below, none really interacted; most were lost in their own little world.” – Joe Tursi
“From kooky bargains like the five-disl collection of “Classic American Rock Songs” (abounding with tracks from the Swedish band Abba), to the ultimate amalgamation of form & function in the pink jagged piece of plastic that removes glogged hair from a sink pipe, we found many rides worth of entertaining merchandise.” – Aaron Brown
“If one is prepared and aware, the Orange Line can transcend a simple transit between points A and B, and become a journey between points in architecture, time, and culture.” – Aaron Raisey
“Picture the color of your bed, the paint on your walls and the sound of the unbalanced ceiling fan that lulled you to sleep. Some of these old details may be a little hazy but if you think hard enough you can recall everything. Details are the building blocks of our memories.” – Colin Roohan
“Hundreds of stations spanning three provinces, millions of eyes, a single goal: the desire to transpose. All of this boils down to a simple experience; anonymity in a cavernous expanse. This is the Seoul Subway.” – Dylan Goldby
“I find being the outsider gives me a unique perspective; it lets me strike out on my own. I’ve often been a person who has done things differently to others in life; this has sometimes given me a unique perspective in photography, and on life.” – Simon Bond
“It is a familiar yet easily formed metaphor; the subway is the circulatory system of a city. Effortlessly pulsating just below the steel and concrete skin.” – Jacob McEndollar
“In/out, up/down, curved/straight, at rest/in motion – these dichotomies are always at play in the subway.” – Anthony Dell’Ario
“You will also notice so much character in the people around you. It was an eye opening reminder that there are good photographs everywhere – you don’t always need to go to some elaborate place to take compelling pictures.” – Brian Keathley
“To me, during the days I spent riding its rails and exploring its stations, Gyeongui came to represent solitude, peace, and a time for introspection.” – Jesse Lord
The link below will take you to MagCloud, where you can order a printed or digital version of The Seoul Metro Project. I hope that you appreciate our work and share it with others.
The Korea Guide Tip:
When you visit the link above, make sure you click on the book cover to browse all the 208 pages of this book.
About the Author
Colin Roohan began his career as a photographer 3 years ago in Seoul, Korea. Since then he has traveled the globe, searching for inspiration and documenting his experiences with travel, culture and lifestyle. His images and words have been published in AFAR Magazine, Groove Magazine and The Korean Herald.
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K-Pop: A Secret Weapon of Korea for Future Cultural Domination?
“Gee, gee, gee, gee, babe, babe, babe, babe.” What does it sound like?
It is a “hook” by an idol girl group who fascinated more than 65 million viewers on YouTube. And the list goes on. There are many other Korean pop groups who have millions of followers or fans around the world: Girls’ Generation, Wonder Girls, KARA, TVXQ, 2NE1, SHINee, 2PM, you just name it.
American pop music industry, beware! Like a pied piper, these idol groups from Korea are captivating fans in North America. For the sold-out concert at the Madison Square Garden in NYC, tens of thousands of star-struck teenybopper-comrades across the country — even from Canada and Mexico — to be mesmerized by the glittering and flashy idol bands from Korea.
Paige from Detroit burst into tears as one boy band was going to the army. Monica came from Mexico, making her friends jealous. You think that’s hardcore? Two brothers from Canada drove non-stop for 36 hours. Dora from Colorado missed two days of school, one to buy the ticket online, and the other for the concert. From Asia to NYC, to flash-mobs in Paris and Istanbul, global K-Pop seems to be afoot.
The International Business Times on February 4, 2012, states, “The catchy and energetic songs are making inroads in the United States… ” like the recent performances on American television (such as CBS’ Letterman Show and ABC’s Live! With Kelly) and Billboards launching a top 100 chart for Korean Pop… also, Turkish tweeters dwarfed Katy Perry by overwhelmingly demanding ‘Turkey Wants KPop.’
As America has been the leader of the world, its pop music industry has held its kingship in the global entertainment industry. Iconic stars like Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Beyoncé and many others thrilled audiences in the world throughout the past decades. Again Madonna’s performance as a Pharaoh at the Super Bowl XLVI evidences how American pop stands out in the world as an empire. Back then, school boys in Korea, like me, had to remember constantly the changing names on America’s Billboard Hot 100.
And now, what is happening? The Wall Street Journal recently posted an article about the Korean pop saying that these groups “aren’t just a random act of globalization. They are the secret weapon in Korea’s next push for worldwide youth-culture domination.”
Are these Korean pop groups really Korea’s secret weapon?
The U.S. has long believed that it would lead the world, partly thanks to its overwhelming “soft power,” probably with pop culture at its forefront.
However, as the world becomes more and more “flat,” per se, exchanges and communications become astonishingly bidirectional. And hybrid products are born through this bidirectional “flattening,” process as you easily find in all manufactured and cultural products.
Case in point, great successes and recognitions built on the world stage by Yo-Yo Ma, Lang Lang of Chinese descent, Japan’s Seiji Ozawa and Kyung Wha Chung of South Korea demonstrates how classical musicians from Asia have been transcending nationalities, through a blend of Western tradition, Asian talents and their own investments.
Let us examine this unfolding new environment: the new generation of the globe equipped with new outlets of technologies is exposed to millions of choices in the sea of web. They can freely select their menus from the vast global resources, and their appetites cannot be fixed. So too are the global availabilities of resources from the producers’ point of view. The sensational surge of K-pop is another product of phenomenal application of interface and interfusion, making “Certificate of Origin Criteria” difficult.
As universal sources come into play in making Apple iPhones or Samsung products, Korean entertainment producers are smart enough to know how to blend ingredients for universal attraction. Best and innovative choreographers, song writers, and skilled musicians from the U.S., Europe and other parts of the world join the production, highlighting the talents and beauties of artists. Even some artists are recruited from the U.S., China, Thailand and elsewhere.
And, within a single song, the singers easily switch from using Korean and English — back and forth, even in mid-sentence — so that English speaking listeners, too, quickly share the same feelings. K-pop artists are extraordinarily good at presenting a mix of music and exhilarating dance in multiple languages wherever they go; thus, inviting fans to get excited and react.
Yes, we should admit that the appetites of the new generations across the globe are transient, unreliable and even capricious. But, what is truer is that they are more ready to interface with each other. Therefore, pop culture is speedily eroding boundaries of nations, as any multinational companies do.
The New York Daily News on October 23, 2011, asserted that Korean pop music “has become an alternative for audiences bored with the current top-100 charts.” It further added by quoting MTV World’s general manager, Nusrat Durrani, “Look at American Pop music today — it’s great, it’s very high-quality, but there is a sameness to it. The visual vocabulary of [Korean] music is completely different…This is, wow, David Bowie in the Ziggy Stardust period — but South Korean. Why should pop music be only American-dominated?”
The newly bred pop music that Korea presents can no longer be a secret weapon, anyway; it is too well-known now. But, can anyone complain about a chef who provides a fancy-looking hybrid menu?
Written by Young-mok Kim. This article originally appeared on The Huffington Post, and was republished with the author’s permission.
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Since August 2010, Ambassador Young-mok Kim has been serving as the Consul General of the Republic of Korea in New York. As Consul General, Kim seeks to promote trade and investment between Korea and the United States, spearhead activities for the Korean American community, and position New York City as a spring board for the Korean Wave.
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Jeremy Lin
A few days ago the internet was chattering with the most remarkable news: a stereotype was misbehaving! An Asian was cleaning up on multiple basketball courts, surrounded on all sides and at all times by gigantic, powerful black people—their muscles like pistons, their hearts threatening to burst, as they thundered back and forth along the court, as though each was John Henry reborn! What the hell was going on here? Had the gods of the races lost their minds? Would a man in a mustache and a sombrero put down his acoustic guitar, step away from his mariachi band, and form a Silicon Valley startup? Would a woman in a black beekeeper’s burka go on national television and ask how short skirts and bare cleavage equal female liberation, exactly? Would The Autobiography of Malcolm X slip out of Donald Trump’s business suit by accident? Would a man with dreadlocks finally formulate a proper theory of quantum gravity?
I have a confession to make. I try to care about sports. It is the artist’s duty to find the beauty in everything (even the nape of Rick Santorum’s succulent neck), regardless of how Sun Tzu (or apparently Frederick the Great) says that when you defend everything you defend nothing. But seriously. Even when everyone here was going apeshit over the world cup with Japan—if you sat by a quiet window on one of those summer nights, you could hear the entire city of Busan screaming from every building, every bar and restaurant, in unison, like a chanting choir in a church made of skyscrapers and high-rises—I would try to join in the festivities, and I would look at the giant green screen before me fraught with dashing soccer players, and I would just zone out. I couldn’t help it. Everyone else was jumping and shouting, but I was turning over something I’d read that day despite myself. I cannot escape who I am. I like playing, even though I suck, but watching bores me to tears.
I didn’t know too many Asians before I came to Korea, and though I counted (and continue to count) a half-Indian and an Iranian as my closest friends—each of us has a different heritage but we are all full-blooded Americans; we don’t really notice that we belong to different tribes, it doesn’t matter—I had never gotten too close to anyone whose ancestors were from China, Korea, or Japan. There was Wataru and someone else who was named something like Yoomoo in kindergarten, and Xi from high school, and a friend of a girl I was after in college, and a few people in the background, but nobody really too close. No one close enough to destroy the stereotype of the zealously hardworking Asian, the perfectly robotic, uncreative, uncharismatic, hopelessly single straight-A student who will never be in charge of anyone…
…no one, that is, except for my friend Jacqueline, who is Asian, though I honestly never noticed, anymore than 99% of my friends and acquaintances noticed that my father comes from a family of secular Jews…
But anyway, then I came to Korea, to Busan, and one day I found myself walking around in the subway station under the Sports Complex, one of several stadiums in the city where Asians of all stripes regularly play baseball and basketball before legions of adoring fans. On the walls in the station there were life-size pictures of many of the players. I’m not going to lie here, but when I saw those pictures, and when I saw those guys playing on TV, I disdained them, not necessarily because they were Asian, but because I thought (possibly correctly) that the best players would have left for America at the first opportunity. There were some black players mixed in among them, and you can bet that (as with nearly everyone who comes to Korea), this country was not their first choice.
I’m a snob. I disdain. I also disdained and continue to disdain the pop bands, the singers, most of the actors and filmmakers, all of the comedians (how many foreigners have even cracked so much as a smile when watching a Korean comedy show?), the politicians (each rotten and corrupt to the core), even the writers (like Kim Jong Il-loving Gong Ji Young) and poets, regardless of the fact that my wife just told someone on the phone that my level of Korean is somewhere between beginner and intermediate.
Always, I thought, if these people were really remarkable, they would be famous in America. Even the warriors and kings from the country’s history seemed mediocre to me. The guy who invented the Korean alphabet, Korea’s favorite king, a one Mister Sejong, achieved this feat roughly five centuries after two Byzantine scholars named Cyril and Methodius gave what we now know as Cyrillic to the Bulgarians. Yi Sun Shin’s naval achievements are definitely astounding, but how do they compare with Alexander or Hannibal or Napoleon?
Although the media here would have the locals believe that people like Kim Yeona, Rain, and the members of The Wondergirls are world-famous, and that every American child adores Pororo, and that every American mother is using a podaegi, the only Korean who has ever gained household prominence outside of this peninsula is named Kim Jong Il.
It seemed to me that the Koreans who adored these Korean celebrities would not really give a damn if they themselves were not Korean. The Korean Wave has made some of them famous throughout Asia, but answer me this: if Asians were regularly starring in TV shows and movies in America, if Asians were not being victimized by their stereotype, if they were playing basketball and baseball and singing and dancing and marching and signing bills into law just as much as whites or blacks or anyone else, do you really think the Korean Wave would stand a chance inside or outside this peninsula? I’m not saying that Rain can’t dance, but if the man had a twin brother in America, and if that twin managed to ascend to the very top of the American pecking order against the likes of the successors of Michael Jackson, who would be more famous? Rain would be in a silver suit and a pink tie, selling cell phones out on the sidewalk, no question about it. The Korean Wave exists because Asians do not have an attractive place in American popular culture. These “World Stars” are definitely talented, but, like me, not that talented.
There’s a lot of protectionism going on in this country. The currency is kept artificially low. Foreign cars and electronics have almost no hope of competing against Korean ones inside Korea. The same supposedly goes for celebrities. But Jeremy Lin may just be the first nail in the coffin of the Korean Wave—he represents Asians all over America, he is playing against the very best in the world, and as a result of what are apparently remarkable achievements, he is proving to even the most skeptical racists that Asians are individuals, like anyone else, and that it’s high time America stopped worrying about the Yellow Peril, and learned to embrace it.
The first Asian-American president is not so far away as everyone believes. In fact, he turned eight months old just over a week ago.
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National Folk Museum of Korea
We finally got around to visiting the National Folk Museum of Korea. We had no problem getting there because it's in the grounds of the Gyeongbokgung Palace. We had heard that it was free but found that information wasn't entirely correct. Yes, the museum is free but the only way to get to it was to spend 1500 WON to enter the palace.
We looked and looked for signs to the museum and Rocketman caught pointed out this hat to me. I think he really liked it but I was afraid to ask.
We asked at the Information Booth and they pointed straight ahead. We walked and walked, taking pictures along the way.
It was freezing cold and we still had no idea where we were going. We asked again and were pointed to the right.
Finally, we found it. These are the zodiaks.
I wanted to get a nice shot of the front of the building but this woman would NOT stop posing. We were freezing and she saw us waiting but she wanted an array of pictures with assorted poses so I went ahead and just took a picture.
This is a marriage room. I was so excited as soon as we entered the building.
We saw lots of Korean crafts from bojagi to chasu and maedeup.
Korean thimbles.
We even found some hanji.
These are molds for rice cakes. There were so cool.
More hanji.
They even had Korean rooms for different decades to show what people would have had in their homes.
We had a great time. Rocketman even enjoyed it. If you want to see the heart and soul of the Korean people, this is a must see. The one strange thing we encountered was there was a staff member outside the entrance of the museum who wanted to see our ticket before we were allowed to leave (not enter). If it was truly free, I questioned the need to see our ticket and why upon leaving. We saw others also fumbling to find their tickets.
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Spicy Seafood Noodle Soup, Jjam Ppong, 짬뽕 - Crazy Korean Cooking
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The Korean Look Travels Well in China
By David Wills
During my three years in South Korea, there wasn’t much the locals would say to me about China that wasn’t overwhelmingly negative, bordering on the outright racist. Even the very youngest students would tell me about the “dirty” Chinese, who sit around watching each other defecate, stopping only to eat babies or steal something from Korea. Of course, Korea isn’t exactly a land of open-mindedness and enthusiasm for its neighbours. Even by the standards of Asia – where animosity between nations is commonplace – Korea is notable for its xenophobia, its paranoia, and its sheer contempt for people that look, act, or speak differently to those of the one true bloodline.
Yet it surprised me when I arrived in China and found that the opinion of Chinese people towards Korea and Koreans (and I’ll state now that I’m definitely referring to South Korea, rather than China’s ally up North) was unanimously positive. Now, I can’t pretend to have taken a sampling of the population as a whole, but I have taught in China for a year and a half, and could count more than five hundred people having told me about their fondness for all things Korean.
Of course, there are stereotypes, but these are nearly always positive (or as positive as stereotypes can be): Korean men are handsome and chivalrous, Korean women are cute and feminine, Korean people treat their elders with the utmost respect, and spend every minute of their lives with their families, whom they love and honor and are faithful to…
You might have guessed by now that China’s perception of Korea doesn’t come from any actual experience of real life. It is gleaned almost entirely from Korea’s two big cultural exports – the overly emotional, sugary K-pop song (and the videos that go hand-in-hand), and the ‘melo-dramas’ that are about as artificial, as healthy, and as addictive as crystal meth.
Girls’ Generation – known in China by their Korean name, Sonyeo Shidae – may not be as popular in China as Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, or Eminem, but their hits are ubiquitous and blast from shops, cell phones, and car radios. K-pop shows are all you’ll ever see on the store model of the latest TV, and China’s homegrown “talent” is now comprised largely of K-pop knock-offs. Perhaps the more surprising success is that of Korea’s dramas, which are sweeping Asia more like a tsunami than a wave. Dae Jang Geum – the most popular – is bizarrely taken by a lot of Chinese as near documentary-like coverage of life in Korea, and is the favorite show of stony-faced President, Hu Jintao, who once quipped that he would watch every episode if he wasn’t so busy leading China. The theme song is one of the most popular songs in China right now, and has been covered by numerous Chinese artists, including the winner of China’s Super Girl TV show (which aims to produce China’s answer to a K-pop idol…).
Korean food is popular in China, too, with even the smallest, most provincial cities serving up hansik as a cool and vaguely exotic luxury. Korean electronics and vehicles are seen as being on the cutting edge, albeit a more affordable option than imports from Japan (for which most Chinese share a less enthusiastic opinion). They also have the reputation of being far more reliable than anything with the dreaded “Made in China” label, which is even feared by the average Chinese person. Fashion is a huge import, too. Shops across China sell “cute Korean girl arm warmers”, seemingly unaware that the majority of Korean “girls” who wear these are in fact probably over of the age of sixty, and Chinese girls wear t-shirts with bad Korean written on the front almost as often as Korean girls wear ones with bad English. It’s not just the girls, either. Young Chinese men are preening themselves in pursuit of that modern Korean style, complete with plunging necklines and perfectly coiffed hair.
But there is one more idea that is labeled “Korea” in the mind of almost all Chinese people, and that is cosmetic surgery. In fact, it is fair to say that – above even Girls’ Generation and Dae Jang Geum – it is this that pops into the mind when the word “Korea” is mentioned. I have numerous times told my students that I lived in Korea, and their reply is invariably, “Korea…? Ah yes, surgery!” It’s as though the two words are inseparable.
It’s hardly surprising that this idea would be so prevalent in the mind of people whose exposure to Korean culture pretty much extends to K-pop and TV dramas. The funny thing is, Chinese – along with much of Asia – are in awe of “the Korean look”, referring to big eyes, high cheek-bones, milky white skin, and small, youthful features. Yet, this look is about as Korean as I am. The great irony is that these men and women who define Korea in the modern age are actually trying to Westernize their faces. Through China, Japan, Malaysia, and Thailand, millions of people are worshipping these K-idols as much for their hybridized Western-Eastern features as their music or acting abilities.
It is odd, then, that while Korea tries to spread its culture around the globe, it does so with young actors and singers that are trying hard to look decidedly not very Korean, acting in dramas that are unfaithful to life in Korea, and singing songs that are imitations of Western music… But, then again, Korea is a modern Asian nation, struggling with its new identity. It is what it is, and it’s presenting that new face to the rest of the world with startling success. It is the envy of Asia for the time being – having usurped Japan’s throne as the king of cool – but is it really presenting itself in the best light? And does the average Korean person look anything like their K-pop idols?
Plastic surgery is more common in South Korea than in any other country. It is not generally covered by health insurance, and so it’s difficult to know how many people exactly have undergone procedures, but various studies and reports claim that between twenty and fifty percent of adult women in South Korea have received some kind of treatment, with likely the majority of twentysomethings falling into this category. The most popular treatment is by far and away a form of blepharoplasty, known as the double eye-lid snip, which makes the recipient’s eyes look bigger, followed by operations to enlarge the bridge of the nose. Other popular treatments include breast enhancements, penis-enlargements, butt-implants, liposuction, botox (to atrophy and shrink cheeks, rather than to remove wrinkles), the cutting of nerve in the leg to cure “radish-shaped calves”, and jaw-shaving, to give a thinner, more Western-shaped face. So whilst the average Korean person is born without what is now known as “the Korean look”, there are now plenty of people walking the streets of Seoul with their faces and bodies surgically altered to look like their favorite stars which of course represents the new “Korean Look.”.
Unsurprisingly, with the rest of Asia looking in awe at Korea’s beautiful people, the nation is marketing itself as a destination for surgery. The travel agents who organize trips to Apgujeong in Seoul, where there are more than 400 plastic surgery clinics, call it “the plastic surgery Mecca of Asia”. Some clinics claim to have between 20-30% of their patients come from overseas, thanks in part to recent shifts in the value of the Won. Daegu, too, is selling itself as a “Medical Tourism” city, with the city government’s own website declaring (in various languages, including both simplified and traditional Chinese) that plastic surgery prices are significantly cheaper than in Seoul, and comparing prices with surgery in the United States, Japan, and Singapore. It boasts that, “With the recentHallyu fever… foreigners, especially from countries in Southeast Asia such as China and Thailand, are visiting Daegu for medical procedures.” There is also a convenient link to the Meditour website, which arranges package tours from all over Asia to Daegu.
Is it any wonder, then, that the average Chinese person finds it hard to separate the image of Korea from plastic surgery?
Korea sells itself to its neighbours very carefully. Granted, this is not a decision made by the average person on the street, but instead by the managers and PR people behind acts just like Girls’ Generation and TV shows like Dae Jang Geum. Whether or not political relations between these countries sour, the money and effort that these people invest into tailoring Korean artists (and therefore, by proxy, Korean people as a whole) to countries like China, Japan, Thailand, and Malaysia, ensures that certain stereotypes will, for better or for worse, continue in the minds of the populations of these countries. You can bet that for as long as these stars stay in the limelight throughout Asia, there will be people flying to Seoul and Daegu to have themselves cut to look like their heroes. Thus, for the foreseeable future, Chinese people will continue to think of the average Korean person as a cutesy K-pop idol, who bursts into tears or rage at the slightest provocation, and is comprised mostly of medical-grade silicon.
________________________________________________________________
David on 3WM: http://thethreewisemonkeys.com/2011/10/24/the-dog-farm-a-novel-about-life-in-korea-by-david-s-wills/
David S. Wills is the editor of Beatdom magazine and the once-anonymous blogger behind controversial K-blog, Korean Rum Diary. He spent several years living and working in Daegu, South Korea, where he gained the inspiration for The Dog Farm, his first novel.
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How to Get Justice Korean-style–Cash Only
By Lee Scott
Part 1
November 26, 2011 was a good day for me–at least most of it. I freelance as an illustrator and I had had a busy week. It was Saturday and my family was out of town for the weekend (which allows me to get a tremendous amount of work done). I had just finished up a personal project (an advent calendar for my 3 year old daughter) and decided to go out to Nowon Station to see a friend of mine. He operates a kebab truck near the main culture street and does a brisk business. The weather had just turned cold and I was wearing a pretty heavy leather jacket. I am an imposing figure at 6′ 6″ and really stand out in a crowd of Koreans. My friend was quite busy and I was just standing nearby chatting with him and his employee.
It was a little after midnight when we heard a loud police siren coming. A black minivan came tearing down the street, headed to where we were standing near the kebab truck. The driver was veering toward crowds of people in the pedestrian street and blasting the van’s police siren. We couldn’t understand why the van had a siren or what they were doing. The driver slammed on the brakes right in front of a crowd of young men and women who scattered in a panic. All the while the guy in the passenger seat of the minivan was laughing and shouting imprecations at the pedestrians over a P.A. built into the siren system.
I became incensed by this reckless and dangerous behavior. My friend and I agreed that something ought to be done. The minivan had already disappeared around the corner and we discussed what kind of action we might take. Initially I suggested hiding behind his truck and throwing an empty beer bottle at them if they turned up again. The responsible citizen inside me quickly dismissed this as a kind of revenge fantasy. In a twinkling, I turned from vigilante to crusader as it occured to me that my smart phone had an HD camera. I determined to get the license plate number and as much footage of the shenanigans as possible and then show it to the police and file a social disturbance complaint.
A few minutes later, I would have my chance. I could hear that the minivan was returning; conveniently, they were still blaring their siren. I positioned myself near the corner around which they would be turning and had my camera ready. There was a large crowd of people near me, and all of us were craning to see where the minivan would come from. I stretched out my arm and made sure that I got a clear and steady shot of the front license plate as they came around the corner. I could see that the driver was looking out the side window at the people and the passenger was laughing and shouting into the P.A. mic. I suddenly realized that I was standing too far out from the edge of the street and these guys didn’t see me. I jumped back just as they cruised by but not before their side view mirror clipped my side, spinning me counter clockwise. I held onto my phone and kept my feet and watched as the minivan stopped about 50 feet beyond where I was standing. The brake lights flare for a moment and then the minivan roars off and turns the far corner. People are asking me if I’m OK; there was a street game vendor nearby who had seen everything. He came to talk to me.
Some old lady said something about calling the police. I crossed the street to my friend’s truck. He was busy making a kebab. ”Are you OK, buddy?” he asked me. I said I was, but could he use my phone to call the police. He was just about to when a patrol car rolled around the corner. Someone else had called them. They pulled around by us and got out. They took down some names and numbers of a few people who had seen what happened. Then they asked me to show them the video I had made. It was about 20 seconds, mainly just the license plate number and then me getting hit. You could hear a loud “crunch!” sound as they rolled by (presumably me breaking their mirror). Then you could see them stop and then speed away. The cops were very excited that the license plate was easy to read and perfectly clear.
I had to go with the cops to the local police station. They were both extremely professional and very helpful. I waited outside with one while his partner checked in. Then we went upstairs to the duty room where there were only a couple of plain-clothes police officers since it was already about 2 a.m. The one who seemed to be in charge came over and spoke to me in Korean. My Korean is sometimes spotty (particularly if I’m in a stressful situation), but I was more or less able to outline the basics of what had happened to me. More importantly I was armed with my phone with the video footage. The sergeant (or equivalent) was particularly interested in seeing it. We stood near his desk and he watched my phone’s screen intently as I started the video.
Almost immediately, he asked the tall patrolman, “Why the hell do they have a siren going?”
“I don’t know!” was the reply. To be fair, the patrolman couldn’t know; they hadn’t yet caught the guys.
“Are you OK?” the sergeant asked me. I told him that I thought I was okay, but I had been clipped in the shoulder (probably by the side view mirror) and felt a little bit of stiffness already. I assumed that it would be worse the next day. He told me that I needed to go to the hospital and the two patrolmen would take me there. He also asked me to return with my wife to act as a translator as soon as it could be arranged. We agreed to meet on Tuesday evening.
The patrolman driving the car asked me if there was any hospital I usually go to in the neighborhood. I told him that I had been admitted to Sang-gye Baek Hospital the year before for cancer surgery and they should have me in their system. That’s where we went. The main nurse on duty in the E.R. actually was pretty good at English (I have found that many of the staff in very big hospitals are pretty good at English). They asked me about my general condition and whether I felt any pain, etc. I had to wait for a while and then took several x-rays. The doctor came and asked me morequestions and if I had any specific complaint. ”Only that I’d like to go home,” I replied. They let me go after about an hour and I took a taxi back to Nowon where I had left my bicycle with my friend.
“Some guy came back looking for you,” he said when I came around the corner.
“What? Why?” Suddenly I felt extremely nervous.
Sang-gye Baek Hospital.
“He wanted to know who you were and why you had a camera. I told him that you were videoing him because he was driving like an asshole. ’Why would he do that?’ he asked me. I told him I didn’t know what you were going to do, but that you went to the hospital and with the police. He was really pissed off. He said he’s going to sue you.” This was not something I was happy to hear. I didn’t know if I was actually going to be in trouble or not, but at this point, I was so tired that I just got on my bike and rode home.
The next day, I told my wife about what happened. She was naturally quite concerned and relieved that I didn’t seem to be seriously hurt. I told her about the guy coming back and looking for me. We called my brother-in-law (who is a police officer) and asked him. He said that even if I HAD deliberately tried to jump in front of the car (it was clear in the video that I did not do that), it wouldn’t matter. Just like most places, a hit and run is illegal and pedestrians always have the right of way. The bottom line is don’t run over someone who is walking. I was relieved to hear that this wasn’t going to turn around on me, and on the way to the police station, my wife was incensed. ”I’m going to tell them you just want him prosecuted.” She was of course referring to the possibility that some kind of “blood money” or payoff could be arranged. In many cases like these, where discrete parties are concerned, the whole case can handled privately. The police seem not to care one way or another. ”If he doesn’t seem to be REALLY sorry,” my wife said, “then I think they should just charge him.”
We called the police station when we were on the way. We had to stop by the hospital to pick up the report about my checkup from the night of the accident. The police sergeant told my wife to come as soon as possible since the owner of the car had already come to the station.
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Resident cartoonist and 3WM webmaster Lee Scott occasionally contributes to 3WM.
He is or has been an avid: gamer/reader/writer/designer/cartoonist/developer/hatchet-man/teacher/entrepreneur.
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Notes from Campuchia, The Kingdom of Wonders Part 1
If you've ever been to Korea or talked to someone living here during the winter time, then you know it gets really cold. Sometimes it's all we talk about because sometimes it's all we can think about. Last winter, I found myself escaping to Thailand and volunteered at an orphanage in Chiang Mai. It was an extremely special experience for me and so, this year, I thought I'd do something similar- volunteer to teach English in a rural village of Cambodia with About Asia Schools.
While I once again escaped Korea's torturous winter for a couple weeks, fell in love with a new culture and it's people, made a very dear volunteer friend, and met some of the most beautiful children of the world, the experiences were anything but alike.
For starters, in Thailand I was staying in a volunteer house complete with a shower, flushing toilet, bed, kitchen, and a whole lot of guidance. In Cambodia, myself and Christine, my partner volunteer, stayed with a local family in the tiny village of Prey Chuk. Here we bathed with buckets of water, used a non-flushing squatter toilet, and slept on the ground underneath giant mosquito nets. One night a rat passed through out room, for a couple days a mouse sat at the bottom of out showering pool, we once said goodnight to a giant 2" beatle, we didn't have access to the Internet/a computer, and our only contact with a modern day store was during the weekends when we went into Siem Reap. In terms of western commodities, we were "roughing it."
Still, I wouldn't change a thing. It was perfect in every way. Here, I share with you notes from my nightly journal entries. They are more detailed than those from Thailand, but in a tiny village, I found myself with plenty of time to do so. I also found myself in the midst of a culture operating at a pace that promotes observation, absorption and reflection.Basically journalling heaven.
Enjoy!
12/21- Flight to Guangzhou, China
"I'm going into this adventure with the new understanding that with the majority of problems, there is a window of time in that if you just remain cool, calm and collected, things just work themselves out."
12/22- Guangzhou, China
"I'm blindly shuffled off to a hotel (from the Guangzhou Airport during a 23.5 hour layover). With a language barrier, I follow airport employees whom deliver me and 5 others to an old van. We pile in, myself in the furthest back seat. It's dark, cramped, and the windows quickly steam up creating a misty coat almost too thick to see the giant raindrops trickling down the glass from the outside. 'Where am I?' I ask myself. I wipe off the moisture from a part of the window and try to catch a glimpse of what is China. I spot people on bicycles using umbrellas. Strange."
"At the hotel, a lady behind the front desk tells me, 'You share a room with her (and points to a the girl behind me in line).' I look back and then to the lady and, while the girl looks very non-sketch, ask for my own room. I'm told it's $100 as opposed to free if I do not share. Again, I think, 'What the heck, where am I?' 'On what planet is it okay to force two strangers into a hotel room?'
I decide to just go with it. A free hotel is a free hotel. Of course, I should probably ask the girl how she feels about being roomies. Apparently I'm also non-sketch looking and she's okay with it. 'Sshe' winds up being a girl named Margo from South Africa, also a teacher in South Korea heading for Cambodia. Together, we eat Chinese food, take an elevator up Canton Tower, take a stroll through Yuexiu Park, master the subway system, and find our way to the airport come time to say goodbye to China. I guess strangers are only strangers for as long as you allow them to be. We wind up in adjacent seats on the flight to Cambodia."
First meal in ChinaCanton Tower in Guangzhou
12/22~ In Cambodia
"I feel empowered and unique being part of all this- contributing who I am and what I've done. Here in this little hostel haven are people from all walks of life. I meet two girls from England volunteering in a village nearby mine. They are just back in Siem Reap and staying at Sweet Dreams Guest House for the weekend. They provide lots of insight as to what to expect, something I'm certainly lacking at the moment. They decide they will bike to Prey Chuk (my village) from Sasasadom (their village) during one of the upcoming days for a visit."
Sweet Home Guest House- Family run and the volunteer base for About Asia Schools
12/23-Siem Reap and Prey Chuk, Cambodia
"We (Christine, my partner in volunteering; myself; and Tola, the project coordinator of AboutAsia) arrive at our village this afternoon via tuk-tuk. I had tried googling it prior to coming, but found very little. Now I know why. It's tiny and very, very, very rural- cows passing on the street, everyone knows everyone, no refrigerators, no running water."
Mooooooooo!
"We meet Grandma, the head of our host family and at about 5', with the classic shaven head of a nun (or monk?), and a kind, toothless smile, is quite possible the sweetest thing known to earth. Also staying in the home is her granddaughter, great grandson, and grandson in law. About 20 other relatives and neighbors come and go at different times throughout the day. The great grandson is about 1 years old, pantless, and very much fond of chasing the families mother chicken and 15 little chicks, which roam free across the dirt driveway and neighbors front yards. I can already tell that he will be a major source of entertainment in the weeks to come."
The grandson of the host family and a neighborhood gal
The fam
1/24
"I wake up at about 5am with the sounding of the neighborhood roosters. Eventually I figure out the portable stove and am able to make some instant coffee, which I enjoy on the balcony surrounded by butterflies and tiny birds. The air is cool this morning. I have a view of the road. It's a fairly busy street that cuts through village after village and continues on to Thailand. It would be a long trip, but just knowing that by the end I'd be in Thailand feels surreal. During the day, it still feels quaint as cattle and owners, kids on bikes, pedestians carryng market goods, dogs, pigs, and even chickens pass. By nightfall, it belongs to the motorized vehicles."
Christine in the morning. This is our little attic-like accommodation.
The main road through the village
"I watch from above until I want to be a part of it all. Christine and I get on bikes and ride. Families are outside their houses and almost everyone shouts 'hello!' as we pass. The welcome is nice. Kids giggle as they practice their 'How are you?' and 'What is your name?'"
One of the many surrounding dirt roads
"At 1pm, without lesson plans and not really knowing what to expect, we head to school. We teach a beginner group followed by a more advanced beginner group for a total of three hours. Conditions are very difficult- it's really hot, I'm teaching with a partner volunteer and a Cambodian classroom teacher (partner teaching is always difficult while getting to know one another's teaching styles), we have very few materials, and the student's vocabulary base is a lot less developed than that of my students in Korea. By the end, I wish for heaps of patience, that's all."
Motor bike for three! Christine and I with the Cambodia teacher
Christine and I. Christine and I were partnered to teach in the village. She's originally
from China, but grew up in Australia. She speaks a million different languages and
will soon be studying in Japan for a year. Will see her again :)
1/25
"I can't sit still for long this morning, so I ask Christine to accompany me on a bike ride. We head out on a trail near out village's pagota, one we explored the day before, but in the opposite direction this time. It's a dirt road and people living in the scattered homes alongside are surprised when they see us pass. As the trail gets rougher and rougher, heaps of garbage and debree from the trees force us to stop.
With Christine behind, a lady carrying a baby approaches me, followed by a whole group of people. We communicate using charades, expressions and single words from the Khmer/English dictionary I'm borrowing from the classroom teacher. I try to translate the word 'cute' in reference to the baby, but it turns out the word does not exist in Kmer. I settle on 'pretty.' The lady jokes about giving her to me and I get a little nervous... She then calls her neighbor over, whom it turns out speaks quite a bit of English.
Translation dictionary= story of our lives, At the rice fields
At the age of 31, she is a teacher, unmarried (very uncommon at this age in Cambodia), paying for her brother to attend university, working the rice fields, and also caring for her sisters children. She jokes, "I have two babies and I'm single!" With one of the youngins, a girl about 3, attached to her hip, she invites and leads us to her property. The cool morning temperature is bidding it's farewell, as it's now about 10am. But the peaceful winds of the vast open fields trick us into thinking otherwise. She leads us on a tour and we pass rice patties, and watermelon and mint fields.
We head back to her house past mango and cocnut trees and find a relative of hers preparing palm sugar. We're given leaves to dunk and take a try. It's very tasty, proven as the young extracts glob after glob from the big metal bowl. Nearby, a dog nurses puppies, chickens run free, and colorful clothes hanging on clothes lines flap in the wind. We have to go to make it in time for Grandma's lunch, but we promise to return."
Fresh palm sugar
1/26
"We meet Lucy, the volunteer in Sasasadam, the neighboring village. Her and Kate, her partner volunteer, biked to us a few days ago. Kate has since left for home, so Christine and I thought we'd pay her a visit. The ride is along the the main road, but switches from feeling freeway-esk to village-esk every now and then. People are laboring in the yards and fields to the sides, but many still take the time to say 'hello.' The landscape is unfathomable and in fact, my words cannot do it justice. The sky is bright blue in contrast with the greens of the grass, palm trees, and various other tree species. I look out into the vast fields and try to decide where it is they end, but all I can spot are more and more trees getting smaller and smaller until they look like miniatures in a painting or some other scaled down piece of art.
In Sasasadam, we find Lucy at her home. A group of kids are hanging out on her balcony, coloring in workbooks she's given them. I love how low key it is. Students show up at their teachers house and it's perfectly normal. Eventually, we bid them a farewell and head off to the local market and pagota (it seems every village has one of each)."
Kids from Sasasadam Village, neighboring Prey Chuk
Sasasadam Market
"After classes, a girl slips me a red Chinese New Year envelope and says, "Not money, open!" It's a lovely picture she's drawn of me. She then asks if I'll play a game with her and motions for me to follow her outside the classroom. Christine, myself, her, and about 8 other students hang around the school and color for a bit. We then head home, but wind up stopping at the pagoda where the children lace Christine and my hair with pastel shades of flowers and insist on taking pictures. During our hour at the pagoda, I feel more free than I have since I've gotten here."
At the Prey Chuk Pagoda
Boy and Cow at the Pagoda
She saw me photograph the boy and wanted hers done as well.
"It feels absolutely wonderful stripping down to the necessities. One just doesn't need much the things the western world convinces us we do. I'm really happy living simply. It feels like me, like this is natural."
1/27
"I wake up this morning at about 5am. I look to one of the windows in our attic-like portion of the house and see little sign of light. Just four hours prior, I had gone outside to pee in the bushes. The only toilet, which is a non-flush squatter by the way, is in the families downstairs area and they were all asleep. Music is blaring from what seems to be a loud speaker in the neighbors tree or yard. The muffled, yet extremely loud Cambodian music fills the air and pierces my eardrums. 'This must be a nightmare,' I think. 'Or hell...' I hear Christine wrestling around and know she's thinking something similar.
After two hours of this torture, I finally get up, start boiling water and go downstairs to see what going on. The granddaughter, who is 21 years old, as if she knows exactly what I'm thinking, pulls out the Khmer/English dictionary and points to the word for wedding ceremony.
Here I am feeling horrible for cursing the awful sounds of what should be a pleasant ceremony and the granddaughter walks into the house and returns with a giant photo album with the faces of a man and a women whom I do not recognize plastered on the front. When I get a closer look I realize it's her! As opposed to the usual natural look, she's wearing lots of makeup and a traditional Cambodian wedding gown. Inside the album, the couple pose in various places and poses including in the upstairs area we are currently calling home. I count 12 different outfits, each similar, but different in color. I felt honored for her to share such a special occasion with me."
"We take a dirt road that leads up to another village. The ride is breathtaking, as usual. The wind travels up my sleeves, into my shirt, and across my skin giving me a sense of being one with my surroundings. Everywhere chickens, ducks, and turkeys and their babies roam.
We discover a new village tucked deep into the maze of rural dirt roads. People are surprised to see us. I get the feeling foreigners aren't exactly a common spectacle around here. They are curious, excited, and some even scared. One girl, probably the age of 3, literally took one look at me and started balling and running to her sister. We pass a school and cause a commotion. Students in the hundreds gather in the school yard, at open windows and the street chanting, 'hello, hello, hello.' They must be younger than our students, the youngest standing at just about 2', which combined with the blue and white school uniforms, might be the most adorable thing I've seen thus far."
1/28- Siem Reap, Cambodia
"People in the village seem to enjoy life more, as well as have a more positive attitude toward foreigners. Their culture, talents, and life are not being exploted for the sake a tourism and their own survival. As volunteers, our relationship with the locals is not one based on what one from take from the other. Instead, it's one of co-existence. We want to help them and, in return, they want to help us. And most importantly, we want to learn from and about one another.."
A Pagoda in Siem Reap on the off streets of Siem Reap
Near the market in Siem Reap
"(At the War Museum) We always hear so much about the hunger, suffering at work camps, separation, illness and death from the perspective of the civilian, but not the government-backed soldier during the reign of the Khmer Rough. For me, our tour guide helped fill that void. A soldier at age 14, he experienced and lives to tell about extreme despair, including the death of a best friend, the loss of a leg, partial blindness, and multiple encounters with landmines and other explosives. He encourages us to touch shrapnel still lodged beneath his flesh."
The War Museum
I heard it about the killing fields down in phnom penh and it was true here as well- a sort of serene peacefulness accompanies horrific historical sites in Cambodia. It's uplifting.
--Whew, that's the end to part 1 of my notes from Campuchia. Part 2 coming soon.--
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The Ducks Start to Line Up and Admit BOK Prudence
Even the FT Admits It: The Bank of Korea Has Done Well
Beyond BRICs is a blog reporting on economics for the UK’s prestigious newspaper, The Financial Times. It too, has finally admitted what readers of the Seoul GYopo Guide have long known: the Bank of Korea (BOK) has yielded a steady hand in rocky waters. For more than a year, you could have read this blog, and understood that the powerful cross-currents made Korea very vulnerable to economic factors beyond its control. When coupled with structural challenges in the domestic economy, the Bank of Korea has faced, is facing, and will almost always face, a difficult set of challenges. If this song sounds familiar, then you would be right.
As Long As the JPY Stays Strong, Everything Will Be OK (Relatively Speaking)
The single most dominant factor affecting the Korean economy is not Europe, it is not the aging population, it is not inflation. It is the strong Japanese Yen. The ratio of the Japanese Yen compared to the Korean Won continues to linger near the financial crisis highs. As long as this is true, then the largest Korean chaebol will continue to create tremendous pressure on their Japanese competitors around the world. That will need to pay for the higher prices resulting from inflation and continuing high energy prices. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix. Korean citizens will need to become accustomed to the notion that real estate prices will not rise dramatically. The process of allocating household savings away from real estate (and private education) expenditures will not occur overnight. If you read this blog in totality, then it will be clear that there are no quick fixes to other problems either. College graduate underemployment, the size of the underground economy, over-reliance on chaebol, gender inequality, military conscription, the list is long, and it isn’t exhaustive. There is no quick fix to any one of these issues, much less the collection of them.
For Now, in BOK We Trust
Until these issues are tackled, we will need to trust that the BOK will continue to act wisely. For the past number of years, we have every reason to believe that this will be the case.
www.seoulgyopoguide.com www.twitter.com/thelostseoul
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Dear Korea #057 - Unlikely Voice of Reason
Call me a wuss, but Korea has been pretty cold during the past few weeks or so. I mean, I prefer the cold over the heat (not looking forward to summer), but the extremes of either make me not want to go outside for anything.
One thing about women’s fashion that has always confused me is how impractical it can be. Korean fashion is pretty guilty of this, especially during the winter. I guess wearing a lot on the top with little on the bottom is popular right now. I can’t say for sure, as my knowledge in fashion is pretty darn limited. The fact that I can dress myself in the morning is a miracle.
To be fair, this seems to be an issue no matter where in the world I go. I do see girls wearing leggings, but I can’t help but question how warm those things actually get. I just know seeing groups of Korean girls outside while complaining how cold it is tends to leave my male friends and I scratching our heads. At least they look good doing it.
Speaking of which! Here’s a translation!
너무 추워!! = It’s so cold!!
Any of you teachers that are unfortunate enough to work in non-heated classrooms may be quite familiar with this phrase.
This is Jen Lee. She likes to draw.
She also likes green tea.
- Jen Lee and Dear Korea @ Gwangju Blog
- Expat comic artists aim to draw fans at Comic World @ The Korea Herald
- 'Dear Korea' now in Busan Haps
Got any questions, comments, or maybe even some delicious cookies you want to send through the internet? Feel free to contact us at dearkoreacomic at gmail dot com.
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Amateur Language Study Adventures
Yesterday I came down with what was probably Swine Flu and shortly began thinking and speaking almost entirely in Korean, which did not help me a great deal when I happened to find myself listening to the pronouncements of a Korean doctor late that afternoon, hiding my gaping mouth (through which I was gasping, slack-jawed, like an inbred country boy) behind a hospital-provided medical mask; lucky for me this doctor spoke flawless English, which she revealed by translating my high temperature from Celsius to Fahrenheit without being asked. I was running a fever of about a hundred and one.
A friend in Japan revealed to me some months ago that, surprise surprise, Akira is a lot better in Japanese. Having recently watched My Neighbor Totoro over the weekend with my son, who was sick with the same disease at the time (although it seems to be a very weak strain), I decided to find myself a version of the film that was not dubbed, and after I did so I started pausing the film to check up on vocabulary words with the help of google translate. If one of the girls said father, I would head on over to find out how the word is written in Japanese; I can remember without checking that the word is otosan, but I can’t even visualize the spelling (お父さん, apparently) on my own, though I do remember the right kanji character and I do remember the letters for ah and n. I would then write the words down once and continue watching the movie. As a result I think I’ve learned a few more hiragana characters as well as a couple of expressions. This was after an hour of studying; to have done so in a more traditional way, with a textbook and maybe a basic language movie or something, might have been more useful and more effective, but not as fun; being tutored by someone in person is always the most effective way to conquer a foreign tongue, but Japanese people are a lot harder to come by in Korea than you might imagine.
I hear Chinese outside on the street almost every time I go outside in Gyeongju (my wife and I even ran into some rich-looking students heading over to check out the university), I see Southrons from god knows where constantly (one in Busan was even arm-in-arm with an ajumma!), but I believe I have only heard Japanese spoken in Busan three times—twice on the subway (once between a pair of old nationalist-looking men who were videotaping their surroundings with a small camcorder and glaring at me with a very unique form of xenophobic hatred, with rectangle-shaped bloodshot eyes, with perhaps a drop of curry-flavored jaundice mixed in—not nearly so comfortable, wholesome, warm, and cozy as the I-really-have-nothing-better-to-do glares you get from random ajummas), once on the beach. You know it’s Japanese because it sounds just like Korean only you cannot understand a single word, rather than the occasional snatches you are used to.
I also spent a lot of time looking at a list of Chinese radicals on wikipedia, which cleared up one or two questions—邑, Eup, in Korean, which looks like a cat to me, but really means town, comes up a lot in Korean place names, and is usually written like a B or a beta, 阝, so back in Busan I was seeing it all the time without having any idea as to the meaning; ⻍ apparently means walk, but I always thought it resembled a dragon…whereas the character for dragon looks nothing like a dragon…
This morning the thing that got me out of bed after a long recuperation from my illness was the thought that I should start trying to read Madame Bovary in French, an idea that’s been kicking around in the back of my mind, tied up in the attic like a secret twin, forever. Here is the first line in French:
Nous étions à l’Étude, quand le Proviseur entra, suivi d’un nouveau habillé en bourgeois et d’un garçon de classe qui portait un grand pupitre. Ceux qui dormaient se réveillèrent, et chacun se leva comme surpris dans son travail.
And the translation in my old Modern Library edition:
We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a “new fellow”, not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if just surprised at his work.
Even if you don’t speak a word of French—my credentials here are several months auditing a class at Mt. Holyoke—you can see that there is a major difference between the two of them, as Flaubert did not write any quotation marks. Upon closer inspection we learn that the nouveau is dressed “en bourgeois”, and that there is nothing about the school uniform; the word was perhaps Flaubert’s favorite, it has huge meaning for him, he once climbed the great pyramid in Egypt and left the business card of a Parisian upholsterer at the very top for his friend, Maxime du Camp, to find—this Maxime also took some of the first pictures of the Sphinx—but because bourgeois has a very strong Marxist sound in English it really cannot be used, because (I believe) Flaubert is trying to establish from the get-go that his nouveau is an idiot, not a communist. It’s not the translator’s fault. The passage could not be translated (without an annoying footnote).
Although I can speak Korean far better than any other language, especially if I am drunk or delirious, reading French or Spanish is still a lot easier because there are so many cognates. In the cases of Chinese and Japanese my status is utterly hopeless on all counts.
I will probably get nowhere with any of these endeavors, especially after I return to work after my unbelievably long vacation in a few weeks, and have less time to pursue these pursuits, but it’s still fun, and I can show off a little here. I should end now by saying that I still feel somewhat delusional and that my body is a bit hot, so if I have written anything that is seriously bizarre, that is my excuse.
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Korea’s Growing (Aging) Pains: Housing and Real Estate
Note: This is the first in a series of posts that will focus on the challenges that Korea will face as a result of its aging population.
Welcome to the First World, Korea
This snippet at Yonhap points out one of the growing pains that Korea will inevitably face. There is no getting around it. Korea’s higher per capital GDP and improved nutrition (not to mention newly-imposed no smoking laws, will increase live expectancy).
Housing is in Long-Term Decline
This Korea Times article cites SERI (Samsung Economics Research Institute) which points out the depth of the problem. A 50% drop in population means that there will be a smaller number of taxpayers. That has two obvious effects. First, the social welfare system can come under tremendous pressure as the average age of the population rises, and few people means that fewer people can make contributions to the national pension system. Second, the real estate market faces long-term decline. There is no way around that: more empty apartments, and no one to live in them. http://koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2012/02/335_104171.html
At least the Korean government has begun to see the writing on the wall. Korea has large construction sites call new cities (싲도시), many unoccupied, many unfinished. Finally, Korea has pulled the plug on the concept. Banks have been struggling with these projects, as they have lent to the engineering and construction companies (건설). The Korean government has bought empty apartments in order to help the companies and the banks that lent to them. Has this fixed the fundamental problem? Nope. In fact, real estate prices in Seoul and Korea has fallen, which has depressed consumer confidence. Whew, does this sound like one big circle? That’s because it is.
Policy Implications
Visitors and foreigners in Korea see the symbols of real estate agencies (부동산) everywhere. There are multiple cable tv channels whose sole topic is the real estate market. Koreans’ net worth is heavily invested in real estate, and not in equities. As usual, the retail investor is usually exactly wrong. Bingo.
The next headline, guaranteed, will be “Banks and E&C companies struggle due to ghost towns.” The aging and shrinking population? They will make the problem worse.
Korea has been consumed with getting out of poverty. However, as its economy has advanced, social planning will be required. How Korea deals with an increasingly aging policy cannot be underestimated. You can easily see the U.S., Japan, and Europe have not found complete solutions. Korea needs to avoid their fate, because it doesn’t have the natural resources that the U.S. and Europe have. Candidly, no economy wants to be mimic Japan. Korea must avoid the same fate.
www.seoulgyopoguide.com www.twitter.com/thelostseoul
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Life in Plastic, It’s Fantastic!
In the Seoul metro, Apgujeong station one of many dozens in that station
When commuting in Seoul you are constantly reminded how having a good face 을짱 is a major concern in Korea. Plastic surgery ads are plastered all over the subway with incredible before & after pictures, telling us there is a price to achieve perfection. Korean women don’t think twice: in 2009 one of every five women in Seoul between the ages of 19 and 49 said they had undergone plastic surgery at least once (Trend Monitor).
I always end-up staring at these pictures, looking for little clues in the skin or the shape of the face to check if really it is the same person before & after surgery. Because I often wonder if their own mother would recognize them. These total face make-over are pretty scary and the concept is in total opposition of the beauty values I heard while growing up.
“Love yourself for who you are”, “don’t be artificial”, “little imperfections make you unique”… These are probably things the average Korean kid never hears while growing up. Recently, I was shocked to hear one of my Korean language teachers say that her 10 year old daughter isn’t pretty. And after seeing her picture, I can vouch that she looks as cute as any other 10 year old!
As I already explained on this blog here the Korean obsession for beauty is the result of different tensions on society. First of all, the Confucian heritage translates into a culture that values oneness and homogeneity of the group. With it, comes the importance of keeping face which can be found all across Asia, encouraging conformism in countries such as Japan, China and Korea.
The little girl in this shot was talking about the surgery ad with her mother, asking: "Is that pretty?"
Secondly, the high number of college graduates who do not find employment creates tremendous pressure on Korean society. Also intertwined with the fear of losing face and bringing shame, getting a job in one of chaebol 재벌 companies (Korean conglomerates: Samsung, LG…) is the dream of thousands since middle school. The societal and individual pressures are such that it has become the #1 cause of suicide among young adults (as already discussed here). One of my Korean friends felt so ashamed to be unemployed, she basically became an hermit for a year, too embarrassed to be seen outside enjoying herself with friends when she was jobless. Ironically, now that she has a job, the long hours and over time keep her away from her friends too…
Thirdly, the image of women in Korean society is pulled in many directions by a multitude of contradictions. In 60 years, Korea has made a huge leap in its development to become a modern economy, however cultural values and mentalities take a lot longer to change and women are still at the bottom of the pyramid. Looking back at Joseon dynasty (beginning of a patriarchal Confucian era in Korea), women were subordinates to men with no freedom, literally forbidden outside of the home This era is often considered the dark age for women’s culture and Korean women in general.
Thankfully, contemporary Korea is more evolved, yet many of the issues regarding women and their emancipation can be traced back to Joseon times. Even today, openly criticizing women for their looks, telling them how to behave and live is quite acceptable. I remember this New Yorker in Seoul article, where a saleslady simply told her she was too fat 뚱뚱 for the clothes in that store.
Young or old, all can get a new face!
Getting double eyelids or a slender nose are so last decade! Now all the rage is in getting a smaller face. Even Korean celebrities are getting the procedure done, to the disbelief of fans who see them reappear a few weeks post-surgery looking like a totally different person. ”It could be easily assumed that 99 percent of South Korean celebrities got stuff done on their faces,” said to Dr. Park Sang- hoon, head of Seoul’s ID Hospital, which specializes in double-jaw surgery (Xinhuanet.com).
Along with the Hallyu wave in Asia, more and more fans, fixated by the beauty standards of Korean celebrities, are flying to Seoul for plastic surgery (see the short BBC report below). Medical tourism is all the hype in Gangnam and Apgujeong, both business and private clinic hubs and the most expensive areas in Korea. A lot of customers don’t think twice about spending 10 thousand dollars on a new face assured that it the returns are worth it. However, not all are happy with the results.
Leaving aside the possible psychological trauma of looking like someone else (or all looking the same…), a major issue is that plastic surgery in Korea is still widely unregulated. In the past decade the number of plastic surgeons in Korea has almost doubled to 1,500. Then how can 4,000 clinics offer cosmetic surgery? Well that’s easy… Psychiatrists or dentists can perform surgeries they have no qualifications to be performing because Korean law authorizes doctors to switch to this money making field.
According to the Korea Consumer Agency, the number of malpractice suites has increased from 1,901 cases in 2006 to 2,984 in 2010. Keeping in mind that double-jaw surgery is extremely invasive and that being put-under general anesthesia there are always unfortunate cases that don’t make it. In some cases the the consequences of a bad plastic suregery can be devastating. Last year a woman hanged herself “Every waking minute is hell,” she wrote in her diary of the pain following a bad double-jaw surgery (New York Times).
I have nothing against plastic surgery, on the contrary I find it fascinating and if it can make people feel good then all the better. However extremes are never healthy and altering one’s appearance to satisfy others can’t bring happiness. But according to Whang Sang-min, a psychologist at Yonsei University “in recent decades, cosmetic surgery has become a weapon in Koreans’ efforts to impress others, like buying an expensive handbag”.
Lifestyle Business Fashion Beauty People Through My Lens
Switzerland, Canada, Philippines, South Korea… I am world citizen enamored with traveling and exploring cultures!With my passion for luxury and marketing I interned at Guerlain after getting my Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University in Montreal. During my degree I studied Asian business and culture as well as costuming, bringing together my love for Asia and fashion.
Now starting a new adventure in Korea at Yonsei University for my Master in International Trade. Seoul is an incredible city, so energized and constantly changing! I’ll be sharing with you some of my observations of the luxury and cosmetics markets, Korean culture and Seoul life.
Manouchka Elefant
founder / editor in chief
© 2011 - Caviar Creme
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Jeongwol Daeboreum Fire Festivals 2012
I must admit, I love these festivals. I guess that means that I am a bit of a fire-bug or something. At any rate, I love photographing them and I have tried to get out every year to catch people swirling fire and lighting a huge bonfire. The festivals are usually held during the first full moon of the lunar new year which is this Monday. These festivals are held pretty much all over Korea and in multiple places in each city. Don’t feel bad if you miss the big one on Jeju as there might just be one down the street at your local district office or community center.
For some that might not know of these festivals, they are quite fun. Basically this is a festival to bring good luck for the following year. There are a number of traditions but most famous are the burning of the Daljib and the jibulnori. The burning of the Daljib is the focal point of many of the smaller festivals and it is basically the lighting of a large bonfire that is used to ward off evil spirits. Jibulnori is where people swing cans of burning embers around to ward off the evil spirits… and to have a good time.
The largest festival of this kind will be held this weekend on Jeju Island. I have always wanted to go there and get some shots as it looks really cool…. or I guess “hot” in this case. This is quickly becoming an “international” event and I would say that from the pics, it looks like a good time. More information can be found on their website.
For these events, I would recommend that you dress warmly. Also bring a tripod to steady your camera. Do not try and hand-hold low light shots… if you want decent shots afterward. Another thing to keep in mind is that in many places they won’t wait until it dark to light the Daljib, so go early. Fast lenses work well here and if you have a 50mm prime, you will be in business. I use my 70-200mm a lot to shoot people doing the Jibulnori as it allows me to zoom in and really isolate the subject.
If you are in Ulsan, I heard that they are breaking up the party into a few locations. Typically it was held down along the Taehwa River but this year there is one supposedly out at Ilsan Beach and another overlooking the city at Baek-yeongsa most likely in that patch of land in front of the temple (read: across the street). I just saw the sign say that the event is tomorrow and ends around 8pm.
Most years, Haeundae Beach has one as well, although I have yet to make it out there. Usually every other year it rains on this day and thus traveling has been limited. It rained last year, so most festivals were cancelled. This year looks to be alright…
** Here are the events for Busan! Thanks to the Korea Bridge **
Shot at f2.8 for 1 second with L series 70-200mm
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