EthnoScopes : Tracks of an Anthropologist

The Play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?"

2012-02-06T23:14:00.008+09:00

The Probationary Theatre Company put on another show at the Whitebox Theatre at Hyochang Park. The whole play consisted of four people, two couples. The first couple had been married for a long time, loved each other but were unable to express that love as they were two souls, perhaps soulmates, who had become deluded by the failure of meeting each other's expectations. Games, brutal games of verbal assault were played against each other with the second couple getting involved just be their being houseguests at 2am after a socialization party at the university where drinking was the standard. The drinking was heightened at the hosting house and was the catalyst for the inebriation and the "honest" baring of closet secrets to the guests in order for the first couple to attack one another.

Dark, sinister and convoluted the story seems until the end is reached where the husband's sick verbage is realized not to be so off at all but was "playing along" with the wife's delusions and borderline madness. The whole night of drinking and verbal and even physical abuse of the couple in front of their houseguests and at times towards their houseguests is tangled layers of a woven story using discordant threads; this all signifies the wavering between the fictions and the realities in their lives. A hard decipher.

I'm still slightly confused about the play being entitled "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?" There seemed to be some political or social allusion to Virginia Wolf beyond the refraine picked up in moments throughout the play that were intended to strick humor and poke jabs at people. But upon reading online more about the title, the refrain was sung to the tune and meter of "Who's afraid of the big bad wolf" and is a subtle questioning of who's afraid of allusions in their life. And in the final line, the deluded and stormy Martha states to her husband who is tender once she has been exposed, "I am, George. I am."

And thus ended the play, brilliant yet dark, soul-searching but filled with the fear of soul loss.

Daeboreum and Bureom

2012-02-02T22:41:00.010+09:00

Following the lunar calendar the first full moon day (정월대보름 or 대보름) is classed as one of the five traditional Korean holidays. On this day people traditionally went out into the rice fields and "played" with fire in a ceremony called 쥐불놀이, literally 'field fire game' (source). This is rather uncommon anymore because Korea is no longer the agrigarian society it was 4-5 decades ago with many rice fields nearby and the desire to go out in the cold and play because there was nothing to do at home. People now prefer the warmth of their homes and more "exciting" entertainment like wii games and cartoon and movie networks or hanging out with friends in warmed coffee shops and heated theaters. But still, on this 15th day of the first lunar month the food culture is strong ... because it is a fact, Koreans love love love their food and eating!

대보름 Food Culture

대보름 now is heavily linked with the food culture in Korea. To start the eating culture for the day, chilled rice wine is served in the morning symbolizing the wish for good hearing and for charming only good news to be brought in one's hearing during the new year; this wine drinking and wishing tradition is referred to as 귀밝이술, or literally 'hearing cleanly liquor'.

On the big first full moon day, Koreans make mult-grained rice called 오곡밥 (5 grain rice) typically made with glutinous rice, black beans, red beans, millet and sorghum although other beans and grains can also be included.

나물 or vegetables are joyfully eaten on this day (although every day Koreans eat assortments of vegetables with their traditional Korean soups although the selection is very small). The vegetable assortments are eaten, and the vegetable pantry or in olden days the dried vegetables hanging from rafters and beams are cleaned out and/or more properly stored for the winter.

And of course 약식, the sticky rice cooked with chestnuts, jujubes, pine nuts and brown sugar are a tasty treat. Ah, I love this mixture and thankfully it's to be found at rice cake shops year round now! And for other 약식-lovers, here's a link with instructions on how to make the delicious dish.

And very importantly, nuts with hard shells are given on this day, particularly to children. At schools children have these nuts packed in their lunch boxes and they share, trade and give them to their classmates. The symbolism surrounding the hard-shelled nuts is to crack them with one's teeth, which is a wish for maintaining hard teeth as well as wishing for no boils or other skin problems in the new year. On this day the ancestors believed that if a person crunch the nuts as many times as his or her age, the person would not get any sores in the coming year and everything would go well. Most common nuts eaten on this day are the pine nuts, chestnuts, peanuts, and walnuts, and the tradition of cracking nuts for making wishes is called 부럼 as in the phrase 부럼을 깨물다, "biting nuts to ward off boils".[Just a note - do not confuse the pronunciation of 대보름, the first full moon day, with that of 부럼, cracking nuts.]

In these modern days, Koreans are a little more analytical about the nutrition of the nuts and not just fascinated with following their rich traditions. Now people discuss more the actual health qualities of nuts, and more and more nuts appearing in the market places because of this heigthened health awareness:

pine nuts ....... fights fatigue
chestnuts ....... promotes growth & a lot of urination
walnuts ......... prevents heart disease and diabetes, rich in Omega 3
gingko nuts ..... helps maintain appropriate urination
peanuts ......... abundant in protein

And now I hope you had a very pleasant 대보름 and cracked nuts as many times as years you are alive. Have a healthy year!

And here are some picts of the spread of seed and nut cakes available. Freshly made, still gooey and delicious! Puffed rice cakes on various flavors are also a big new years treat.

An Intro to the Joseon Dynasty Uigwe

2012-01-31T00:00:00.007+09:00

"What can one expect to find in these uigwe books that will further our understanding of Joseon culture? Depending on one’s area of interest, one might retrieve information on Joseon society, politics, economics, rituals, literature, art history, musicology, culinary history, and perhaps more. Of particular interest to the art historian is the extensive description of the visual culture of the court. There is a seemingly endless amount of documentation along with numerous illustrations of ritual performances, and also of court costumes, musical instruments, ceremonial utensils, and finally of interior decoration, notably, screen paintings--all of which were made for those special events. This lecture will highlight some of these features, drawing on the lecturer’s research on several categories of the uigwe, those documenting royal weddings, the painting and copying of royal portraits, palace banquets, and finally on royal funerals and related rites." [taken from the overview of the lecture posted on the RAS website]

The Uigwe is broken down into ui or rites and gwi, tracks or models to be followed. Therefore, Professor Yi Song-mi from the Academy of Korean Studies translates the Uigwe as the Book of State Rites. The person sitting beside me was a historian who has worked on the books and he whispered that the translation should actually be "manual" of rites as the compilation is not a book per se but a manual on prescribed conduct to be performed.

Currently there are more than 4,000 volumes of uigwe. I'm not clear whether these are inclusive of all the copies made because between 4 and 9 copies were made of each book/manual and sent to its respective location. One copy was bound in silk cloth and its spine secured with a strong fancy metal binder. Between 3-8 other copies were made and sent to history archives throughout the nation. Depending on the content, even a copy was made for the crown prince's personal library to enrich his mind and tutor him in the rites of his nation.

There are various topics within the uigwe, many uigwe are dedicated to specific topics, for example, Unique Paintings of Royal Portraits or Unique Paintings of Gyeong-mo Palace, a lesser palace where a king's mother resided. Some uigwe are prescriptions on how a marriage ceremony should take place or took place for a king. But through the language used or the pictures drawn, some deeper hidden unworded sociocultural layers of the Joseon dynasty can be revealed. One point that was particularly interesting was the painting shown of a king's procession with great detail given to the horsemen and banner bearers, etc. However, the king's chair being carried was conspicuously empty, and the reason revealed was, the king can only be painted in portrait; he was like a god and therefore his likeness was only recreated in the formal setting. Ah, those interested points that give dry dusty history books flesh and life!

An (blurred) analysis of the topics in the Uigwe:

In 2007 all of the existing Uigwe were designated as Memory of the World, the world-wide designated collection of historical artifacts that represent humans fight against collective amnesia of key historical documentation.

Japanese Restaurant near the Blue House

2012-01-23T00:30:00.007+09:00

Ah, Japanese food, especially the 회 or raw fish is absolutely divine. I love love love raw chilled tuna with rice and raw salad greens topped with a sweetened spicey red pepper sauce. And in Hyehwa-dong near where I used to teach is a fabulous raw tuna restaurant. Uh, actually saying 'raw tuna' in English makes the dish sound disgusting, so it's much better to refer to the tasty tuna in Korean (참치회) as the culture connotations mix better with the flavors of the food.

This particular Japanese restaurant had a very attractive external appearance. A small rustic looking building with paned glass, which is rather odd in Korea, and the glass panes were painted with wandering stems of 5" cherry blossoms, Japan's national flower.

Inside the decor was cozy and quaint. The small tables were of rustic build - wood pieces of various sizes and painted in various faded colors were nailed in hodge-podge designs and chairs were brown wood warm. The counter lost the rustic and gave a more modern appearance with a long glass display case enshrining the raw fish choices and delicacies to be served. My friend was particularly hungry after hiking and eating a piecemeal breakfast so ordered a menu set with noodles and a side order of raw fish. I ate up the ambiance.

Such a friendly attractive setting with good food and service! Though I'd like to recommend the restaurant, I didn't get the name. Boo, I know. However, on the wall, there was a copy of a historial map of the area, and their map indicated with a red dot their location. From the description I've given and this map, the place would be easy to find for any interested.

Behind the Blue House

2012-01-22T00:28:00.011+09:00

My great historian friend and I had another historical experience. Usually we talk about Korean history and we both have a fascination with ancient history - the splitting of the Han and their cousin the Hun nomadic groups and how the Han (Koreans) and the Huns (Turks) are still connected by blood and historical records. We're interested in the Mongols and how they affected Korean history, and then we've had deep discussions on the presidents and the re-writing of Korean books based on political viewpoints of the times. I believe all countries do this (shocked?). And by doing so, there is created an intentional historical amnesia which the old and historically valuable documents discovered and preserved around the world seek to continue to preserve and to honor. Korea has some of these documents, the Uigwe, known as the Memory of the World. These documents help historians trace where present-day known history can be realized to be incorrect. These documents are true to their time; however, the Uigwe, Korea's contribution to the Memory of the World, is not without flaw. They are the annual published manuals of the kings ... but they are rewrote at the end of every year, loose or unwanted elements have been eliminated and only the facts chosen are included. Perhaps this can be said to be creating historical amnesia by omiting certain facts that can not be verified by later generations as all original notes and writings are put into the river to wash all words away and to disintegrate the kingly texts that were not to pass into the wrong hands.

Anyway, my friend and I had our historical walk on this crisp, brisk winter day on Bugaksan. We started at Hyehwa Station and hiked over the mountain, ending up at Police Commisioner Choi Gyushik's Statue and from there walked past Cheongwadae, the Blue House, to Gyeongbokkung. Basically, we circled the Blue House but of course were not allowed anywhere near it. And particularly on the mountain trail guards were posted so that we could not even take pictures. Thankfully we had just passed beyond the point where pictures were not allowed when I detected some brown movement on the trail below us. And shocker of shockers! In this city of nearly 15 million people stacked on top of each other with roads and busy thoroughways crammed with traffic, there before our very eyes were 7 deer!

The movement I had detected was from 4 deer as they walked gracefully below. As I looked closer and had already taken some pictures to prove I wasn't hallucinating, I detected 3 more sitting placidly in the shade and looking very much like the brown shubbery around them. You bet I was excited! In all my years of hiking in Korea, I've only seen two special kinds of wildlife: 11 deer on Halla Mountain in Cheju Island when another friend and I were hiking a trail over the mountain and were caught in a snowstorm. And the other time with the same friend I was in Sobaek Mountain and there was a light rain and lo and behold an Asian raccoon crossed the trail right in front of us! And I didn't get pictures of either those events so ... wow!

After hiking the 3.3 kilometer segment of the formerly 18 km wall (at present only 10 km remain as roads were built through the city), we ended up at Police Commissioner Choe Gyushik's Statue. Police Chief Choi Gyu-sik was killed on January 21, 1968 when he and his men defended Cheongwadae (Blue House) from North Korean infiltrators. He was posthumously promoted to Superintendant General and awarded the Order of Taegeuk Military Merit. Officer Jung Jong-su who assisted him was also killed in gun battle against the North Korean commandos, and he was posthumously promoted to Assistant Inspector Officer and awarded the Hwarang Order of Military Merit.

As the sign reads explaining the area: "A tombstone has been erected on the site where the two police officers died while resisting the infiltration by armed North Korean troops. On the Jahamun Pass overlooking the road to cheonwadae, stand the Bronze Statue and the Memorial Monument erected in memory of two outstanding patriots." We came, we saw, we witnessed the memorial wreaths with memorial ribbons of black and white, and in one year if we were to return to this site, we will again see the memorial wreaths and ribbons for every year the same police force offices present their flower arrangements to pay honor to the dead and their heroic deeds for the living.

Dried Fish Lady (건어물녀)

2012-01-10T19:05:00.006+09:00

건어물녀 or "dried fish lady" was, and to some extent still is, a briefly fashionable term for a lady who is neat, beautiful and capable at work but after work is dirty, drinks beer (as opposed to some more refined drink), eats dried fish (perhaps a shortcut to cooking), stays at home and has no date.

The origin of the term comes from the Japanese comic book The Light of Hotaroo published around 2003. The comic book was about a young girl who was successful, fashionable and clever at work but at home was slovenly wearing the same comfortable trainees day after day, nibbled on dried fish when hungry, and was lazy and inactive. She fell in love, however, and tried to change to become more acceptable to the man, but in the end she realized that she was just a "dried fish lady" at heart and so stopped trying to make the changes because she accepted herself for who she was; the man did not and they broke up. So the connotations of dried fish lady also include work as being more important than love while also having the tendency of being antisocial.

Another popular contemporary slang for a successful woman is "gold miss". Yet, while both the Dried Fish Lady and the Gold Miss both remain single and dedicated to their work, the similarities stop there. A Gold Miss is the Korean or Asian concept of the West's "career woman".

Historically due to the strong influence of the Confucian society, marriage was very important as a woman was dependent on the three men in her life (first her father, then her husband, finally her eldest son), and in Confucianism the family was of utmost importance as procreation was important for the continuation of the ancestral line and offspring would continue the procreation while performing ancestral services to the parents and grandparents up to the fourth generation. Unmarried women in the strong Confucian era were looked down upon, were a shame to the family and were dependent on their fathers or elder brother. However, in the past decade or two women have entered the work force and many have remained single, dedicated to their work which is becoming accepted as the clutches of Confucianism have exceedingly weakened from the influx of western influences. So now Gold Misses are appearing in society. They are successful, independent women with money of their own and are usually in their 30s and 40s. They enjoy spending their money to look fashionable and to maintain their health, and so unlike the Dried Fish Ladies who stay at home, Gold Misses are outgoing and actively involved outside their homes, meeting a wide variety of people. Basically, they take pride in who they are at work, associating with people and in their neatly arranged homes.

With the relaxed standards of the previously strong Confucian society, females of any age now can be independent, and so office ladies, even students, who prefer staying at home in comfortable clothes and without inviting people over can get labeled as 건어물녀. So, to find out if you are a Dried Fish Lady, take the self-diagnostic test. Answering three or all four of the questions with the affirmative means that you are a 건어물녀.

Dried fish lady self-diagnostic test:

(1) Do you wear the same trainees at home every day?
(2) After work/school do you quickly remove your make-up when getting home?
(3) Do you like to stay at home after work/school?
(4) Are your text messages short and very simple?

This presentation was given by Ha Bo-yoon and Kim Soo-rin. When concluding their presentation, they posed the four-question self-diagnosis test for the 28-member class to find out for fun if any in the class had "dried fish lady syndrome". Surprisingly, four of the ladies in the classroom laughingly raised their hands for at least three of the four questions, surprising themselves with the outcome and REALLY surprising the two speakers, who commented on the outcome by saying that though the four were self-diagnosed as "dried fish ladies", there were other considerations not mentioned so the ladies were not to take this seriously.

Japan has introduced other terms for people with similar introverted behavior, hikikomori (ひきこもり or 引き籠もり), an extremely anti-social person who basically stays in his/her apartment or room all the time and refuses to go out. See hikikomori in Wikipedia for more on the seriousness of this problem in Japan. Korea has borrowed the term from Japan because the anti-social problem is becoming more and more apparent here also.

[The point of this presentation was to associate a food with some kind of cultural behavior, and here a cultural behavior is evoked by a food term. Other food terms in Korea which apply to cultural behavior are 둰장 여, or doenjang girl, meaning a girl races after western expensive products, consumes the overly pricey prestige Starbucks coffee and is consumed with makeup and looking too good while taking pictures of herself in fashionable settings - see more here. This term, used since 2000 or so, is a Korean coinage from adding "girl" to one of Korea's more common and basic sauces to imply more than the common or basic.

One other food term (introduced in this presentation and which I haven't heard in use yet) is "herbivore men", 草食系男子 (Sōshokukei-danshi), coined in Japan in 2006 and refers to men who are passive in dating and careful to follow a vegetarian diet. Korea is a big meat-eating country and so this phenomenon isn't readily apparent yet, but like other popular Japanese-isms, this concept too will soon take-off in Korea.

The 63 Building

2012-01-07T00:27:00.008+09:00

Saturday night in Seoul - cold, breathy evening and looking for something to do ... inside, away from the chill outside. But where to go and what to do? My Russian friend had the brainstorm, "Let's go to the 63 Building!" Now, while I've been to the 63 Building several times, usually to see a show at the IMAX, I've never ventured to the top floor. And so there we went.

Surprisingly with the night being so chill, and of course the 63 Building isn't located in the heart of vibrant pulsating Seoul but is in the business district, there was hardly anyone around. We happily entered the building to warm up and then dawdled over to the ticketing counter for our "venture to the top". There were multiple package deals which included the acquarium, the IMAX, and I forget what all. We only bought tickets for ₩11,000 to the top floor and art gallery, because we got the ₩1,000 foreigner's discount. I'd never heard of a foreigner's discount but can easily see that it's a promotional tool for "foreigner's" to visit what are deemed in Korea as Hot-Spots and "places everyone should know about while visiting Seoul". Hmmm, it's the expats who get out and about, but we're always deemed as being foreigners and thus here short term. Anyway, semantics.

When the 63 Building was completed in 1985, it was the highest building outside of North America, and therefore, was (and still is to some extent) an object of great pride in Korea. Since 2010, the building is no longer in the top 100 tallest buildings of the world but with it's impressive height amongst the dwarf building around and its golden-sided panels, it stands proudly tall and regal overlooking the sensually curving Han River. [picture source]

The top floor contains a gallery of modern art by a handful of artists. Most of the people - principally families and couples - were not interested in the garish colored pictures, the swirls and kaleidoscopes of colors, and the stark black-and-whites. The majority were interested in the view, lovers were interested in sitting entwined in each other's arms gazing and whispering using a tool as a lover's pallette, and the youth were fascinated by the glass floor in one corner where a person could "step out" with nothing visibly below except ... a long crashing descending space to the pavement with toy cars ant-ing along below. I stepped out into the "nether space" but I certainly didn't linger. It was somewhat upsetting psychologically, especially when some young kids started jumping up and down violently right next to me. Ah, the invinsibility of youth!

A wishing wall was in the corridor just before the cafe. The wall held hearts with messages, and those messages were in a wide range of languages. They were messages not of young romantic love like the fence on Han Mountain with locks for lovers to "lock their love" via the symbolism of locks. Many of the messages I read were of more mature people who promised to continue their love relationship for yet another XX years, pledges of their hearts again or of their desire for some intangible thing to be realized. The majority that I read were from a mature audience, in touch with reality and focused on pledges and promises for a brighter future. Wishes involving material things seemed few and far between. Quite interesting! I did wonder, however, if when the wall became too cluttered, if some of the messages were clandestinely removed to free up space. There was only this corner for messages so freeing up space does make practical sense.

The rise was one minute and ears popped or felt pressure. Amazing speed! The descent another 1 minute with ears popping and again equalizing to ground pressure. What a pricey but interesting 1 hour. And then as we exited the elevator, my friend laughed and said, "Ah, they are so smart! The funnel all guests through their food court, haha, that's so smart! Now let's eat!" And we did what everyone does in Korea, the 1-cha 2-cha thing - the first round on an outing, the second rount, but we had no third round. We went back to my house and had tea and more talk on the warm ondol floor.

Kim Jung Il and North Korean Stats

2011-12-19T19:46:00.008+09:00

The November issue of Groove Korea was rich in stories of North Korea. Such stories included "Arduous March of N.K. Tourism", "The Pyongyang Merry-go-round", "Flashback or Flash Forward?" and "My Memories of North Korea". The catching title to this month's Groove is "A Defector Tells Her Story" and the shadowy outline of a hip-curvy woman with the black effect of fencing and barb-wire lend surreal effect to another North Korean 'behind the forbidden lines' story. South Korea provides asylum for North Korean refugees; however, the refugees must make their way through other enemy territory (China), to Vietnam or other countries where they can run to a Korean embassy to request asylum. If caught in China, the Chinese government treats the refugees not as war refugees but as famine refugees and repatriates them to their country ... where it is believed that they are put in a gulag for daring to escape or they simply disappear.

In the magazine my eye caught some statistics of North Korean defectors from 1949 - 2009. I'm not sure why the numbers of defectors exploded in 2001-2005 - what perhaps provoked so many to dare attempt an escape? or perhaps more accurately, what military factor broke down enough to allow so many defectors the chance to actually escape? The numbers in 2006-2009 exploded even more and the same questions apply.

And then there was also a time-line of key events that took place in North Korea, and some small commentary on each event. I'd like to make further comment on two of the events below.

(1) According to the time line, in 1976 North Korea was passed by the South Korean economy. This was a big blow to the North Korean ego. Until that time, the GDP and other 'perks' were publicized internationally and they continually compared their economy to that of the fledgling South Korean economy. Once the South Korean economy, however, surpassed the North's, the previously publicized financial factors in North Korea were made secret, as were many other "developments" there also.

(2) This magazine reports 117 South Korean companies operating in the Gaesong Industrial Complex, and 42,560 North Koreans employed in those companies. I believe this is an inaccuracy. One of my friends went on one of the last Gaesong tours and came back with shocking insights. By the way, my friend speaks Chinese okay but lousy Korean, so when they were in the Gaesong complexes my friend tried to interact in Chinese with the sales girls. A few of them got very excited that my friend was speaking to them in Chinese, and answered all sorts of questions posed to them. One question was in regard to the pin that each worker wore, but there were some variations in the pins. The workers informed my friend that even though they wore the pin stating they were North Koreans, they were in fact Chinese. The actual North Koreans working there were fewer than the Chinese although the majority of workers wore North Korean pins. Also, they said, telling the North Korean workers apart is very easy (for them). The North Korean workers never interact with the foreigners but the Chinese workers, and yes, they speak (North) Korean, do interact to some extent. So this number of 42,560 North Korean workers being employed at Gaesong is rather questionable.

And since we're making comments about these "facts", here's a third difference. Since 1945 there have been only 2 leaders in North Korea. Well, that is true up until today only for today Kim Jung Il died and will be succeeded by one of his sons. (I write this in hindsight. Actually I don't know if the succession was clearly stated in North Korea but I do know there has been a lot of discussion and controversy or who would be eligible.)

So today, at the age of 70, Kim Jung Il who was born 16 February 1941 (Soviet records) or 1942 (North Korean records) died. Facts provided about him in the magazine are amusing. He had four children, had a 38 under par in golf (albeit that's his reported score), and had an annual budget of $800,000 for Hennessy cognac. That's a lot of cognac and that's a huge expenditure on a product for self pleasure when a package of noodles (I've heard) at a tiny mom-and-pop style cafe would be about 15 cents, a sum the majority cannot afford. There was no mention of the GDP in North Korea but the makeup of the North Korean economy is divided into three large sectors: industry at 43.1%, services at 33.6%, and agriculture at 23.3%.

Filipina Women in US Military Camptowns

2011-12-16T20:46:00.011+09:00

Park Sori, the director of Durebang in Pyoungtek, gave a presentation on the final night of the series on gender studies sponsored by the International Outreach Team of the House of Sharing: "한풀이: Liberating Herstories".

The website www.durebang.org is for the Durebang center in 위정부, the main office and which assists the women who were entrapped in sex trafficking around the military bases in years past; the women at that site are older, maybe around 60ish, but the women in the 평택 Durebang are younger and principally Filippina. The 평택 Durebang has only been opened for 2 years and is still trying to resolve what role it can play in assisting the sex trafficked foreign women. [Much dialog is held about the role these women function in modern-day society, and their roles as 'coerced' sex workers have been likened to that of the 'comfort women' of the Japanese colonial period.]

Since 1986 Durebang has been a functioning organization that has supported foreign camptown women. These women have come to Korean on legal visas to work in and only for entertainment as singers and dancers, and the women since the 1990s have been predominantly Filippinas, misled Filippinas who are promised one job and upon arrival realize that it's a different job and are forced to do the work as they have no social or legal support in the foreign country. Therefore, one of the big reasons for opening the 평택 branch is to provide avenues for entertainment workers social networks outside of their compromised work environment and to meet other Filippinas in the Korean community, such as Filippinas who have married Korean men or are nannies, etc.

The Filippinas who do go to Durebang for assistance are usually needing help regarding financial assistance, such as no money for food, not being paid, needing hospital or medical care. However, they NOT want to say anything in any way regarding their being victims of sex trafficking. After some time of being open and available for assistance, one Filippina finally confessed to being used sexually and once someone had opened the topic, others came to report the problem also. The Filippinas came to Korea thinking that they would be singers and dancers, but once here realized that their job as entertainer was bar hostess that had to serve other sex roles.

Even though their passports and ID were taken away, the government does not admit that they are sex trafficked as to the government sex trafficking implies kidnapping and being chained or confined against one's will and obviously the Filippinas have signed contracts as entertainers and are not chained or confined in any way. As the workers have official places of work -- cruise boats, entertainment resorts, near military camps, ports, they are certainly not trafficked. However, sex trafficking in its broader definition means that people, predominantly women, are moved to alternative locations and pressured into sexual relations of any kind against their will. These girls are therefore sex trafficked; they have been not forcefully but deceptively relocated to another country, given jobs that they did not contract for, and are forced to stay at those jobs (by government sanction) as they cannot find employment anywhere else until they show their personal documents, which they don't even have access to, and re-register their place of employment. Therefore, the Filippinas' existence in Korea is a sex-trafficking sanctioned by the government!

How Brokers Work in the Filippines

Women first get introduced to brokers by family members, friends, and other contacts. The Filippinas are hoping to get a job in order to earn money to support their families back in the Philippines. Once they accept the job, brokers convince them of the validity of the job and the girls receive training in singing and/or dancing in order to have the necessary skills upon arriving in Korea. They are also convinced that they will receive workers' rights, 4 days off a month, only give 3 performances a day, and basically brokers go to great lengths to convince the girls and those around them of the attractiveness of the job.

However, once the girls are in Korea and actually see others working, they know their contracts are basically null and void. Instead of singing, they might be working as bar hostesses and have to meet certain unrealistic quotas, for example, as a juicy bar hostess they might have to sell 300-400 glasses of pricey fruit juice (non-alcoholic so the selling is tricky) a month. They learn how to flirt, sit next to or on the lap of the customer, act cute, kiss, dance and even have more escalated contact, which can include sex. Business owners actually give a commission on each glass of juice sold -- example, for a ₩10,000 glass commission might be ₩2,000, and with this minute payment, owners can validate their claim that the girls are not trafficked and of course girls act all innocent when police or immigration raid the juicy bars as they feel somehow caught in the machinations of the industry and don't know who to trust or if they can even get help.

Brokers certainly aren't trustworthy. They are the ones benefitting. They get a commission for each girl they sign up, so go to unscrupulous ends for high commissions. Then, when bar owners pay the girls, they aren't paid the entertainment wages dictated by their contracts (hey, they likely haven't met quota so why?) so the owners pay between 1.1 and 1.3million won, but not to the girls but to the brokers. The brokers may or may not pay the girls, who might in the end only see ₩300,000 a month, not really enough to eek by and certainly with little to nothing left over to send home to the family in the Philippines.

Feeling trapped and bound by the quota system, girls learn that selling one juice equates to one point toward the unrealistic 300 or 400, but if they go to 2-차, or second round, they can get 20 points toward their quota ... and so they are kind of forced into the physical sexual acts.

Many people know about the circumstances of the juicy bars or other entertainment systems, but see them as a "necessary evil". The Korean sex industry is rapidly increasing and the nature of this work, "sex trafficking", is conducted in areas where it's not obvious, behind closed doors so to say, and so there is a lot of passivity on the issue. As it was historically for the poor Korean women without male support, Korea with its development now thinks that it is justified that other poor-country women should do the same work. Russian women were "trafficked" in Korea until 2003 when the E-6 visa was no longer issued to them, but this simply transferred the sex work around military camps to another nationality of women. In short the prevailing attitude seems to be, although the sex industry for camptowns does happen in Korean but no longer involves Korean women, it really is not Korea's problem any more.

To solve this problem, Durebang also tries to work with the sending countries because they are responsible too. Japan has military camptowns like Korea, and there too the women working them are predominantly Filippinas, a country quite relaxed about sending its women abroad to work. The Thai government takes an even laxer stance on the sending of its females than the Philippines government. There is a lack of vital response to control the work as the work outside constitutes generating cash flow within the country, an attitude that Korea took in the 1960s through 1980s, which results in exploitation of its people, particularly its women.

The Filipina women, after coming to the Durebang shelter, want to return to their country, which means that no charges can be pressed if there is no one to testify against the contract breakers and sexual perpetrators. Further on that note, Korean women usually fail at winning in sex related court cases, and foreign women, particularly the looked-down upon south-east Asians, really haven't got a chance of winning.

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Tonight concludes the series "Liberating Herstories". More awareness on the topic of the sex industry - both past and present - and hopefully some sizeable donations have been made to divide between the 3 NGOs: House of Sharing, Durebang, and the Korean Council. However, although many people attended and I attended almost every night, I saw no businessmen, only one reporter (maybe), in fact few professionals. Young people mostly attended ... but they will help carry the flame to light the pyre of enlightenment on the issue and fuel the political engines for getting an apology and the six other concerns of the halmoni. Looking around Cafe Anthrocite at the various pictures of the halmoni on silent auction tonight [halmoni through art paint their emotions of the unfortunate events which took place], there is one picture that I find most gripping on the issue. It is a picture of a young woman in stark black and white; the only color on the large felt pen and ink picture is a bloody red hand splashed over the woman's mouth ... demanding her silence.

She will remain silent no longer! She will speak out! She will be heard! She demands an apology!

"The Rape of Nanking"

2011-12-15T20:45:00.009+09:00

The book "The Rape of Nanking" was a horrific undertaking for the young Chinese-American Iris Chang to write. She felt compelled, she was driven to reveal the voices of the untold number of Chinese who were brutally murdered by the Japanese after breaking the gate of Nanking down and taking military control of the city. Numbers are argued among scholars, but the point is not the numbers, but the fact that such violence could be wreaked upon a city that did not resist them. Women were brutalized, raped and systematically killed to remove all evidence; children too were sodomized; men tortured. If numbers killed are important, Iris provides a guestimate. The city before Nanking was marched on contained 1 million residents. As the Japanese approached raiding, pillaging and destroying all that was in their path to the capital, half of the residents fled, leaving 500,000 residents and peasants by the thousands who fled to the great walled city for protection. When the Japanese were finished, half of the 500,000 roughly remained alive within the city, and this greatly reduced number survived only thanks due to a 2 1/2 mile Nanking Safety Zone guarded by a handful of Westerners.

Men were killed but women were taken for sexual purposes, and then killed or maintained in sexual slavery for the military troops during the war. The incessant raping of local women and stirring up more hatred within communities where the military was stationed and the spread of STDs caused the military to sanction "facilities for sexual comfort" so troops would stop raping women in regions they controlled in China. And so the first official comfort house was opened near Nanking in 1938. Untold numbers of women (from several countries but a higher percentage from Korea and Taiwan, the colonies of Japan) were taken. The Japanese referred to them as "public toilets", and if they survived they were shamed, isolated, sterilized or mentally damaged for life. The women suffered the greatest atrocities, and though the Japanese Defense Agency archives revealed a document "Regarding the Recruitment of Women for Military Brothels", Japan denies that the brothels were government sanctioned but operated under private entrepreneurs. Iris Chang burned to reveal to humanity the truth before the truth would be silenced by the death of the aging victims, and Japan would effectively be able to rewrite world history because of victim lack of representation.

The Rape of Nanking is a brutal period in history met by Japanese denial that such brutalization did not and could not have happend by the Japanese army, which was exemplary under the guidance of the emperor. The Japanese military leaders are regarded as war heroes with shrines built for and dedicated to them in Tokyo. Needless to say, the Japanese, unlike the Germans who admitted their war crimes and have paid indemnities, have never admitted to doing anything less than honorable and have never paid consolation moneys of any kind. The UN and the US are largely at fault here because of political and economic reasons. After the war, Japan with its rapidly growing economy, useful to the UN and the US, was also needed as a buffer and balance in the Far East against the growing power of communism and the resulting Cold War, and so the nation which had been practicing aggression in Asia for over half of a century was not tried heavily in the tribunal court and many issues, like the use of women's bodies during war, was never mentioned.

Iris Chang uses triangulation to write her book. She triangulates on the three large perspectives taken of the rape of the city. The first is from the Chinese's perspective and what they suffered; the second from the perpetrators, the Japanese, and a discussion of the circumstances that bring about their denial; and finally, from the foreigners themselves within the city and what they observed, heavily documented by diaries, letters, pictures and even some video.

The movie "The Rape of Nanking" revealed the toll that Iris paid for attempting such a pain-shrouded present darkened by the shadows of a brutal past. In writing her book, she came to live the lives of the victims, who haunted her. Her research weighed heavily on her shoulders and she pushed herself beyond her limits to write a book to reveal the truth on a topic that failed to receive attention in even world history books. Her book was so well-received by the public who was shocked by such a holocaust of lives within just a few weeks that she toured for over a year conducting book signings and revelatory lectures on the topic, raising further awareness.

Her follow-up book was on a similar thread of research, the road of terror by the Japanese done at Bataan. On the same day that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor (well documented in American history books) the Philippines was also bombed (not much historial attention given to this event). Another topic that failed to receive much historical attention in history books and school curriculums! Bataan was another horrific time, a long march of prisoners to Bataan where basically they slowly starved if they even made it on the march. She never completed the book as the work consumed her whole cheerful personality, threw her into depression and caused her to commit suicide, much like her war hero Minnie Vautrin, who she felt was one of the three most vociferous leaders in holding the Nanking Safety Zone and who eventually had a nervous breakdown and committed suicide.

1000 Demonstrations!

2011-12-14T20:44:00.021+09:00

In 1991 the first former "comfort woman" Kim Hak Sun spoke out about her sexual abuse by the organized Japanese government in their brothels to maintain the "comfort" of the Japanese troops and keep them fighting. The following year on January 8, 1992 some of the former "comfort women" and other Korean citizens waged a protest in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. Since that protest on a Wednesday, the former "comfort women" have faithfully protested every Wednesday. And today, December 14, the 1000th protest was enacted. This is the longest recorded protest in history! [Some halmoni demonstrating pictured below.]

Not many of the halmoni (only 5), the preferred term used for referencing the women now, are healthy enough to attend the demonstration but the crowds of other demonstrators made a strong presence and a loud voice in making the on-going demands on the Japanese government. And because this was the symbolic 1000th demonstration held in front of the embassy, the women brought along a statue of a young girl to place in front of the Japanese embassy [read the news report here]. The young girl, symbolizing the young virtuous girls forcefully taken in rape, is dressed in a hanbok, evoking traditional Korean clothing, thoughts and traditions. The Japanese government requested the Seoul/Korean government to deny the statue's placement in front of its embassy but the Korean government has denied the petition.

The demonstrating halmoni want to release their on-going shame, which will never happen if the Japanese government does not admit their fault. The halmoni want an apology, amongst other points. The demands made by the halmoni are seven-fold:

(1) That the Japanese government admit the compulsory drafting of Korean women as Military Sexual Slavery by Japan.
(2) That an official apology be made.
(3) That all the atrocities be fully disclosed.
(4) That a memorial be built for the victims (not just the one that volunteers of the halmonis commissioned to be made for this on-going protest).
(5) That the survivors or their bereaved families be compensated.
(6) That the facts and truth about Military Sexual Slavery by Japan be taught in Japanese history classes so that such inhumanities (crimes against humanity) are not repeated.
(7) Punish the war criminals (who incidentally are lauded as war heroes at Tokyo Shinto shrines).

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Time is running out for the halmoni. Just two nights ago, the 12th of December, 박서운 할머니 (Park Seo Woon), the oldest living recorded survivor of the comfort station system passed way. The next morning (yesterday), 김요지 할머니 (Kim Yo Ji), a resident at 우리 집 (Our Place) in Seoul passed away. The moral indecency of raping hundreds of thousands of young girls, denying such an action, lauding the perpetrators and not acknowledging shame in the act but transferring that shame to the victims is exciting more of the public to demand apologies and recognition of war crimes .... but will it happen before the halmoni all die? And does the Japanese government hope that with the last dying voices of the remaining halmoni, the issue will forever be lost?

"Sex Industry in Korea Today"

2011-12-14T20:44:00.020+09:00

Cho Ji Young (조지뎡), 43, is the founder of Dasimihamgye (spelling), meaning "Together Again". Ms. Cho has been working on the sex trafficking issue for 11 years, providing assistance, information and rescue for women in sex trafficking. Her awareness of a serious sex problem in Korea occured when on a field trip and was shown a horrific picture of Yoon Geum-i (윤금이), a prostitute working the clubs around US military camptowns and who had been brutally murdered in 1992. She was surprised such things happened in Korea because even as a Korean, she had NEVER heard of this brutal murder case through any media. There had been many other camptown murders, and all had been basically buried until this particular murder when people started to take this photo around the Chongno area, and show passersby, and how Ms. Cho saw the picture. However, Koreans were fearful of pointing the finger at the US military because of the "need" for American military presence to stave off an invasion from North Korea. However, with this utterly brutal murder, people started demanding that SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) regulations be changed. (SOFA disallows American soldiers being tried in a Korean court, even if the soldier committed a crime in Korea and with hurtful results to a Korean.)

The above picture of Yoon Geum-i, age 28, was taken after her brutalization. She had a coke bottle and an umbrella piercing her anus and two beer bottles shoved up into her uterus. Having many bruises and cuts on her body and a mouth shoved full of broken matchsticks to hide further violence, she had been liberally sprinkled with laundry detergent and abandoned. Cause of death was reportedly from bleeding and collapse of organs. This crime committed by an American military man has been one of the hottest issues raised against the US since the Korean war. Wikipedia offers more on the topic.

Camptown Women

A camptown woman is a euphemism for a prostitute working around the American military camps. According to Cho Ji Young, the US military men use women's bodies with the silent support of the Korean government, as the Korean government could but doesn't shut down such areas but regulates the areas by registering the women [Doesn't registering a woman as a prostitute constitute condoning sexual practices, alternatively called "prostitution" when prostitution is supposed to be illegal? Wouldn't this legalize illegal prostitution?] Like in every place where war is happening and/or men are gathered as instruments of war, women's bodies are part of the war!

As the Korean economy has developed, so has the Korean sex industry. In the 1990s three phenomenons happened:

(1) Koreans started avoiding 3D (dirty, difficult and dangerous) jobs. Prostitution fell in this category, for especially after the murder of Yoon Geum-i, Korean girls were fearful of operating around US camptowns. So migrant workers were suddenly needed, and the E-6 visa or entertainment visa was created. Migrant women were given "legal" status to come to work on the entertainment visa as dancers, singers, etc but which ultimately was a cover-up for the sex industry that they were usually unknowingly thrust into. The government was and is well aware that these girls were hired as singers, etc but because sex workers are needed and falls under the category of "entertainer" the government justifies the workers legality within Korea.

(2) The American dream was broken. Until the 1990s many Korean women had the American dream of marrying a US soldier and being taken care of in the land of great opportunities. However, women who had married American soldiers were starting to return to Korea; many had drug addictions, some had worked in sex towns or had broader sexual relationships in the US and Korea was realizing that the American soldier was not a step upward.

(3) The domestic sex industry expanded to the broader Korean society so improverished, runaways and other Korean women no longer had to service the US military club scenes known for violence but could work away from the camptown scenes and actually make more of a profit. So at the club, the owners requested women to work with the agreement that military men could have sex (often resulting in rape) with women if there weren't enough women to service their needs ...

The big result of these changing circumstances was the creation of the E-6 visa ... and women's bodies became once again objects controlled by economics and politics and strongly influences by the social foundation of patriarchy where men make determining decisions concerning women.

The First 2 Days of Work for Cho Ji Young:

Day 1: I got a call from a father asking me to help him find his daughter who had left home a week before. She called her father the previous night night saying she was calling from a customer's phone in Sungnam and wanted to say "I miss you." The father pleaded with me to help and said that the police were not helping and she (Cho Ji Young) was the last resort. I didn't know what I could do but I agreed to try. I called the police and asked for their help. They said, "Where's the brothel?" I told them, "If I knew where it was, I wouldn't be needing your help! Can't you trace the brothel by asking the guy, his number is saved in the father's phone?" The police said that was illegal ... but long story, they finally did that and were able to locate the brothel. Then they went through all the registrations of the girls working in that brothel (the records are needed to enforce the girls getting regular testing for STDs, etc) and easily found her. Argh, Cho Ji Young wanted to scream, "How can the government control the sex industry!" There was a prohibition of WOMEN selling their bodies, but NOT on men, so the government feels justified in keeping these records. [The logic eludes me!]

Anyway, so there was a raid on the brothel and the girl was brought out. The police tried to send her home but she refused because she said there was a disabled woman in there who was brutally abused and the girl wouldn't go home until that woman was released too. So, the police went in and rescued her and then started investigating about her abuse case. The woman had obviously had physical and emotional trauma and adamantly refused to admit anything incriminating against the owner. "I never provided sexual services. I love the owner. I'm like a father and a mother to him." Surprisingly the owner confessed to his abusive actions but the woman would not.

Day 2: To bring charges against the ownder, my second day of work I had to sit down with the woman and try to convince her to admit the truth. Around and around we went all day, me pleading, her denying. But after she finally realized she wouldn't have to return to that brothel, she admitted to many kinds of punishment. Because she was slower than the rest, she was not popular among the men and failed to meet up to the demanding standards of the owner, so she had to hold her hands over her head for long painful extended periods of time, or she was beaten with a bar of soap wrapped in towels or a sock so no bruises would show up but the pain could still be inflicted. "It was a long second day too .... and that was my introduction to working to help some of the women caught in the sex industry."

Functions of Dasimihamgye (spelling)

In 2004 Dasimihamkgye tried to get legislation to prohibit sex trafficking, and so set up the Dasimihamgye center to help women "trapped" in the system because of the debt created by the women. Example of debt -- when women take a taxi to get to the new job, unknowingly it's a brothel, the pimp pays and the debt is added to the woman's account of what she must pay off to get out of the system, but high interest rates, fines for not meeting quotas, food and lodging charges accumulate keeping the girl in a down-spiral of debt, and so if she runs away, the police just bring her back because the pimp can show that the girl is bound to him through debt. Dasimihamgye did accomplish one great success in helping the girls, and that was the elimination of the debt system! Since the elimination of that system, workers can also be better paid. Where before in the red-light district, alternatively known as the "glass rooms", a 15-minute visit would cost the patron ₩60,000 or for an hour in the massage parlors ₩160,000, the sex worker would get perhaps 10% of that fee, but with Dasimihamgye's fighting for workers' equal rights, the workers can get as much as 50%.

Dasimihamgye also provides medical and counselling service for these women because many of these women have physical and/or psychological problems and no way to pay for help.

Dasimihamgye provides a home for these girls escaping the system. In the center they can get job training for other more socially acceptable jobs so they are not "forced" to return to prostitution for income. Safe houses are also provided in the event the girls are in a very threatening situation, for instance, if they were to provide trial evidence.

Dasimihamgye also hosts educational campaigns for raising public awareness of how dire the sex industry problem really is within the Korean society. Their goal is to make people take a more proactive stance and not disregard the topic as not one of significant social relevance to society as a whole or to out-of-balance functioning of women being exploited for men's pleasure. Cho Ji Young said that the scope of the Korean sex industry is beyond what anyone can really imagine, it is HUGE within Korea. To illustrate her point, she told of going to rescue a girl on Hongdo Island, a place with a population of 500 residents and 4 kareokes staffed with prostitutes. Now why would 500 people, perhaps half of whom are women, need 4 kareokes for prostitution?! If this sex industry is as hungry as the residents on Hongdo Island, which Cho Ji Young thinks it is, then Korea has a mega-serious sex industry with women's bodies as the medium for social entertainment.

Cho Ji Young concluded her workshop time with the statement that the comfort woman system (of the past), the camptown system and the sex trafficking system (the latter two of the present) are based on the same principle -- the exploitation of women's bodies by military and/or government organizations (predominantly dominated by men) but affecting women on the physical and emotional levels.

Final comment: Koreans are pretty proud of the "fact" that sex trafficking does not exist in Korea. What a huge misconception! Sex trafficking has been legalized for political and economic reasons by the government through various means, one in particular the E-6 visa, or it is overlooked. Koreans now are big on taking social issues to the press and demanding changes, but this only happends when voices are collectively raised after awareness has been made on the matter. Dasimihamgye is endeavoring to raise attention to the problem that sex trafficking does indeed exist in Korea!

Comfort Woman Documentary "63 Years On"

2011-12-13T23:28:00.005+09:00

In 2008 the documentary "63 Years On" was made with interviews of five women who had been used by the Japanese forces as 위안부 or "comfort women". One questions the male-centered term "comfort woman" as the term can connote no comfort whatsoever to the women who were repeatedly raped for months or years as they were brutalized in Japanese operated brothels aimed at keeping the men from 'raping and pillaging' in the areas they occupied and also in an attempt to control venereal diseases that the men would be exposed to if raping all across the countrysides.

The documentary centers around the interviews of 5 women who were forced into sex slavery: 1 Korean from Cheju-do, 2 Filipinas, 1 Chinese, and 1 Dutch. These five women are representative voices of women from 13 countries who were used in the more than 1000 comfort Japanese operated comfort stations spread out in Japanese occupied territories.

Not one of the thousands upon thousands of "comfort women" spoke out about her sex slavery experience in public unti l991 for societies were male dominated in many countries, women's virginity was to be maintained at all times and to lose one's virginity was to incur blame, especially among the Confucian countries like Korea and Taiwan from which the majority of "comfort women" had been taken as these countries were colonized by Japan at the time.

Figures suggest that 200,000 women from 13 countries were victims of the comfort stations. That number can never be corroborated as many women died of starvation, of rape, of venereal diseases, at the emotions of the men who came to rape them, and of suicide.

After the war, Japan was tried for war crimes with focus on compensation to the Allied Nations. The comfort woman issue was intentionally avoided during the trials, and as was pointed out in the documentary, only men were in the court system and only men had a voice and so women were denied compensation or even a voice in the trials of the men who had damaged them for life. The "comfort women" were forced to live on as prisoners, bound by their wounds, and unable to integrate back into society because of loss of home, family or social acceptance due to being "experienced" women. Confucianism, as a patriarchal system touting strict rules on women's bodies, denied their reintegration back into society, so if the "comfort women's" family knew of their past and were still accepting, the women could never speak to anyone regarding their shameful past; it must remain forever hidden for public or extended family shame would result.

In 1991 Kim Hak Sun became the first former "comfort woman" to speak out. Until that time due to shame no woman had made a public complaint in the 50 years since being taken as a sex slave. After the Korean woman spoke out, Jan H. (the Dutch woman interviewed in the documentary) became the first European woman to speak out on the issue. She spoke out because as she said, "That woman needed support and she needed support from the international community." Jan correctly felt that without westerners acknowledging that the comfort woman issue also involved westerners and was not limited to victims in the Far East, the international communities would more or less ignore the seriousness of the historical period of systematic rape. By going public on a topic that she too had suppressed since the war, Jan H. was able to support Kim Hak Sun and to rally the Western interest on the issue.

Japan denies any claim concerning the comfort stations that thrived throughout occupied Japanese territories and states there are no proven records. [There are but Japan makes excuses or remains silent when asked about them.] Their attitude is to 'blame the victim'. In 1998 the McDonald Report by the UN was filed, and alas, world recognition was achieved. On July 30, 2007 the US urged the Japanese to apologize. The result was denial.

However, Shizo Abe, former politician apologized to President George W. Bush in a formal meeting with Pres. Bush sitting on the platform with him. Pres. Bush nodded his acceptance. [The audience exploded in laughter at the idiocy of (1) why would a politican apologize to an American on a Japanese military problem concerning 13 countries, loudest of which has been S. Korea and which the US was not involved in, and (2) why would a president calmly accept the apology as if indeed it were his right to accept and not the 200,000 women who lost their lives during the brutalities or have lived with emotional war wounds since?!?!] Such an apology is steeped in political rewards and reeks of insincerity. A sincere apology would be to the women prinicipally of the Far East and not a male head of state from the US. A sincere apology would be mentioned in history books and students' textbooks and would involve compensation, and not be focused on political ingratiations and the possible reaping of further political and economic accolades.

Former "Comfort Women" final comments

Of the approximate 200,000 women taken as "comfort women" [I don't know the approximations of S. Korean numbers], within S. Korea 243 have registered since 1991 with the government. At present, statistics state there are approximately 65 living ... that number is rapidy changing as the average age of the halmonis, the popular preferred term now, is 86; and with failing health and old age, their numbers are sadly declining ... and without that cathartic apology they so badly crave.

The numbers of registered living former "comfort women" are:

ages 77 - 79 ............ 4
ages 80 - 84 ............ 23
ages 85 - 89 ............ 30
ages 90+ ................ 9

The purpose of this documentary is to further get the word out about un-tried and un-repented for war crimes perpetrated by the Japanese. It is only by the raising of many voices will an apology be forced from the Japanese. The women are old, sickly and carry their burdens of shame even now, and so they demand a public apology and compensation. [See 1000 Demonstrations on Wednesday, December 14, for the full demands made by the former sex slaves.]

Without a true apology concerning the war that finished 63 years ago [from 2008 when the documentary was made], the war will just continue for these victims.

"Women, War & Peace" - the movie

2011-12-12T16:02:00.005+09:00

Movie Synopsis:

"Women, War & Peace: I Came to Testify" (2011) is a 60-minute documentary on sensitive gender-related issues, is the moving story of how a group of 16 women who had been imprisoned and raped by Serb-led forces in the Bosnian town of Foca broke history's great silence, and stepped forward to take the witness stand in an international court of law. Their remarkable courage resulted in a triumphant verdict that led to new international laws about sexual violence in war.

Until this time, no international court case had been lodged based strictly on rape during war. The women were recognized by the interational court of law as having a rightful complaint to be made and made a decision to imprison three of the main leaders of the Serbian-run brothels. While many many men were not tried and still roam the streets of Foca, the city where Serbs, Muslims and many others coexisted as tolerant neighbors living in interaction and peace, the dozen or so women who participated in the trial were glad to see some action taken to support their loss of womanhood, tranquility of spirit, and fear trapped within. Just seeing three men tried and convicted provided some catharsis and will also provide an avenue for future gender-related crimes to be tried in international courts in the future ... for as long as their is war, there will be crimes against women.

It is women who shout for 'no more war' as they are the one's who suffer the most. Yet, it tends to be men who decide to make war, organize women to keep them from wandering and raping in communities (much like government organized brothels, 'comfort women' stations, camptowns), but it the women where the battles are fought - physically during the war and psychologically after the war.

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The Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan is an activist organization at the forefront of the struggle to achieve justice and recognition for women drafted into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during WWII. For more information about the Korean Council and to stay up-to-date with their campaigns, visit -- www.womenandwar.net

"My Heart Is Not Yet Broken"

2011-12-11T16:04:00.011+09:00

In 1937/8 until 1945 Song Sin Do served as a comfort woman "위안부" during Japanese colonialism in various Japanese brothels in China. Taken as a 16-year-old from her family and experiencing brutal on-going sex, her life was shattered. After the war, she wanted to get back to Korea, but to do so she had to get a boat to Japan first and hope to get a boat to Korea from there. Without money or any legal papers, she couldn't get back to Korea, so there she stayed in Japan, working as a house-keeper for a man who was compassionate.

In 1991 when Kim Hak Sun became the first former "comfort woman" to lodge a public complaint and local and international communities suddenly became aware of yet another untried war crime of the Japanese, and one that took horrendous tole of women in the countries Japan occupied, committees started gathering former "comfort women's" names and doing research on the history that had been scrubbed from Japanese oral or written history. Someone tipped off a director of a Japanese committee about Song Sin Do, and when the director went to meet Song Sin Do, she found a woman who was a fierce and caustic and who used crude language and had no apparent chinks in her armor. However, once the director got to know Song Sin Do and she expressed the desire to battle with the Japanese in the courts concerning her years of ordeal, the committee agreed to back her and hundreds if not thousands of Japanese people sponsored Song Sin Do for the next 10 years.

During those 10 years, Song Sin Do filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government, which does have some documents authorizing "comfort stations" although the government still denies it. The lawsuit demand was for an apology by the Diet and an official letter also stating apologies from the Prime Minister. She also wanted compensation for war crimes done in the past.

The comfort woman issue is silently denied in Japan, but when confronted with the issue, it is adamantly denied. One present-day government official representing the Diet in Japan in 1990 declared, "The comfort women were imagined by private sector people." Statements also were made that entreprenuer businessmen were the ones operating the comfort stations (now these two statements are very contradictory!) and the government can take no blame for entrepreneurs' activities.

While awaiting trial, she did tours to gather more support and raise more awareness of the issue blackened out my Japanese war adminstrative amnesia. She would speak at press conferences where she could easily blast newspaper people for their 'stupid' questions, at meetings for various groups including business meetings in which elderly men sometimes attended and she was pleased because these men would 'know' what happened and could make the difference. She spoke at youth centers, but the place that bothered her the most to speak at was a high school with mostly 16-year-old girls in attendance, the same age at which she was taken into the Japanese brothel networks and lost that vital part of her very being. She fell apart emotionally and could hardly speak to the girls.

The date of the trial came and crowds gathered outside to support her. She went in wondering the outcome and came out depressed, yet she suppressed her own sorrow and she gave a victory speech to the large audience outside saying that though she had not won, she would not stop fighting. The ruling was that the 20 year statute of limitation had expired, so referring to this archaic law, the trial was dismissed.

In 2000 she then took the trial to the higher court system, the Tokyo High Court. Months of emotional battling and continually raising awareness passed, and the outcome was that is is possible that the international statue of limitation has expired. The court did acknowledge the responsibility of the government though, so some progress was made. She and her team decided to take the court battle to the highest court in Japan, the Supreme Court. And the battle continued.

In March 2003 the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, and the dismissal seemed based on the statue of limitation not being filed within the 20 years. [Women were afraid to come forward and it took nearly 50 years for even one voice to make the public statement about her sexual abuse, a confession that had been suppressed for fear of cultural blame on the woman for her loss of virtue/virginity and not placing fault on any male.] Archaic laws were again pulled around the cloak of Japan's dark past to keep that past from having to result in loss of face, loss of public and international respect, admittance that the emperor (perfect in all ways) and the Japanese people (who fought only honorably) were even in part to blame. [A big irony is that in the same war, World War II, Germany apologized and paid enormous amounts of money in war reparation fees while Japan lost no territory, only its colonial holdings that it had taken by force anyway, paid no war indemnities and was not tried for the more serious war crimes; the comfort woman issue was even known about but never was part of the trials against Japan to decide its war crimes. Japan got off so lightly because the US and the UN needed Japan's blossoming economy for exploit in their own countries and they needed Japan as a buffer in the far east against the growing powers of USSR and communism.]

Although Song Sin Do lost the 10 years of court battles, her voice raised much public awareness and made the average Japanese citizens aware that their historial warring past needed to be researched and rectified. She might have lost the battle, but she gained interest in others for pursuing and rectifying the distorted history that the Japanese government purports to teach to its citizens via media, textbooks, lectures and laws.

The movie "My Heart Is Not Yet Broken" is a production of a strong character of a woman who has suffered in the past from the injustices of the Japanese government, in the present from the injustices of the Japanese court system, and yet she continues to fight for moral justice. Song Sin Do has turned her private wish - an apology to herself and others like her and compensation - into a universal plea for peace. At the end of every meeting or press conference held, her vituperous language and spitfire character shouts out, "Don't have any more wars and you won't have any more victims!"

Multimedia Exhibition: "Liberating Herstories"

2011-12-10T22:54:00.011+09:00

"한풀이 Liberating Herstories" is a multimedia exhibition organized by the House of Sharing International Outreach Team (all volunteers - 3 pictured below) to raise awareness of the need for the former Japanese "comfort women" to get acknowledgement and apologies for their years of war crimes against them. The Japanese government maintains absolute silence on the matter or states that the comfort houses (brothels) were operated by private entrepreneurs. This series of events by the Sharing House Int'l Outreach Team intentionally created this week of awareness to coincide with the 1000th demonstration of former comfort women in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. (More on this topic on December 14, the day of the 1000th protest.)

Liberating Herstories awareness-raising schedule:

2/10 Sat 8-10:30pm ..... Acoustic Performance
Opening Night Fundraising Event

2/11 Sun 2:30-5pm ..... Film Screening
나의 마음은 지지않았다 "My Heart Is Not Yet Broken"

2/12 Mon 7-9pm ..... Film Screening
"Women, War & Peace" (indirectly related to the Korean comfort woman issue)

2/13 Tues 7-9pm ..... Film Screening
끝나지 않은 전쟁 "63 Years On"

2/14 Wed 11:45am - 1pm
일본군 "위안부" 생존자들의 1000번째 정기 수요시위 / 1000th Wednesday Protest

12/14 Wed 7-9pm ..... Workshop
한국 성산업의 현재 "Sex Industry in Korea Today"
by 다시함께센터 대표, the former director of Dasihamkke Center

12/15 Thurs 5-7pm ..... Film Screening
난징 댜학살 "The Rape of Nanking"

12/15 Thurs 7-9pm ..... Workshop
생존자 할머니와의 투쟁 / Activism with the Halmoni
by 한국정신대문제대책협의회 / Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan

12/16 Fri 6-8pm ..... Workshop
미군 기지촌의 필리핀 여성들 "Filipino Women in US Military Camptowns"
by 두레방/Duraebang

12/16 Fri 8-8:30pm ..... 입찰경매 / Silent Auction
Closing Night Fundraising Event

12/16 Fri 8:30-9:30 ..... Film Preview
"Within Every Woman" w/ Q&A by director and producer

There are no entrance fees, but donations will be accepted throughout the week. All proceeds through donations and the auction of various halmoni's artwork will be divided equally among the House of Sharing, Durebang, and the Korean Council (for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan). For more information:

House of Sharing

http://houseofsharing.org
www.nanum.org
http://houseofsharing.org/art-gallery - 할머니's artwork

Durebang (Durebang in Oijeongbu (not Pyoungtek) where the women servicing the American military are in their late 50s and 60s)

www.durebang.org

The Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan

www.womenandwar.net

Cafe Anthrocite, the hosting facility

Cafe Anthrocite (카페 앤트라싸이트) is offering their meeting room adjacent to their Bohemian-style coffee shop free of charge as well as gallery space on their second floor. The decor inside is that of a renovated warehouse complete with patchworking on the cement walls, and holes in the gallery wall upstairs. The ambience is actually fitting for a place of dark secrets to be discussed - the room had a chill and the lighting was bare-bulbed and austere, very reminiscent of war times and basic shelter being met.

However, the wafts of home-brewed coffees and freshly made chocolates and scones warmed the soul.

To get to Cafe Anthrocite, get off at Sangsu Station (line 6), exit 4, and walk about 3 minutes to the Family Mart on your left. Turn left and walk 2 minutes or so and just before getting to 장미 아파트 located on your right, turn right. At the next small crossroads, turn left and walk 2-3 minutes. Cafe Anthrocite looks like a two-story white shed-wafehouse opposite Humanville Apts, but it's quite popular for gallery exhibitions ... and of course the coffee is spectacular!

The Play "A Streetcar Named Desire"

2011-12-04T21:27:00.006+09:00

The Daegu Theatre Troupe presented Tennessee Williams "A Streetcar Named Desire", a thought-provoking character study of time, circumstances, self-concept and desire, both rational and irrational.

The theatrical troupe has had little to no theatre experiences and yet portrayed the raw emotions and stark contrasts of "good" and "evil" in the characters with minimal props. In fact, the whole play was performed with just the one-room house with shabbily curtained off bedroom. Using space and gestures the audience was taken in imagery to the front porch where conflicts and eavesdropping developed the increasing clash of characters. And the black walls of the bar-theater and bare-bulb lighting illumined the characters harshly, very appropriate for creating a mood of day and night, good and evil, right and wrong. Through setting in the play, Tennessee Williams brings out the flaws of two central characters who at the culmination of the play are victims of their own characters - one as a harsh, obdurate and demanding man who rapes the vulnerable but secretly promiscuous sister-in-law. The play ended with the sister-in-law being institutionalized and a friend laying blame on the raper who, from the period would not be punished, continues playing cards as ... if ... he ... were ... innocent.

Having never read this play, I found the ending abrupt and shocking, and yet, such is the way that life is constructed. Tennessee Williams created characters, revealed their flaws, and through the results of their actions, they were condemned to live with the consequences.

The play was well-attended. The small bar-theatre was filled, perhaps as many as 50-60 people. One English teacher had several of his students in attendance, but wow, I really wonder how much they understood. The play was filled with colloquialisms, slang and dated terminology. For native speakers studying language change, this play would be a winner, but for EFL students, how much they actually verbally comprehended is likely to be quite low.

The Birth of Ramen Noodles

2011-12-03T20:49:00.008+09:00

The birth of ramen noodles was over 4000 years ago in China, where all noodles seem to originate from. Even their name is of Chinese origin. "lo-mein" in Chinese, meaning boiled noodles, was borrowed into Japanese where "l" and "r" have no distiction, and thus, "ra-men" as the West has come to know it was born. Here's a further transliteration of the meaning of lo-mein and ramen to justify why it could be so easily borrowed from one culture to another:

Lamian :
la (Chinese) = pulling and stretching
mian (Chinese) = noodles
Ramen :
men (Japanese) = all kind of noodles made of cereal flour

Ramen in China was originally called nabmen ‘납면(拉麵)’ or nomen ‘노면(老麵)’ or yumen ‘유면(柳麵)’, and when it was introduced to Japan by Chinese living in the Hokkaido region, these noodles came to be known as gina-soba ‘지나(支那)소바’ or namkyung-soba ‘남경(南京)소바. They became so popular in Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido, that now the dish is considered to be their regional dish. Perhaps part of their popularity is linked to satisfying hunger when Japan had an intense food shortage at the end and after World War II.

In 1958 Ando Momofuku, founder of Nissin Foods in Japan, invented instant ramen, which has been named the greatest "made in Japan" invention in the 20th century, in front of the karaoke and headphone stereos according to a Japanese poll. Instant ramen became a Japanese cultural icon! Pictured is Ando Momofuku and the first Nising Ramen marketed.

Variations exist among the countries where ramen in now marketed.

"Each country's Ramen noodles reflect their own particular flavor preferences. Korean Ramen is highly spiced and often contains packets of black bean sauce. China makes Ramen in Szechuan flavors. Thailand makes very thin, delicate noodles with very hotly spiced packets. Japan prefers the flavor of seafood and mild spices. In the U.S. they are usually available with meat flavors, mushroom flavors or mild spices often referred to as “Oriental flavor”."

More precisely the variation between Japanese ramen is based on regional variations - different meat or seafood broths and even different thicknesses and ingredients for the noodles. The largest regional variations are those of Sapporo, Kitakata, Tokyo, Yokohama and Hakata.

In Korea the noodles are called ramyeon (라면) and are usually instant, whereas Japanese ramen noodles can be instant but more frequently are freshly made in restaurants. In Korea ramyeon is a popular instant meal for students between classes, people on vacations and just for the quick "meal". In fact, at 75 meals per year Koreans lead the world per capita in ramen/ramyeon consumption. Korean ramyeon is hot and spicy as it is highly flavored with chili peppers. Many varieties of ramyeon exist: kimchi-flavored, seafood-flavored and beef-flavored are among the most popular. Some restaurants serve variations of ramyeon containing additional ingredients such as dumplings, ddeok, and even sliced cheese! If ordering ramyeon in a restaurant, some chopped green onions and carrot shreads with a raw egg to be cooked by the hot soup are frequently added.

My students Chae Min-ah and Seo Jun-ho along with extra resources from The History of Ramen, The Origin of Ramen , and Ramen in Wikipedia are the references for this material.

Differences of Tang in the Far East

2011-12-02T23:00:00.000+09:00

As many things in the Far East have originated in China, it is believed that what is known as tang today also did originate on the northeast Asian mainland in what is now China and Mongolia. Tang does not translate directly into English but can be called soup although it is usually more like a hearty stew. The 'soup' of China originated as a simple bowl of food cooked with a few ingredients, thus, 湯 (tang). Varieties existed and they were distinguished as 臛(hak), a soup with only meat, and 羹(gaeng), a soup with only vegies. And then the Mongols had their soup called шөл (schule), with the main ingredient being meat, either that of goat or sheep.

Three cultural recipes for tang

Chinese tang in the present day has many ingredients. Tang in China is also a medicine, and Korea has borrowed both tang as soup and tang as Korean medicine.

In Korea, tang (the soup) is differentiated by its water content. For a thin soup with 70% or more water the soup is referred to as 국 (gook), with between 50-70% water a soup in Korea is typically called 찌개 (jjigae), and with less than 50% water the soup-stew is called 전골 (jeongol). There are more than 200 kinds of tang in Korea and with a wide range of meats, vegies and spices (red peppers and garlic are almost always guaranteed).

Japanese tang has a light and bland taste compared to that of Korea's. The broth base is from seafood, various kelps and bonito, as culturally Japanese did not eat red meats. That of course is changing but Japan, as an island country, is still very culturally dependent on the sea for providing much of the food and many seasonings.

Tang embued with cultural meaning

Though tang exists in the three Far North-eastern cultures, eating tang reveals hidden cultural meanings. For Korea, people eat tang together in order to grow closer. This was more true two decades ago when two people shared the same bowl, but even nowadays with people each eating from their own soup bowl, the very act of eating the same kind of food is bonding. In Japan, however, eating tang together is a subtle way of saying that the people are already close. This might be due to the fact that Japanese do not eat out as much as Koreans, who might eat every meal out in this fast modern age. In China, here doesn't seem to be a special meaning attached to the eating of tang together.

As for how tang is served, in Korea it is the main dish of the meal served with a bowl of rice while in Japan it is one of the many light dishes served with a bowl of rice. China considers tang a kind of sub-food, just an accompaniment to a meal to be eaten last. Koreans very often tip their rice bowl into the tang and eat them mixed together, and for the westerner to do so brings smiles to Koreans faces, who might joyfully say, "Ah, you eat your tang like a Korean." Even if they don't tip the rice into the bowl, scooping a spoon of rice and dipping it in the tang is common. For the Japanese, however, tang and rice are eaten separately, spoon by spoon; and yet, a couple eating together would eat the tang and rice together to show that they are a couple. Wow, table manners telling tales on people beknownst or unbeknownst to them!

Tang : 감자탕 (pork bone soup)

Guk : 재첩국 (small shellfish soup)

Jjigae : 두부찌개 (Korean tofu stew)

Jeongol : 해물전골 (seafood jeongol)

This presentation by my students Kim Seong Hoon and Kim Jeong Seop was concluded with pictures of them eating some noodle tang and slurping the noodles happily! And by the way, slurping noodles is only now being considered bad manners (as influenced by western culture that dislikes noisily eating food). Traditionally in Korea, to slurp noodles was to show deep appreciation for the food and was an indirect compliment to the cook.

Red Peppers Introduced to Korea

2011-12-01T22:20:00.001+09:00

The hot and spicy red peppers known throughout Korea are supposed to have originated from South America, specifically from Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. During the great age of navigation, they were transported from Brazil to Portugal and Spain, and through Columbus and others like him redistributed from there all over the world.

But the question arises, how and when did red peppers get to Korea? I have heard via my students since I arrived in Korea that the red peppers were introduced sometime in the 16th century and came from Italy or thereabouts. Historically, there are two beliefs about how they arrived that are a little clearer than the word-of-mouth version I've heard.

The first is that red peppers were introduced from Japan, and this is what Japan teaches in its text and history books. Red peppers are internationally documented as being introduced to Japan in the 16th~17th centuries and they were then known as "the mustard of Japan". Japan teaches and broadcasts that they were the ones who introduced this present-day core Korean flavoring and spice to Korea.

Korea however refutes this ... for more reasons than one. Namely it's refuted because Korea and Japan have an on-going dispute about which country introduced 'culture' to the other. Japan likes to contend that its original ideas and culture were borrowed into the Korean culture, and of course there were periods of historical cultural sharing in various eras between both countries, sometimes with Korea borrowing more and sometimes vice versa. However, Japan would like to contest that the majority of culture Korea claims - artwork, some religious practices, the mastery of Gaya kingdom during the three kingdoms period in ancient Korean history, etc - originated from Japan. Historians even contest this statement as culture has never been known to originate FROM an island TO a mainland but was transported FROM a mainland TO an island, and often, from a logical historical point of view, FROM the nearest mainland (which happens to be Korea) TO the island(s), which are the Japanese islands.

There is further "proof" that the red pepper was not introduced from Japan in the 16th~17th centuries. In a 15th century text, the term 고추 (red pepper) is clearly written in regard to cultural foods present in Korea. For the sake of the cultural arguement though, names and meanings of names change over the centuries so there is a small possibility that the 고추 mentioned in the text could in fact refer to another plant than what is known as "red pepper" today. In any case, the red pepper that is ubiquitous in almost every Korean dish today, was only introduced about 400 years ago, and it has had an amazingly huge influence on what is known as "Korean food" today.

Jo Min-ji and Song Jung-eun did some very nice research to collect this data for their 'Food and Culture' presentation. Quite interesting.

Bibimbap - Origins and Brief History

2011-11-22T13:42:00.009+09:00

The earliest written record of bibimbap appears in the annals of the kings as "bubimbap", a light meal for the king. The origin itself is speculated, however, three theories currently exist. One is that of farmer origin. As farmers were poor and a lot of work was demanded of them outside of the home, it is believed that rice with some kinds of vegetation could quickly be mixed in a large bowl or container for communal feeding. Another theory is that after ancestor ceremonies which required the preparing of fruits, vegetables, rice cakes, fish, and many more "thankful" foods, leftovers were mixed to create simple meals after the intensive labor of ancestor meal preparations. The third suggested theory is that in uprisings and battles, there was not time for food preparations so rice, the "bread" of the east, was mixed with whatever foods were handy to create a meal.

Although the historical development is fogged over by the mists of time, the present bibimbap food culture is evident in restaurants throughout Korea. Various "famous" kinds of bibimbap are known throughout Korea -- they are known by their city of origins and have flavors and ingredients that suit the citizens (and some argue, temperaments) of the specific locales.

Jeonju bibimbap - having spicy (red pepper sauce) and bean sprouts as the main ingredients, the lip-smacking spicy-flavored spice complementing the cooling sprouts has made Jeonju bibimbap as one of the most well-known bibimbaps in Korea.

Jinju bibimbap - made with herbs and SOOKJU sprouts and a non-spicy sauce, probably of soy sauce base; it is usually served with an egg (raw or fried).

Andong bibimbap - made with herbs and beef, and served with a special soy sauce.

Tong-young bibimbap - made with various mountain vegetables and herbs; usually it has no red spicy sauce. Also this dish is usually meatless and eggless, but frequently tofu chunks appear among the vegies.

Masan bibimbap - made with bean sprouts and other simple vegies topped with a glob of red pepper sauce-duingjjang sauce and an egg, raw or fried. Jeonju bibimbap and Masan bibimbap are quite similar in their spice factor, but then the two cities are quite close with much travel to and from Masan being routed through the larger city of Jeonju.

My students - Oh Hyewon and Kim Yongha - compiled this research and pictures for a phenomenally well organized presentation. They also added that bibimbap has a lot of cultural value and Korea is marketing this most precious traditional food as a food symbolizing coexistence, cooperation (eating together) which promotes harmony, peace and friendship.

Beliefs about Red Bean Soup (팥죽)

2011-11-15T21:51:00.007+09:00

Red bean soup, in Korea known as 팥죽, originated in China, and it was the custom there to make red beans for casting out demons and performing other supersititous acts. Korea has similar beliefs about negating bad fortune with the fearful red colored beans as both cultures view the color "red" as a symbol of positive yang energy for warding off negative energy forces. Exactly when red beans or red bean soup was introduced to Korea is unknown. We do know, however, that the earliest records concerning red bean soup in Korea are recorded in ancient books noting that the beans were to be eaten on the winter solstice (동지). And over time other records show that red bean soup was not eaten only during the winter solstice but were often eaten throughout the winter and were readily available in the inns (주막) of the past. This makes a lot of sense for the agrarian culture as grain was expensive and often in short supply in the long winter months of no food production. Beans, therefore, were the food of the peasants but which still provided energy. The beans could be and were often a meal by themselves.

Korea likely borrowed their superstitious beliefs about red beans and red bean soup from the Chinese as there was much cultural sharing between the countries. However, there might be variation in the superstitious beliefs, so the following beliefs are those which Korea held until quite recently (some beliefs are still marginally held). That said, red beans and red bean soup are now ritual foods that people recognize at certain events and/or rites of passage, but the reason for serving those foods is often lost to the younger participants in this scientific, educated and non-superstitous age.

Red Bean Superstitions in Korea

(1) In order to prevent a disaster or to avoid ghosts within a home, red beans (the color itself is supposed to be frightening) are scattered in front of the main entrance of a house or in a crock (장독대) before making the red bean soup itself. The cooking and eating of the beans themselves is a ritual for preventing bad luck and the ever-present epidemic diseases.
(2) When moving to or building a house, red bean soup is shared with the new neighbors as the belief is held that demons around the house will be cast away (and I guess maybe the neighbors don't want the demons either and thus the communal demon eviction).
(3) When someone gets ill, red bean soup is made and spilled in the street. By doing so, the red color of the soup is thought to drive away the disease.
(4) When bereaved, neighbors make red bean soup and give to the bereaved neighbors. This practice is a communal way of praying for the souls of the departed and wish them well. (Nobody wants an unhappy or unappeased ghost around!)
(5) Farmers eat red bean soup and the act of farmers eating red bean soup particularly on Dongjinal (winter solstice) is a wish for a prosperous rich year with abundant harvest. Winter solstice is a day of the year which is founded on the belief of balancing the yin and yang harmony and balance of the universe, and farmers need to the harmonious balance to ensure good production of their crops.

Red Bean Soup in Japan and China

Much cultural sharing has occurred in the history of the far northeastern Asian countries: China, Korea and Japan. China was the big brother to Korea and culture was diffused onward to the little brother country. Often times from Korea the culture was further diffused to the islands of Nippon (Japan). And within these three countries, red bean soup exists; however, of course the basic soup recipe has been borrowed into and adapted to harmonize with the cultural tastes of each country.

China's present red bean soup is called 紅豆沙 (hǒng dòu shā). The color red is a lively color evoking luck and happiness, and therefore, red bean soup is eaten at special celebrations like Chinese New Year, weddings, birthdays, among many others. In and unique to China, red bean soup is a sweet dessert especially served hot in winter (as a yang food it is warming), but it's also served cold in summer frequently as the main dessert following a meal. Leftover soup can also be frozen on a stick to make a frozen red bean popsickle.

In Japan the red bean soup is called shiruko (汁粉) and has mochi in it. The bean paste itself is much sweeter than that in Korea and the bowl of sweet soup may accompany a sour or salty dish as a complement to complete the meal.

This compilation is a reorganization of Jang Moon Young's phenomenal presentation on the origin, superstitions and various forms of red bean soup around Asian countries. Some additional information was taken from Wikipedia to add more clarity to the materials given, but the interesting structure was Moon Young's. :)

The History of "Toppokki"

2011-11-14T20:29:00.010+09:00

The first 떡볶이 can be traced back to the Joseon Dynasty when it was the custom that the most delicious food in a village be transported to Hanyang (Seoul) and given to the king. 떡볶이 was actually first prepared into a bar of gooey rice called 가래떡 and was considered so delicious as to be suitable for the king. However in transporting it to Hanyang, the rice bar became hard and lost its flavor and chewiness, so the king's cook boiled the bar of 가래떡 and added soy sauce as a tasty base. Thus, the first 떡볶이 in a sauce was created.

It wasn't until 1953 that 떡볶이 as we know it today was created. A woman by the name of Ma Bok Rim was preparing jajangmyeon, noodles in a fermented soybean sauce, and accidentally dropped the rice cake bar into the sauce. When she pulled out the rice cake, she didn't want to waste it so ate it and really like the flavor. So from then on, she added 신당동 in a red pepper paste sauce (known now as 떡볶이) to her menu. Ma Bok Rim is a grandmother still living today, manages her own 떡볶이 restaurant, and is still lauded as the inventor of 떡볶이.

In the mid-1970s DJ shows were added to popular 떡볶이 restaurants, a very competitive business strategy for competing with other restaurants and attracting more people in the growing economy where people were enjoying meals out more and more. The music boxes in the restaurants enticed all ages to eat for gustatory satisfaction as well as socialization.

In fact, 떡볶이 is greatly enjoyed today, so much so that a Shindangdong 떡볶이 Town, somewhere near Anam Station in Seoul, thrives with street vendors selling the spicy rice cake bars in red pepper sauce and with indenpendent restaurants latching onto the meteor tail of 떡볶이 success.

With the popularization of 떡볶이 among ordinary folks, it has become a symbol of Korean culture. At present it is most popular among school aged children who feast on it at parks, on field trips and in front of their schools where guaranteed a variety of 떡볶이 shops have huge pans of the rice cakes steaming and ready for hungry children the moment they are let out of schools.

Marketing and Globalization of "Toppokki"

떡볶이 is such a popular food in Korea that the Korean government is now trying to develop it as export material, so a laboratory has been set up in Yongin to develop a sauce that will be internationally marketable. Experiential classes are available there too. Also, the government changed the difficult to pronounce name of 떡볶이 into the more foreigner friendly pronunciation of "Toppokki", which will be the name of the marketed foreign food. And then not surprisingly, to further promote and celebrate the food in Korea the Seoul Toppokki Festival (among the myriads of other festivals springing up in Korea in honor of other cities, foods, and famous sites) has been held in Seoul since 2009.

But this is where things start to get weird from the foreigners' perspective. Even cutesy little rice cake characters have been created and given names. To me this is too much like the Japanese comic book series on Sailormoon, with each comic character of course having a name, but the details going so far as to even give each character a blood type, the blood type having very high value in Japan. In Korea, each style of rice cake is given a character name, is animated and cutesified, all important features of advertising in Korea today ... but unfortunately advertising for the Korean or Asian market, not necessarily for the broader international market. Naming each style of rice cake seems practical, just as each style of pasta in Italy has a name ... but not giving each type of race cake a childish animation with proper name. Reminiscent of the Teletobies?!?! Ah, Korea is definitely in the age of cutesy, etsy and animation.

But this food culture is definitely interesting on many levels! This historical study on a food culture was done by Park Jieun and Yoon Migyeong and really exemplify how food has affected culture - the purpose of the assignment. Well done!

Ddeok (Korean Rice Cake)

2011-11-13T19:33:00.016+09:00

떡 (rice cake) can be traced back to the bronze age in Korea. In the past it was considered a court cuisine or a noble's food because of the amount of preparation time required in making it. Peasants could not make the rice cake as the making was labor intensive and they often barely could survive on the simple fare they could produce from long hours in the fields, they had no time for making delicacies. Peasants also at times had limited access to rice, so even if having the time, supplies were unavailable. And then of course, the peasant class restricted by the yangban class to what was deemed as lower class foods and 떡 was considered to be food only to be eaten by statused individuals.

Over time, 떡 became a part of ritual, ceremonial and feast foods. When it became acceptable for peasants to eat it is not known as almost nil documentation was made by or on the illiterate lower classes. Yet, some of the rituals that 떡 became very much a part of are 설날, Lunar New Year's day, Korea's biggest holiday. The ritual food is served in the form of 떡국 (rice cake soup), and after eating the rice cake soup on New Year's day, people are considered to age another year - collective eating and collective aging. [Korean age is still determined by the lunar new year. For example, a baby is one year of age at birth due to the 10 months (Korean belief) of gestation, so a baby born in fall can be just a few wee months old and still be said to be two years of age on the babe's first lunar new year's.]

추석, Chuseok or Korean Thanksgiving Day or Harvest Mood Day, is Korea's second largest holiday after 설날. Rice cakes also play a big role in this holiday. The rice cakes are not served in soup but are various in flavor and design, however, in shape they are round, symbolizing the moon. This day is for "prayers" under, perhaps to, the full moon on its closest orbit to the earth. "Prayers" are thanksgivings for the fortunes for the past year and entreaties for good fortunes for the coming year. Many other Asian cultures have moon-shaped cakes on this full moon day also.

떡 is a ceremonial food also and is served at birthdays. Originally people didn't have big birthday celebrations but now individual birthdays are popularly celebrated and what better food to give than a glutinous food that symbolizes 'stickiness', the wish for luck to 'stick' to that person for their upcoming new year of life.

Weddings serve rice cakes, probably also related to the wish for wish for luck to 'stick' to the bride and groom.

And so today, with rice cakes symbolizing the wish for luck to stick to someone, rice cakes elegantly packaged make wonderful personal gifts for many events. In fact, airport terminals in both Korea and Japan stock large selections of fancy rice cakes packaged in various sizes and in huge assortment. I wouldn't be surprised if China and Taiwan also celebrated the indirect wish for luck on people through the giving of rice cakes, especially because rice cakes now come in colors and shapes that grace banquets, table displays as well as the too-popular gift boxes.

Four Primary Types of Rice Cakes

steamed ddeok

pounded ddeok

shaped ddeok

pan-fried ddeok

The majority of this information was compiled by Kim So-jeong and Park Do-young in their presentation on how food and culture are intimately entertwined. Excellent presentation!

Yeot Culture

2011-11-12T18:17:00.000+09:00

Yeot is a thick Korean-style syrup - much like corn syrup but less sweet - or in its hard form like a taffy. It is made from a variety of ingredients ... there's rice yeot, daikon (radish) yeot, sweet potato yeot, corn yeot, pumpkin yeot, barley yeot, trichosanthes kirilowii (한을 애기 엿, a Korean medicine) yeot, medicine (양열) yeot, and pheasant yeot which is traditional in Cheju Island. The word "엿" originates from "yit-da" and "yi-oe-ji-da", meaning "connect" and "become connected" respectively, and the uses of yeot can be traced back through the Joseon Dynasty, the Goryeo Dynasty, back to the period of the three states.

Making Yeot Taffy

The making of yeot can be simplified into 8 steps. Sorry, measurements not included in this recipe.

Step 1: Add malt powder to water.
Step 2: After sitting for some time, strain the malt lumps out of the water.
Step 3: Mix cooked white rice in with the strained malt water.
Step 4: Ferment the mixture and strain out the rice.
Step 5: Boil the malt-rice water down until the color becomes a tawny brown.
Step 6: Add ingredients like pine nuts or peanuts and mix together. However, most eye-appealing if nuts on crusted on the outside of the yeot taffy.
Step 7: Spread the malt mixture on a greased tray and allow to cool.
Step 8: Before the mixture hardens, cut into desired shapes.

Yeot Culture Extends Beyond Just Food

My students (Hwang Kyoung Hui and Lee Se Jun) were able to identify as many as 5 cultural meanings of yeot beyond just food - a traditional meaning, a modern-day meaning, and three kinds of insults or negative slang all related to yeot taffy.

The traditional meaning goes back perhaps many centuries and was for wishing good fortune but also having a negative twist. In traditional Confucian times when the woman went to her parents-in-law as a new bride, to her wedding ceremony she would bring yeot which symbolized a stickiness and thus an indirect wish for amicable relations between herself and her mother-in-law. The stickiness of yeot was a suggestion of the feeling of sweetness and stickiness in one's mouth, thus preventing one to talk, and in the bride's case, her inability to talk back to her mother-in-law.

A modern usage of yeot has to do with the homophone 붇다 which means both 'to stick' (the original meaning) and 'to pass', as in 'pass an exam'. Thus, people in modern times give yeot to test-takers as a wish for them to pass the exam, as in "시험에 붇었다 (get permission for the exam) as opposed to "시헙에 떨어지다/떨어짔다" (fail the exam).

Yeot also has slang meanings - three are presented here. The first is related to the Namsadangpae or traveling entertainers, who used vulgar words in their traveling acts targeted to the common people. Somehow through the vulgarity of the traveling entertainers acts yeot came also to be a foul slang for the female's sexual organ.

Another coinage of yeot originated in 1964 during a middle school entrance exam. One of the multiple choice questions asked which kind of plant would make yeot. However, there were two possible answers, the one determined to be correct by the test-makers and the less common answer of "radish juice" (무엿). The students who chose 'radish juice' were marked incorrect causing parents to demonstrate and creating a scandal concerning the competitive exam. Exam-taking periods are taken very seriously in Korea and even today, students born decades after the scandal know the details and are quick to point back to the controversial "무엿과동" (Radish Juice Affair) if they feel a test is unfair.

A final usage of yeot is based on near homophonic sounds of 'yeom' (corpse cleaning and dressing process) and 'yeot'. Perhaps because yeot has been used to keep dead people's mouths closed after death (because of the stickiness), the near homophonic sound of 'yeom' gets articulated into the insult 'yeot' when someone shouts an insult at another. The insult suggests the person died and went to hell.

Clearly yeot is not limited to concepts of just food, as my students Hwang Kyung Hui and Lee Se Jun's presentation demonstrated. The assignment given was to identify an aspect of food in relation to culture in any way, and of the many presentations, this particular one showed most clearly showed that food does not serve the function of feeding one's self for nutrition only, but rather is intimately tied to the culture from which it originated through language, history and belief systems. A very well organized presentation!

Play "The Importance of Being Earnest"

2011-11-11T21:20:00.005+09:00

The Cut Glass Theatre proudly presented Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest". Such an extraordinarily funny play based on the trivial importance of middle-class British society of proper nomenclature. The director Gef Somervell states "I only hope we have spoken [Oscar Wilde's] wonderul, intellectually exciting nonsense beautifully enough." Yes, delightfully trivial, down to every detail, but the importance of triviality rules in language, gesture, tone and pause. Well done!

The following comments are taken from the flyer handed out at the door:

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

Though he is recognized as one of the greatest playwrights to come out of England, the Oxford-educated Wilde was, in fact, an Irishman. The colour and lilting rhythms of his homeland are strewn through the dialogue of his plays, and the magic of Celtic mythology surely influenced his little-known but beautiful fairy tales and poetry.

Surprisingly, the phrase "little-known" is aptly applied to Wilde. Though readers the world over are familiar with "The Importance of Being Earnest", and with Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, few are aware of the wider body of word that he produced.

By the age of 46, Wilde had written books of fairy tales (The Happy Prince and Other Tales, and House of Pomegranates), a collection of short stories (Lord Arthur Savile's Crimes and Other Stories), essays on topics ranging from aethetics to philosophy (Intentions, De Produndis, and The Soul of Man Under Socialism), several sparkling plays ("Lady Windermere's Fan", "A Woman of No Importance", and "An Ideal Husband"), a novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray), and numerous poems.

Wilde both challenged and fell victim to the harsh social proprieties of his day. He lived a life of unparalleled flair and panache, and gave the world some its most treasured literature. We are honored to speak his lines.

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."

"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tradjic."

"It takes a great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it."

"Yes, I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotations."

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."

"At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets."

"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."

"To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity."

And a quote from Oscar Wilde that summarizes his opinions about the beauty of expression and the force of it (as he so cleverly demonstrated in his play) - "Mere expression is to an artist the supreme and only mode of life. It is by utterance that we live."

Punishment for Rape in Korea

2011-11-08T11:34:00.001+09:00

This is my blog and in it are my words or reconstructions of other people's words after listening to lectures and sharing what I learned. However, once in a grand blue moon do I introduce whole texts of writings of others. This following essay was written by one of my students, Ahn Ji Sung, and was a paper filled with great content based on research. The style of writing was compare/contrast, and of the 120 or so papers I received, Ji Sung's struck me as important to understanding about Korea and its social and legal systems that are rapidly changing (and needing to be further changed) as society is more and more affected by the greed of materialism and losing its centuries-old Confucian values which had intrinsicaly become social controls for maintaining "honorable" bahavior. The text is hers in entirity minus two unclear pronoun changes, and has been reproduced here by permission:

"Rape is one of the most serious crimes, and today there is a lot of controversy in Korea over the appropriate degree of punishment for it. Most Koreans think their punishment for sexual assault is relatively weak compared to other foreign countries in regard to three aspects. First, the maximum level of punishment for rape indicates a huge difference between Korea and other countries. Korean sex offenders are generally imprisoned for the maximum of seven years which is too generous considering they can be sentenced to death in China and Yemen, and they might go through surgical castration in Germany. Also, it was not until November 24, 2010 that Korea started to release identities of these sex offenders. Finally, Korea is coming up with issues of punishing child sex offenders. They are generally jailed for four to seven years and get even lighter sentences if they were drunk during the incidents. However, in China, people who are charged with raping children under 14 years old are sentenced to death without any exception. Also, child sex offenders in Britain are sentenced to life in prison regardless of the gravity of the offense and are even imprisoned for 10 years if they just make children see them having sexual relationships. In New Zealand, after being released from prison, those offenders are under police surveillance by GPS system for life and in Malaysia, they are imprisoned for the maximum of 60 years and get five lashes officially."

(unclear conclusion omitted but the content was phenomenal)

KU Girl Killed in Shuttle-bus Accident

2011-11-04T16:48:00.011+09:00

Just a couple days ago a Korea University student, Kim Kyung Min, studying in her third year in the Sociology Department after transferring only this past March from Inha University, was killed on campus by a KU shuttle bus. Apparently, as the news came diffused down to me, she was texting with her cell phone and it also seems the shuttle bus driver was momentarily distacted, the combination of which created the unfortunate subsequents events of the girl being hit by the shuttle bus and being dragged behind. Apparently, it was the latter which killed her.

As white is the traditional color for mourning in Korea, on campus yesterday and today, a table to pay respects to the dead has been set up under a white tent near the well populated side entrance of the campus. Those passing the tent can pay their respects and commemorate her passing by bowing, lighting incense sticks from the perpetually burning white candles and lay another white chrysanthemum beside Kyung Min's framed smiling face while making wishes for her passage onward to the next life. The making of wishes is a Korean practice that seems fairly universal across religious disciplines in Korea, but even for those Christians who do not believe in the afterlife, paying silent respect to her and placing the white chrysanthemum is a symbolic gesture of both love and regret. The white chysanthemum is the flower which symbolizes lamentations and grief (or death) and is the funeral flower in Korea unlike the white lily in American society. Today sometime in the afternoon, the young lady's picture, I believe it is her high school graduation shot, was finally added to the white table. People wishing to sign her mourning "guest" book are welcomed, and the book will be passed on to her parents and single sibling to place with among the treasure and cherished memories which Kyung Min left behind.

Oriental Raisin Tree (헛개나무)

2011-11-03T14:25:00.008+09:00

My friend, Yoon, and I have been doing cultural sharing on healing herbs and practices in our native countries. I'm fascinated with the oriental herbs and the huge herb markets displaying bursting bags and baskets of musty smelling barks and roots that the older generations oggle and haggle over. Wandering the herb markets is a delight for me, but I'm not satisfied with just the visual culture ... I want to KNOW the beliefs behind them!

On the 헛게나무 or Oriental Raisin Tree

The 헛개나무 is common to oriental medicine, referred to in Korea as 한의약 (Korean medicine), and so it is readily available in herb and open air markets and in the 5-day markets which specialize in medicinals. Probably the biggest reason for its popularity is due to the huge drinking culture in Korea. With so much indigestion, stomach upset and malaise from binge drinking, the boiled pulp and bark of the 헛개나무 ease hangovers and detox the liver. It is believed to be great for alcoholics and particularly helpful for treating the fatty liver.

To make the post-alcohol detox drink, add 50 grams of sliced 헛개나무 to 2 liters of water and bring to a boil. Once it begins to boil, turn the heat down and simmer the liquid for 2 hours with the lid opened or removed (for releasing toxins). After the liquid has been simmered for 2 hours, it is ready to drink. Though drinking it hot or cold effects the body the same, most people prefer to drink the liquid chilled and as if it were water, that is, throughout the day. There doesn't seem to be any limit on how much a person can consume in a day but my gut feeling parallels the cliche "too much of a good thing" isn't good. The woody plant can be boiled several times for extracting the healing properties, but 2 or 3 times at the very least.

The 헛개나무 is also believed to be great for releasing stress, lowering high blood pressure, counteracting jaundice, constipation and diabetes. As already said, it is great for the hangover and upset stomach so marketing, to exploit this belief, has happily created a 헛개나무 yogurt. Older people also use it when boiling meat in order to "clean up" the meat and remove bad tastes and toxins. Even the fruit of the 헛개나무 has its purpose -- it is used in Oriental medicine, particularly when doing acupunture (although Yoon wasn't certain exactly how).

The web is filled with places to purchase 헛개나무, the fruit, the bark (pictured above), the leaf. Of course it's available through GMarket -- hey, what isn't?! But because of its popularity in the Korean culture, there is even a market that specializes in the woody plant: http://hutgenamu.com. This site markets the domesticated plant substances, the really wild plant substances -- 헛개나무 껍질, the skin/bark of the tree, which is marketed at ￦50,000/kg -- and even the 헛개나무 얼매 or fruit of the tree, which sells at ￦130,000/60 fruit juice packets.

Language Diversity in Subway

2011-10-30T18:14:00.000+09:00

For the first time today, I saw a medley of foreign languages on a subway poster on subway line 6, the line that passes through Itaewon, the known location for foreign goods and exotic restaurants, and an international assemblage of foreigners and their respective babble of languages. I have in the past seen a brief comment in Chinese or Japanese and the subway intercom announcing stops has gradually come to include Chinese or Japanese on some lines and some key stations or transfer stations, but today this posting really shows that Korea is making attempts to embrace other foreign languages and target other large language groups besides the big three: English, Chinese and Japanese.

This poster shows three languages with a simple sentence representing each. The first is Japanese with the message "Seoul where everyone smiles". The second language I'm actually clueless about but the message is "Seoul where everyone is happy". The final message reads in Arabic "Seoul that is constantly thankful". In the upper right-hand corner this propaganda message heralds from Hi Seoul, the department that spreads or perhaps is in charge of culture and entertainment around Seoul. For some more info on the entertainment options or other information on "Hi Seoul, the soul of Korea" go to http://english.seoul.go.kr/ for English, Japanese and Chinese (both Mandarin and Cantonese?), or for Korean http://www.seoul.go.kr/main/index.html.

Dolmen at Sahmyook University

2011-10-29T01:55:00.005+09:00

Sahmyook University is located outside of Seoul proper, and is far enough away from a subway line that is still considered quite rural although 10 minutes walk locates a person in the middle of a thriving suburbia. Having stately red pines lining the main entrance drive and thick green overhead foliage, the air seems cleaner and the pace of life slows to enjoy the surroundings.

Especially in fall, the display of colors is vivid. Not surprising, nestled among tall trees and pebbled paths are a line-up of dolmen (고인돌), neolithic stones for ritual or burial purposes. While the dolmen are just stylized recreations, unlike a couple of those that were actually excavated and relocated to larger universities - Korea University, for example - the setting seems natural enough for such remembrances of a bygone time.

Sunday at the Riverside

2011-10-23T22:10:00.013+09:00

Spring and fall when the weather is bright and sunny, the riverside is swarming with people, especially on weekends. This Sunday was gorgeous after a slightly chilly spell so the riverside wasn't as packed, but it certainly was filled with entertaining activities for people to watch or participate in!

Bee-sting Therapy

Many times through the spring, summer and now the fall I've seen middle-aged and elderly people collecting bees. I'm passionately interested about the therapy used, how to do it, how effective and so many questions. Most people haven't talked with me - some because maybe they didn't want to, but others seem to feel that the foreigner just won't understand. Today this gentleman was really helpful and informative. Yeah, I certainly didn't understand everything and he wasn't very talkative but he sure did give me a lot of info about his collecting method which he feels is superior to others. [I agree. Others have used tweezers to snatch bees badly damaging the ones they catch as well as the very high percentage that gets away; others have places a baggy over the flower and bee and shook the bee to the bottom of the deep baggy where others were balled up, of course injuring the bees with all the rough shaking and them being compressed in such a small tight hot space; others use bottles but none as confidently or gently as this guy!]

He uses sugar cubes stuck inside the plastic water bottle so that caught bees won't get hurt or want to fly out when he's trying to grab others. Small holes allow ventilation and he doesn't bang the bees around and injure them, because he's collecting them for therapy, bee-sting therapy. He tries to get at least 25 stings for effective therapy. I didn't understand what the problem he was exactly treating but rheumtism and "places where people ache" seem to cover it. My friend in the states who has fibromyalgia says the beestring therapy she tried was somewhat helpful, but I've never talked with anyone in Korea who has explained more about the therapy on a deeper level, and where the idea and treatment came from. It's certainly another fascinating aspect of either traditional Chinese or Korean medicine!

Drum Concert

Events like picnic fundraisers, concerts and competitions are held at one of the many riverside park areas. Today there was a rousing drum concert with precision repercussion power rolling from the throats of the drums. Absolutely loved it! I think it was for a fund-raiser for perhaps physically and mentally handicapped youth and their families. Many young people with evidence of cerebral palsy, Mongoloidism, and other disabilities were swarming the area with care-givers, volunteers and family in attendance. The drum concert was one of the beginning events held and other musical events followed. Food tents were set up busting with people preparing hot "picnic foods" over bunsen burners.

[Kimbap boxes made early in the morning by some small company used to be the traditional picnic food but now people actually bring in cooking equipment and make hot food. Kimbap is not so commonly seen anymore as street food either ... and I really miss it. But according to my friends, cheap oils are used in making kimbap so people shouldn't eat it. And my thoughts, and cheap oils at high temperatures aren't used for making the now ubiquitous and very fattening fried street foods? Or white bread colored with caramel coloring is better for you than rice? I don't get it. Why spurn what one knows for something unknown but which tastes better, but in the long run will do a lot more harm to the body? Sigh.]

Kite Flying

Kite flying offers surprising constrasts in Korea. In the US children like playing with kites in the summer. However, in Korea children do like playing with kites but this has been traditionally a winter sport. With the right winds blowing on cold winter days making a blue cloudless sky, the wind and sky were perfect for enticing a colorful display of kites high. Also traditionally there were kite fights, but I'm not sure in what period they took place, which ethnic group introduced them or whether they originated in Korea. But what did take place traditionally long ago in Korea was a special kite flying on Lunar New Year's day. Children would fly kites in the sky, make a wish and then cut their kite strings to release their kite, aka wish, in hopes of having their wish be realized. I've heard that this tradition was causing a lot of kite trash around [much like releasing balloons in the atmosphere] so the government put a stop to it. As best as I can tell, this tradition stopped sometime in the 1980s.

Anyway, kite flying has become an activity for elderly men, and today there were three out flying their kites. There was also a father teaching his little girl how to fly a simple kite, but he sure seemed more interested in flying it than she. She quickly lost interest because she couldn't get it up in the air, not surprising since the elderly pros were really struggling too. What I love about these picts is the string cradle that Koreans use for easily spinning to allow quick soaring flights or to harness in a falling kite. Korea is famous for their kite skills and kite making is something that all Korean children learn in kindergarten and elementary school, kite making with kites that look like the Korean flag. Even festivals frequently offer this as a craft option.

Korean Croquet

I wish I knew the name of this "sport" but it definitely looks like croquet until you watch for a couple of minutes, then you begin to wonder why players sometimes overlap playing time, seem to hit more than they should, and the way they play in teams is REALLY confusing. However, this is definitely an old people's game. I have never, ever seen anyone under 50 playing. Women do enjoy it, but men thrive on it and play pretty much in all four seasons. For that reason, all along the long riverside bike trails is a quite occasion croquet court. The courts usually appear in areas near large apartment complexes, and they get a lot of grooming to maintain their flat, unscuffed appearance. There's one particular court where a gentleman plays and thinks I should hit the ball for "experience". I never have because I plainly don't understand their rules; they're different than how I learned croquet, and if I'm going to hit the ball, I'm going to play a whole game ... maybe not skillfully, but knowledgeable at least.

Car Racing

Racing remote control cars is the latest craze along the riverside. Old and young alike line up in droves to watch people "drive" their remote cars around and around and around and around in circles. Hypnotizing indeed! The cars aren't racing really; they're just going around, making maneuvers, and sometimes jumping. Nothing exciting but crowds get attracted. I have to smile. People go to the riverside for exercise, but this is the most sedentary activity here ... and with lots of people doing it - nothing!

Playing ball and Fishing for ball

Loads and loads of guys make teams and play ball, or vigorously practice solo shots. Really blood pumping workouts! Well, today another ball bounced into the dirty river, and one of the local fishermen was recruited to help. That fisherman was good at throwing his line just on the other side of the ball, but the slight current was pulling the ball away and eventually the poor fisherman had to admit defeat ... and another ball now bobs in the middle of the river. It just wouldn't be Sunday without adding at least one ball to the river!

A Modern Traditional Korean Wedding

2011-10-17T18:24:00.017+09:00

Today, an American female friend married her Korean soulmate at the famous Korea House, which they had to book several months in advance for. At the reception afterwards, she was laughing with several of her friends about her choice of wedding hall: three of her couple-friends in attendance had gotten married there and there were a lot of memories stirred up by the group gathering.

Korea House

Korea House (한국의집) is popular for both Koreans and foreigners as a wedding hall. Korea House provides a traditional cultural setting, food, performance and cultural goods. Originally as a private residence of Park Paeng-nyeon, a scholar during King Sejong's rule (4th king of the Joseon Dynasty), after the establishment of the South Korean government the hall was used as a guest hall for domestic and overseas VIPs, and then in 1980 finally became managed by the Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation for the development and preservation of traditional Korean culture. The design of the building is regarded as an important intangible cultural asset. With such a historic background and the traditional ambience located in the heart of Seoul, popularity as a traditional wedding hall is guaranteed, especially for Koreans marrying non-Koreans who want their visiting family members to experience the Korean culture they are marrying into.

In the courtyard the family members assemble in a line [well, traditionally the groom's family would be on one side of the courtyward and the bride's family on the other, but this non-traditional seating is to facilitate photography.] The court musician play their ensemble and await the coming of the groom, who is escorted by a senior or highly respected friend.

The groom humbly enters, and bows to the assisting honorable friend and groom are exchanged. This is a formality of acceptance and the groom is then escorted to his awaiting bride, who becomingly must hide her face from the groom and submissively follow him, tailed by her consenting mother. [Heather's mother was visiting Korea for the first time so her trailing behind was just an act of ritual whereas traditionally the mother would assist her daughter to the marriage table, set with fertility symbols, such as chestnuts, jujubes, rice cakes, eggs, a chicken wrapped in cloth. etc -- only chestnuts were on this simplified table, however.]

The bride bows deeply to the groom. He bows in return. Then [I've never seen this before] he performs ritualistic absolutions of cleansing his face and hands with ceremonial water on his side of the table, and then she does the same on her side. [It is important to note that a sharp delineation of gender roles and rituals for gender are apparent in any traditional ceremony ... a book could be written on just the Korean marriage ceremony!]

After ritualistic cleansing, once again they bow; this time deep genuflections are solemnly performed three times with foreheads touching hands which are placed decorously on the straw mat. These deep genuflections from the bride are symbolic of her subserviant attitude to be performed throughout marriage, and his accepting her subservience as his bride ... [traditional thinking].

Then, maintaining gender segregation the groom on his side and the bride on hers are assisted with eating their "first meal together", symbolic of future meals to be shared as husband and wife, although in the Korean language frequently when people talk about a couple they refer to them as the "groom and the bride"; only with more and more exposure to western thinking has this been changing to "husband and wife".

With the eating of their "first meal" together, the bride is ready to say farewell to her family and enter her in-laws household. [Traditionally, she entered as household drudge as the new bride was to serve her husband and his extended family. She would only get relief in household work as her groom's younger brothers got married and brought their wives into the household and the youngest female to enter the household would be the one to do the hardest labor.] To saw farewell, the bride turns to her parents and bows her farewell. [In many other ceremonies I've seen, the bows have been genuflection to the floor, three times with hands held in polite decorum. Our bride here was directed that the single bow from the waist would be sufficiently polite and convey the honor necessary to both her parents and in-laws. Otherwise, the ceremony would have been long. She (perhaps including her husband) would have had to genuflect to the floor three times in farewell to her parents, and then genuflect three times to the groom's parents as she was now to be registered under their 촉포, family registry.]

I really don't get it. In Korea when a ceremony is over, people jump up and rush out. The bow was barely concluded and over a third and maybe half of the people were gone, not even waiting for the bride and groom to make an exit to the door which the bride had entered by. The reason for this rush in Korea is shameful I think: people are anxious to eat the good food at the reception. I've even known (many times!) people who take a quick peak at the bride and groom in the ceremony and head for the dining hall before "the rush" gets there. But because the majority bolted or went to the front to take pictures of the newly wed couple, I could get a shot of the elegant display of flower arrangments traditionally present at weddings (colorful), funerals (white), and in front of shops at shop openings (colorful). Each tiered flower bouquet must cost at least ₩200,000, but the Korea House package deal includes these background arrangeents, which are shaped by the several weddings held on that day.

The Reception

I was a bit surprised by the reception at Korea House. In their glorious colored brochures advertising their splendid facilities and ceremonies, low reception tables are spread elegantly with chopstick and spoon sets, a spreading centerpiece of appetising side dishes, and steaming bowls of soups or meat dishes are served to people who are sitting on mats at the table. We, on the other hand, were directed to the "new dining hall" and it was inelegant buffet style. The food was varied but the decorum was lost. Buffet style is the new rage in Korea for speed and efficiency in serving the most people. It does not require many attendants, the tables are east to set and clean up afterwards, and an eating time limit is enforced for laggers, which we were. Another wedding party was expected within half an hour and we were politely asked to depart. Though the atmosphere didn't signify anything special, the food itself was delicious and there were many meat and seafood dishes, which is considered important for food events in the present-day.

The Korean Creation Story & Dangun

2011-10-16T13:45:00.007+09:00

Long, long ago at the beginning of time the great celestial father "Hwan-in" (환인) gave permission for his son "Hwan-oong" (환웅) to visit earth where a few thousand people lived in poverty, died of diseases and had bad characters.

While there he was approached by two animals, a bear and a tiger, who beseeched him, "Please, oh venerable sir, change us into humans." Hwan-oong felt this was very praiseworthy, but since earth already had flawed humans, he decided to test their characters. Grabbing a handful of garlic cloves, he told them, "I have heard your supplications, and your true heart will be revealed with these garlic cloves. Go into a cave and eat garlic for food, and for 100 days you must not come out or see the light if you wish to achieve your heart's desire."

Both the bear and the tiger entered the cave and endeavored to do as the son of the celestial father had directed them. However, the tiger craved sunlight and the garlic was not at all to his liking, and endurance was beyond him so he rushed out of the cave ... and the weak, grasping nature of the tiger has been forever revealed. The bear, however, patiently persevered, and after the 100 days, its heart's desire was achieved for it became changed into a beautiful maiden of good and pure character.

Unfortunately, the maid was alone and she made her own supplications. Her heart's desire was to give birth to a son. Hwan-oong heard her supplications and seeing her beauty and her gentle character, married her and soon they became parents of a strong baby boy, who they named "Dangun-prince" (단군왕검).

And Dangun-prince grew in strength and power. He married and had children who became the forefathers of the people of the Korean peninsula. And there on the peninsula the great Dangun-prince founded the great legacy of blood and the nation of "Gojoseon" (고조선).

And thus is the story of the founding of the united Koreas.

Ganghwa-do Tour Miscellany

2011-10-15T21:13:00.021+09:00

There are just some places that are hard to travel around and occasionally I break down and do the foreigner-take-a-cultural-tour-thing. I've been pretty much all over Korea but a couple of the hardest places to travel around are south of Kwangju in jeollanamdo and around Ganghwa Island. These two areas in particular are more rural than other places, have fewer buses and those buses are really spaced out. About 5 years ago I wanted to see the Ganghwa-do dolmen and whatever else I could in the course of a day; I was only able to see three things because of bus schedules. I ended up hitch-hiking twice; well, once the curator at the dolmen museum told me when she was leaving and if I was in front of the museum, she'd take me along and drop me off at the bus station. Wow! And it was so much fun talking to her too while she was driving ... I just love, love, love the more rural places because of a more traditional atmosphere but also because of much friendlier people!

Well, RAS (the Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch) offered their fall tour of Ganghwa-do so I gladly signed up, knowing I would be able to see a lot more than if I were to give myself the tour.

Blast! I've lost my notes again, so can't remember the name of the modern-stylized hanok or the highly informed gentleman who gave up the tour. But suffice it to say, he was dressed in a modern-stylized hanbok to match his brother's home and he gave us insights on Ganghwa-do history, plants related to traditional medicinal healing, other flora in his gardens, and explanations of cultural symbols ... blast, I lost my notes! Here in the picture though, he's welcoming us at the front door of his house, giving us a very hospitable welcome.

Wandering along the paths and among the many gardens where he and his landscaping teams are carefully gathering native flora from around Korea and trying to eliminate the invasive and introduced plants in the attempts to recreate a cultural past around the hanok, we came across several dogs, the Chindo, one of the three native Korean dogs. Most of the dogs were given their own rice straw shelter to fit into the nostalgic ambience.

Also along the paths were some trees with rice straw mattings wrapped around them. With the warming of the country, the Korean red pines are threatened not only by climbing temperatures but also by boring insects. It is believes that the insects instead hide in these straw mats and before spring breezes warm the earth, these straw mats are torn off the trees and burned to incinerate (hopefully) another generation of boring bugs.

As the rain threatened, we retreated to one of the many wide porches for a refreshing tea/coffee break. It'd been a long time since I'd had an outdoor tea break, since with the growing wealth of Koreans, people nowadays seem to retreat to elegant coffee houses with plush chairs and internet connections. Here we had fresh air, a water-hazed picture of the harbor with island creeping out of the fog behind, and a warm ondol floor if we were too chilled on the wooden balcony. Perfect!

성공회강화겅당, Anglican Church of Ganghwa-do

Built in 1900 by Bishop John Corfe, this Anglican church is a studied mixture of Korean, Western, Christian, Buddhist and Confucian architecture. The overall basic shape (interior construction and rooftop) bespeak Western Christian influences while Confucian-inspired is the traditional Korean exterior design with Buddhist courtyard stylization reflected in the covered front gate and the courtyard bo tree.

Another Buddhist icon is the alter or shrine which is usually supported by the longevity animal, the turtle, but here a ship, probably an iconic creation of Noah's ark holds the alter label [there's probably a better name for this].

Walking around in the courtyard I absolutely cracked up when I saw the alterations of the yin-yang red-blue symbol to include the Anglican cross. And then instead of the three dot marker or the circle marker under the peaked eaves on temples telling which order of Buddhism is practiced within, this church has a cross. Ah, the thought that went into this to incorporate familiar symbols in the newly introduced Anglican religion!

전등사, Jeondeung-sa, Temple of the Three Spirits

Jeondeung-sa, founded in 381, is one of the oldest temples in Korea. The Buddhist monk Ado founded this temple, perhaps on his route south where he introduced Buddhism to the Baekje and Silla kingdoms. Originally the temple was known as Jinjong-sa but after Queen Jeonghwa, the wife of King Chungnyeol, gave temple a jade lamp in 1299, the temple's name was changed to Jeondeung-sa, "The Temple of the Bequeathed Lamp". The lamp is unfortunately gone, but the temple is the repository of the three treasures (three energies based on Taoistic beliefs). The temple is also famed for where the Korean Tripitaka, meaning "three baskets" (canons), was carved in the 1230s and 1240s and later moved for safe keeping to Haeinsa, another temple having the three treasures.

This temple is additionally known for its unique, human-like figures carved under the heavy ridgebeams which they appear to bear the weight on their heads while making faces. The meaning of these odd creatures has been lost, but "one story has it that they were carved by a jilted lover, a carpenter of one of the temple's reconstructions, to represent his unfaithful wife in the hope that she too would find pain and remorse in her actions and suffer as these figures suffr under the weight of the heavy roof." (excerpt from tour handout)

A festival was in the works as we wandered among the many temple buildings, which are part of the 덕진진 (Deokjin Fortress). Unfortunately the festival wasn't very well attended because of the intermittent rain. Anyway, a magnificent display tile paintings was one cultural event that immediately caught my eye. I'm unclear whether this was simply a display of art by perhaps high schoolers or was a fund-raiser for building another temple building. Paying a sum of money like ₩10,000 to write one's name on a temple tile that will later be used in the temple's construction is a common fund raiser. I've never seen people painting elaborate pictures on tiles, however, for the fund-raising effort. Maybe though.

Under an awning, some elderly men were busy weaving traditionally useful household objects. The man on the left was working on woven rope for making straw sandals. The middle man, who spoke some broken English and was quite entertaining to the visitors, was making a rice measure, and the man to the right was probably weaving a rice measurer too. There weren't any takers on learning how to do this dying art, but straw sandals and other objects could be purchased as fund-raising for the temple construction under progress.

Under another awning women were weaving colored rice strands into round baskets, and then further on, a young couple was being taught how to make shamanic ducks. I wish I knew the name for them, but as I understand it, the name varies depending upon location. Ducks are used as marriage symbols (fertility symbols but slightly different than these), as "lookouts" in trees or along waterways, and probably in other ways. If we we hadn't been on a tight tour schedule, I would have loved to make a duck-art to put in a bookcase. I love wood carvings and something that has a sense of culture. Ah, too bad ... but I have some models in this picture and can make a model on my own time now.

강화지석묘 (Ganghwa Island Dolmen)

The 지석묘 is another name for 고인돌 (dolmen), a granite rock used possibly as a burial stone during the Neolithic period or even possibly for ritual ceremonies. This particular dolmen is Korea's largest standing 2 meters high, 5x7 meters in width and a meter thick. and Korea is quite proud that thier country holds about 40% of the world's dolmen, and are therefore collectively recognized as a UNESCO treasure.

Like a Fish out of Water

2011-10-13T19:34:00.005+09:00

Frequently I walk along the riverside near my house, especially when I'm meeting some friends who live three subway stops away. Walking is great exercise and along the riverside, the car pollution isn't so bad; and then there's the bonus, many wonderful people are there and because we frequently see other, we have become on cheerful greeting terms. A couple fishermen at the riverside are there almost every time I walk past, and one guy joyfully greets me in bits of broken English and sometimes we chat a bit. [Once he even told me he thought I had lost 10 kilograms because I walk so much, and he was serious ... sometimes you just have to laugh!]

Well, today I happened along as another fisherman friend reeled in a fish. People stopped to watch him reel the sizeable fish in and land it to the cheers of his two mates. Once the fish was over land, one of the mates pulled the hook out but couldn't get a good grip on the flipping, thrashing fish so it ended up on the ground, giving higher and higher flips of its tail as it gasped more deeply for "air" each time. Eventually with friends and passersby laughing, the thrashing fish was retrieved and put into the fish cage to be thrown back into the water to keep it "fresh" (meaning alive) for supper tonight.

These guys, thankfully, aren't sport fishermen, guys who fish for the pleasure of hurting fish with hooks and deep cuts and then releasing them back into the water feeling like heroes and documenting their manliness on TV shows. These fishermen are actually fishing because they enjoy it, and when they catch something, it will go into the fry pan.

Somehow there's a difference in the reason for fishing on how much I disapprove of inflicting animal pain. Sports fishermen are insensitive and block any thought that creatures beside themselves can suffer pain; this goes for hooking the worm too, because a squirming worm is non-vocally yelling out for mercy, the same as a bloodied thrashing hooked fish. The fisherman who fishes for his livelihood and his dinner plate is understandable ... as long as the creature doesn't suffer beyond the time that it took for the fish to be reeled in. Just my big opinion!

Kids and Chicks

2011-10-12T17:59:00.007+09:00

Walking past an elementary school, I saw a typical swarm of kids around the latest hatchings of chicks - these chicks were the typical Korean chicken but there were also smaller chicks, baby quails I presume, very delicate and fragile. The chicks were for sale for ₩500 each, no matter the type, and then ₩500 for a small bag of chick feed.

Kids were grabbing the chicks up in their hands, passing them roughly from kid to kid, one tall girl half-dropped, half-flung one down when it pooped on her, and hardly at no moment was there not a hand touching, patting or scooping up a chick or a handful of chicks from the boxes. The baby quails suffered the most. One little boy had his wrapped in a handkerchief which he frequently unwrapped and rewrapped. I wanted to smack some sense in the witless boy when I saw the poor twisted little quail laying limply on its back hardly breathing, and when it was picked up and laid back down again, it just flopped; I doubt if it arrived "home" alive. I was equally shocked that the woman seller didn't at least advise the kids on less rough behavior of the chicks, but seemed to encourage them. She sat passively in front of the boxes and only moved to take the coins passed to her or to offer a plastic bag for the latest purchase to be dropped into for its journey "home". Money is money, the message was clear.

Kids buying chicks in Korea is thought to teach (animal) responsibility. Well, while feeding and watering an animal and cleaning up after it daily does teach responsibility, I think humane treatment is not included in the "responsibility package". People here just don't have many animals to see in real life, and families with children get all excited if their child sees a squirrel in a city park. One of my western friends said that was one of the main reasons he was leaving Korea -- he didn't want his daughter growing up in an animal-destitute country whipping out her cell phone to take a picture every time she saw a squirrel. Anyway, how can someone learn humane treatment if (1) they have a deficit of animal experiences, and (2) they aren't modeled from their elders (to the older generations, animals served the function of food and were treated as beasts, and obviously from this chick seller, the chicks served the sole purpose of generating money).

Not all chicks die en route "home"; some do spend some weeks on their owners' apartment balconies. Most of my university students have had the experience of trying or even for a period of time raising chicks. One of my students reported raising his chicks on the apartment balcony for a few weeks. He said they were incredibly messy and stinky and when they got big enough, mother cooked them for supper one night.

Constructing Gender in Pansori

2011-10-11T20:34:00.006+09:00

Dr. Heather Willoughby studied music at Brigham Young University and wrote her PhD dissertation on "The Sound of Han: Pansori, Timbre, and a Korean Ethos of Suffering and Lament", having a major field on interest in traditional Korean music. Her interest was peaked when she heard 김송희, one of the best pansori singers of all times [Heather heard her in 1986 when she first came to Korea.] Her lecture write-up is a rich prelude to the topic of music which I know little about:

China, Japan and Korea have distinct musical theater arts that embody aesthetic practices unique to each nation and which express, reflect, and interpret notions of the self. When studied in a compartive manner, pronounced differences, but also threads of similarity can be seen and heard. This lecture will present certain sound aesthetics and other vocal and physical performative aspects that demonstrate the sound and image of an ideal woman in East Asia. Pansori, the main focus of this study, provides an interesting case to investigate verbal expressions of gender ideals as both men and women play all characters in any given story, creating a trans-gendered space, while at the same time occasionally alternating their physicality, timbre and even the pitch of the voice to distinguish Peking Opera with its distinct role types for and/or portraying women, and Japanese kabuki, in which male actors do not merely attempt to act like a woman but rather create and construct an ideal female likeness both visually and aurally.

Korean pansori artfully portrays how femininity and famales are constructed. In Confucianism cultivating proper females characteristics was important as comportment and conduct defined a "good" woman or a "bad" woman. Of highest honor paid to a woman was to have a gate or monument erected in front of her house declaring her loyalty, femininity and/or faithfulness to her husband. [Unfortunately, these gates and monuments were erected posthumously but held up to other women as icons of behavior telling them what was proper behavior to develop.) On the other hand were chanyeon, or a list of "bad" women and these were held as threats to little girls as what was dishonorable for females but which would have repercussions throughout their extended households. Little girls feared being on the list of chanyeon.

The tightening of restrictions on women's behavior and comportment came with the Chosun Dynasty which began to deny Buddhism as their national religion and started to adopt the gender-restricting Confucian principles. And therefore education and indoctrination of proper behavior for women, originated in several textbooks that discussed the precise laws and standards:

Chinese based texts: Yeollyeo, Myeonggam, Yeokyo, Sohak
Illustrated collections of stories: (including parts of) Samgang haengsildo
Guidebook: Naehum (Instructions for Women, compiled in 1475 by Queen Consort Sohye, mother of King Seongjong)

Korean Pansori

Very little is known about the history, development or even who developed or introduced pansori, but it can be traced back to itinerant musicians, who were often relatives to shamans. It was a music style that was also developed by the lower classes and for the lower classes, and was not seen as something to cultivate among the yangban, probably due to its informality of musical presentation and certainly because of the vulgarity.

Pansori has three key components - song, speech and gestures. There is no scenery, just a mat signifying space, the 소리 or song accompaniment, and the drum accompaniment. The song could be news from local or the central government, a musical narration over days, and utilize many different styles throughout even a single pansori performance.

However, as pansori became a musical genre that the upper classes started to cultivate, the genre began to change as it was "Confucianized". The cheeky vulgarity of the lower classes had to be cleaned up and racy stories eliminated or altered. The pansori became regulated and a teaching tool for Confucian morals and the teaching of principles. So of the 12 pansori performances still in existence today, only 5 were permitted to be told. And so pansori, as a tool of the upper classes, came to be relied on as a story-telling tool for the education and indoctrination of women. Women were prominent in Korean narratives and the thrust became "no matter how powerful a female character may be, it is imperative that she first be indoctrinated as to her proper mode of conduct. Only through the reification of her virtue will she be awarded honor in society." To have honor, feminine ideals were proper etiquette, conduct, demeanor, filial piety, monetary frugaliaty, marriage and other relationships maintained with chastity, faithfulness and virtue. And in the storytelling, three types of women emerged to laud the proper behavior of the "good" woman, and to chastise the "bad": women were either virtuous and having valor, bawdy and manipulative, or controlling and conniving (but caring). Ideal womanhood was emphasized!

Pansori performers were traditionally men, and only three women were trained in pansori prior to the 20th century, which means women were absent from the emergence and the development of the genre, and yet through the genre women were regulated to the role of "voicing" well-established roles of the ideal Korean woman. Not so ironically, as women gain recognition and "voice" in Korean society, their numbers of pansori singers has also risen, and today there are many more female pansori singers than male.

As for the sounds of pansori, no particular "femaleness" or "maleness" is apparent in the performance, that is, there is no physical movement to vindicate the change in character enactment although two or multiple characters are being enacted by a single pansori singer. The enactment is done solely through voice change. Because pansori was developed by males, when women began to sing pansori they had to adjust to the male style and range, although range can shift throughout each performance, creating an androgyny of sound.

Of the 5 most popular pansori performances still given today, "The Tale of Ch'unhyang" is most famous as it is based on a story of a "good" woman, which is replete with moral lessons, including filial devotion, obedience, faithfulness, and very important womanly virtue (chastity).

Constructing Women Comparatively

Traditionally in the development of Peking opera, men played men's roles; men play women's roles; women play young boy's roles. In Japanese kabuki, men dominated the performances and the "ideal woman" was traditionally played by a man. In Korean pansori, there was very little distinction between masculinity and femininity in the performance itself, but the 소리 was for the male voice range, and parts were broken up not based on gender but on story. As women entered the profession, ranges were not changed so women were trained to sing with strength and power.

Korean Drama Popularized in Asia, even Palau

2011-10-06T19:08:00.007+09:00

25 years ago I taught high school English on a tropical island in the Republic of Palau. That was an exciting year, and my memories have been stoked by a few students suddenly getting in touch with me via Facebook. It's amazing how small the world has become! When a couple of my former students found out I'm teaching in Korea, they immediately asked about Korean dramas (soaps). I knew soaps were popular in many parts of Asia but it just never occurred to me that people in Oceania too would be avid watchers. According to them, housewives (and others too) watching Korean dramas sometimes for hours on end and not accomplishing other work has become a big social problem in Palau and other islands like Guam and Yap [probably others but they only mentioned these nearby islands]. One guy who obviously disdains the waste of time wrote, "My god, I even saw one grandmother looking up words in the dictionary so that she would know what was being said!!!"

Woljeongsa Templestay (Odaesan)

2011-10-01T20:32:00.019+09:00

Templestay is becoming more and more popular with temples throughout Korea opening up for visitors (foreigners are big marketing targets) to spend some time "staying" in the temples and learning about Buddhism. What an interesting concept for prosyletizing, although I rather think that proselytizing isn't the preferred term used by Buddhists. Anyway, the following information has been lifted from a pamphlet directed at me, the foreigner, to get me to participate in the activities designated for foreigners ... Interesting, and I thought templestay was just an overnight motel with possibilities of participating in marginal activities, not organized programs! Templestay is a moderate form of Buddhistic lifestyle enactment.

Sitting Meditation

Sleeping in the temples isn't meanst to be a passive affair, but rather one of induction or at least introduction. Sitting Meditation is one of the Buddhist practices introduced early on during the stay. Korean practices Seon Buddhism principally, and Buddhists believe that "liberation" is acquired through Seon meditation, which is for calming the mind through focus on one thing. Posture and breathing methods are taught to facilitate deeper meditation.

108 Prostrations

108 prostrations is practiced after the early morning service with the hope of achieving one's dream with the help of Buddha's blissful energy. Making repentance while bowing the 108 prostrations turns negative thinking into positive energy. [The meaning of 108 is unclear to me.]

Tea Drinking Ceremony

Drink tea with Buddhist monks and talk about dreams and life -- how did you live, your current life experiences, your life in the future. This is a time to taste a bit of hope and have confidence in your life.

Balwoo Gongyang

All people share the same food to encourage community spirit and harmony. This is to promote equality among everyone. Eating without sound teaches the pious mind.

108 Bead Threading

One bead, one bow. The purpose is to bead whole-heartedly and to reflect on the "I", while making a wish to live proudly and dynamically in order to fulfil one's dream.

Pray Service

Pray service is to pay homage to Buddha and to reflect on one's practice. While praying, reflect on Buddha's life and make resolutions to practice hard in front of Buddha. [This seems to suggest that unlike Christians who pray to a God, Buddhists pay homage to but do not pray to Buddha because each person, if he/she strives enough, can achieve Buddha status. Quite different in purpose although the practice seems to be the same.]

Communal Work Period (Ul-ryeok)

A long time ago, one master said, "A day without work is a day without eating." People in the community must work together, and the enactment of the community work is a function of Seon Meditation.

Walking Fir Tree Forest

Exercise is needed for purifying the mind, and the Woljeongsa Temple practices their walking medition with hands clasped in front while among the heavenly scented fir trees, the natural foliage of Odaesan.

Five Small Temple: A Place of Pilgrimage

Because Odaesan is famed for five mountain peaks and five sacred temples, pilgrimages to Odaesan naturally include the physical pilgramage to each of the temples for different sacred experiences -- temple trekking is in the five directions: north, south, middle, east and west.

Up Odaesan on the Way to Birobong

2011-09-30T16:45:00.018+09:00

Odaesan in 1975 was proclaimed the 11th national park in South Korea; at present I believe there are 20, and 14 of them have "major" mountains, at least mountains that attract a number of people for climbing purposes. The Odaesan National Park attracts over a million visitors each year, but it is by no means popular compared to Jirisan and Seolaksan National Parks.

There are three particular legends concerning the naming of the mountain, but which one is correct is unknown. "Odaeson" meaning Big Five is said to be named after its five peaks (Birobong, Dongdaesan, Durobong, Sangwandbong and Horyeongbong). It is also said to be named after the five famous temples recessed on its dirt slopes (Gwaneumam to the east, Sujeonam to the west, Jijangam to the north, Mireudam to the north, and Sajaam in the center) ... it seems these five temples represent the five heavenly directions as they spread out fan-like over the mountains, while the "mountains topography is said to resemble a crane with outstretched wings, as if about to take flight". Another belief in the origin of the name is based on the story that Janjangyulsa, a monk of the Silla Dynasty, studied in China and upon his return and arrival at this mountain, named the mountain Odaesan because it looked so similar to where he studied in China.

Other myths shape the belief systems of people visiting Odaesan. At the entrance to the trail to Sangwon-sa is Gwandaegeori, or "coat hanger". As legend has it, King Sejo (of the 15th Century) was praying in Sangwon-sa and left for a moment of cleansing in the clear waters of Odaecheon, Odae mountain stream. While he bathed he hung his clothes on the spot now revered as "the coat hanger". As he was bathing alone, a young monk passed by and asked if he wanted a back scrub, which King Sejo accepted. Afterwards, however, he told the young monk, "Wherever you go, do not tell anyone you washed the king's noble body." The young monk is said to have smiled and responded, "Wherever you go, do not tell anyone you met Munsubosal (a Buddhist saint) up close," and he disappeared. The surprised King Sejo looked around but could find no trace of the Buddhist monk, and he discovered that the tumor [in some versions, his incurable skin disease] on his body had completely disappeared. Moved by such a gift of a cure, King Sejo ordered a painter to make a drawing and wood sculpture of the young monk. [According to a pamphlet, the pictured Buddha image is the wooden sculpture of Manjusri, the Bodhisatttva of Incisive Wisdom and who assisted King Sejo; the image is also referred to as a casting by order of King Sejo ... somewhat confusing, but this is National Treasure #221 and is one of Korea's most highly venerated icons.]

There were many temples on the way to the peak, and each temple was ornate and unique. I believe the temple which Manjusri is housed is the Sajaam, a temple of four peaks on a steep slope.

Something I noted in the splendid artwork on temple walls and ceilings is that the young monks are very similar to the Christian concept of a cherub, usually depicted as fat nearly naked babies with wings and halos. The Buddhistic iconography portrays their young (cherub) monks without wings but with trailing clothes that give them a weightless aspect, without halos but these particular Bodhisattva have hair knotted in two knots on the tops of their heads. Other bohisattvas I've seen were bald like the present-day practicing monks, a hair-style I realize is dependent on type of Buddhism being practices, location where it's practiced and time period. Bodhisattvas are round, fat and usually portray innocence like Christian cherub icons.

Jeolmyeolbogung (Precious Palace of Nirvana)

Referring back to the monk Jajangyulsa who studied in China and possibly named Odaesan, the famous shrine where the Great Master enshrined authentic relics of the historical Buddha [Sakyamuni sarira] is behind the Jeolmyeolbogung. Many people visit annually to worship at this sacred place, which is one of the five "Precious Palaces of Nirvana" because of the relic-containing shrine.

The temple is elaboratedly decorated with dragons - dragons on the roof tiles that look over the valley with the long (futuristic) gaze of a celestial creature, dragons on the doors in different colors, but the significance of the colors is beyond me, dragons under the eaves carved in wood and holding celestrial golden balls in their mouths. The dragon is viewed as the celestial creature linking heaven and earth, and so such a symbol would elevate the perception of a temple dedicated to the dragon guardian.

Festivities were in session, not sure what event they were celebrating, but after the rhythmically worship and ritual bowing [one picture even reveals deep prostrations to the sarira of the Buddha underneath the stones behind the temple], steaming-hot rice cakes were served to the participants, and wow, they tasted so good in the chilly fall weather and put smiles on the people who had previously been deep in religious meditation.

Birobong (1,563 meters)

Birobong is also considered one of the sacred mountains in Korea; however, the Three Sacred Mountains are Geumgangsan, Jirisan and Hallasan. I didn't climb the mountain for any religious reasons but because before I leave Korea I must climb the highest mountain peak in every national park; that is 14 of the 20 national parks in Korea are considered to have major peaks and by climbing Birobong I knocked another peak off my bucket list. [I think I have 2 left!]

A Show from the Cat's Eye View

2011-09-29T21:19:00.010+09:00

Whew! The music went off at 9pm sharp, a happy surprise since the last apartment complex courtyard performance went until 11pm and was painfully loud, especially considering the fact that this is a family community. Tonight's decibels were maintained at a rather acceptable level (I'm sure there were complaints last time at both the volume and the late hour the "noise" lasted) although I did have to close the veranda door in order to be able to listen to a DVD lecture.

For the first couple of hours, the windows and veranda doors stayed wide open to listen to the "action" below, and of course to occasionally poke the head out and check out the stage action: whirling dancers in flairing brightly colored skirts dancing to South American cantatas, an Indian song reminding me of Bollywood accompanied by swaying arms and arched backs (most fascinating was the bizarrely elongated shadow of the twisting contortionist on the wall behind the Bollywoodinger)... Other Spanish flavored songs followed, an English ballad, and a couple of songs bordering on opera, and then a unique Korean fan dance zippily danced to the faster rhythms of modern pop - I rather liked the unique blend of attire of the past with the beat of the present!

The last hour, when people had gotten off work or away from classrooms and were starting to fill the plastic chairs set up for the free performance, the volume went up and then Korean ballads oddly salted with jazz and peppered with quavering or sometimes screaming voices replaced the internationally zesty music fest ... and occasionally an electric guitar ripped through the air and electrically thwanged on my nerves and sense of flowing music. Suddenly, a DVD lecture seemed more interesting than the live performance below that my cat and I had been enjoying from our pillowed reading chairs.

"Three duck" folk art

2011-09-25T11:06:00.005+09:00

The 진또배기 (jinddobaegi) is a cosmic symbol in Kangneung. It consists of a wooden pole or structure which is mounted with a trio of ducks in a modified tricorn pattern. These wooden structures were found near entrances to villages and were worshipped by the villagers. The 진또배기, as a cosmic tree, symbolizes a connection of people with god, the sky and the earth. (I find this quite interesting as the Chinese symbol for king 王 also has nearly the same metaphysical meaning!) Kangneung was principally a fishing village, and the villagers living a communal life, and one in communion with both land and sea, believed that the 진또배기 prevented floods, fire and wind damage, and would ensure a safe life. They also believed that it would bestow peace, a good harvest and good catch. The 진또배기 is now just a reminder of a shamanic past, and the cosmic trees are found now as tourist symbols but having no further spiritual or metaphysical meaning beyond that in the burgeoning capitalistic society grounded in science which denies the illogical and unexplainable.

Kangneung Beach near Kyungpo-dae (1960 ~ 2008)

2011-09-24T21:30:00.013+09:00

Posted in a modernly landscaped park beside Kyungpo Lake is a public bathroom designed with a nautical theme, and in front of that bathroom is a metal information board with pictures showing the development of Kyungpo Lake and the annexed beach since the Korean War. These pictures show an amazement development of the beach which is a reflection of the character of the developing nation!

In 1960, not even a decade after the Korean War the expansive oceanfront beach was lined with striped white tents for vacationers. The tents were surprisingly numerous and very tidily arranged on the creamy clean sand. The number of tents surprised me as, since I came to Korea in 1991, Koreans have been 'fearful' of the sun and haven't wanted "black" skin as they put it. Here, obviously Koreans were enjoying the beach with all its brilliant tan-creating sunshine. I have two particular thoughts on this at the moment: (1) people in Kangwon-do didn't 'fear' the sun as much as the citified Koreans, although a very tiny percent of Korean were urban-dwellers at this time, and (2) the dislike of browning one's skin has been a more recent aversion as white skin signifies a non-rural, non-farming complexion and thus connotes status on the person. Probably the latter is more in tune with the sun-tanning practices of the 1960s.

By 1970 a railroad had been constructed in order to facilitate people vacationing. At that time, industrialization was off to a pretty good start and Korea was able to generate some income for urban and rural development. The population in Kangwon-do was relatively small and so spending dough on building a railroad would suggest a need for transportation to the city of Kangnung and by extension, the beach. For many many kilometers the railroad parallels the ocean, and what a scenic tour that would offer, thus promoting tourism and giving Koreans a place to get away. I'm not sure when chaebols started the vacation season in August with half of the workers getting vacation one week and then the other half getting vacation the following, but this railroad would have been heavily used during the August season. I think chaebols were well established by this time and already had those fixed vacations.

By 1980 permanent camping facilities were appearing in a tight stretch along the beach-head, in the thin stretch of land between Kyungpo Lake and the ocean. These kinds of structures could operate year-round ... and they probably did to some extent.

By 1990 the beach was becoming very well developed. Permanent cement beach cottages jammed together closest to the ocean with tourist hotels popping up behind. The two visible tourist hotels pictured would fall under the classification of "villa", or multi-apartmented building having only four floors or less. The villa, made of poured but smooth cement, was the common structure of the late 1980s and 1990s. These two villas still exist today but they are swallowed in a burgeoning number of villas and tightly squashed together taller buildings.

By 2007, a jump of 17 years, the beach front has been developed and re-developed over the years. By this time, multiple advertising signs polluted the view, and the government was disseminating information country-wide about the need to reform the clutter of advertising on buildings (that foreigners thought so gaudy and gauche). The government was also promoting a 'greener' Korea ...

... and so in the year between 2007 and 2008, the Kyungpo beach front underwent a huge beautification process, promoted by the government. Flashing lights, neon signs and building shingles in front of buildings had to fall within specific governmental guidelines on size, color, location of placement on or in front of buildings. And the 'ugly old' had to be removed to create space for trees, which had to be transplanted since the Korean government wanted (and still wants) to promote a 'greener' image and only a modern image (which I find sterile and lacking personality as the modern image is everywhere and does not change ... this to me is a rewriting of Korean history as old places of nostalgia are rebuilt).

This kind of "history rewriting" is happening all around Korea, and because of this it is very hard to accurately trace Korean development and history. But I am glad for these pictures as each "is worth a thousand words" and tells its part in the rapid development of this lovely stretch of beach.

Ojukheon, Birth-place of Yulgok Yi Yi

2011-09-23T07:58:00.015+09:00

Ojukheon is the birthplace of Lady Shin Saimdong (1504-1551) and her son Yulgok Yi Yi (alternatively, Yi I - pictured). Lady Shin was the eldest of five girls and her father very open-mindedly gave her the private education normally given to a son, which was very usually for the gender-segregated strict Confucian era in which she was raised. Even after marriage, her husband allowed her to pursue educational interests and she was not limited to the confines of feminine household operations. On the Ojuheon grounds, according to the huge placard informing the public, Lady Shin Saimdong was "a woman of kind, gentle disposition and deep filial piety. Saimdong excelled in scholarly achievements from her childhood and became the most outstanding woman artist in Korea with her brilliant paintings and poetry as well as sewing and embroidery. She was, at the same time, a most devoted wife and mother."

In June 2009, South Korea finally approved the making of a ₩50,000 bill. There was much debate about it but finally it was decided that Lady Shin Saimdong would be the representative figure on it. There was a long debate between her and a male scientist, but common opinion was that Lady Shin was ultimately chosen for political reasons -- one reason being that Korea only had men on its monetary units and to be considered up-to-date and post-modern, putting a woman on the bill would create a good impression of equality. A lot of criticism flared regarding the "political" choice of Lady Shin and feminist were among the loudest. They felt that chosing a woman was great, but not a woman that affirmed stereotypical opinions of the female who was a good homemaker, known for her piety and filial dedication, and was renowned for her paintings (good) and embroidery (!). All of these point except the excelling in painting and calligraphy were too much reinforcement on beliefs that women should stay within the home as home-makers and care-takers and be represented and protected by man.

Yulgok Yi Yi is on the ₩5,000 bill, and he has been a strong representative figure for Korean education, politics and military affairs. As a child, he studied the classics from his mother (a rare instance of a capable female educator) and was able to pass the junior civil examination at age 13, also winning first prize in the state examination in 1564, the 19th reigning year of King Myeongjong (1545-1567). "He served various government posts such as the governor of Hwanghae-do Province, inspector general, minister of personnel, punishment and military affairs. He devoted himself to coordinating feuds between the political factions and advised the kind on the need to raise a 100,000-man army to prepare for a possible invasion by Japan. He also worked for tax reforms and introduced a system of community grain storage. He was a renowned Confucian scholar whose fame was matched only by his contemporary Yi Hwang. He led the Koho school of Confucian studies. He was an excellent calligrapher and painter."

"Memorial tablets for Yi are enshrined in and memorial services are held for him at the shrine of King Seonjo, some 20 Confucian academics including Chaun-seowon in Paju, Songdam-seowon in Kangnung and numerous Confucian shrines throughout the country." Ojukheon has its own memorial tablet, hall and shrine for remembering Yi. In the right side of this room, Lady Shin gave birth to Yi in 1536 after dreaming of a dragon standing at the upper frame of the gate on the left side. The room is also called Mongrongsil which means a room of dragon dreams. Birth dreams were very important as they were considered portentous of the character and destiny of the child to be born, and a dream about a dragon was considered highly portentous for success.

Yulgok Yi Yi was famed during his time and has remained highly commemorated in school children's textbooks to ensure a "model" for behavior and aspiration as well as a form of creating collective national pride in an exemplary historical person generally regarded as one of the great nation shapers for Korea. Here in Ojukheon, the birthplace of Yi, it is of course expected that a shrine would be built for such a great personage. This shrine is called Munseongsa Shrine, Munseong being the posthumous name of Yi Yi which was conferred on him by King Injo in the Choseon Dynasty in 1624. Note the dragon at the apex of the shrine. I'm not clear on why a turtle is almost always used to support a memorial tablet other than the turtle is one of the 싶장생 or longevity symbols and thus possibly represents eternity for Yi's spirit. But with that said, within various parts of Asia the turtle is used as a beast of spiritual burden--e.g. Thailand's old belief that the world was carried on the back of a great turtle.

Kyungpo Pavillion & Lake

2011-09-22T20:59:00.013+09:00

Fleeing the busyness of Seoul, I spent a long weekend at a beach front hotel in Kangneung. With Kyungpo-ho (lake) behind me and an overview of the undulating ocean directly in front of me, I slept in the peaceful salt-tinged air. Although the tourist season is past (making the hotel quite affordable - I even bargained because there's just no competition for vacant rooms!) the beach was still warm and inviting. I spent a good long time wading and relaxing by the water with a book. I even intended to go swimming -- yes! shocking to swim when the season is closed, but the weather was still nice enough for a short, brisk swim. Well, I intended to wait till noon before plunging into the water, and got quite a lot of sunshine before that ... but around noon the clouds suddenly blew in and the day turned downright chilly in less than an hour! About the time the day was becoming jacket-weather, these two girls dressed in hanboks appeared on the beach and were wildly playing at the edge of the slapping swells, and shrieking with laughter. I wasn't the only one of the beach entertained by their youthful enthusiasm!

They played for about 30 minutes and then were quite glad when Mom came and wrapped them in an adult sized jacket. Brrr, it was getting cold. Well, I had had enough beach for the day anyway, so went wandering around Kyungpo-Lake again.

Kyungpodae (Pavillion)

Kyungpodae (Gyeongpodae) is the famous pavillion overlooking Kyungpo Lake. Though first built in the Goryeo Dynasty in 1326 behind Inwolsa Temple, it was transferred to the present location at some unspecified later time. Of course the pictured Kyungpodae is not the original, as it was rebuilt in 1873 and has since undergone sporadic maintenance repairs. The pavillion is located on the steep hill closest to the lake and is known for its scenic views, as it is considered the best preserved site among the Eight Scenic Points of Kyungpo (which are - sunrise view from Nokdujeong Pavillion, Jukdomyeongwol, Gangmuneohwa, Chodangchuiyeon, Hongjangyau, Jeungbongnakjo, Hwanseonchwijeok, Hansongmojong) and the Three Lunar Scenes of Kyungpo (the Lunar Column, Lunar Tower, and Lunar Wave). Well, this list of scenic views and scenes was written on the information posting in front of the pavillion, but while I can make some educated guesses about the meaning and location of the 8 scenic points, I'm totally clueless what the 3 lunar scenes might be ... something specific to learn about when I come back. Anyway, inside of Kyungpodae is a royal poem written by the famous Master Yulgok Yi Yi at the age of ten. There were more famous pieces by people I haven't heard of but even foreigners recognize the illustrious penname of Yulgok Yi Yi!

Kyungpo-ho (Lake)

Concerning the legend of Kyungpo-ho, there's a folk belief that the five moons can be seen here at midnight when the moon is full: the orb of the bright moon in the sky, the yellow orb reflected in the water of the lake, an orb also in the sea, the moon reflected in your lover's wine glasses and of course the moon in your lover's eye(s). Rather romantic! However, there have been some changes to the lake which make viewing all 5 moons nowadays a bit difficult: the lake, formerly 12 kilometers in circumference, has shrunk to a 4 kilometer in circumference lake. The meaning of the Kyungpo-do is a lake with a surface as still and clear like a mirror. This placid calmness is still true, but it's shrinking size is a threat to the migrating birds.

Sunset views at Kyungpo-ho

Haenyeo of Jeju-do

2011-09-17T20:09:00.017+09:00

Jai Ok Shim, Executive Director of Fulbright in Seoul, introduced tonight's research lecturer Grace Ha. Grace has an undergraduate background in marine biology and environmental conservation and became interested in the haenyeo in a short passage in her marine biology textbook that piqued her interest and resulted in her Fulbright project concerning the haenyeo and traditional ecological knowledge, a study which isn't based solidly on science but weaves science and a people's belief systems. The blurb summarizing her research project follows:

"On Jeju Island, fisherwomen, known widely today as haenyeo (해녀), have a long-standing tradition of free-diving into the ocean for seafood such as abalone, kelp, seaweed, sea cucumber, turban shell and octopus. Over the past year, Grace has been researching these women and the Jeju fishing villages, focusing largely on their traditional ecological knowledge and resource management techniques. Grace has been specifically investigating what implications this disappearing way-of-life may have on future marine conservation efforts."

Grace Ha collected her research through literature research and language study prior to going to Jejudo and more while on Jeju. She conducted interviews and had personal communication with the haenyeo, fishing cooperative leaders, and scholars on the topic. And she also participated in the hanyeo school, not really a school but a practice hands-on in-the-water one-day (or more) experience of being a haenyeo. She laughingly said that when she participated and took her dive, without prior training as the training is "in the water", the haenyeo in charge of her just pointed down into the depths of the water and said things like, "Hey, you didn't stay down long enough" or "You'll never collect anything if you don't go deeper" or "What are you doing? Go down again!" And that was her experience at the haenyeo school! While many haenyeo can go down as much as 20 meters and stay down up to 3 minutes, the average is 5-6 meters and underwater 1-2 minutes. There is no way that a beginner could or should attempt such, but by pushing one's self, one can supposedly expand the human limits of diving.

The Haenyeo of Jejudo

The haenyeo (해녀/海女), which means 'woman of the sea', have also been known as jamsu, literally 'entering into the water' but having the traditional meaning of 'divers/diving women'. Jamnyeo is another traditional term and is translated roughly the same. The haenyeo are not mermaids, indomitable Amazons or super-women. They were and still are divers, using no breathing equipment, only a rubber suit, mask, fins and weights. They carry a float (태왁?), a net (마앙사리), a spear (작살) and a curved pick or sickle (비창?). They had a job, low-class and underpaid in Joseon Dynasty, but one which gave them income and therefore independence in the highly regimented Joseon dynasty when women were seen as only homemakers and child breeders. The diving for sea urchins, sea abalone and other sea goods on the ocean floor was a job principally for women, ironic as it may seem. Men's jobs were related to the hazards of fishing (beltfish, squid, etc) in the turbulent waters, both far and near, around the island. Many died fighting the treachery of ocean and a large female population remained.

Whether a large portion of haenyeo are Christians, I don't know, but I do know that there are many shamanistic rituals, an annual shaman festival for the gods of the ocean which includes a gut (exoricism) to appease angry gods and pay tribute to protective ocean and natural element spirits. In Korean communities that have lower education and are living close with the elements, shamanism is still strong and the approximate 100 villages harboring haenyeo maintain rituals and beliefs for their spiritual well-being while in the ocean.

In recent years, the haenyeo have become a tourism symbol of Jejudo, the island known for its 3 Ws — wind, water, women … and of course rocks. This tourist symbol will be just that and nothing more in a few years as the haenyeo discourage their daughters from entering the trade, and a rapidly declining number of elderly haenyeo comprise the majority. Many die - the young, the old, the experienced - in their attempts to stay under the water as long as they can in order to gather the most sea products as possible. The trade is dangerous, not to mention physically demanding and now women, no longer contrained by rigid gender roles, can have other jobs and ones which are both safe and guarantee independence, so haenyeo mothers refuse to teach their secrets to their daughters, as becoming a haenyeo is a trade passed down only from mother to daughter. So, the traditional ecological knowledge is dying with the aging haenyeo.

By definition, traditional ecological knowledge is "A cumulative body of knowledge, practice and belief evolving by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cultural transmission, about the relationship of living beings (including humans) with one another and with their environment" [Berkes, Colding and Folke, 2002, 'Rediscovery of traditional ecological knowledge as adaptive management' Ecological Applications 10:1251-1262.] What the haenyeo pass along to their daughters is a keen understanding of the tides, underwater geography and topography, weather and waves, ecology of marine life according to season, and much more. They have their own specialized folk taxonomy of the ocean and are aware of spatial changes within the ocean and to a large extent aware of the impact their local development has on the marine ecosystem. They also pass along communal cleaning and gardening techniques, that is, they 'weed out' underwater plants that invade or encrouch on the garden territory of the more desireable flora and fauna.

In 1966, there were 23,081 registered haenyeo but those numbers have dropped to 4,995 in 2010 with 43.3% of the diving women 70 years old and older. With the advent of rubber suits for the haenyeo in the 1970s, a drop in the numbers of underwater fisherwomen was appropriate but those numbers are still rapidly declining. Prior to the rubber suits, the women wore cotton smocks and could dive for only 2 hours max per day, taking breaks to warm themselves, but the rubber suits made it possible to dive for 6-7 hours straight, which really taxed the ocean's gardens around the island.

Since the 1970s, overfishing has become a ecological problem, not to mention the pollutions from fish farms that have sprung up around Jejudo. Marine ecology is further damaged by climate change, resulting in the disappearance of algae and key species extending the Korean diet. To try to control the ecological decline, current resource management in Jeju fishing villages has resulted in top-down policies like (1) no diving during breeding season [which last 2-3 months. It seems the haenyeo dive year-round but when certain species are breeding, those species are not to be including in their "catch of the day"]; (2) catch size limits on species have been imposed, and (3) diving is limited to a certain number of days per month as based on neap tides, ex. ~15 days/month; and finally (4) a guard is posted on fishing grounds to prevent poaching [there is a lot of competition between villages ... not just local competition that exists even between mother and daughter].

Grace presented an interesting twist of opinions regarding the future ecology of the ocean around Jejudo if the haenyeo cease to exist as fisherwomen. One opinion is from Youngsoon Go, Sehwa-ri fishing cooperative leader and the contrasting opinion is from Baekyeon Im, Hado-ri fishing cooperative leader. Youngsoon Go says, "Without haenyeo around to keep overfishing, Jeju's oceans will be able to recover" while Baekyeon Im says, "Without haenyeo, who will be here to ensure Jeju has healthy oceans?" Both have a point. While the haenyeo now tend to overfish having the advantage of working longer with the advantage of their rubber suits, they still garden and cultivate the ocean of unwanted flora - three examples of the valuable garden of Jejudo but which other countries see as invasive are two kinds of seaweed and a crab, all much loved by Koreans and encouraged to reproduce and grow in the gardens around Jeju.

A Word on K-Pop

2011-09-15T22:19:00.011+09:00

"K-Pop influences Korean society but Korean history and social development have influenced K-Pop" was Emilie Chu's opening line to her lecture entitled "K-pop Mirroring Korea or Korea Mirroring K-pop?" Although I am not personally interested in K-Pop, the write-up was another glimpse into the multi-facted social gem of Korea, and I felt I needed to delve into a new facet of Korea to broaden my own cultural horizons:

"Like the country itself, South Korean popular culture and music has grown to take on an international presence over the past ten to fifteen years. Cultural figures, from Seotaiji [a rapper who retired at the height of his popularity and then shockingly attempted, and did make a comeback, in rock music even though his rapping was not particularly out-of-date] to g.o.d. [still active in ballad style but 2001 saw them at the pinnacle of success] to TVBQ to Big Bang [particularly popular in 2005 with rapping, and with lyrics rather meaningless as their ultimate focus is for rhyme and rhythm] to BoA [who debutted with SM Entertainment, the biggest entertainment industry, and then marketed herself through a Japanese music entertainment company], have been making waves in steadily increasing extents, to the point of becoming a dominant force and current standard throughout Asia. Yet there are a number of lesser known factors behind the words they sing and the images they present, as well as the implications of such works. Thanks to Fulbright, this past year Emilie Chu has been able to study the relationship between Korean pop music and Korean culture through its history, society and industries by examining Korean songs within their local context, and has found some very interesting connections between cultural expression and representation."

To begin, Emilie stated that song and record need to be clearly defined as they are not synonymous and understanding their concepts within the Korean context is crucial to understanding their sociocultural significance. Therefore, a song is 'words + melody' and needs songwriters, lyricists and composers. The lyrics themselves should be more than just cliché, can comprise an element of language play with metaphor, can be "fun" or thought-provoking, or even can be experiential and having subtle biographical influences reflecting culture and social attitudes. Record, on the other hand, is a craft combining the skills of singers, musicians, arrangers, producers, recording engineers, among others, with the purpose of creating a powerful performance, an artist or group with a unique identity or sound, a great arrangement, or possibly even produced for business considerations such as timing or promotion.

K-Pop is not necessarily Hallyu (the Korean wave) although it can be. When Emilie showed the top 10 songs for each of the years in the past decade [except 2008 and 2009 as the music industry was undergoing change resulting in government marketing under the Ministry of Culture in order to standardize and centralize the ratings, sales, etc], rather consistently the top three songs in the list were little known in the room of expats, several of whom were K-Pop fans. According to Emilie, such anonymity of top songs among the K-Pop loving expats just goes to show that though many songs were wildly famous in Hallyu, not all the songs were known outside of Korea, but rather were so popular in Korea and marketed solely for Koreans that they were popularized alone by local sale.

Common Themes and Tropes

At the turn of the century, K-Pop focused on idealized (and rather tragic) love or parting, evoking a romantic concept intermixed with the Korean han (a cultural sorrow for what was and can never be again). Songs were idealistically focused on puppy love and the "cute concept", so evident in "pure and sweet" first date relationships, knick knacks and souvenirs, Hello Kitty popularity, and kitsch culture memorabilia. Songs also were on attraction, suggesting a "sexy concept", rather an ironic twist on the "pure and sweet". And many songs also were a type of confidence anthem, a new genre of song sung primarily by females who, I feel, are being emancipated in Korean society and now challenging, perhaps overturning, the stigma of "femininity" and attitude of being "substandard" to male-dominated society. What Emilie brilliantly pointed out is that the songs in the past decade were mostly about individualism, and rare were the songs about family, friendship or commentaries on life. [In writing this, these twenty-first century K-Pop songs can be likened to someone singing solely about a wedding, but not the marriage itself ... that is, they are a reflection of love but that which is unrequited, not experienced and which therefore has no future.]

K-Pop: The "Good" and the "Bad"

K-Pop, if evaluated for its positive or negative function within the Korean society, can be said to have four positive factors in its favor: (1) identity - it has given Koreans an identity in the international community that they as a collective nation can say is "successful", (2) international doorway - now that it is recognized as an international music genre, Korea hopes to gain more international acclaim, not necessarily through music, (3) community - as a nation grounded in Confucism, collectivism and community still have inherent values and although Korea is rapidly changing, K-Pop success and acceptance furthers confidence and elicits sentiments of comradery and togetherness, and (4)the "fun" factor - the wide variety of K-Pop singers and groups provides on-going entertainment for subway riders, commuters, music circles, beer halls ... and is just a fun form of entertainment, made easily accessible on the ubiquitous digital equipment in public or in pocket.

K-Pop, on the other hand, (1) lacks diversity - the music is all rather homogenous, just as the Korean people have claimed blood homogeniety, and as a result, variation is seriously lacking, (2) creativity/musicianship - singers are rarely composers, they are just that, "singers". One of the original g.o.d. singers invoked a Korean slang "lounge loser" for the type of singer who simply goes on tours, only sings and is a face for the music industry that does the writing, creating, etc. He broke away from g.o.d. to attempt a more creative approach to music. (3) personal identification and expression - related to creativity and musicianship, singers are not allowed any poetic license but must sing what the music industry decrees, and (4) objectification - singers are objectified, become objects to imitate, scorn, gossip abour, and who as a result lose any semblance of a "normal" life but must always be a "face" for the Korean market.

Wrapping Up

The Japanese market is the second biggest market for Korean K-Pop (with of course Korea being number 1). The reason for this is there isn't pirating (not much anyway) in Japan and the Japanese are big purchasers of physical albums rather than downloaders of the digitally available online albums and/or songs.

I gained a lot of insights on the K-Pop industry and although I'm still not an avid listener, at least now I feel slightly more informed on the development of the industry and the quick evolution of the songs in a mere decade. For more information on K-Pop view Emilie Chu's blog at http://songprints.wordpress.com/

Nostalgic Diner in Insa-dong

2011-09-14T20:42:00.008+09:00

Just three months ago via a stateside friend I "met" a fellow anthropology graduate, Leah, who ventured to Korea and this past week welcomed her mom for a brief visit to her new country of residence. Somehow I met the mom over the internet too and we three decided to finally meet in person and have an afternoon hiking adventure behind Sungkyunkwan University. After a hike up the hills in the steamy weather and down the other side, we ended up in Insa-dong where we had to decide which Korean food would be most appetizing as an introduction to the mother. We settled on a bi-bim-bop restaurant to treat Josephine to some vegetables and rice prepared with a pungent soybean soup.

To attact foreign clientele, menus in the touristy Insa-dong are posted in both English and Korean on A-frames outside their respective restaurants. It used to be there was no menu except the one hung on the inside wall, but touristy areas post their menus outside their restaurants, and many restaurants in the bigger cities now offer booklet menus to guests seated at tables [the concept borrowed from the West]. Looking at the pictures of the food spreads on an A-frame, I was explaining the bi-bim-bop to Josephine when suddenly a Korean woman interrupted and spouted how she'd like to recommend the bi-bim-bop to us because it's such a traditional food and loved by all Koreans and blah blah blah. Errrrgh, sometimes I get very annoyed with people who interrupt conversations, especially when I'm in a deep in a conversation and am completely devoid of a blank lost look ...

The female passerby probably thought she had really recommended a classy meal to the "poor, uninformed" foreigners because we did go in. Not only did the food look tasty on the A-frame posting, but also the restaurant can easily market itself for ambiance with its rich wooden decor of a hanok-style construction somewhat reminiscent of 50 or more years ago. We sat in a courtyard, with a cheap plastic canopy overhead to keep the air conditioning in and mosquitoes out; I rather think that those two functions were its only functions as the looseness would certainly not hold water in any kind of rain shower. The food was splendid, and Josephine enjoyed her introduction to one of the choice cuisines of Korea. The place was really crowded with more Koreans than "foreigners", which is a good sign of a good restaurant. But at the cash register, the restaurant took on a more historical charm for above the register was a wall hung with old photographs of Korea, pictures of daily social interactions, dress attire, means of making a living and most were representative of the working class, and not the yangban class! When the cashier saw me looking at the wood framed photos, she got excited and volunteered explanations on many of them. I was especially enthusiastic about the pict of a peasant carrying a amount of large baskets on his A-frame carrier; I'd never seen or heard of anything like it!

North Korean 만화

2011-09-06T16:21:00.016+09:00

Jacco Zwetsloot gave a powerfully interesting presentation on the genre of 만화 or "comic books" in North Korea. North Korean comic books "have been in publication since at least the early 1980s, despite paper shortages at times. Some of them are barely more than illustrated storybooks for children, others are caricature-filled horror stories, while still others are finely crafted graphic novels - with barely believable plotlines. The content of these "comic books" vary, but many seem to fall into three broad categories:

1. warnings against spies and how to spot them
2. cautionary tales about the evils of the world
3. heroic tales set during the Korean War or pre-1910 Korean history"

The comic books target various ages, even well-educated adults. Unfortunately, they are hard to find outside of the DPRK, but they can be similarly hard to find within it too. An interesting few points of the North Korean comic book are the interminable long sentences, repetitive passages about juche [North Korean "self reliance"] and seongun [North Korea's "military first policy"] and imperious injunctions by the Great and/or Dear Leader. North Korean comic books, therefore, are not for pure entertainment purposes but to be used as propaganda tools and social and/or political weapons.

Comic Book Trends

Some trends that Jacco was able to point out are the shifts in comic book themes over time. In the 1960s to early 1980s, Kim Il Sung was frequently portrayed as the leader of the anti-Japanese struggle. In the early 1980s to early 1990s the emphasis was placed on ideology (with Kim Il Sung dead, of course there would have to be a change in theme). Art remained ossified through the decades as it appears with the closing of the borders to imports, lack of foreign artistic expression limits the creative imagination and results in stagnation. Characters are predictable based on nationality, class, and political position. Bad guys never reflect on their evil ways and the good guys never waver. North Koreans who follow the political viewpoints of juche are "good", and keeping that in mind, the antogonists are quite predictably bad. Primary antagonists are:

spies (anti-regime North Koreans)
US soldiers
feadal landlords
capitalists
lusty women
Koreans who have lived in America or who work for Americans
Japanese who return (to Korea) to help Americans

It must be said that when the North Koreans are writing or talking about Americans, Americans are always labeled as ~놈 (bastard) and ~년 (worse than "bitch"). [Many tourists have reported this strange phenomenon, even the NK children are raised refering to Americans as such and do not recognize such language as vulgar or socially wrong. In fact, such vulgar language is seen as socially correct.

Common conflicts are centered on (1) feudal Korea (landlord bastards and the hard-working peasant conflict), (2) North Korea at present (pro vs. anti-regime struggles) (3) South Korea (pro-Korean vs. racial traitors, meaning particularly Koreans who work with Americans), and (4) Korean War (all possible character types as Korea was a mish-mash of terror on multiple levels during that time).

And some common themes for today are (1) kids as spy-hunters to help the nation, (2) kids as agents of violence, (3) re-writing Korean War incidents (North Korea realistically still loses the war, but some battles lost were rewritten as won; real names, places and incidents are referred to, but truth is wildly distorted), (4) evil bastard Americans, (4) the world outside of North Korea is a scary place. (Now is that the reverse ideology of what "we outside of North Korea" say about living IN the North!)

The comics aimed at kids seem pretty standard within North Korea as well as "outside". Those comics are often anthropomorphised with animals, they are morality tales and speak against laziness. They also emphasize loyalty and a following of the rules, which is good, but the North Korean comics books do not allow for deviation of juche principles, the rules are very restrictive and absolute loyalty is demanded. And then perhaps most different is kids are spy hunters - from the time they are young, they are taught (brainwashed, depending on your perspective) to aggressively eradicate the evil of the "foreign". An example of this type is the comic, 총을 쥐소년등 or "Kids with Guns". The story is set during the Korean War, and kids in the village start up their own resistance group to fight occupying South Korean/US forces. They raid an armory, steal guns and uniforms, and kill lots of soldiers.

Consistent to the North Korean comic books is that Americans are capital imperialists and they are evil. Missionaries are not seen favorably in North Korea but one particular comic book even attacked the Underwoods, a most famous missionary family who even in our lecture had a fourth generation Underwood present. The protestant Underwoods were portrayed in the book as dressed like Catholics, translating texts in a picture very reminiscent of John Wycliffe and then the family members were referred to in the most vulgar manner. (Again, perspective on who is speaking determines politically correct language. The follow translation to English cannot give the justice to the vulgarity of the terms used.)

Jacco gave many examples of portrayal, imagery - both visual and linguistic, and theme and plot. The last one I'll give an example from his many examples is the comic book "A Sick and Twisted World", a series of books that teaches life outside of North Korea as evil. In the series are 13 stories of terrible deeds from around the world although many of them take place in South Korea. Book 7 has an exemplary quote from the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il himself, "Capitalist society is, basically a sick and twisted society, one without a sense of what's right, and one that is nearing collapse." And in that section the picture portrayals are of super-obese Americans [well, well more than 50% are in fact overweight], eating prodigious amounts of food [well, truth again], cramming the food and all sorts of unidentifiable garbage in their mouths [hmmm] ... maybe only the quote is incorrect here.

One would think that after reading the above samples of North Korean comic books that they are all political. That would be a very incorrect assumption, but the point emphasized in the lecture is that many of the comic books are for glorifying the juche regime and used as propaganda tools.

Hansen's Disease on the Korean Peninsula

2011-09-03T07:07:00.009+09:00

Joji Wilson Kohjima, Fulbright researcher with interests in medical anthropology and medical practice, is the great grandson of Robert Manton Wilson, an American missionary who worked as a doctor for Hansen's disease in Korea from 1907 to 1941. Joji's research is on a topic shunned and of a people ostracized.
"Hansen's disease in Korea historically existed at endemic levels until effective drugs became available in the 1930s to 1950s. [The disease] has been referenced in Korean literature for centuries even including some Chosun era mask dances. In the 20th century, Hansen's disease patients became what professor Jeong Keun-Shik of Seoul National University refers to as 'the most significant social other' in ethnically homogeneous Korean society. They have alternately been used as symbols of national shame, Christian salvation, Japanese imperial benevolence, and finally Korea's national "han" or sorrow.

Joji Kohjima's research deals with the efforts of Hansen's disease patients to tell their own story, and to seek restitution for their treatment under Japanese colonialism and post-colonial Korean governments. He has been researching ... Aeyangwon hospital in Yeosu and Sorokdo National Leprosy Hospital in Sorok Island, Jeollanamdo. This forum will explore leprosy in Korean society as a phenomenon originating at the microscopic level of bacteria but extending to the level of social constructs in the discrimination, otherization and isolation faced by leprosy patients. Largely originating in Japanese colonial policy, patients have historically faced quarantine, forced labor, and forced sterilization as they were caught in the triangle of Japanese colonial government, missionaries, and an often hostile Korean population."

Hansen's Disease in Korea

Basically, Hansen's disease or leprosy is caused by a bacteria that attacks the nervous system, both the autonomic nerves and sensory nerves, which results in a widespread variety of symptoms ultimately resulting in deformities, caused by a build-up of bacteria, in the extremities and working its way to the body core.

Historically, lepers in Korea were forced to live a life separated by the "civilized" or healthy peoples. They were not allowed to enter cities and were stoned if attempting to do so, they were the objects of many wild and nefarious tales that furthered ostracization within the society, and because there was no known cure or treatment, lepers were greatly feared. Fear breeds anger, hatred, violence, torture and lack of understanding or compassion, and therefore lepers were the marginalized "social others". Korea is a culture predominantly of one ethnicity and leprosy sufferers were considered almost as if they were another race, and many tales of boogie-man caliber existed to keep them ostracised or "other-ized", such as lepers feast on healthy children's liver [suggesting that healthy young livers could be powerful antidotes to the leper's unhealthy state ...]

In 1904, Scottish Missionary Wiley Forsythe arrived in Korea and he became very symbolic as a Christian to value the lives of Korean people [he was attacked in 1906, left Korea for treatment but adamantly returned again the next year] and the life of lepers, namely a leprous woman in 1909. Though many versions of the tale exist, the apocryphal account is of Wiley Forsythe in some stories as seeing a leper woman being stoned by some villagers, so he put her on his own horse [in Korea at that time, dignitaries always rode and were led around by someone calling out their status - if they had a horse, they would not walk] and, leading the horse, took her to a mission hospital where she could get help. Before leaving her at the hospital where of course she could not be admitted in, he even made sure she had a place of shelter, a brick kiln, where she could stay while being treated.

In 1907 Robert Manton Wilson came to Korea as a medical missionary for the Southern Presbyterian Church. Dismayed at the lepers begging and wandering the countryside, he establish a leprosarium in Kwangju, and around 1920 the patient population peaked with over 1,100 patients, making it the largest leprosarium in Korea. With its continued growth and the growing fear of the "contagion" in and around Kwangju, the leprosarium was relocated between 1926 and 1928 to the Yeosu peninsula ... [how appropriate to marginalize the already marginalized at the margins of the nation]. He remained for decades administering to the Koreas, but when WWII broke out, he departed although he did return for a brief 3 months in 1947 at the behest of General McArthur as many leper patients had wandered away from their registered leprosarium. Missionary Wilson was regarded with great respect by the lepers, and, in another lecture I heard, when a memorial stone was constructed in Kwangju to commemorate his great efforts in Korea, a group of lepers broke out of the Yeosu colonies and traveled in the secrecy of many nights to "steal" the stone and take it with them back to Yeosu, such was their respect for the missionary doctor who did so much for them!

In the early days of the leprosariums, there were no known drugs for leprosy, but the missionaries had various levels of treatment. For the physical ravages of the disease they injected an Ayurvedic oil called Chalmoogra Oil [it didn't help]; for spiritual help those wanting treatment were required to join the church; for supporting themselves they were taken from the life of beggary and given vocational training; and finally, for their socialization genders were segregated to prevent the procreation of more "outcasts". Some marriages between lepers were allowed, but men were persuaded to get vasectomies [for missionaries this seemed to be the solution to controlling the population of lepers but later vasectomies were a political mandate of the Japanese colonial rule] and married lepers could adopt leper children who were brought into the leper colony.

The Rise of State-model Leprosy Colony on Sorokdo

In 1916 the Sorokdo leprosy colony was established, by whom I don't know, but in 1933 Suho Masasue, a Japanese doctor and sanitary officer, took over as director, and expanding on the role of the "national leprosarium" in Korea that would control this pestilential disease under the more effective Japanese colonialism, Sorokdo became know as one of the important national leprosariums, with population peaking during WWI with around 6,000 patients. To put this large number for one colony into perspective, the total number of lepers in the 1940s and 1950s is estimated around 100,000~150,000.

It seems that under Japanese colonialism, lepers were not allowed to marry as in the Yeosu peninsula the men were housed in simple houses on the western side and women on the eastern. Control was intended to be absolute and people who were known to establish any similar political interests were separated and relocated to various villages on the peninsula. The leprosarium on Sorokdo was for political activists, rascals and criminals, and to be sent there was to be sent to the harshest environs for "controlling" the disease as well as controlling any political unrest. One such person sent to Sorokdo was leper inmate Lee Sung-San who assassinated the Japanese doctor Suho Masasue in 1942.

Leprosy in Korea Today

There are 14,200 registered cases of recovered leprosy patients living in Korea today. Of these, 10,900 are registered as disabled, and 332 are listed as "active" patients. The predominant number of people with the leprosy bacteria are over 40 years of age, and fewer that 10 "new cases" are registered each year. The majority of recovered leprosy patients live in agricultural settlements, approximately 5,000, and yes, there is still a stigma to marrying anyone, even a relative, of a leper so the "social other" still exists in Korea today. To illustrate, just three or four years ago three (healthy) children were reported to have disappeared and as the children's community was tangent to a leper community, rumors of the lepers stealing the children for recovery rituals were rampant. The children were found, no kidnapping had happened, but the dormant rumors and wild imaginings of the feared "other" have obviously never been put to sleep with modern medicine.

Cicadas and Humidity

2011-08-26T10:24:00.009+09:00

The summer has been staggeringly hot, well, when it wasn't raining and it sure has rained too much this particular summer. It's rained so much in fact that Seoul made international news for flooding within the city, but almost 2 months of nearly non-stop rain is a bit much. However, I might add that the rain wasn't quite as bad as 2 years ago when the rivers flooded to overflowing and walking and bike trails paralleling the rivers completely disappeared. At least there were intermittent days this year when the sun would peep through and which allowed the waters to not back-up so badly. Housing in the low level areas were the ones badly affected again with homes being flooded and foundations being undermined causing structures to collapse or mudslides to appear where mudslides were not known to be.

Anyway, now that the rains have stopped, the humidity now soars and the cicadas (pictured) chirr from the trees. When the humidity goes up, so does their volume and lately I've noticed the shrieking chirr, much louder than the chirr of cicadas in the northern states, has started as early as 5:30 a.m. Yes, it's blazing! But exercise is needed so in the early a.m. before kids and drunk old men populate the riverside walks, I strap on my rollerblades and fly along the paved paths, feeling the rush of wind and adrenaline. Zipping along, I made a strange discovery. Some trees along the path would be loud with chirring and others silent, so I started paying some attention to the reasons for the crescendos and gaps of silence. It seems that cicadas don't chirr, and perhaps don't populate, the acacia trees [not the stickery acacia trees common to Africa but the acacia trees that trail white lupine-like blooms with heavenly perfume for 10 glorious days in the spring]. Poplars and pines are favorites as well as a unknown specie of gum tree. The chirr of the cicadas has become such a comforting sound that I associate it with Korea, but unfortunately, I also associate it with a climbing and unpleasant level of humidity.

Apt Complex Roof Repairs

2011-08-19T23:36:00.010+09:00

My cat was fascinated by the movement on the rooves in my apartment complex and would daily watch the roof tile repairmen as they migrated from building to building overhauling the rooves: removing old tiles and shingles, retarring and then reshingling. They worked either before or after teams of painters came in, rigged up long ropes and descending over the sides of the buildings for giving the complex a whole new look. They painted over the tired wintry colors popular in the last couple of decades and put on a fresh autumn color scheme.

The painters were fast, team painting an entire building in about 2 days. There were the spray painters [they must have terrible lungs and carpal tunnel from breathing in all that continuous spray and repetitively squeezing the spray nozzle for hours on end.] My cat especially loved these guys because they would swing to and fro lowering themselves slightly with every other pass, repetitive movements that cats who have all the classic symptoms of autism love. Following the spray painters were guys descending on ropes also but they didn't swing so rhythmically back and forth but instead had several sizes of paint brushes fixed to them or their bucket and they would touch up the edges around the windows if needed and make the perpendicular lines as straight as possible.

For days and days, instead of watching and cackling at pigeons on the distant rooves, the cat supervised the movements of the men. The roofers had no safety ropes and I couldn't help but wonder how much their life insurance policies would cost, especially as they cat-walked on the slanted roof tops 20 to 25 stories above the earth.
_____________________________________________________________________________

Several weeks later:

A friend just told me that the government has "suggested" (in Korean, 'suggested' but in English 'required') certain color schemes in construction with the overall attempt of "beautifying Seoul" and making it look harmonious, kind of like living in the familiar environs of a single organism wherever you may live in the great metropolitan city.

The Japanese and Indicators of Social Change

2011-08-03T01:59:00.006+09:00

Dr. Karl Moskowitz gave an exceedingly informative presentation on the Japanese occupation of 35 years and the resulting Japanese influence on Korean society. As he puts it, the colonial period raised two, if not three, generations of Koreans and current cultural change and social practices are not as homogenously Korean as Koreans would like to believe. In his lecture, he explores some of the rites of passage that the nation underwent during the 35 years of colonization. With authority he speaks. He received a PhD in History and East Asian Languages, Harvard and has particular interest in Korean and Japanese modern history. {Lecture given November 9, 2010 at the Royal Asiatic Society}

Colonial Period (1910~1945)

Population Statistics

Population in 1910 was 13,300,000 according to police records, which were consistently undercounted, e.g. people didn't register their babies for a couple or years. Other indicators show that perhaps the population was 15,300,000 in addition to some Japanese and a Chinese minority (based on a census). At this time there was no displaced diaspora excepting the 2 boat loads of Koreans who had gone to work in the sugar cane fields of Hawaii some time between 1903~1905. And of this 15 million population, only 3~4% were urban (including the Japanese), concentrated in Seoul, Daegu, and the ports. Kwangju and Daejeon did not as yet exist.

Control Policies (1910~1919)

Early in the occupancy, Japanese brought Japanese farmers to Korea (on the premise that Korea did not have enough population for agricultural labor), but then the Japanese went into "control mode" and became landlords and so rented land out to the Koreans. However, the March 1st Movement in 1919 made it clear that the control policy in Korea was failing.

Agricultural Policies (1920~1935)

Rice inflation in Japan had resulted in the infamous Rice Riot of 1918, and with the Japanese political need to bring more rice into Japan, policies overseas (particularly in Korea and Taiwan) were made for rice production. Rice policies in Korea included the making of small dams and irrigation systems; improving seeds for production; teaching more productive ways to cultivate and produce rice; the making and use of fertilizers; investment into land (e.g. in the 1920s, claiming land on the western coast). As rice became cheaper, the market prices determined in Osaka kind of collapsed, and so investments were then expanded to the sardine industry for making fertilizer to take back to Japan. Economic stimulation was necessary and the production of fibers to stimulate the economy became evident in the slogan "cotton in the south and wool in the north".

The occupational structure in 1920 was 87% agricultural, 6% commerce, and 2% public/professional (these numbers need to be read with caution - see comment near end on interpreting numbers).

Industrial Policies (1927~...)

1927 is the pivotal year for agricultural production with the completion of a fertilizer plant in (North) Korea, soon followed by the creation of the Chosin Reservoir also in the north. In 1931 the staged Manchurian Incident which fueled the Japanese to take control and form a puppet government in Manchuria resulted in upping the exploitation of its other colonies, particularly Korea to provide natural resources, fibers, rice, etc to fund further expansionism.

War Mobilization Policies (1937~...)

By 1930 Korea had become a mixed economy, no longer completely dependent on its agriculture, which had declined by 30%. An increasing push was for industrial development, and the Japanese were mobilizing manufacturing to support its Manchurian war front. In 1942, super mobilization began with most of Korea's production being exported leaving Koreans to eek out a minimal living in many places.

In 1938, the occupational structure had greatly changed from when Japan first began to occupy the colonies. Korean mixed economy comprised 76% agriculture, 6.5% commerce, 4% mining and industry, and 3% public/professional. Again read these numbers with caution as they reflect an interpretation which could be interpreted quite differently at present if we could know how the data was collected, interpreted and categorized. In 1940, 14% of the population was urban (urban meaning that 15,000 people or more occupied a town).

Korea and Koreans in 1945

Population in 1945 was 26,500,000 plus 500,000 Chinese and 2,200,000 Japanese (a number which had tripled in 35 years of colonialization). 100,000 Koreans were in Manchuria as economic and political refugees, for pursuing occupations, and as military conscripts who had been drafted (or volunteered) into the Japanese military.

Political Memories

Two particularly sensitive periods concerning fellow Koreans rankled among the larger Korean community as resulted by Japanese occupancy. The first occurred roughly between 1905 and 1910 when "traitor" Koreans sold the country. Those Koreans were progressives who either got dragged in with the Japanese or who were out for their own personal gain. The second group cropped up from the mid-1930s onward and were the Koreans who were mixed in economically with the Japanese as overseers, employees, etc. These were also traitors and were feared and hated and yet envied, those conflicting emotions being strangely entwined.

Radiation in Seoul

2011-07-12T15:43:00.007+09:00

Since the nuclear plant explosion near Tokyo at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, the Japanese economy has plummeted. Food exports are way down as some foods have been shown to contain high-levels of radiation, and tourism has been sadly reduced, resulting in little fuel to stimulate the depressed economy. A friend told me earlier today that from Seoul, S. Korea she could get a ticket for next to nothing, just 75 round trip. I think that translates as US$75 or even possible 75,000 KRW (Korean won), which is approximately the same. Japan is desperate to promote their tourism.

Well, tomorrow I fly to the US and have a short stopover in Japan, just a couple of hours. However, when I checked-in online earlier today, a notice popped up stating that people willing to be bumped could give notice at the Delta desk in Tokyo. I've been bumped a few times when not in a hurry, and am not feeling particularly rushed this round; however, I think checking the radation level for a 24-hour stay in Tokyo might be health-wise.

Hmm ... Some quick sleuthing online brought up a rather shocking bit of info: basically, Seoul has more radiation emission than Tokyo! According to the July 11, 2011 listing of several majors cities around the world (printed below but also linked), Tokyo's radition yesterday was .057 while Seoul's was .111, pretty close to double that of Japan's. The caption marketing Japan as not having dangerously high levels of radition is clearly stated in the title caption: "The dose of radiation in Tokyo is not high in comparison with that in major cities in the world."

So I thought I would follow the proffered link to find out more about radiation levels in S. Korea. The up-to-date reading states that 고산 (a bit southeast of Wonju and located centrally inland) is recording the lowest level of radiation today with a fluctuation between 63 and 67 [does that translate on the model that Japan is using as .063 and .067? - not clear as a different testing scale could be used in measuring these numbers] while 속초, on the east coast and a city closest to Japan, registers a fluctuation between 178 and 181 [ .178 and .181? - again not clear]. This is recorded in 국가 환경방사선 자동감시망 감시결과 which loosely translates as "Automatically Piloted Country-wide Environmental Radiation Observation Results".

I'm still not sure whether I'll ask for the layover or not, but living - not just passing though - a country that has such high radiation levels is a weee bit unnerving.

Symbolism in a Royal Garden

2011-07-11T17:28:00.003+09:00

At the back of Kyungbokkung Palace, the largest and oldest palace in Korea, is a tiny garden in which the women in their isolated seclusion and prisoners from the commoners' eyes were allowed to wander. The garden is Amisan, a slice of verdent greenier nestled at the back of the queen's living quarters with access by the queen and the multiple concubines. In the terraced garden are four hexagonal chimneys obviously reflecting a rich household due to their distant proxemics from the building (the farther the chimney, the more statused the household) and also reflected in the quality of materials (fired bricks), 8-directional shape, size and most importantly, artistic design elaborately incorporated on the sides of the chimneys.

The symbols and designs are not coincidental but carefully planned and imbued with auspicious meanings. The phoenix, the imaginary celestial bird that appears when the king is considered a good and fair ruler and all is well in the kingdom, is an important symbol for the garden. The phoenix also is the representative bird for the queen, and another meaning of the phoenix is the animal representative for 'south', a delightfully auspicious direction and favored for house positions (and indeed, the garden as do all the palace buildings carefully face south). Although I don't know my trees, I'm sure that originally and maybe even at present the palownia tree spreads its branches somewhere in the garden as the palownia tree is the only tree which the celestial bird, the phoenix, will deign to land in.

Other symbols on the chimneys are bats for good fortune, plums and chrysanthemums symbolizing a man of virtue (why not a woman since this is primarily a garden for women???), and the 10 longevity symbols (십장생): crane, deer, herb of eternal youth, pine tree, bamboo, stone, etc. [A study on longevity symbols will reveal that there are a few more than 10; 8 of them seemed standard but the remaining 2 change by speaker, time period and who knows what reasoning.]

On the lowest terrace are two stone tubs or reflecting pools: Hamwolji and Hakhadam, which translate as "a pond containing the moon" and "a pond that reflects the sunset". These are significant within the terraced garden as the tiered garden represent a mountain while the stone reflecting pools symbolize lakes. The decorative motifs on the chimneys are symbolic of the world of plants and animals, and in total, Amisan was the representative garden-world for the higher mortals to linger in the natural world of the immortals.

Rainy Season

2011-07-08T19:05:00.005+09:00

Ah, the monsoon season has come again and this particular year is a drowner! For the people living along the eastern coastline and in particular Pusan which in places has been built out another 50+ meters or so on reclaimed land into the East Sea (usually referred to on maps as the Sea of Japan, a name which the Koreans keenly resent due to centuries of historical conflicts), the monsoon season brings the direct hits of typhoons. I remember several years ago a typhoon hit so strongly that it flipped a large vessel along the shore, killing a number of people on board. It was one of the most talked about news stories of that year, but that came after I "believed" in the power of monsoons.

Only familiar with the Michigan Lake effect of thundering storms and powerful winds bringing summer rains, my first experience with the screaming winds and slashing rains of typhoons was my first year in Korea two decades ago. At the time I lived inland in Kwangju and was planning on taking a bus to Pusan to meet a friend and then hopping on a ferry for a trip to Japan. Colleagues warned me of a coming monsoon, but I just pooh-poohed what they said as I thought they were trying to use friendly scare tactics because I was taking an exciting vacation but they weren't. I blithely boarded the bus to Pusan (the last that left the station for Pusan for a few days - a not-so-surprising fact which I found out later). Half-way to Pusan we slowed to a crawl because of deluges of rain and mudslides (notorious in mountain regions on that narrow 4-lane snaking highway). We arrived in Pusan but I was new to Korea and the landmarks I had been told to look out for just weren't visible and of course I had basically zippo Korean. Road sides were littered with half-submerged parked/stalled cars making the place seem full of parking lots, but we could see little beyond the cars. Buses were still able to move forward because their engines were higher off the ground; however, they stayed in the center of the road where the water was not as deep. Even when letting out passengers (almost no one was boarding), they stopped in the middle of the road and people just waded 2-3 feet (if more, the buses wouldn't stop) to the more visible sidewalk.

I was able to communicate that I needed to get off at a certain department store, and so kind Koreans aboard were on the lookout for me and told me when. Well, only murky water swirled where a road should have been but I jumped out into the more than knee-deep water and waded to the sidewalk. Water was horizontal and my Mary Poppin's umbrella was instantly flipped inside-out and my backpack saturated before I could get into a nearby building. And whew! My friend just happened to be passing to exchange our ferry tickets to Japan for the more expensive plane tickets. Of course we wanted the ferry experience so planned on returning that way. And yet, even returning eight or so days later was not a smooth sea-crossing experience. The massive ferry that could transport at least 2,000 had less than 20 people.
We slept alone on a slightly raised open-roomed floor that would normally hold at least 100. Well, I slept. My friend would turn horizontal to the rolling waves, then vertical, then back again, complaining of seasickness. I found the movement rather soothing, at least until I tried to ride a racing horse video game that moved in weird directions while the ship moved in others ... and my head said to GET OFF.

So this rainy season kicked off with another tremendous typhooon, thankfully one that was off-shore. Though in Seoul, a couple hundred kilometers inland, we still received powerful wailing winds, slashing rain and of course flooding. I love taking walks right after a huge rain and so yesterday, the first day that was clear, I zipped outside to the riverside paths. However, the low bridge that headed north was completely submerged. Some fishermen were out enjoying the fishing opportunities from it and the neighboring newly created sandbar and some brave bikers would walk their bike through the water. This young kid actually had the nerve to ride his bike through and get wet by not only the water-tail from the back tire but also the feet from peddling .... but it sure beat just staring across and turning around, because if you walked very far on the riverside paths after deluging rain, you are sure to come across some kind of water barrier.

A Tea Ceremony

2011-07-03T23:08:00.004+09:00

The tea ceremony can be greatly ritualized, depending on who and how you are entertaining. The highly ritualized ceremonies were those of gisaeng, Korea's geisha. Even today there are highly ritualized ceremonies but they must be conducted within the aura of the traditional and not in a hotel cafe or brisk place of business. The ceremony is to be conducted with soft soothing music and to be contemplated upon. Having a tea ceremony within the precincts of the traditional palaces with their heavy red pine timbers and polished wooden floors and clockless mulberry papered walls are perfect for the aura necessary for quiet contemplation and the giving of regard and esteem to the person being served.

On holidays, weekends, and for cultural teaching of the Korean young, foreigners, and particularly the foreign wives of Korean men, conducting tea ceremonies has become a popular cultural event. Wandering around in Kyungbokkung Palace between rain-drenching clouds, I happened across such a ceremony; this one aimed primarily at foreigners who wandered far back in the royal precincts and also for the Korean youth. Some couples were in attendance enjoying their couple-time together and probably the 이차 or second dating event of the day (coming to Kyungbokkung was their first as it wss still well before noon when I wandered around), and with more dating events to take place as the day progressed - such is the strange modern and rather materialistic dating culture of the present-day youth.

On a table in front of a palace pavilion with awning stretched above were rows and and rows of tea service trays with white ceramic pots and matching handle-less cups that can easily be nestled in the cupped palm. The services were ready for a multitude of guests to take their tray and sit on designated bamboo mats within the pavillion.

A lady dressed in hanbok conducted the ceremony by explaining the ettiquette in detail ... "at this time pour the tea but smoothly and do not spill a drop", "fill your counterpart's cup before yours", "cradle the cup with your right hand flattened beneath and slowly look into it, enhale its essence and then take a small sip", "do not swallow hastily but enjoy the rich flavor" ... Parents guided children and gave additional instruction. I was too late to participate but watched with some interest a father guiding his 10-year-old daughter in proper tea ceremony conduct and was amused that now the fathers are participating in raising their children as women can hold jobs, and the majority do, after marriage. Of secondary interest were 3 types complimentary rice cakes which I would loved to have nibbled on as I wandered further in the recesses of the palace.

Seocheon, a Little Known Strip of Seoul

2011-07-02T23:45:00.001+09:00

Robert J. Frouser, PhD, gave a very interesting slide show with chronological commentary over the past several centuries of a little known area of Seoul, Seocheon, located in a narrow strip next to the famous Kyungbokkung Palace (Palace of Shining Happiness). His titled presentation "Seocheon: Wandering Seoul's Last 'Untouched' Neighborhood" gave insights on the development and growing awareness of this little known but not secluded groupings of hanok (traditional style homes), small shops and new renovations of one-story buildings into artsy galleries.

Location

Kyungbokbung, as the oldest palace in Korea constructed in 1394 by King Taejo, needed court officials to help with the governance of the country. The more prestigous the position of the offical, the more likely he was to live on the eastern side of Kyungbokkung. According to pungsujiri (fengshui), the western side had the Inwhang Mountain, also now known in English as "Witch Mountain", and this mountain had negative qi [refer to picture of Robert Frouser describing the particular qi in the arrangement of the mountains surrounding Hanyang, or present-day Seoul]. Thus, Seocheon (literally "western district") was contructed in the shadow of the latent malevolent forces of Inwhang Mountain, and so more highly positioned officials chose to live in Bukcheon ("eastern district") where benevolence, success and happiness were embued in the topography. As can be guessed also, the Seocheon hanok were smaller and more modestly constructed on postage stamps squares of hilly mountainside land than those built in the more spacious flat area of Bukcheon.

Interesting Points about Seocheon
The year following the construction of Kyungbokkung, Sajik-dan (the neo-Confucian shrine for soil and grain ceremonies and for funeral rites) was built nestled at the northwestern corner of the palace and in the foothills of Inwhang Mountain directly north of what quickly became the housing area for lower court officials, their families and (unlike in the more reserved, higher statused Bukcheon) small groceries and shops for conveniences. The dwellers in the Seocheon district were not above mercantilism as were the Bukcheon-ites who wanted an atmosphere to reflect their scholarship and distance from the work of the lower statused.

Seocheon, though extremely narrow, had one particular advantage, that is, the area was the headwater of Cheongyechoen, the stream that flows through the heart of Seoul and was covered over in 1976 with a 16-lane highway and finally uncovered and restored to "green" glory in 2005. As was the Cheongyecheon, the headwater and other streams in Seocheon were also slowly covered over beginning in the 1930s to allow housing space for the growing influx of people migrating in the capital.

Even before the covering of the streams, the housing constructions changed in Seoul. With postage stamp squares for homes, the more flamboyant wings of roof tiles and the central open madang (garden) were reduced to accommodate reduced housing units, and thus was born a new style of hanok, what Robert Frouser refers to as the "city hanok", a more utilitarian style of house for cramped city living. What is unique then as still is true is the alleys that meander through the postage stamp plots. These alleys retain the same lines as they have for the past few centuries. Until just last year, the Korean government was making a huge push to modernize Seocheon as it is systematically doing of all of Korea ... tear down the old and build up new and bigger and "better". According to Peter Bartholomew on a similar lecture on Korean architecture [see Dec 12, 2009], only 3% of the hanok that stood after the Korean War still stand today, mainly due to the "carpet bombing and rebuilding" (Frouser's very appropriate description) of ridding the culture of the old to make way for the new-and-improved.

Anyway, as of 2010 the Korean government started to see Seocheon as an area that can be utilized to tout Korean history, although it's my and many others' opinion that when something gets recognized as "originally Korean and exportable to the public", the ugly or unpleasantness of it gets white-washed and the history gets presented as something gloriously "sterile". An example, the commoners (that is, the majority of people) of Joseon dynasty wore white and were not allowed to wear colored hanbok with each color represented position, season, gender and many other factors and so colored hanbok were only for statused individuals. However, when people in museums are portrayed in the Joseon dynasty, they are very frequently presented in a colored hanbok, a gross misrepresentation of an era, and one that confers status and "cultural respect" on the glossy history. Anyway, it is yet to be revealed how the Korean government will "rebuild" Seocheon, but it can be guessed that the present brick walls will take on the sterile chunking of gray concrete with light plaster fill like those already surrounding the renovated five palaces and in the re-created Bukcheon area. However, the unique focus of Seocheon is 3-fold: the streams, the alleys and the hanok.

Seocheon, due to its proxemics to the palace, emissaries and its spider-alleyed pathways disappearing into a multitude of tiny doors, not to mention the negative forces of qi filling the area has at times caused the government keep its eye on the comings and goings of the densely populated narrow district. Especially after the 1968 Blue House attack when North Korean commandoes came within 80 meters of the Blue House, Seocheon was awarded with the special privilege of a strictly enforced curfew of 10pm while the rest of Korea was allowed an additional two hours to get off the streets for the night. The curfew has long since been lifted but the new threat of development (galleries, shops for tourists, etc) endanger yet another area of Seoul where housing was once cheap for the very young and the elderly but where, with the development and price hikes, those present occupants are threatened with losing their homes. (One old man still lives in his simple house although homes all around have been torn down. He has no electricity, water or heating, but HE STILL HAS A HOME.)

Heavenly Father I know, but who is "Heavenly Mother"

2011-04-04T19:10:00.004+09:00

While looking at a menu in front of a 식당, a young lady approached me and asked if I knew "Heavenly Mother". Several people have approached me or knocked on my door with the same question, but with my poor Korean and with not being able to comprehend the basic principles of the Church of God religion, I just could not understand who this "Heavenly Mother" was [Even in English I struggled to understand because their beliefs are so "unique".] But now someone spoke English and had a good understanding of giving Bible studies in support of the religion, and so I listened and questioned for well over an hour. I'm still in the dark about some basic beliefs but now I at least understand who the "Heavenly Mother" is.

First some background knowledge about the Church of God. In Korea there are about 400 temples and several seminary institutes. It is a very fast-growing church within Korea, but since followers in the Church of God believe that Korea is a type of Jerusalem, then understandably Korea would be a Mecca of sorts for believers to come, pray together, study together and further their beliefs. They believe in Passover (rather different in character is my understanding than that in the Bible - seems to be a celebration of feasting with focus on symbolism of taking the Passover feast once a year for the purpose of being "saved" until the next Passover feast). They also believe in foot-washing, in women covering their heads in worship as based on the New Testament, and they believe in the 6-day creation week as being symbolic of 1000 days for each day (they support this with Rev 3:8). These are basically variations of other Christian beliefs but their truly "unique" beliefs are centered around the time and function of the Godhead and of course their central belief, that of the existence of a "Heavenly Mother".

The pictures above are pictoral timelines concerning the Godhead and the time and function of it. Before someone can understand about God from a Church of God viewpoint, he or she must understand about the function of the Bible and creation itself. Before creation (as I was told), the earth was a time for beasts, and so when Jesus spoke in Luke 9:59-60 to "let the dead bury the dead", supposedly this was a reference to the spiritually dead to tend to non-believers, just as the time before creation was a time period of spiritually dead people or "beasts". They believe in both creationism and evolution, which is rather ironic to me since that means that God as the Creator made earth from something rather than created it from nothing. But then they believe that the Bible is merely a parable and not a collection of actual events. Believing such, they can qualify the Godhead [God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit] into three separate characters operating under three separate time periods. That is, when the parable of creation occured in roughly 4000 B.C. and until the zero year when Jesus Christ was born, God the Father or "Jehovah" ruled. Once Jesus was born, it was the time for God the Son or "Jesus Christ" to rule. And then the ultra-unique aspect of their belief is for an earthly man, "Ahn Sang Hong" who symbolized God the Holy Spirit, to spiritually rule. Even more uniquely, upon his death, his wife became the spiritual ruler and is known as "Heavenly Mother" and at present she is believed to rule. The religion has definite undertones of feminism in it, restructuring the godhead unlike any religion I have yet encountered.

How can this belief be supported by the Bible?

According to the believers, in John 6 Jesus promises four times to "raise man up in the last day". Jesus didn't give eternal life when He came the first time as, they qualified, this eternal life would be only when He would return the second time (as Ahn Sang Hong) because, they told me, "He [not Jesus but Ahn Sang Hong] was waiting for His bride [his wife]". This was supported with "For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready"(Rev 19:7-8). In Rev 21:9-10, Jesus said He would show the bride, who is identified later in the verse as Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven. So as interpreted to me, Rev 22:17 is about the spirit [Ahn Sang Ho to them] and the bride ["Heavenly Mother" to them] come to give the water of life.

They said, because both the Heavenly Father and "Heavenly Mother" give the water of life, it is important to know the "Heavenly Mother" because most people just believe in the Heavenly Father. Galatians 4:26 says "she (Jerusalem) is our mother" and in the last days "living water will flow out of Jerusalem" [Jerusalem and "Heavenly Mother" are duality in their belief] (Zech 14:8).

Why is Korea the place of the (new?) Jerusalem?

OK, this was the part that really wasn't clearly explained to me, but of key importance is the Passover because it is "eagerly desired" (Luke 22:15). The Passover is a "new covenant" (Luke 22:20), and according to Lev 23:4-5 the Passover date is the 14th day of the 1st month, or Jan 14th by the Jewish calendar which translates to falling in the solar calendar sometime from late March to early May. Jesus kept the Passover 2000 years ago, but in 325 A.D. the Passover was abolished as prophesized by Daniel (Dan 7:25). However, the Church of God doesn't recognize this abolishment, so they still keep the Passover and women still wear veils, as found in Corinthians. Until the 1600s (according to history) there was no Passover celebration, but Isaiah 25:6-9 talks about the return of "aged wine", symbolic (to them) of a long period of time after which Jesus would return to "remove the disgrace from the earth" or in other words, reinstate the Passover by bringing Ahn Sang Hong in 1948 [which I still don't have Biblical support for]. They used Heb 9:28 to support this belief - Jesus will appear [in 1948] a 2nd time, "not to bear sin, but to bring salvation" [which is through the Passover].

Questions

I had a lot of questions, and since, more have popped up. But one question which seemed and still seems so obvious obviously odd to me is about the likely death from the aging "Heavenly Mother". Just as Ahn Sang Hong died in 1985, his wife who is "Heavenly Mother" is a human also and will experience death, so I asked what will happen after she dies. The answer was quite simple, "Nobody knows. The Bible doesn't talk about that." This really perplexes me. If Ahn Sang Hong was supposed to be Jesus and as Savior returned to earth the second time to give living water and he as "Jesus" died (and a second time!) even though he was the creator of the earth, how can his death a second time which seems to be a forever-death rather than a 3-day death with resurrection be justified? And what happens to "Heavenly Mother" when she dies, as do all humans? How will she bring living water, and what is living water from her earthly perspective? Will there be any thoughts of spiritual renewal or even "hope" for something else to exist? The Godhead is synonymous with "life" and so for the Godhead to die, there must be purpose. To me, there is no purpose in Ahn Sang Hong's death or for "Heavenly Mother's" death. When Jesus died at His first coming 2000 years ago, He had a clear purpose - to die so that we could live.

RAS - Year-end Statistics

2010-12-12T19:24:00.004+09:00

[These Royal Asiatic Society (RAS) statistics were summarized at the conclusion of the final lecture for 2010 ..... Since I joined the RAS 3 years ago, the society has grown and ex-pats now are pursuing more awareness of Korea and its culture. Oddly enough, after the RAS started requesting 5,000won entrance fee for each lecture, the attendance greatly increased (and I always thought Koreans were the ones who put more value on things that cost ... haha, the irony!)]

Statistics for 2010

21 lectures
1050 attendees (40% non-members)
435~450 members in Korea
260 overseas members
many life-time members
# of Koreans attending is climbing
51 cultural tours (slightly down from 2009)
47 culture tours in Korea, 2 in Japan, 1 in Mongolia/China, 1 in Nepal/Tibet

The "Transactions" continues to be published annually. It represents the oldest collection of Korean writings in the world (Universities didn't start writing on Korea until the 1960s)

The RAS library has been relocated to Inje University and the RAS has a new website (www.raskb.com) where books can now be purchsed on-line.

A (unspecified) university has donated a large sum of money for the RAS to scan their collection of "Transactions" and some even older documents only held in the RAS library collection.

Brother Anthony of Taize (안손채) will be president of the RAS as of 2011.

Sakhalin and Its Forgotten Korean Exiles

2010-12-08T18:21:00.010+09:00

[Oops, 6 months after listening to this awesome lecture I find my notes on it and now enter the synopsis. However, there may be some small mistakes due to my note-taking shorthand and understanding it so many months hence. Please take any small errors into consideration ... they are my own and not to be reflected on the lecturer - July 2011]

Dr. Andrei Lankov, a research fellow at the China and Korea Centre, Faculty of Asian Studies, Austalian National University, received both his MA and PhD from Leningrad State University. He wrote his thesis on factionalism in Yi Dynasty Korea (Political Factions and Conflicts in Korea, 16th - 18th C) and submits regularly to Korean newspapers.

The RAS Carrot

Not only does Dr. Lankov write rather prolifically on Korea, but he also speaks enthusiastically and knowledgably on topics concerning Korea, a very entertaining lecturer indeed! So being a phenomenal lecturer and reading the RAS carrot on the displaced Korean diaspora, many people flocked to his lecture. The carrot is as follows:

The Sakhalin Korean community is one of the most interesting parts of the 5,000,000 strong Korean diaspora. There are some 40,000 Koreans who live on this sparsely populated island which in the recent decade or so became remarkably rich due to the gas and oil deposits. Some of [the disapora] are descendants of the miners and loggers who were moved there in the 1940s by the Japanese authorities, while many more are descendants of North Korean workers who were recruited by the Soviet administration in Korea. Their history was full of tribulations. For long, they remained stateless, and then many of them became citizens of North Korea (a decision which cost some of the dearly). For decades they worked hard to return to their native lands, and this struggle [has been] full of dramatic and tragic episodes. But they should not be seen as passive victims: in essence, the history of their community is also an example of remarkable social and economic success.

Some Comments on the Diaspora

Of the approximate 400,000 Koreans in Central Asia (descendants of people who fled in the colonial times, political refugees, and others deported to Central Asia), roughly 10,000 of that number were Koreans who were first relocated (for whatever reason) from Sakhalin Island, the long island above Hokkaido Japan.

But what first took Koreans to Sakhalin Island? In the 1930s, a mass migration from the combined Korea began. Many were sent there to work in mines (in the colonial period ruled by the Japanese) as miners were paid 80 yen per month whereas a steel worker in the homeland of Korea received only 15 yen a month. Others moved there of their own volition. However, with the Japanese losing the war and the Russians claiming the island in 1945, the Koreans on the island were viewed discriminatorily and some ethnic cleansing began, effectively forcing the remaining Japanese to return to Japan. Koreans desired to leave too, but Russia needed the Korean man-power so by the end of 1945, Koreans were forbidden to leave. Only those who were involved in mixed marriages (Japanese and Korean spouses) were given the choice to leave or stay; many departed.

The Russians now actively occupied the island and exploited its resources (coal mining, forestry, fishing), and the displaced diaspora could be exploited as a resource too. A larger workforce than existed was needed and so Russians recruited 10,000 Koreans from the Korean provinces under Russian control, those in present-day North Korea. The earliest 10,000 or so Koreans did not mix with these latter recruits, due to politico-cultural reasons: principally, the earlier were Koreans who had mainly come from the southern Korean provinces, and most specifically, the Kyungsando area in the lower southeast corner of the Korean peninsula. Ideologies were different and they did not mix well.

Thus, in the 1930s, Koreans were recruited from the southern areas as miners (and other jobs) to Sakhalin; in the 1940s, the Koreans were shipped in as a mandatory work force; and in 1945, the Russians further changed the dynamics by recruiting Koreans from northern provinces. In 1950, 2,000 Soviet Koreans from Central Asia (loyal soviets and with even a more radically different ideology) were sent to "control" the Koreans on Sakhalin. They were brought in as supervisors, "spies", policemen, educators while those directly from the Korean peninsula were only given menial and laborious jobs.

In 1952, the Koreans (in Japan, on Sakhalin, wherever they were) who had been declared as Japanese citizens under colonialism were suddenly denied Japanese citizenship, approximately 42,000 Koreans from the southern provinces on Sakhalin (8,000 Koreans from the northern provinces and 2,000 Soviet Koreans). In effect, 50,000 stateless people! And so most Koreans were "foreigners" in their (frequently) birth country which disallowed freedom of movement and enforced police checks every 3 months on its "foreign" population. In 1958(?), Russia so briefly allowed the Koreans to acquire Russian citizenship ... but only 3% accepted. Why? Because they would NEVER be allowed to go "home" due to the Russian immigration policy of Russian citizens. [This immigration policy lasted until the 1960s and very few were allowed immigration privileges.] The displaced diaspora with second and sometimes third generation children had a yearning to return "home".

In the late 1950s, about 4,000 of the displaced group were allowed to return to North Korea, although not all had originated from the norther provinces. As an aside, Dr Lankov mentioned the tension between the returning diaspora and those in power and many of the 4,000 ended up in prison.

As citizen-less people, they were forbidden to do many types of occupation as to "work" would be to have legal permission from the government, but without citizenship, no legal permission could be given. In the late 1950s, the Koreans discovered yet another job that they could do with citizenship: agriculture. They were fortunately the only ethnic group that was allowed to have private farms, although they had to give a fixed percent to the state and the rest would then be theirs. This was a great advancement as they could then have something besides dried potatoes and onions.

Time passed and 2 kinds of discrimination are found to exist. (1) official discrimination against the Koreans (principally the older generation) who are stateless (not so many left now), (2) non-offical discrimination exists from the Russians as prejudice although, thankfully, not all Russians have this prejudice. By the time the third generation was old enough to get jobs, they were fluent in Russian, had been able to get good eduation and thus were able to be equally employable with the Russian-Russians. Dr. Lankov conluded that there is little prejudice against the displaced diaspora to this day on Sakhalin.

Some Personal Comments

For two years (2001~2003) I lived on Sakhalin Island and worked at a university there that had several Korean-Russian students and employees. I also was involved in the Korean church in Yuzhno-Sahkalinsk and visited many Korean home churches in isolated places. I was accepted as I was great friends with the Korean pastor and spoke some Korean as well as had lived in their "home"land. What the Korean-Russians told me does not reflect a country without prejudice. I met a few citizen-less Koreans (men) and their lack of "good" work prevented the family from getting accepted. The Korean-Russians were often segregated from the others; some of this segregation was due to still using the Korean language and eating somewhat differently, and some I'm sure comes from the more independent attitude of Russian non-conformity. Other reasons exists too which would be interesting to explore.

Of the many Korean-Russians I met, only two had highly educated positions: a doctor and a manager; the others didn't have very estimable positions, but then the whole of the Russian community that I moved within was lower-middle-class. The one theme which I found most interesting, however, was the point of discrimination. Many Korean-Russians said that Russian-Russians discriminated (to some extent) against them. However, the vast majority talked about the discrimination experienced by themselves or others by South Koreans, who many identified with, as being even more discriminatory! The South Koreans, they said, treated them like they were provincial (an insult in Korea), as if they were uneducated (perhaps less educated but certainly the Korean-Russians are not uneducated), and worst of all, that they were inferior because they did not speak Korean like the South Koreans or behave like the South Koreans (South Koreans are still very collective and homogenous in a lot of their behavior).

As a white American female expat in Korea, I get treated very well. Sometimes I get preferential treatment (which can irk me at times) because I'm white and I'm American and I'm trying to speak Korean. My Korean-American friends who speak Korean even better than I get some of the discrimination however, because they do not speak Korean like the South Koreans. And so when the Korean-Russians speak of South Korean discrimination being worse than that in their birth country, I so understand. [I know of several Korean-Russians who were able to move to South Korea, their "home"land, only to realize that Sakhalin Russia is their true home, and so they returned.)

Gumgang Migratory Bird Observatory

2010-12-05T19:27:00.015+09:00

Two weeks ago I was down in Gunsan and finally had the pleasure of going to another of Korea's migratory bird parks ... although I have to say, I didn't expect the park to be developed to the point that people would go there for entertainment rather than as a natural habitat. The park is located along the western sea where people could easily and seasonably view birds in a bird santuary, but instead, the park has bird iconography everywhere, picnic sights (very picturesquely placed), various viewing cages based on habitat (water, field, tropical, etc), and even a museum with 3D cinema and an aquarium. Little attention is given to the waterways across the wide street from the park and where the wildlife is in its natural habitat. That said, there are tour buses that go out four times a day (on weekends and holidays from mid-November through February) but the buses rush quickly through and disallow people to get to really view nature. Nature has been reduced to a tour and the bus returns the people to the more entertaining aspects of the bird park where there are facilities, gadgets to turn and twist, and birds in cages that cannot escape the eye.

At the top of the museum tower is an observatory with a 360 degree panoramic view of the western sea, the artificial fountain which has colorful light displays, and the hills behind the observatory park. The other migratory bird areas have not been developed, but then neither did they have a brown historical interest sign directing traffic to them from major roads and the highway approach, and neither do they have a huge Baikal teal overlooking the park. Interestingly but not for the vivid minded, the teal can be walked inside as if walking inside the body of a duck, and as one descends through the duck, one can view the location of a duck's body parts before exiting out the duck's rear. All body parts have video footage and explanation to further understanding - very informative and ideal for educational school trips.

School children participate in art projects. One of the art projects was making "bird" boxes and putting them on display on one of the floors of the museum.

Another art project was a competition among elementary school children for drawing their concept of the migratory bird park. About 12 of the pictures were framed and highly awarded. Those pictures were also printed on large banners and hung throughout the park in honor of the children and to further interest in the bird park.

Migratory bird areas in Korea

On the outskirts of Gunsan located on the west coast rich in tidal pools, mudflats and inlets is one of the best areas in Korea for viewing migratory birds. Even as my bus was approaching Gunsan and we were passing along the waterways and wetlands, looking out my window with its western view I saw my first swans ever in Korea - just five or six but I had never seen this particular bird grace this country. When I lived on Sakhalin Island, Russia, the island above Hokkaido, Japan, we were graced every year with a huge migratory cloud of swans and people of Sakhalinsk would plan trips to the Sea of Ohotsk to see them. So Gunsan is probably on a narrow leg of the Russian migratory route to warmer climes. Inside the museum is a globe with four migratory routes mapped out (unfortunately I can't remember which birds these routes were designated for.)

This map of the Koreas together is anthropologically rather interesting. It seems that whenever maps are concerned (by the South that is), both North and South Koreas are drawn on the maps but the data for the topic is usually only for the southern half. Even though South Koreans (especially since the IMF period of 1997) do not talk about reunification, the concept that South Korea is only part of a whole is strongly embedded in their map iconography. This map likewise shows both of the Koreas with only the designated migratory bird parks being shown in South Korea - a total of six bird areas.

Han-gang lower end (the lower end of the Han River) is a delta made by the Imjin and the Han Rivers. It is Natural Monument #250 and is a natural habitat for the White-napped Crane. The habitat is being overtaken by plants (among them Susong vegetables) that do not attract the crane and so the crane is also disappearing. Recently bulrush and turkeys are its residents. It still attracts migratory birds like snipes, wild geese and ducks, and other water fowl.

Cheonsu-man is an artifical bay created by a tide embankment constructed on 8 kilometers of mud beach between Chungnam and Hongseong-gun. The swampy areas and shallow lakes are "developed" each year [developed means that the food chain has to work hard to stay in existence]. Thousands of migratory birds hibernate here during the winter. In fact, about half of Korea's migratory birds - such as the Oriental White Stork, Hooded Crane, Eurasian Spoonbill, Black-winged Stilts, Grey Heron, Little Grebe, Cattle Egret, Black-crowned Night Heron, Mallards, to name a few - can be found here.

Lower region of Geumgang [THIS LOCATION] has well-developed reed fields, broad mud beaches, and ample food, all important for seasonal birds. The surrounding area is rather undeveloped compared with other parts of Korea, and so migratory birds are still relatively undisturbed in their watery mudflats. Especially protected here are the Baikal Teals and Saunder's Gulls.

Suncheon-man is a deep bay developed between Yeocheonbando and Goheungbando. It is a natural wetland with still well-preserved mud beaches. In its northern reaches, thick reed forests are utilized as birds' hiding places and approximately 180 kinds of birds like the Hooded Crane and snipe live there. Only about 9,000 Hooded Cranes, Natural Monument #228, are left around the globe.

Junam Jeonsu-ji is a big lake connected to Sannam, Junam and Dongpan in Changwon-si Dongmyun water reservoirs. With some surrounding wetlands and reed islands sustaining foods like frogs and crucian carp, it remains an ideal location for a migratory bird habitat. Every November around 20 kinds of birds fly in by the thousands - the Tundra Swan (Natural Monument #201), White-naped Crane (Natural Monument #203), Eurasian Spoonbill (Natural Monument #205), etc. and they remain to feed and shelter until the following March.

Nakdong-gang lower end has rich food sources throughout the four seasons, and due to its more southern location, does not freeze over in the cold winter. The largest number of birds in all of Asia habitat here. Several hundreds of kinds of birds - a total of 167 kinds - are flocking in and out of here during all four seasons. Mallards, Bean Geese, Tundra Swans, Dunlins, Common Shelducks, and many more.

Kimjang Season

2010-12-04T21:06:00.007+09:00

The beginning of December usually wraps up the kimjang making season. Depending on temperatures the season can fluctuate a bit but while late fall temperatures have cooled down and yet still dependably hover above the freezing point, making kimjang (winter kimchi), is the seasonal activity. This year due to the unseasonably wet August and September when cabbage were peaking and getting ready for harvesting, this year they were rotting and plants were being uprooted. So, while there was some cabbage for the kimjang, it was expensive and not the typically densely grown cabbage leaves desired for best preserving the kimchi.

In late November many supermarkets were hawking the remaining, and not so wanted, cabbage heads for 1000won or about $1. Takers were few. In the Ssangbong area where there are a number of street stalls, one had piles and piles of pretty good looking cabbage heads and the local old people mixed in with a few housewives were swarming through and over the heads looking for the best. One older gentleman was loading up his heavy-framed old-fashioned bicycle with bags and bags of cabbage heads to cycle home for probably his wife to prepare.

Unlike in former years when kimjang absolutely needed to be made just before the winter freeze, Koreans are no longer dependent on brown ceremic jars buried in the soil to preserve their "vegetables" for the winter. Now Koreans have their very unique kimchi frigerators - refrigerators designed with various drawers for storing and keeping chilled several different kinds of kimchi with the bonus of not smelling up their other produce and purchases kept properly chilled in their regular refrigerator.

Cheonpung Cultural Park

2010-12-01T19:43:00.015+09:00

[This is a continuation of November 21, Gosu Cave and Thereabouts, especially important to note as this traditional village was flocked to by Korean tourists but relatively ignored and probably unknown to the foreigners living in and visiting Korea - as said earlier, someone needs to conduct research on tourism and marketing in Korea.]

Cheonpung Cultural Heritage Park

천풍문화재단지, Cheonpung Cultural Heritage Park was built because of the Chungju Multi-purpose Dam which would submerge houses and cultural sites, so from 1983-1985 the government along with the Korea Industrial Development Corporation worked to do research on and/or relocate several artifacts. The following were intensely studied: 33 archeological sites, 10 historical sites, 5 Buddhist sites, and then 36 tangible cultural properties were moved. Included in this park are five old government buildings including Hanbyeoku Pavilion, Cheonpung Hyanggyo (Confucian shrine-cum-school), Buddhist statues, stone monuments and four traditional residential houses.

The highlights for me in the park were the performers wearing colorful hanbok in their proper traditional setting, and the sign painter who was painting the park landscape map as a true artist guided by his own inspiration and inner eye should.

And then of course the scenery from a pavillion on the highest overlooking hill provided a phenomenal view of Cheongpung Lake in one direction and the culture-village in another.