Book Report: Aquariums of Pyongyang

I finally finished Aquariums of Pyongyang tonight, on the KTX train home from Busan (post on the trip coming soon), subtitled "Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag" written by Kang Chol-Hwan.

The book begins with Kang's family background, which is crucial to understanding all that follows: his grandparents were committed socialists of the Chosun Soren, essentially the North Korean socialist party in Japan, who moved to North Korea in the 1960s. His grandfather was well-off, which earned the family a higher-class status within the Worker's Party in Pyongyang. However, somewhere along the way, Chol-Hwan's grandfather did something to offend higher-ups in the Party--exactly what, the family has never discovered--and the family (minus his grandfather and his mother) were sent to a "re-education camp" called Yodok.

In one instant, he was transformed from a child of privilege (never mind how that can exist in a socialist state) to a child of desperate poverty and ill-treatment. This memoir describes in unflinching detail the brutality of the camp's guards, the cruelty and ignorance of the teachers, the filthy, subhuman conditions, the contradictions of socialist philosophy under the the Great Leader, Kim Il-sung, and the depths of depravity to which humans can sink when the physical pain of hunger is all you can feel.

Children spent their mornings in "school", mostly regurgitating the Great Leader's speeches or being physically abused by sadists masquarading as teachers, and their afternoons doing physical labor--dangerous physical labor. He describes being forced to work the balance of the day after a cave-in buried alive half of his preadolecent work crew, while the guards laughed at the foolishness of the dead children; being required to attend executions of failed escapees from Yodok--including once being forced to participate in stoning the dead bodies until they were mostly bones and scraps of bloody clothes and flesh; becoming adept at trapping rats for the meat they provided; learning the false smile and empty words of the slave.

I once believed that man was different from other animals, but Yodok showed me that reality doesn't support this opinion. In the camp, there was no difference between man and beast, except maybe that a very hungry human was capable of stealing food from its little ones while an animal, perhaps, was not. I also saw many people die in the camp, and their deaths looked like that of other animals. (p. 160)

The family was released from the camp after his grandfather died, in February, 1987. He was nineteen. While there were the ordinary difficulties of acclimating to life outside, the economy of North Korea grew worse during this time, and he could see the impact of gross mismanagement firsthand--rice rotting in the villages as there was no way to transport it to the cities, machinery sitting idle in cities that was needed in the farming communities--the famine of the early nineties (and surely the current one) wholly preventable but for the intransigence of Dear Leader's regime.

Eventually, Chol-hwan escapes to China and makes his way to the South (not a spoiler, since the book could never have been published otherwise), and finally escapes also the cumulative mental effect of the propaganda he heard day-in and day-out his whole life long. I found this passage very moving:

He showed me the famous sites of Seoul: City Hall, Namdaemun, the banks of the Han River, the parks, Itaewon. One evening, we went up the Namsam Television Tower and saw all of Seoul lit up below us. The view filled me with wonder.
What most struck me, however, was the way people led their lives. Everyone seemed free to do as they wished. No system organized their movements and activities. I have to admit that it rather worried me at first. This sort of society just couldn't last; it could never face a crisis. I later realized this only seemed like disorder. A pervading logic governed peoples' interactions. Though the principle of everybody for himself reigned supreme, people here appeared honest; they thought about others and shared common values. Seoul was teeming with cars. I'd never seen so many. I was amazed to learn that most of them were actually manufactured in Korea itself. This was never mentioned in the North. I remember the pride I felt at this discovery--my first feeling of pride for South Korea. (pp. 222-3)

Originally published in 2000, this is the first memoir to come out of North Korea's prison camps: haunting, shocking, grotesque but somehow life-affirming, it is a call to action for those in the West--and in South Korea--who wish to end the needless human suffering caused by this evil regime.

Today's Korea Times

A doctoral dissertation delivered at Columbia University by Samuel S. Kim and reported on at Korea Times today posits that 44% of Korean students studying at Ivy League universities in America drop out by the end of the second year.

The article provides familiar statistics about the high rate of acceptance to the Ivy League for Korean students, and posits the following reason for the drop-out:

Kim said in the thesis that such a high dropout rate is largely attributable to Korean parents forcing their children to study rather than participate in extracurricular activities, an essential part of overseas education for foreign students to acclimate themselves to American society and get a good job in the long run.
According to the thesis, Korean students consume 75 percent of their time available for studying, while they allocate only 25 percent to extracurricular activities such as community service.
In contrast, American students and those from other countries tend to equally share their time for both study and other activities.

Another story, oddly related, is the suicide of "Korea's actress" Choi Jin-sil, who has been a "national heartthrob for two decades". While her death appears related to her depression over Internet rumors about money she was owed by actor Ahn Jae-hwan, who committed suicide in September, it serves to point up Korea's high suicide rate.

How is it related? Suicide is frighteningly common in Korea, among the highest in the OECD, especially among young students--apparently unable to deal with the stress of getting in to the top schools (SKY: Seoul National, Korea, and Yonsei). China Daily weighs in.

The Legend (?) of Tangun

To cap off a week in which I have done essentially bugger-all at work, tomorrow is a national holiday called Foundation Day. It celebrates the founding of Chosun (the Land of the Morning Calm) in 2333 BC, by Tangun.

Once upon a time, Hwan-ung, the Prince of Heaven, went to his father Hwan-in, the Ruler of Heaven, and asked him for the beautiful peninsula of Korea, so that he could govern it and live among the human beings.

So it came to pass that Hwan-ung and three thousand Heavenly followers landed in Korea under a sacred (well, it's sacred now) sandalwood tree on Mount Taebaek. Living near the tree were a tiger and a bear who yearned to become human beings. They prayed every day that they might become human. Hwan-ung heard their prayers and called them to him.

He gave them both a bundle of mugwort (also known as wormwood) and twenty garlic bulbs as their only food, and sent them to live in a cave for 100 days. "At the end of that time, you will become human," he said.

Well, the tiger couldn't stand it, being stuck in a cave eating garlic, so he soon gave up and ran off. But the bear kept at it. As the days passed, she noticed her hair was falling out, and lo! after only twenty-one days, she was transformed into a beautiful woman.

As time passed, the bear-now-woman grew sad--she was happy to be a human, but sad because she had no children. So again, Hwan-ung took heed of her pleas, and took her to be his wife. She gave birth to a handsome son named Tangun, who grew up to become a wise and powerful leader of the people on the peninsula. In 2333 BC, he moved to Pyongyang and founded Chosun, where he lived until he was 1,908 years old. Then he returned to Taebaeksan and became a sin-san or mountain god.

But the story doesn't end there. Miraculously, the North Korean government uncovered the burial site of King Tangun and erected a monument in 1994:

“Thanks to the correct policy of the Workers’ Party of Korea for preserving our nation’s cultural relics, Tangun, who was thought for thousands of years to have been a mythical being, was proved to have been a real person, and his tomb perfectly reconstructed in less than a year.”--from North Korea 1-on-1

I can't decide which part of the story is more fanciful.

A Busy Day

Though actually my day is a brief time full of nothing--it's Exam Week at school, I have no exams, but I am still expected to show up until 11 AM and twiddle my thumbs (er, um, ah, work on future lesson plans)--it turned out to be quite a full one. Allow me to elaborate.

Yesterday, Mr Hwang and I went over to his house and got on the internet to purchase my tickets for a weigook day trip to Busan (aka Pusan) for Saturday, Oct 4. Since he doesn't have a printer, the very least I could do was show up this morning so I could get my e-tickets, once he printed them out at school.

Furthermore, I have been threatening to join the Fitness Center in my building (what with my high blood pressure, fat ass and all) so that was also on the agenda. It's the beginning of the month, y'know. Well, Mr Hwang and I were going to join together, today--not necessarily my idea.

However, since I had to get athletic shoes just for indoors (my thirty dollar new balance sneaks bought just before leaving the States wouldn't do), I went to Dongdaemun market, which has about 1000 shoe shops. I swear, this is not an exaggeration. The cheapest Korean-made sneaks were about W30,000 at E-Mart-uh. After visiting 999 shops at Dongdaemun, I got what I was after for W9,000. Light-weight, not too crappy "U-7 You Seven" brand with breathable uppers and cushiony soles.

Then I had lunch, a strange ham sandwich on weird bread w/cole slaw, pineapple-on-a-stick, and a cruller and a donut w/ sweet red bean filling--W 3,000. Dongdaemun is awesome! At some point, a couple of flatbed trucks came by loaded with, well, what you see below:


I have been informed that they are part of Soldier's Day celebrations, though what part exactly I was not informed.

Anyway, I eventually made my way back to Deungchon-dong and my apartment located therein, to await Mr Hwang so we could go register for the Fitness Center together--it really helps to have someone who knows what to put in the boxes on the form! About 3:45 he calls to tell me, Oh, we have a meeting, I will pick you up in ten minutes.

I should have known--okay, I suspected--this was the party-type long dinner, with "second course", at a galbi, sushimi or samgyupsal place. We were back at the mushroom samgyupsal joint from my very first Young-Il faculty meeting. The trick to these is to drink as much as the guy who is drinking the most. And still be sober. That way, you're not, you know, a pussy (to those who are offended, appipolologies). Not a problem. When they ask me how much I can drink, I answer, How much have you got? If they keep asking, I say, However much you've got, I'll drink half!

At this event, I sat next to the Principal, Mr Jun, who told me repeatedly how much parents and students have come to love and appreciate me as their English-ee teacher. Well, that's great, but after one month, it is taken with a grain of salt. Mr Jun and I talked for a bit about Yi Chung-Ee--the art teacher--with whom he is very good friends.

It probably helps that I have "hit it off" with Chung-Ee also. We shoot the shit, drink coffee and smoke a cigarette together during our shared free periods. He teaches me a few words of Korean every day. I have mentioned that he is an incredible artist, on the subject lately of rocks and roots exposed by stream erosion in the mountains. I won't bother photographing and posting his work until I have a quality camera that allows you to see its realism and detail. I ain't kiddin' about this guy. The principal says I should just ask him for one of his paintings and he would give it to me.

Well, he's probably right, since Chung-Ee has already been so kind to me, but I don't feel right about that. Maybe once I make it through the whole year.

So we went to second round, again at Adonis, and I discussed philosophy with Mr Ha, the Oriential philosophy instructor, and Mr Kim, Economics teacher, with Lee Song-young serving to interpret. Noam Chomsky is very influential in Korean philosophy circles, let me say (Tanner, you listening?)

Well, it was all over by 19:30, but I can't go work out after drinking a lot of beer, can I?

Without throwing up, I mean.

Fine, thank you. And How Are You?

... which is, as everyone knows, the correct response to "Hello, how are you?"

And that's just about the whole English repertoire of the average Korean. They tell the following joke on themselves:

A Korean is visiting America, when he gets hit by a car, and is lying badly injured on the road.
The car driver gets out, runs over to him and asks, "How are you?"
The Korean replies, "Fine, thank you. And how are you?"

It makes me giggle, I gotta admit.

Tapgol Park, Changdeokgung and Insa-dong

On Saturday, I met up with my friend Steve at Exit #1 of Jongno-sam-ga Station; it was our intention to explore the artsy area called Insa-dong. The first place we came to was Tapgol Park, where I recognized the ten-tiered pagoda that is Korea's National Treasure #2.



The park is small, and marks the site of a 15th century Buddhist temple. It is famous as the site of the March 1st Movement, or Sam-il (meaning 3 - 1), an important impetus for the Korean independence movement during the Japanese occupation. There is a series of bas relief sculptures around the park documenting moments during the independence movement.



It was also the terminus of the Great Peace March in 1986, which led to dictator Chun Doo-whan stepping down in favor of democratic elections for the first time in the country's history. Because of all this background, Tapgol Park remains a common gathering place for protests and marches (such as the beef protests earlier this year). We couldn't find out what was in the offing, but it looks as if the police were ready for something:


Next, we made our way to Changdeokgung Palace, rich in history as the second palace built by the royal family in 1405, during the Joseon dynasty. Few of the buildings from that time are extant, as the palace has been destroyed and rebuilt throughout South Korea's various occupations. First, a picture of Injeongjeon Hall, and its throne room, the site of the palace's formal functions such as weddings, receptions for foreign envoys and the like. It was built in 1405, and reconstructed after a fire in 1609. If you look at the 10,000 Won note, you can see the same image of five mountains that are painted on the panel behind the throne!


One of my favorite things about Seoul is the juxtaposition of ancient and modern. In this picture, you can see Injeongmun (Injeong Gate) to my right, and the modern city outside the palace walls on my left.


Below are a few more photos of our Changdeokgung Palace tour. Hover your mouse over the photo for a description:





After the tour concluded, Steve and I were both thirsty, so we went looking for a hof before dinner. Amazingly, we walked several blocks before finding anything at all--apparently we had wandered into the one neighborhood in Seoul that was teetotal! Neither of us is fluent in Korean, so the snack we ordered in this tiny seafood restaurant (the cheapest thing on the menu) turned out to be fried eggs and carrots. With dried tiny sardines on the side.

So we quenched our thirst, and took the edge off our hunger, and wandered back toward the main area of Insa-dong, looking for a galbi restaurant. Turns out, Insa-dong is loaded with artsy coffee shops and panini bistros with names like Cafe du Coin and Ma Ma, but not much in the way of serious Korean food. Okay, we did pass up a Chinese noodle house and a samgyupsal place, as we were in the mood for beef. Finally, we found it! And it was worth the walking--besides we saw all of Insa-dong during our stroll. Now I know where the chicken art museum is located. I will so be back for that.

The galbi was outstanding--it always is--and the bill came to 53,000 W including beer, about $25 each. Which is what you'd pay at Ruby Tuesday's, and infinitely superior.

On the way home, we stopped briefly in Itaewon--about 4 stops away on line #6--as Steve needed a new phone card. We dropped in at Nashville, three doors down from Seoul Bar, and much mellower. A pleasant ending to a pleasant day!

K-League Heats Up (despite the weather)

So, the K-League soccer season is nearing its end (seven games left for most teams), and it has really started to heat up. The season has been rather disjointed as World Cup qualifying and Olympic competition (even though the South Koreans exited after the first round in Beijing) caused stoppages that prevented momentum from building during the summer months.

Dong-A Ilbo reports on a three-way standings race in which Seongnam Ilwha Chunma (seven time league champs) have moved into a tie with Suwon Bluewings, who have led the league for much of the season thanks to a record-setting 11-game win streak, and are the most popular team in the country with average attendance of about 30,000.

Seongnam and Suwon each have 41 league points, but perennial bottom-dwellers FC Seoul have quietly moved into striking range with 38 points following a 9-for-12 win streak. John Duerden writes at Soccerphile

Despite the broken rib of star striker Mota, Seongnam have barely broken their stride. Youngster Han Dong-won has chipped in with three goals in the last two games. Seongnam are looking fresh and confident while Suwon are spluttering. Worse for Suwon is the fact that bitter rivals FC Seoul are in good form and not that far behind in third.

I haven't managed to make it to a professional sports event here yet, but I certainly plan to before the soccer season ends.

Seoul Weather Report

Yesterday I went to another one of those committee meetings (this one was the School Planning and Development Committee) that is pretty much a party at a nice restaurant paid for by the school! It rained off and on all day.

I was invited because ... well, I'm not sure why I was invited, except I am the KFC harabuji. And a minor celebrity hereabouts. And every Korean wants to speak better English (as well they should, trust me). And I provide a handy sounding board, as possibly the first foreigner they have ever met. There were seven Koreans, and four of them had the Asian alcohol blush--one guy looked like Hooker Hill at night!

We went to a Korean sashimi restaurant at which in addition to raw saltwater bream and sea squirts, we had raw haddock and squid, and smoked shad. And beer. Lots of beer. And soju. Not a grain of rice on the whole table, which is a first. Just like with samgyupsal or galbi, sashimi here is eaten with panchan and wrapped in a lettuce or sesame leaf. Later was a visit to the noraebang across the street from the restaurant. And later still was the ride home in a taxi.

Still, I was bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed this morning, for my last day running through the interview lesson described about three posts down. Recall that in one section, students write their own questions to ask of classmates. It had to happen, and it did: How long is your penis? Another student wrote, Would you like to kicking my ass hole? I answered, "Yes. Hard." In a related story, one kid had drawn a picture of a penis on the back of his paper. I rolled my eyes in my inimitable fashion and walked away, making sure they could hear me say, "Oh, it is very small." The laugh and the penis were in inverse proportion.

After being warm to hot ever since I got to Korea, and so humid I am drenched after a twenty-minute walk to school--today was downright chilly! It's almost as if autumn lasted 20 minutes sometime yesterday afternoon. However, paran haa-lul, as the Koreans say--the sky was blue!

Konglish Pwnage

So I was just downstairs in chicken hof #2 watching a baseball game between the Lotte Giants and the Samsung Lions--Korean baseball teams generally take the name of the chaebol that owns them. At the moment, the Lions are winning, 4 - 1, but that's actually irrelevant to my post.

No, what caught my eye was the graphic that flashed on the screen everytime someone got a hit. It said PAWN, with two baseball bats forming the center peak of the W. Now, for a little background, PWN is a common slang term among today's yoot, meaning to dominate or humiliate an opponent. It is thought to have arisen from a typo of OWN, as in, "I owned you that time, man!" probably after an online computer game.

Someone, sometime, somewhere, gleefully mistyped their taunt of a fellow geek, and the irony of it all spread.

... but not quite as far as Korea, as it turns out. They seem to have missed the mispledding and have taken up the sound. Which is a different irony, since it's the first Konglish I've heard of that gets the pronunciation right--pwned it, you might say.

Still, I wonder what Koreans visiting the West think when they walk past a Pawn Shop--"I'm not going in there, they just like to taunt and humiliate people." Or knot.

Blah Blah Blogging

Welcome to Tuttle's Five Minute Minutiae Report:

* Well, so Seoul Medical Center faxed a copy of my medical check to the school--I was normal in all respects (yeah, shocked the hell out of me, too) except slightly high blood pressure (yeah, no surprise there). The fax is not good enough for the Immigration Office, so tomorrow morning, I will be skipping my first class to travel all the way to Samseong Station to pick up the original; then, at the end of the day, Mr Hwang will drive me over to Mok-dong to apply for my Alien Registration Card.

* The basic interview lesson went well in every class today--at least as well as could be expected from students who have never had to express an idea of their own in the English language. For instance, wanting to ask, What is your favorite food? one student put down Would you like favorite eat? And this is after modeling "What is your favorite ________?/Who is your favorite ________?" severally.

* That one was easy to figure out, but what do you do with What do you want to buy at first?

* I got to use one of my favorite jokes today (yeah, just TRY to stop me), when the question was "What is your favorite brand?" The kid I picked to respond said "Polo." So I said, "Ah, Polo. By Ralph Lauren. You know why those Polo shirts are so expensive? Because the little guy on the horse is wearing Izod!" Two or three of them actually got it. Eventually.

* Mr Hwang came over after school to tell me about the new medical check/Immigration Office plan and we went downstairs to one of the hofs. We had beer and a sausage plate w/French fries. We talked about how I was enjoying living in Seoul, how I was enjoying the students, etc. Then after a short Korean lesson--focused on word order as emphasis--he told me that the students have responded well to me, even if I have been a challenging teacher. My nickname is "KFC harabuji" or grandfather, so the Col. Sanders thing has expanded to the whole school. He insists it's more my hair style and hair color than my age (Koreans have difficulty figuring the age of foreigners, he says)--plus, KFC harabuji is viewed as a very kind man.

* We also talked about the wide range of fluency among students at Young-Il. It is largely explained by the area served by the school. Students from Mok-dong are wealthy and have parents who have traveled abroad and readily pay for hagwons (private English schools), while Deungchon-dong is solidly middle class, and the neighborhood north of E-Mart is decidedly working class. The advantage of uniforms is that these differences are less noticeable to students; the disadvantage of uniforms is that these differences are less noticeable to teachers.

The New Lesson

This week's lesson is our first attempt at "conversation" in Conversational English. Since only one in ten is actually capable of a conversation, I provided them with a script, with only their specific information to fill in:
A: Hello, my English name is ____________. What is your English name?
B: My English name is _____________.
A: Where you born? How old are you?
B: I was born in _____________, and I am _______ years old.
...
A: What do you like to do in your spare time?
B: I like to _____________.
A: What other hobbies do you have?
B: I also like to _____________.
... and so on. Each table has three people, so person #3 is the policeman, who makes sure they speak only English. Then they switch roles until everyone has asked and answered.

In the next activity, each student writes four new questions, and they take turns asking them to each other. We spent the last ten minutes with me randomly selecting someone to ask a question, and then randomly choosing someone else to answer. This was to encourage listening, as you will look silly if you don't know the answer: for instance, the student who informed us his favorite color was to become a medical doctor. I said, "Wow, cool! Medical doctor is my favorite color, too!" It was a Korean knee slapper.

The first few times, I stand near the student I will pick to answer--you want to model success; only after a few good trials should you call on a student who is off-task. Anyway, this lesson seemed to go pretty well, so if you are here for ESL help (although I can't imagine why), give it a try. If you're here for another reason, too bad, it's what I've got for today.

Shellfish in Sillim

Had a great time Saturday as I met up with Andy, my roomie from SMOE training, and his girlfriend Julie (that's her English name)--and later his buddy Greg--in Sillim.


Sillim is a massive commercial zone chock full of bars and restaurants. And yet it gets not a single mention in the Lonely Planet guide for Seoul! Our first stop was for beers and appetizers in a "Japanese-style" chain; I don't know the name of the bar or what we ate, but it was ddok dumplings, a bit of potato, some sausage, and onions and green peppers all sauteed up in hot red sauce (gochu-jang) and smothered in Korean cheese.

We then moved on to the main course, a shellfish extravaganza at a place called Pirate #1. You know it's fresh, because your dinner is living in tanks outside the entrance. This is another of those places where the food is cooked on a grill right in the middle of your table. Periodically, a server comes along to open the clams, scrape the mussels from the side of the shell, mix in the panchan ingredients, etc. (I will put up a pic or two, once Andy updates his blog and I can rip them--my cellphone battery ran down.) Everything is eaten in a particular order, finished off with a potato and a sweet potato that have been baking in foil on the coals during the whole meal.

UPDATE, 22:38 PM: For another (quite hilarious, dammit!) take on the evening, visit Andy's blog at http://www.judochop.us/index.php?itemid=1450. I'm stealing a couple of his pics, even though I hate him now! More pictures, there, too--dammit.



The food was amazingly good! This fact can be illustrated by the line of twenty-five folks waiting to get in by the time we left--remember, there are easily over a hundred places to eat in this area.

Next, we randomly picked another place, this one basement level, to enjoy a brewski or two. It smelled funny, and we spotted a cockroach on the table, but the 5,000 won pitchers made up for all that. We next headed to a 2F (second floor) bistro named "I Love School" but it was packed, so we went to 3F, called "Garten Bier".

The table had a cellphone charger, so eventually I was able to take the photo below, of Andy. Note two things: first, the funky beer flutes are sitting in little refrigerated wells (a brilliant idea!); and second, the little figurines of musical Negroes on the ledge above the table. 1950's era charm or 21st century racism? Uh, racism, I'm thinking...


Anyway, the total evening was a blast, Andy's friends were cool, conversation was intelligent, and I managed to catch the bus and get off at the correct stop (hard to do at night, since I can't really see the landmarks)! Love ya, Sillim, I'll be back ...

In The News, 2008-09-19

1) North Korea has yet again shown how duplicitous it is, and how reckless US foreign policy has been under the current administration, by thumbing its metaphorical nose at the prospect of being removed from the US terrorism blacklist and promising to restart its non-metaphorical uranium enrichment program.

Of course, the smart money says that this is just bluster to distract the political world from Kim Jung-Il's incapacity following a reputed stroke. Further evidence in favor of this theory is provided by a North Korean Foreign Affairs minister, Hyun Hak-Bong, who called the reports "nonsense." (North Korean officials are about as trustworthy as Fox News.)

2) Also in peninsular military news, the South has announced plans to withdraw all its remaining troops from Iraq by year's end, reducing the so-called Coalition of the Willing to the Coalition of the US, the United States and the Contiguous Forty-Eight plus Alaska and Hawaii ("That's five, count 'em, five whole countries," beamed President Bush, without an iota of irony).

3) While American markets continue to lose value at the most astonishing rate in the history of human civilization, the government of Seoul announced plans to build half a million new homes each year for the next ten years, in an aggressive strategy to stabilize prices in one of the most expensive real estate markets on the planet.

The fact that there is virtually no land available for these homes is what one may term "a fly in the ointment":

"I doubt the government will be able to secure enough land to construct 5 million houses in 10 years," said one expert. Governments in the past came up with housing supply plans for the underprivileged, but none successfully achieved original goals because they had problems acquiring land for construction, he said.

Still, President Lee Myung-Bak, elected on a pro-US and pro-infrastructure platform, has little left to offer at this point to rebuild his cachet. "The government will strive to help newlywed couples and all ordinary households buy their own homes by expanding new housing supply drastically," Lee said.

4) Indeed, FTSE (a joint index of Financial Times and London Stock Exchange) has announced that South Korea has joined the US and Germany in the top rank of investor-friendly financial markets. Its conservative banking system and chaebol-dominated business structure are thought to help insulate the country from much of the fluctuation and uncertainty coursing through today's financial markets. Chaebol are the family-run conglomerates that epitomize ROK business success, like Samsung, LG, Doosan, Hyundai, etc.

5) Speaking of US markets, here's a great Toles cartoon that shows exactly why you should never vote for a Republican ever again:

6) In a further black mark for Republicans, today's Military.com covers Barton Gellman's reporting in "Angler" that Republican former House majority leader Dick Armey says Vice President Dick Cheney lied to him to get his support for the Iraq War.

"Did Dick Cheney ... purposely tell me things he knew to be untrue? I seriously feel that may be the case," Armey said. "Had I known or believed then what I believe now, I would have publicly opposed the resolution right to the bitter end, and I believe I might have stopped it from happening."

That's the horse's mouth, right there, folks.

Heavy Equipment in the Playground

For about a week, there has been a pile of rebar, bricks and other construction-type materials sitting on the edge of the playground at school. It was a mystery to everyone I asked about it.

Today, the mystery was solved: by arriving time--7:45 AM--there was a large breaker, like a backhoe with a jackhammer attachment, breaking up the lower part of the parking lot, with the purpose of enlarging it. By lunchtime, a ten foot trench had been excavated to a depth of about three feet, and a mound of rock and dirt piled alongside.

On the way to my building from the lunchroom, I stopped to watch for a while--what male of the species isn't fascinated by heavy machinery?--as a front end loader was removing dirt. Sounds pretty normal, right? EXCEPT: the kids were at recess, playing soccer, and the front end loader was traversing right through the middle of the game! There was no construction fencing, no Do Not Cross ribbon, nothing between the cavorting students and five tons of killer construction equipment. In fact, the workers were making less than little attempt to steer clear of the kids.

In the States, no one would even need to get injured before the lawsuits started flying. Welcome to Korea. So anyway, I was watching this scene with interest not unmixed with mortal fear, when I was suddenly surrounded by a large gaggle of students. This is not that unusual, for I am something of a celebrity in the neighborhood.

I had just been talking to one student about his brother who lived in "New Jerlun" or somewhere close to that ... New Jersey, New Harlem, New Brunswick, New--Ah ha--Zealand!... when another student was thrust forward by the mob. "Talk, Maury, say to him!"

Well, he wasn't Maury--they were calling him Maori, because he had spent some of his childhood years in New Jerlun. They wanted him to prove he could speak English by holding a conversation with me. As I have mentioned, Koreans are very desirous of English language skills, and are also highly competitive. However, it's pretty tough to hold a reasonable conversation surrounded by fifty gawking listeners. Fortunately (?), one of the kids got too close to the construction workers, and the crowd was forced to disperse.


In other news, Young-Il principal, Mr. Chun, brought me a Chosuk gift, a piece of "porcelain" he had created himself. As you can see, it is a lovely ceramic vase, which I will, of course, treasure as a prize of my Korean experience. Jealous, aren't you? I thought so.

Tips on Aging Gracefully

I was just about to write this exact same post, but Jo-Anna, at The View from Over Here, beat me to it: What You Need to Know About Korea. Have a look. In the "Metro" section, she writes:

Do NOT sit in the seats labeled for handicapped/elderly/pregnant women, even if there are none around. More often than not an angry ajumma that you
don't see coming will give you a lecture in Korean about how rude it is that you're sitting there, then proceed to kick you out of your seat. If that doesn't happen, you'll certainly get nasty looks from other passengers. Maybe this rule
may become more lax around 11:00 PM.

Now, this is all true, unless, like me, you resemble the KFC Grandfather, in which case someone will probably insist that you sit. No, I'm not kidding. And damn right, I'll sit there. Chances are, if I'm on the subway, I have been walking till my feet are bloody stumps. Uphill. Both ways.

It's kind of like when they charge me the Senior Citizens price at Golden Corral--hey, the cashiers are, like, eighteen years old, so everyone over thirty is old (I keep telling myself). Is it insulting? Yeah. Do I take the discount? Damn right, I do. Little shits.

Dongdaemun

Dongdaemun (Great East Gate) is an ancient gate from the days of the walled city of Seoul, most recently rebuilt in 1869. It stands at the end of Dongdaemun marketplace, which contains three large malls and about ten thousand small open-air stalls.

Here are two views of Dongdaemun, first looking at its south face (in the distance, above the girl's head), then looking at the east.




Another landmark in the neighborhood is Cheonggye Stream, a natural and man-made stream that bisects Dongdaemun market and the whole downtown area. It was filled with concrete in the sixties, due to sanitation and flooding concerns, but was restored in 2005.


While shopping, I was looking for two things: shoelaces for my Rocs, and a mustache trimmer, for my mustache, which is looking pretty bushy about now. There must be over a hundred stalls that sell shoes (not an exaggeration) but I found only ONE that had shoelaces! The only trimmers I found were cut-your-own-hair kits "as seen on TV."


For lunch, I had a corn dog with the French fries built in; I also had some cold, crisp watermelon slices and a tasty pastry--total cost USD 3.50.

Kimchi Field Museum

Even before I left the States, I promised myself a visit to the Kimchi Museum as soon as I could manage it. So that's one item checked off my list.

The museum, dedicated to to the history of Korean pickled cabbage, is located, it turns out, in Coex Mall, a massive underground shopping center located beneath Millennium Plaza (photo below), which contains hundreds of shops, ranging from six-floor Hyundai Department Store (whose food court is has at least fifty different restaurants and stalls) to Pink Chocolate, a 12X20 foot upscale shoe store.


Anyway, the museum was quite extensive, considering the subject matter, and offered free samples--okay, so it's no brewery tour, but it was still quite well laid-out and hugely informative. Koreans don't eat much in the way of dairy products, it turns out, because kimchi serves as their source of the lactobaccilli so necessary for digestion of grains--don't misunderstand me, I would never want to give up cheese, but when in Rome ...

With no further ado, here is my photo (crappy cellphone camera photo, that is) tour of Pulmuone Presents the Kimchi Field Museum. Hover your mouse on the pic for a brief description:

Politics is Inevitable III

It is now pretty well established that Kim Jong Il, the North Korean dictator, suffered a stroke in August which has left him largely incapacitated. The intelligence community of the West still seems unable to learn more than that: he can "stand if assisted" and is "able to brush his teeth", descriptions appropriate of a toddler, not a man with his finger on the button of Armageddon.

The fact that Kim was unable to put in an obligatory appearance during Chusok only increases the level of concern that a power vacuum will soon obliterate what little progress the Bush administration has made after giving up its dunderheaded ignore-it-and-it-will-magically-become-democratic "policy" of the last seven years and actually making diplomatic contact with the loony leader to the north. While Kim has three sons, none are viewed as capable of leading should that be necessary. The most likely scenario has a military junta stepping into the leadership role.

Many South Koreans are pleased with news of Kim's illness, but concerned that there are few options for the rest of the world in influencing the next steps. They dream of ultimate reconciliation, a chance to visit freely with family members in the North, but shrug when asked to describe the mechanism that will open the border again.

Once more we see how the Bush administration (applauded and defended by each and every Republican on Capitol Hill) has fucked everything up! Any reasonable administration would have continued the back-channel diplomacy of Clinton and George the First, and thereby have some tools and room in which to operate. But not Mr Decider and Darth Vader, oh no!

Indeed, the fact that the loony at issue has his (shaky, stroke-ridden) finger on the button is directly due to neocon "magical thinking"--and if you think Mr McCain and the Hairdo have a plan to change all that, you are as crazy as Mr. Kim!

Now, I am by no means some Obama freak who faints at the recitation of his pearly words of wisdom, but I gotta ask--what's wrong with talking to our foes on the world stage? Hell, even Nixon went to China!

So, it appears from here that the choice is pretty clear cut: four more years of cynical neocon lies, intentional incompetence and demagoguery; or something else--a willingness to negotiate, a desire for peace, a tendency to roll up the sleeves and work at this difficult business of governing, rather than strutting, snickering, and lying through your teeth. Vote Democrat straight in 2008!

Blog News

My pal Andy, who moved in in the middle of night on me and Max back during training at Hyundai Center (about forty-two thousand years ago), has dedicated an entire post to my blog. You can read it here, but I'll save you the trouble: he describes me as funny, charming, insightful, handsome, slender, brilliant, all-powerful, God's gift to women, a joy to know, the veritable god at whose feet all humans should worship every day, and pretty damn sexy.

Did I mention how perspicacious he is? I would point you to his blog, Literaryhero and Friends, but it's been in my blog roll since day two after I met him. It's taken him all this time to return the favor, but, hey, I understand. Scumbag.

More on Chusok/Chu'seok/Chuseok

It is, as I mentioned, the Korean Thanksgiving holiday, which falls on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month (this year, we'll call it "September 14th," for the heck of it) just in time for the harvest season. Indeed, newly harvested rice plays an important role in the traditional family festivities, as it is ground into powder and formed into ddok (doughy rice cakes) then stuffed with honey and sesame seeds before being steamed over pine needles.

We were served them for lunch on Thursday, and they were delicious--technically, they're called songpyeon. You bite into a light but sticky doughball and get a sweet, tasty surprise. I guess the tradition of the family making them together has begun to disappear, as I have noticed them for sale for quite a while in E-Mart-uh. Of course, in America, once upon a time, the family would craft and hang the decorations for the tree together on Christmas Eve. Welcome to commercialism, Korea!

Speaking of holiday commercialism, I now understand the everpresent "Gift Boxes" in E-Mart--presentation-style boxes of fruit, liquor, socks (!?), Italian prepared meats, Spam (no, I'm not kidding, gift sets of Spam), hygiene products, mushrooms, and on and on, all ranging in price from from about W10,000 to W200,000. Erase three zeroes to convert to USD. They have been selling Chusok at least since I got here.

Turns out, Seoul won't be a total ghost town; here is a list of activities at Korea Times. To learn more about the holiday, go to Korea4Expats or The Holdiay Zone.

Happy Chusok/Chu'seok/Chuseok.