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            Three Years In Korea



It's hard to decide on which pictures to use to sum up three years in Korea. Out
of the hundreds of pictures that we took, these are a good cross section.


                         (Click on the titles for the full sized image.)






The Cherry Blossoms of Kwangju Women's University.

Most of the time in Korea it is either too hot (most of the summer is high
temperatures with insane humidity) or too cold (not really cold weather-wise but
the buildings are made of cement and seem to collect the cold).

The best times of the year are autumn and spring. Autumn has nice weather but is
a little bland colour-wise. Spring is pretty nice. Cherry blossom season is
really something to see.

As you can see from the time stamp on the picture; it's late March and spring is
pretty much underway. At other times of the year you can see orchids in the
ditches. I'll leave it to Connie's page to talk about the flowers if she wishes.





Downtown Gwangju

This picture does not do justice to the situation. In person, there is so much
light pollution that the only way to tell that it's night time is to look up and
see the black sky.

It was taken on the night of the National presidential election. It's actually a
holiday in Korea, and our students asked us if we had any plans for election
day. Keep in mind, the Korean habit of substituting “r's” for “l's”. We were
just a little taken aback that there would be a day for that.





12 kinds of Kimchi.

Any pictorial of Korea that does not include Kimchi, is incomplete. It's
everywhere. There's no food in Canada that even comes close in cultural
importance. Second only to rice, it is eaten at every meal and often for snacks.

Basically, it's a pickled, fermented Napa cabbage. Other vegetables, and
sometimes bi-valves such as oysters, can be given the same treatment, but it's
the cabbage version that is most common.. (How does a fermented raw oyster
appeal to you?)

It can range from mild and cooling in the case of “water Kimchi”, to
outrageously spicy with some of the hot pepper versions.

The recipe will be subtly different for each family, but the essential
ingredients are:

Cabbage, salt, hot red pepper paste (capsicum not pepper), fermented fish or
shrimp. The cabbage is soaked in a salt brine for a number of hours and then
rinsed. Then the red pepper paste is massaged into the individual leaves. Then
the fermented seafood is mixed in.

Traditionally, this mixture would then be put into a Kimchi pot (see the
potter's workshop below) and either stored on the roof of the house or buried in
the ground. Either method results in the fermentation process.

The new method is to retard the fermentation process by putting the mixture into
specially designed fridges.

Sadly, the tradition of homemade Kimchi is slowly disappearing. Most families
buy Kimchi at a store. Most of it is made in China now. It is a very labour
intensive food and women just don't have the time anymore. Yes it sounds sexist
but traditionally Korean men had absolutely nothing to do with food preparation,
or anything even resembling housework.

My preference for Kimchi is the homemade stuff that hasn't had a chance to
ferment for very long. The really old stuff is somewhat of an acquired taste.

Korea has the highest incidence of stomach cancer in the world. Even the Korean
doctors are starting to suspect their love of pickling mixed with obscene
amounts of heat from red peppers may not be good for you when eaten 5-8 times a
day.

But the common person is convinced that it is a panacea. It's responsible for
the absence of SARS in Korea, will cure just about any disease known to man, is
a protection from HIV...

There is some validity of its anti-oxidant properties, but that is still being
tested.





One of our favourite meals: Bullbek.

This was one of the first meals that Connie introduced me to. Marinated pork,
spinach, onions, rice noodles and an egg yolk are simmered in a broth. There are
three kinds of kimchi on the table; as well as tubu (tofu) and bondaegee (silk
worm larvae). Sounds disgusting but they're very good. A meal like this costs
about 7 dollars each.

I should also mention the contrasts of Korean food when looked at from a western
perspective.

On one hand, they have some of the best meat, fish, poultry, vegetables that I
have ever tasted. This includes the time I spent working in good restaurants in
Canada. The vegetables are of the best quality (as long as they are Korean
vegetables), a whole duck would only cost you about 7 dollars, abalone is only
around 3 or 4 dollars a pound.

On the other hand, they will take a beautifully fresh skate (ray fish) and leave
it at room temperature until the smell of ammonia would stop a buzzard, then
they cut it up, bones and all, and eat it raw. The taste was actually quite
good. But the smell, and crunch of the bony cartilage was too much to get past.
I only tried it a couple of times.

Eggs are a little like playing Russian Roulette. The Koreans feel that a
fertilized egg will be better for you. Also, they don't candle them. I'll let
your imagination fill in the rest.

Buying meat at a grocery store was a risky endeavour. Many times, we would smell
the meat before we bought it and by the time we got it home, it had gone bad. We
did a lot of complaining about this and it cost us a fair bit of money in the
long run.

We actually went to a restaurant the specializes in beef intestines. The
selection on the menu was very large. Everything from fried, stewed, stir fried,
spicy, mild, you name it. For me, it was one of the most memorable and enjoyable
meals of my stay, Connie was sickened.

We both had a couple cases of something that I hesitate to call food poisoning.
We got sick from some raw oysters but the Koreans we were with did not. One trip
to Japan was clouded in a particularly nasty bout of something that had me up
all night offering my soul up on very easy terms, promising never to eat a raw
oyster again. Just please, please, please let me start feeling better.

We also had a couple of bouts of real food poisoning. One dinner at a "Western"
style restaurant resulted in four out of five of us feeling a little poorly and
not wanting to stray too far from the washroom.

However, the vast majority of my food memories are good ones.

I could write all day about food, so I should stop now.





Korean video games.

The middle one is the neatest but the other two are not without their charms.
The idea is that the butt represents your boss. At various times in the game,
you are required to either kick, hip or punch your boss in the butt. The first
time I saw the game, I thought that there was a technician working on it.

The other two games are the crane-and-catch-a-prize style. The uncommon thing is
that they often contained such prizes as lingerie, dried pasta and 40 ouncers of
scotch. Not sure about the rate of vandalism, but I do know that street crime is
very low in Korea in general, and particularly low in Gwangju.





Andong Mask Festival.

These guys were about to participate in a parade. The colourful group in the
background are a troupe of dancers/percussionists. The performances are usually
pretty impressive. Very interesting rhythms in Korean folk music. Well, the
percussion stuff at least.

They also have a vocal folk music that we as foreigners will never understand.
It's very dissonant and the melody and time signatures are... well... foreign.
To blatantly steal from one of my favourite authors: ”It sounds like a cat
trying to go to the bathroom through a sewn up bum.”

The older men in the foreground represent the elders of a village. Historically,
your social status would dictate the style of hat you could wear.





Canada Day - Seoul


Makes me so proud to be a Canadian: brings a tear to my eye. Ah, the joys of
literal translations. The sign was on a port-a-potty with only a urinal in it.

Canada Day in Seoul is a yearly party put on by the Canadian chamber of
commerce. No Canadian beer and the food was cooked by the Korean franchise of
Outback.

There had been rain and the day degenerated into a mud-wrestling, mud-football
and mud-redneck contest. After which, these people got onto buses and subways:
drunk and filthy with mud. These are the people who are acting as ambassadors
for our country. In a society that puts such a high value on appearances and
propriety.

In some areas we are starting get as bad a reputation as Americans.





Outdoor market in Gwangju.

Not really sure how the Koreans treat pig heads when used as a food item. I
didn't have the opportunity to try any, (that I know of).

There is one Buddhist tradition that's worth mentioning. Several times during
our stay, we had to walk around an impromptu picnic on the sidewalk in front of
a car dealership. There is a Buddhist ritual involving the pig and travel,
another thing was never really explained to us. Basically, a picnic in front of
a new car with a pig head facing both the picnickers and the vehicle. This will
result in safety and happiness for all who travel in the car.

The Koreans need all the help they can get in this respect. They have the
highest accident rate in the world and within that figure they have the highest
death-to-accident rate in the world.





Potter's workshop.


This guy is actually registered as a Korean cultural treasure. He’s the nth
generation of potters in his family going back hundreds of years.

The above Kimchi pot was thrown together in about ten minutes. Watching him
work, you could tell that he could do it in his sleep. He was busy talking with
the interpreter and hardly watching what he was doing.

In another room, there were rows and rows of these things. If there were any
differences in size or curvature, I couldn't see it. They were all drying a
little bit before they were put into the kiln.






Traditional Kiln.


This is the old style kiln. The fire was in the bottom. The pottery was placed
inside according to size. Large, thick stuff nearer to the bottom and close to
the fire; smaller stuff was further away.

We were told that this one hadn't been used for a number of years, but that
there had been an oven on that particular site since his family had taken over
the property generations ago.






A Sea Salt Farm.

This was an eye-opening trip for me. I never realized the processes and length
of time involved in harvesting sea salt.

Fresh sea water is allowed into the first set of pens, after a few days, that
water is moved, now with much less volume, into the next set of pens. This
process continues until the salts are so concentrated that they start to
crystallize. I believe the ratio is 16 – 8 – 4 – 2 – 1. The woman that you see
above is pushing the crystals into the centre of the pen, then the water is
somehow returned to the first set. All that's left is to shovel the salt into a
wheelbarrow, and you're off.

The pens are very well designed and built. Everything is done by gravity: no
hoses just removable plugs in the retaining walls. The bottom of the pens are
small ceramic tiles, set with a gentle slope for the gravity system to work
properly.

Salt made in this fashion is quite labour intensive and therefore expensive (by
Korean standards).

It was a little bit bothersome that the pens are open to the air, insects, birds
and all that good stuff. Salt will kill anything and they've been doing it this
way for as long as Korea has been keeping records so I guess it's safe, but it
does go against our notions of food safety.

Each region prides itself on its own local salts, and apparently there are
pronounced differences in taste.





The results.



Sunset by the sea.

This happens to be at the salt farm but was taken for the view, The picture does
not do it justice.





A really big bonfire.

This is another shot from the Andong Mask Festival. Rice straw on the bottom,
the cage is made from bamboo. Inside the cage are evergreens about the size of a
home Christmas tree.

We didn't stick around for the fire as we had to catch a bus back to Gwangju.
Pity.





Unjunsa (Unjun temple). Really, really big bell.

Every trip we went on seemed to involve a Buddhist temple. For the most part
they are scenic places that would be beautiful if it weren't for the hundreds of
tourists that always seemed to be at the various temples we visited. Of course,
I realize that we were part of this problem. (See below)

The other difficulty from our point of view was that after you have seen a few
dozen of them, THEY ALL START TO LOOK THE SAME. On some trips we would stop at
two different temples.

Hats off to the Gwangju International Centre (the organization that took us on
these trips). Sing-Sing, (the organizer and our good friend) and the GIC
volunteers did a great job and really thought that they were showing us an
important part of Korean culture. And for the first few temples we could
appreciate it. But after a very short time, they all looked the same.

To me, there are two things that make these temples interesting. First is the
construction of the temple buildings. The detail and complexity is incredible.
The buildings have no foundation. The “legs”, that hold the temples up off the
ground are always set on bedrock and cut in situ to make level.

The second thing that I find interesting is that while that temple site are (in
some cases) thousands of years old, we saw no shrine buildings older than the
Korean war. If the communists didn't burn them down on the retreat north after
the American landings, then the Americans did. No one could ever give me a
satisfactory explanation as to why the Americans did this, so I do find the
explanation a little suspect.





Entrance to Unjunsa.

Unjunsa, pictured above, is know as The Temple of 1001 Buddhas. At one point in
it's history, there were 1001 stone statues of Buddha. When the Japanese invaded
in the early 20th century, many of these were taken to Japan.



Detail. No nails, no glue, hand painted.



Ditto.





Japanese Cooper.

Speaking of Japan... I made two trips. One with Connie and one on my own. This
was number two (food poisoning, remember?) This is probably not the picture that
most people would choose to show off Japan, but I'm using it 'cause this Mini is
in the best shape I've ever seen for the 60's vintage.

Japan is in many ways the opposite of Korea. It's clean, the streets are
immaculate. There's no rubbish, the paving stones in the sidewalks are level and
do not wobble or try to trip you when you walk on them.

The Japanese seem proud of their history (even if the school system teaches a
blatantly skewed version of WWII and Japanese colonial policy).

The Japanese embrace technology and it's advancements. During the late 1800's,
the Japanese military was every bit as advanced technologically as any western
power. The Koreans were isolationist and the military was not up to date. They
were still in swords and spears: virtually no rifles or artillery.

Two food memories from Japan. First, the best pizza Margarita I have ever had,
real water buffalo mozzarella and everything. Second, a vegetable tempura dish
that was pretty special.

The morning after my bout of food related insomnia, I had to walk about 6
kilometres to the Korean consulate. Shortly after I started walking, I started
to feel a bit better.

I stopped at a park with a beautiful lake. I took the island walkway and
couldn't believe how clean it was.

Again the Korean comparison. Land is very scarce in both Korea and Japan. In
Korea, they certainly do love to go hiking, but the goal is not to enjoy, but
rather to accomplish. All of the hiking trails that I saw in Korea were ugly
with litter. In fact there was a movement afoot last summer to try and clean up
the mountains and hiking trails. It was a volunteer group made up entirely of
expats from other countries. When the Korean hikers were asked about it , most
of them responded that they were happy that someone was doing it, but felt no
need to pitch in.

Over the time that I spent in Korea, I did notice that these attitudes are
slowly changing.

As I mentioned before, the streets in Japan are clean; the park was immaculate.
All of the stereotypes that you've heard about Japanese gardens are actually
true from what I saw. Manicured is the best adjective I can think of.





Traditional rice planting.

The title pretty much says it all. This was taken at the Hampyong Butterfly
Festival. A festival that celebrates the lowly cabbage butterfly. There was a
procession around the paddy lead by the elders and shaman of the village. This
was to bless the field. The women then walked right into the mud and started the
planting. The men only entered the field reluctantly, and none of them did any
planting.

Today, this work is all done by machine, but as recently as the 1970's this was
the method of planting. It is common to see Ajumas, older women (lit. married
woman) bent over at the waist from a combination of years in the fields and
osteoporosis. This is becoming less common as diet and automation improve.

Of course, many of the men long for “the good old days” when things were simpler
and men were in charge.



Mudungsan.

One of my favourite pictures from Korea. This is a view from the driveway of one
of our closest friends, Perry. This view has changed a fair bit since we took
it. More buildings block Mudung mountain.




I can see now that I left out many of the pictures.

The trip to the bird sanctuary at dusk and we watched over 350,000 water birds
take off as one flock and head to their feeding areas.

The odd site of rice paddies being cared for by hand in vacant lots surrounded
by a city of 1.5 million people.

Rice or peppers drying on tarps taking a up an entire lane of a busy street.

The ubiquitous garbage and litter on every street in Gwangju.

The absolute belief by many Koreans that: homosexuality does not exist in Korea,
there are no homeless people, leaving a fan running through the night will kill
you (it's called fan death), male-pattern baldness is caused by getting your
hair wet in the rain.

A picture of the Korean Turtle ships. Iron clads developed, built and used 450
years before the Americans 'invented' them.

Pictures of huge phallus-like rock rock statues that represent the ancestors of
Jeju Island.

Drum majorettes firing explosive paper streamers during a wedding procession.
(we were startled and I actually ducked: sounded just like a shotgun.)

A family history book brought to an adult class that showed a continuous lineage
back 2100 years.

The anachronism of a historical folk village dating back a thousand plus years
with coffee machines, restaurants and motor scooters in open view. Picture
vending machines and televisions inside Upper Canada Village and you'll get the
idea.

Some sort of pictorial representation of the fact that cell phones in Korea will
actually get a signal anywhere in the country: like in the subway or road
tunnels.

Speaking of cell phones, the reason they work everywhere is probably due to the
expected social unrest if they didn't. Koreans are crazy about cells phones in a
way that makes mere obsession look harmless.

Some pictures regarding the Gwangju Democratic Uprising. The first uprising that
demonstrated against the American puppet government, but resulted in Jimmy
Carter ordering the troops in. Many civilians were killed.

The mountainous landscape that must have been hell to move a mechanized army
through, let alone historical regiments of cavalry and infantry.