**NEWS FLASH** New pictures!

I thought maybe I'd been getting a little too serious in my postings as of late so I decided to liven things up a bit with some scandalous pictures of what life's really like here for me in Korea. Ok, well not really scandalous, except for maybe the long night out at the Noraebang, which involved a lot of really bad singing that only got worse toward the end. What you will see:

***Never-before-seen footage of giant fish swimming through the streets in the aftermath of the recent typhoon!***
http://seantoki.shutterfly.com/action/?a=0AZtGLdozasmL7w

***A heinously expensive cup of tea in an Insadong teahouse!*** http://seantoki.shutterfly.com/action/?a=0AZtGLdozasmL_g

***Sudden enlightenment at the top of a mountain in the midst of said typhoon!*** http://seantoki.shutterfly.com/action/?a=0AZtGLdozasmL9o

***And yes, ALL THREE stages of a night out on the town in Korea!*** seantoki.shutterfly.com/action/?a=0AZtGLdozasmLCBg

...and a lot of other really nice, though rather tame, pictures.

So enjoy and feel free to let me know what you think,

Sean-toki

Things to do in a typhoon

This past weekend was a 3-day here in Korea (Monday was Constitution Day). I had considered going on a trip given the long weekend but was relieved to have neglected to plan as a typhoon (maybe more than one) swept Korea, apparently causing the president to declare a state of national emergency. Not that it was really that bad up here, as the most I saw was basically a lot of rain, not much worse than springtime in Seattle.

Anyway, I took the show indoors for the most part, with the exception of an excellent (but very wet) foray into the hills just North of Seoul. That was the result of a sort of half-planned, half just brazen curiosity-driven trip to the end of the #4 subway line, to the neighborhood of Donggigae. What I came across there was a glimpse of “old Korea” (by this I mean the faded images of my early years here) at the urban fringe where development has yet to replace the old, organic, somewhat ramshackle city form with the high-rise structures that dominate elsewhere. Narrow, winding streets, and even narrower alleyways branching off the streets, snaking through the neighborhood, crammed with small shops – restaurants, rice-pastry shops, fabric shops, fish and vegetable stalls, tailors, barber shops, makeshift video arcades, mobile sellers with their recorded messages blasting over megaphones, and improvised churches are everywhere. Some churches have the actual “standard” steeple that you see everywhere, others use old radio-towers with crosses on top, still others are just tiny one-story buildings and just have “church” written on the side. Buddhist buildings can be identified by their left-facing swastikas. It’s still a little jarring to see this symbol all over the place here, even though it was in existence as a sacred symbol for many religions long before it became known to the world as a symbol of evil. A sign of how deeply it has penetrated our (or at least my) consciousness.
After winding my way through Donggigae, I found myself on the road leading out of town, which after a quarter mile or so split off to the left and entered a nature preserve area. I continued along the road, through what seemed like a squatter camp of some sort, feeling a little wary and wondering a little if I shouldn’t just turn around rather than find myself in the wrong neck of the woods…but, I continued, sensing I was in some sort of interesting place and there was more to see down the road. Eventually the road turned sharply upward, and I started up a hill, into the woods. All the while it was pouring down rain – luckily I had brought my umbrella, which as usual, seemed way too small. After a little while I came across a small shelter with a large bell in it, with what might have been 2 or 3 people huddled underneath the floor of the shelter, taking cover from the rain. Then, through the trees, I saw a small, but beautiful Buddhist temple with a garden in front. I decided after a little bit that I could probably wander quietly around for a couple of minutes, which I did – the smell of ginseng and incense hanging heavily in the air and mixing with the smell of the rain. Feeling a little like I might not belong there, I decided not to linger too long – I think I probably could have ventured inside the temple, but for fear of looking like a doofy lost-in-the-woods tourist, desecrating a sacred place, I figured it was better not to risk it. The experience I had was certainly memorable enough…

So that was Saturday – Sunday I spent much of the day with the Hos at the gigantic underground COEX mall and the Seoul Aquarium, both good places to visit in typhoon weather. COEX was both very big, and very crowded, but two things stand out as memorable: 1) they project these ads which double as interactive video games onto the floor, kids cram around them jumping, kicking, doing whatever the game has them doing – I still can’t figure out exactly how they do it, and 2) t-shirts. Like you’ve never seen them before – a t-shirt can be built on just about any slogan/catchphrase/graphic or combination thereof, they’re everywhere, and almost no two are the same. Many of them have English slogans but something usually gets lost in translation so it’s just not quite right. Which makes them both unique and entertaining reading as you’re walking along. The aquarium was cool – with a few twists that made it different than most others I’ve seen. Like the army action figures in the fish tanks, and the one aquarium that was made out of a phone booth (photos to follow).

On Monday I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art. One of the great things about visiting the Museum (which is in the same place as the giant Seoul Land amusement park) is that you are shuttled there via the one and only elephant train - a purple, motorized trolley with a big plastic elephant head on the front. Anyway, I’d been really interested to see this museum as I’m trying to wrap my mind around what Korea is today – I mean they have basically developed as a distinct culture over several thousand years, mostly because of their natural geographic isolation (mountains to the north and a peninsula surrounded by water). Over that time they have had to fight off invasion after invasion, and have been occupied/ruled by different countries at many different points in their history (the Japanese occupation of 1910-1945 being a particularly sore point). After the Korean War, the country was both devastated and divided...and during the past 50 years they have struggled to find themselves as a distinct culture again, amidst the ubiquitous force of Westernization. It sort of reminds me a bit of visiting Moscow and St. Petersburg a few years ago and seeing the cities rapidly evolving, taking on a new identity that was heavily influenced by the West but yet distinctly rooted in an undercurrent of their own history and traditions. So in an age where everything starts to look and feel more the same, it’s interesting to me to see if and how cultures react to that, and how they stand apart.

All this being said, the development of modern Korean culture seems very visible in their art. In the early years after the war, the art was tending toward abstract-expressionist, very much seeking meaning, lacking a distinct "Korean" identity (as far as I could see), probably influenced partly by the west, but also introverted and hard for a wider audience understand. As time went on, artists rebelled against this lack of coherency, and the art became much more focused on clear geometric forms, seeking meaning in structure. "Traditional" forms or references were largely ignored until the late 70's, early 80's, when they were combined with contemporary themes in an apparent realization of the need to connect with and acknowledge their past, and then finally, after the Olympic games of 1988, this strongly-defined, distinctly Korean identity was finally put forth in modern art. It was pretty fascinating to see this develop - I was especially interested in the early 80's period, partly because I was in Korea then (yeah and heavily into the art scene too ;), but also because it was this period right before the economic boom began and Korea was totally transformed. It was interesting to see this period as part of a realization of the culture and traditions of the past, just as Korea was seeing itself becoming a much more affluent and westernized nation.

Plenty of pictures to come in the next post – including never-before seen shots of *ALL THREE* parts of a night out on the town in Anyang, army guys in fish tanks, my very wet day in Danggogae, a hard-won picture of the one and only Rich Business (just the outside of course), and the old teahouses of Insadong. But as usual it’s late, and my wrist got pretty badly whacked playing basketball tonight – wrapped as it is in some sort of herbal remedy patch, oozing a very medicinal smell, it really shouldn’t be forced to type any longer…and it’s been another long post, so good night & good luck ‘til next time…

~Sean-toki

Things that make you go hmmm

I've been wanting to post on a few collected oddities that I've noticed over the course of the past month (and yes, it's been a month already...) but haven't for one reason or another. One is that I want to get pictures of some of these, but I haven't had my camera with me at the opportune times - for instance, some of the most document-worthy events happen when I go out to lunch, or dinner, and I don't have my camera with me. The mantra has to change...wallet, keys - no cell phone, ha! - camera...

Anyway - one of these little nuances that continues to amaze me involves parking...so picture a typical parking lot, say at a park, with two rows of cars on either side parked next to each other, perpendicular to the curb. There's space in the middle of course so you can drive through, back out, etc. But picture that space filled with two rows of cars, parked in a line that is completely blocking the cars parked perpendicular to the curb. Now there's just a narrow strip in the middle, between the blocking cars. See the improvised graphic below for details (I will get a photo, I promise) and try to guess how the orange cars get out. If you don't want to know the answer before guessing how it's done, don't read below the graphic...:



Ok, so the answer is....:



The cars in blue are in neutral. If one of them is blocking your car, you simply push it until it's not blocking anymore (Yes, you too grandma), and you're good to go. So the parking spots you really want are those blocking the cars - which of course requires excellent timing and/or luck on your part to accomplish. It's amazing how much this is a non-issue to them - just another part of urban life, using the space you have and dealing with it. I've never seen this done in any other city without someone's headlights getting broken or, at the very least, the car getting towed. Of course, there are still way too many cars here (and little respect for pedestrians), but I have to admire the demonstrated human capacity for adapting to a distinct shortage of space.

Another one is the very unique concept of "mixed use" that seems to work perfectly well here. Sure, it's an idea that's been tossed around a lot in the last ten years by urban planner types, architects, developers, as a cure-all for downtown revitalization. Usually what they like to have us picture are trendy street-level restaurants, cafes, boutiques and the like, with their patrons stacked comfortably above in equally trendy condos. Of course there are plenty of variations on this theme - some places are grittier or more culturally cosmopolitan than others, for example - but the general formula is more or less pretty similar. Well, the book on mixed use has been rewritten my friends. Here (and this is basically a suburb of Seoul, keep in mind), upon entering the main shopping/nightlife area - framed on either side by six stories of neon, plastered on every square inch of the buildings, and going on for blocks - you will encounter every kind of use imaginable, squeezed into every square inch of space: live fish restaurants, video game rooms, country western and jazz bars, right next to each other, an endless array of noraebangs and their slightly more disreputable cousins, the norea-bars, quiet coffee shops, theaters, barber shops, insurance offices, stationary shops, and on and on, all right next to or stacked on top of each other. My favorite mixed-use combination so far is this shady place called "Rich Business & Black Hole Room" (the only hint of what it actually is being a neon "motel" sign prominently displayed out front), and right next door, literally, is a church (you can tell because there's a steeple sticking out of the top of that particular area of the building). And there are plenty of other examples of these, peacefully coexisting, perhaps mutually benefitting each other. Sure, the irony is there - but that's just how things are set up here, just one leaseholder and another, right next door, minding his own business, doing what it is he's here on earth to do, making a living.

Churches are another story of their own. There are hundreds of them, thousands maybe, in Seoul and in the outlying areas - they're everywhere. Most of them in fact are just in buildings like the large ones that line the streets of Anyang, and the only way you know they are there is by the two story-or-so steeple that juts out the top, like a candle on a birthday cake. And most of the steeples look exactly the same - as churches come and go, I'm assuming the steeple is just removed and put on a new building, wherever a new church is going. And religion seems to be a pretty open topic - I've been asked to go to church with people several times. Confucian beliefs still predominate, but it seems that Christianity has grown quite rapidly. I don't know exactly why, but it's an interesting shift. Confucian beliefs are part of the very traditional part of Korea that is somewhat at odds with modern, Western-influenced culture, and might be seen to be constraining, especially to females. Christianity might be a response to this for people who seek some sort of structured spirituality that can be accomodated in their everyday lives. I really don't know, but it would be interesting to find out more about this...

Anyway, I'm afraid another blog entry is nearing its end as my focus is starting to dwindle and sleep calls my name. There are plenty of other things that took me a while to get used to here, or not even that, just struck me pretty plainly as interesting and different. Which I guess is predictable in a foreign country, but they certainly make for good thought-fodder...

The last lingering question/riddle I will leave off on is why people, when walking toward you, seem to expect to be passed on the left, and not the right, as seems to be the norm in the States. They don't drive on the left. But if I'm correct, up until 2000 or so, the reading was done right to left. Coincidence? I don't have an answer - thesis anyone?

Time for bed I think... ~Sean-Toki

Epic entry - fish market and a folk village (w/ pictures!)

I have to get this entry up about last weekend before this weekend comes, before the new experiences rob the "old" ones of their freshness...

So it was last Saturday and I had spent most of the morning doing laundry and trying to decide whether to venture out into the very tentative looking weather outside. Plus I'd stayed up late watching the Germany-Argentina game, which stretched late into the night with penalty kicks...I have to say though that I was truly impressed by the Argentine national anthem, which I might have to give the "best in tournament" award. It's a beautiful, epic piece, though only a few of the players seemed to know all of the nine or so verses. Speaking of epic, my single load of laundry, in the washing machine, must have taken at least two hours. By the time it's finally done, I realize there is no dryer in the apartment, and I have decided to wash nearly all of my socks and all of my underwear. It's a tough lesson to learn, but I'll remember to keep something in reserve next time I'm travelling and I don't have some sort of reliable way to dry my clothes lined up...

Not about to let a pile of wet clothes ruin my day, and tired of waiting for the weather to make up its mind, I headed out to the subway with the intention of doing a little urban exploring in Seoul. Just as I get to the subway steps, an impulse grabs me and pulls me off to the right. Part of it was just simply to grab what would seem to most as a mundane picture -- but I was really intrigued by the fact that there's this giant power plant in the middle of town, which not only provides electricity but is a central source of heat for office and residential buildings in the neighborhood (we don't have anything like this in the U.S. as far as I know). And in Sim City, if you ever put a power plant in the middle of your posh residential neighborhood, it would instantly become a slum. But not here - in fact there are some of the most expensive apartments in the greater Seoul area in this neighborhood. Granted, it's not spewing coal dust or oil smoke (it's powered by nat. gas) but still, I was intrigued. So I got my precious picture (it's not that good, but you can still see it if you click the link at the end of this entry) and instead of turning around to go back the subway station, I simply kept walking...I can't really explain why, I just thought maybe I'd find something interesting here, and I don't generally like being overly destination-oriented when I'm travelling. So this was my chance to make sure I stayed true to that state of mind...Well sure enough, after a good 20-30 mins or so I came upon this huge complex, which I first thought was some kind of factory...but people were walking right in, and there was plenty of traffic going through its gates...so I kept going. I navigated my way around the back of the massive warehouse, whilst perilously dodging cars weaving their way through the parking lot, and found the entrance. Inside it's like stepping back into the world of "old Korea" that I remember - vendors everywhere, selling all kinds of vegetables, fruits, herbs, some clamoring for my attention, others perhaps just tired of clamoring, just waiting for the next customer to pick their stand out of the 100's of other vendors. I wander around for a while, snap a few pictures, and start feeling a little guilty just being there for my own benefit - so I buy a bunch of grapes to tie me over to dinner time. I figure it will be a dollar, maybe less, but when the vendor hands me the bag I realize maybe I should have just gone for the mandarin oranges. Apparently grapes here aren't cheap. I feel a little pathetic giving in and handing over the roughly $10 for my precious grapes, but I hardly ever pay for food here, and consider it the price of a worthwhile experience.

Clearly done with the fruit & vegetable market for the day, I head to the neighboring warehouse, which is just as big, but filled with all kinds of bounty from the sea - most of it still living. In fact, it might as well have been an aquarium. Red snapper, salmon, eels, halibut, shellfish, octopus, squid, and all kinds of other beautiful fish - all suddenly having been taken from their respective places in the food chain and placed squarely at the bottom. In fact, if you like you can have sashimi prepared right in front of you, which only moments before was happily swimming in the tank. It's pretty amazing to see all of this fresh food being sold directly to the customer - and this was apparently not a product of "old Korea" so much as a part of the plan for Pyeongcheon, the area in Anyang where I live. It's exactly the kind of facility that we were trying to get the city of Seattle, a city with a strong maritime history, to buy into as part of this past year's "food systems" endeavor. And Pyeongcheon isn't even near the ocean.

Satisfied with the whole experience, despite the $10 grapes, I head further up the road, where, after quite a bit of searching I eventually find the entrance to a trail that I'm hoping will take me to the top of a local mountain. It's been a bad week for smog and I'm craving a little fresh air. As it turns out, the trail is good, and I make my way up, through a traditional Korean burial ground (grassy mounds of dirt piled over the dead) and up a steep slope, complete with ropes so I can pull myself up the rocks (they come in really handy on the way down). It's a good hike to the top, and I savor the view with my expensive snack. I had no idea Anyang was this big - the apartment towers seem to flow through the valley like concrete glaciers, although these glaciers tend to keep growing, unlike the case of their more traditional cousins. High density development is everywhere, and as far as I can see, anything resembling the single family home so familiar to us in the U.S. doesn't exist here. I think about how most Koreans must think of their public and private space. Private space is at a premium, and usually small - quality public spaces are essential. Traditional Korean architecture has given way to buildings that almost all look the same; with so many people in one building, the architecture could never really democratically reflect a unified sense of space anyway. The "new" architecture as far as I can see is no longer the building - it's the collected personal spaces of hundreds of people on the inside, and well-designed urban spaces (especially public ones) on the outside that give people a sense of community. With this in mind, they're doing what I think is a pretty good job of making urban areas livable; although since the government realizes nice places like Pyeongcheon are quite expensive right now, they're on a mission to build 48 more "new towns" much like it, mostly from scratch. As I've said before, some extraordinary things are about to happen in Korea, as well as other places facing similar issues, as far as urbanism goes. 2 Shoes actually sent me a great article today that brings some of this to light check it out here.

This post is getting kind of long so I'll try to finish up...on the way back from my meditations on the mountain, heading home, I passed under a busy expressway where I discovered a whole neighborhood that existed right underneath and to either side. At the center was a well-used sculpture park area, with foot bridges connecting either side of the commercial area (still going underneath the expressway). As is the case for most successful commercial areas I see here, neon signs lit just about every square inch of the buildings, people walked, sat, and talked in front, kids ate ice cream and learned to ride their bicycles...the recipe for urban success happening right there under a freeway. It was cool to see - I don't know what, if anything, the government might have done to encourage this, or if there was more to the story I didn't know, but nonetheless, a nice bookend to my adventure for the day.

On Sunday I went to the "Korean Folk Village" (a sort of "old Korea" cultural experience that tries its best to be authentic) with the Hos, which I had remembered from my childhood long ago as an actual folk village in the country. I think it's expanded quite a bit since then - there's now a theme park right across the river, and apartment towers surround the area, which is totally urbanized. Inside the gates though, you forget about that for a while, and walk through the dirt streets, past the blacksmiths and artisans, the farmhouses and their (yes, real) crops, eat authentic old-style Korean food and buy authentic souveniers. Most impressive were the performances - people doing wild tricks on horseback, tightrope walkers, see-saw acrobats, and some mesmerizing dancers who could twirl these streamers attached to their headdresses in unison, while barely moving their heads. That was all great of course, but my favorite part of the day was sprawling out and taking a nap on the hard, wooden floor of an open gazebo with the Hos - which they comfortably did, at their 75 years, for over an hour. It was a nice way to recover from a little too much dong dong ju (they swore off drinking last week) and a very hearty lunch.

The evening was capped by another great dinner prepared by Wan Mi, their daughter - this time it was chicken stuffed with ginseng, garlic, and some kind of red fruit, accompanied by kimche, rice, pumpkin gruel and the requisite OB...which I was satisfied to enjoy alone (but nonetheless in great company) this time as result of last week's pinky promise.

So thanks for staying with me for this epic entry, unless you skipped all the way to the bottom just to see the pictures, in which case, I'd still be more than happy to share them with you, here:
Pictures of my wanderings around Anyang here

The Folk Village here

New blog feature - Pictures!

Yes, I'm working hard to enhance the blog experience for all of you - so I decided to kick it up a notch and attempt to add some pictures. I picked Shutterfly as my picture-providing service for now, not really having explored my options much, so if anyone knows of a better way, feel free to let me know...

The ones I've posted so far are a collection of the first couple weeks here - they seem outdated to me already because I have so many more to post - just not enough energy left at the moment to put them through the production process that it takes to get everything up online...Anyway my head's starting hurt after all of the picture organizing/reformatting etc. so I don't know if I'm much for a blog entry right now. Let's just let the pictures speak for themselves for the moment and I'll fill in the gaps in a day or so...

So - here they are...the viewing experience is probably best if you click on the "view slideshow" option to the right of the screen after you click the link...

Return to Seocho-dong and reunion with the Hos here
Some pictures from the first couple of weeks in Anyang
First wanderings around Seoul
Some shots of the Cheonggyecheon Stream, beautifully restored after many years of dual use as a roadway and sewer.

Enjoy! More soon...

--seantoki