Seoul, Uijeongbu Peace Statue, Budae Jjigae Street

Statue of Peace, Peace Park
After arriving at Uijeongbu station on Line 1, a full one and a half hours from Gangseo-gu, I came out of the station (exits 4,5 and 6) expecting, based on the maps, that the Statue of Peace that I had come all this way to see would be obvious. Well, there are two separate parks, and as per usual I picked the wrong one. The one to the right, which is a kids' art zone:


On the left, you will find the Peace Statue, and a variety of other installations relevant to the theme. If you go all the way through the park to the main street, the statue is right on the sidewalk by the bus stop. Here she is, representing a "comfort woman" of WWII, dressed warmly for winter, 2020:


Nearby, an homage to 70 years of Korean independence from Japan:


… and celebrating Uijeongbu's elevation to status of "city":


Following WWII, Korea was split into two parts, and five years later, the Korean War began with Kim Il-sung's attempt by force to reunite the halves under his dictatorial leadership. This became a proxy war, with the US (and allies) fighting on the South's side, and Communist China assisting the North. The movie and TV show MASH are set nearby what was then the village of Uijeongbu. Though the show is fictional, the US military presence in the area was real, and still to be felt to this day--23,500 US servicemen are based in Korea at this writing.

An homage to their efforts for peace, a section of a wall from nearby Camp Falling Water has been put up in the park:


With a theme of peace and reunification, the experience of Germany in 1990 was symbolized here with sections of the Berlin Wall and an interesting series of photographs from the time.


Alas, on this Saturday during Seollal, no one will get to enjoy toast from this pocha ...


… but hang on tight, because food is on order shortly.

Rodeo Drive, which I walked north from the park, after crossing the main road, is a fancy shopping street reminding us of the strong presence of US GIs in the area.


I strolled up Rodeo Drive to make my way to a street specializing in a particular food. Korea has this in spades: yeonnip-bap is from Buyeo, bibimbap and choco-pies are from Jeon-ju, etc. Uijeongbu's specialty is budae jjigae, or army base stew.

Budae jjigae street


This stew (jjigae) is Korean comfort food which dates only from the Korean War era. Those were tough times for the people, so you scrounged food where you could, including the refuse of US army bases (budae). In a MASH episode, Hawkeye and BJ ridicule Frank Burns's attempt to sell off the camp's trash in lots, but he was right: the average Korean could make good use of our cast-offs. Especially popular were SPAM and hot dogs, which together with seasonal veg, tofu (dubu), red pepper paste (gochujang), and beans, cheese or whatever else you could get, were cooked up in stock and served over rice or noodles. It is a hearty and delicious meal (I dedicated a post to it back in 2009).

I have it once or twice a month in my neighborhood, but Budae-jjigae street has grown up to be the place for it. I chose this restaurant, the second busiest one, whose sign means Uijeongbu Specialty Budae Jjigae Main Place (they have an overflow across the street), and was not disappointed:


Here is the ajumma in charge:


The version here is heavy on meat, dubu and kimchi, and I love the contrast of sour kimchi and spicy gochujang. Here's what it looks like cooking over a flame at your table:


Here's what it looks like in a bowl over some rice:


And here's what I look like stuffing my face!

Seoul Food

A few (!?) more photos taken by Tanner during his stay, capturing some of the food we ate.  Thanks old chum!

뼈해장국, hangover soup, at 청진동, a popular restaurant chain

These three photos show seafood awaiting a gastronomic fate in Guro-gu

My French coffee at Gecko's Terrace, Itaewon

영고치, Chinese style lamb skewers in Bongcheon

The manager of preceding lamb restaurant

삼겹살, samgyupsal at 찌개마을 or Stew Village, in Insadong

Some 반찬, banchan, to go with our samgyupsal: seasoned bean sprouts

소금구이, sogeumgui, or salt pork, at 새마을식당, New Village Restaurant in Gangseo-gu cheong

More banchan, pickled onions: Tanner had three bowls

Cow's liver, stomach lining and kidney (?) , meant to be eaten raw

곱창,gopchang, cow offal, for which the preceding two banchan were provided. The restaurant is named 한우곱창전문, Hanu (or Korean Beef) Gopchang Specialists

볶음밥, fried rice, being prepared in the griddle used to cook our gopchang.  Crispy and delicious, though I personally can do without the added seaweed

Korean comfort food, 부대찌개, budae jjigae literally means army base stew . This is the Heungbu variety as served at the Nolboo chain

So, those are the culinary highlights of Tanner's Seoul experience.  We didn't have time to try everything, and he wanted a couple of dishes repeated (the haejangguk and yang gochi in particular).  No boshintang, nor beef galbi, and no hong-eo, haha.  I did try to tempt him with sundaeguk, but once I had to tell him what "headcheese" is, he shied away ...  Still, we covered most of the highlights, ate well, and left him wanting for more.  Come on back, TB, the city has refilled its soju stocks.

Oddly, I've come over all peckish.

Have A Very E-Mart Chuseok

A key aspect of Chuseok, which is a Korean harvest festival along the lines of, say, Thanksgiving, is the bearing of gifts to the relatives. Back in the day, I bet this would have been a couple of spare potatoes, a bottle of raspberry wine or an ox-horn comb in a burlap sack, done up with a scrap of ribbon or some silk salvaged from a worn-out hanbok (the traditional garb, as worn by the salesgirl in the photo above).

In a Korea that has become one of the wealthiest nations on earth, such simple gifts are a thing of the past. Today's Chuseok presents range from fresh fruit to towels to coffee, all done up in elaborate packages and a healthy markup. In a quick trip to the Chuseok gift section of my local E-Mart, I found items beginning at a low price of W6,000 (about USD 5) up to W199,000 (around $180). The first photo below is part of a huge stack of fruit boxes. Next is a selection of fungus selections; ginseng extracts; and canned luncheon meats--aka SPAM.





SPAM (the SPiced hAM precooked meat food product from Hormel Foods Corporation of Austin, Minnesota) has a special hold on the Korean heart, going back to the Korean War years, when refugees depended on help from the Americans to survive in the war-ravaged countryside. Leftover food, like hot dogs, SPAM and other processed meats made their way from army camps to the locals' stew pots, resulting in an enduring fondness for such foods in the Korean palate.

Food is definitely a mainstay of the Chuseok gift, in keeping with the notion of a harvest festival, such as these preserved meats; a more mundane gift might be the selection of haircare products below. And who doesn't enjoy a little liquor?

A Few Tidbits of Today

1) I found out today, about an hour in advance (why am I still surprised by this kind of thing?) that a film crew would come into my classroom to shoot footage for a promotional video for the school. Could I please do something interesting?

Well, no one actually said that, but you get the feeling. Could you please tell me a little bit in advance? I'd answer, if they did. I could have worn a tie. I bought a new tie in New Zealand that I only wore once, a fetching bright yellow, but not so bright that it would strobe on film.

So it came to pass during 4th period that four or five twenty-somethings carrying a lot of equipment came in and tried to catch in the act of learning a group of second graders whose concentration skills are tenuous at the best of times. I don't know how the footage came out as I wasn't invited to lushes, but I am not hopeful. They did get a good shot up my right nostril as wrote "famous" on the whiteboard.

2) Lunch today--mind you, lunch is almost always good at Young-il HS--was an orgy of meat, which Jay Lee pointed out was the Mr Campbell Special. The main course was beef bulgogi; the soup was budae jjigae in guk form, essentially a soup loaded with SPAM chunks, hot dog slices, bacon, baked beans and kimchi; and pork meatballs.

3) I got approval to spend a little money on some toys. No, that's not code for computer equipment or something, I mean toys. My next crazy lesson plan for turning the English Only Zone inside out is going to be ... a Toy Convention, come Oct 19. So I'll spend around W 100,000 buying some toys for the manufacturer's "booths" (a pair of desks and some laminated signage) to show to the store buyers. The format will be generally as described in the Young-il Job Fair.

I wanted to make it cheap and easy, so I want to use simple, old-fashioned toys: bag o' marbles, cup-and-ball, wind-up pin-organ, etc. And I finally hit on the right idea: toys which don't use batteries! Here's the first draft of a logo for the Young-il ToyCon, made in MS Paint:


I've put together the conversation exchange and the worksheet templates, but still to come are the logos for the toy manufacturers, the displays, and the unique names of the stores and store buyers, enough for about 30 students.

If it sounds like a lot of work, it is. The first time. However, I always work under the principle that if I do it correctly from the start, I can reuse it over and over, thus saving effort in the long run. OTOH, I'm not planning to stay in Korea all that long.

In Which I Go Shopping

A big Thank You! to my friends who participated in the Tuttle Bailout Program, it didn't cost a trillion dollars (or even won) and your good deed has been writ large in the Book of Life. Be warned, though, that this won't get you into Heaven by itself.

Newly re-monitarized, I rolled out to Omokgyo Sta. to meet up with Karen and Patrick for budae jjigae at Nolboo. Always delicious. I showed up early and went through the Hyundai Department Store complex at the subway station, and ... bought a couple of books!

First, I will read a Kurt Vonnegut book I somehow missed when it came out in 1988, Bluebeard. I used to say Vonnegut is the greatest living American writer, but he's dead now, so I don't say that anymore.

Next I will make my way through Tracy Kidder's 2003 offering, Mountains Beyond Mountains, about Dr. Paul Farmer. I first read Kidder back in college, when I was assigned to read The Soul of a New Machine for a scriptwriting class. Next I read House, which makes the process of building a nice American home into a fascinating, even riveting, drama. Then came Among Schoolchildren, a year in the life of a fifth grade classroom. Kidder was the speaker at a teacher's conference I attended shortly after that one came out.

Together with my purchases, I sat in the square below, betwixt CBS (Korea's Christian Broadcasting System) and 41 Building, waiting for lunchtime, reading the opening chapters of Bluebeard. The weather was spectacular, as was the reading. As has happened everytime I've been by Omokgyo, numerous of my students from Young-il came over to tell me it was nice to meet me.


Blog News:
This is post #250, a milestone of sorts. And so it goes, as Vonnegut used to say.

Budae Jjigae in Mok-dong

Budae-jjigae is an ancient Korean traditional food dating all the way back to the 1950s. Okay, so it's not ancient, but it is traditional. It's also really yummy.

During the lean war years and after, meat was hard to come by, so many Seoulites augmented their diets with SPAM, sausage, hot dogs and whatever else they could scrounge from the US Army bases; together with gochujang (red pepper paste), vegetables in season, beans, ramyeon noodles or rice, it's all piled into a hot pot and cooked up in some vegetable stock.

Budae-jjigae literally means "army base stew" and is also called Johnson-tang. It should be fairly easy to replicate at home; there is a recipe here. But if you don't have any particular thing, just go ahead without--SPAM is probably the only absolute essential (never thought I'd see that in print, much less write it myself). While it arose from needful times, today, I went with Karen to a nice restaurant in the basement of the CBS building in Mok-dong to give it a shot.

The restaurant was busy, with numerous middle-class families sitting around the hot pot, paying good money to eat what was survival food for their grandparents.

Step 1: set the jjigae on to cook. Ours had the usual suspects, plus potatoes, mushrooms and salami; unlike a western stew, you don't cook it for hours to let the flavors meld, you just get everything cooked through.


Step 2: The waitress comes back and removes the lid to reveal the finished jjigae.


Step 3: Ladle some into your bowl. With this particular style, you add rice from the standard metal rice bowl. In other styles, the waitress will drop in ramen noodles at just the right point before completion.


Step 4: Repeat.


As you can see, it was seriously delectable.