Visa Run to Fukuoka, Japan

The Process

The process is pretty straightforward. Day 1 - Drop off your forms and passport at the Korean consulate in the morning (before 11:00), and then Day 2 - pick the passport back up after 11:00 - 12:00 or early afternoon (after 13:30). Two pieces of advice are:

u  Get to the consulate as early as possible (9:00 or 10:00) on Day 1, so you don’t miss getting your application in and so you can spend the rest of the day touring around.

u  Prepare all your documents in Korea - then you can jump the lines at the consulate and also know you have everything.

Once you get back to Korea, you have 90 days to go to Korean immigration in Korea and apply for your Alien Registration Card (ARC).

Documents required:

ü  Passport

ü  Completed application form (picked up at the Korean Consulate or downloaded online)

ü  Certificate for confirmation of visa issuance (a blue form from your employer in Korea)

ü  2 color passport photos (3cm x 4cm)

ü  Application fee: 6,000JPY (about 70,000KRW)

The Korean Consulate in Fukuoka

u  Address: 1-1-3, Jigyohama, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka, Japan 810-0065

u  Phone: 092-771-0461

u  Office Hours: M-F, 10:00-12:00 & 13:30-15:30. Closed Sat-Sun. Closed both Korean & Japanese holidays

Directions to the Korean Consulate (Fukuoka)

1.     Take the subway to Tojin Machi Station

2.     Take exit 1 (follow the signs to the Korean Consulate)

3.     Walk straight for about 5 minutes

4.     Reach a T-intersection, cross the road and turn right

5.     Walk straight for about 5 minutes and look for the consulate

For information concerning getting your visa, see Visa Runs from Korea to Japan.


While in Fukuoka, look around. There is a gorgeous lake (Ohori Park) with bike lanes around it, and just east of it massive and diverse water lily gardens,  a castle wall (which was undergoing some archaeological excavations), and more than a couple large Shinto shrines. A walk to the ocean from the consulate is also possible. Explore!

Fukuoka Castle ruins - the castle was built in the Edo Period (17th - 19th century)

Fukuoka Castle was one of the largest castles in Japan with four floors, 47 turrets, and a samurai quarters spanning over 2.46 million square meters. The east gate provided access between the second and third baileys, and it was part of the main route to the second bailey, the castle keep, and to the castle tower. The third bailey contained the residences of the chief retainers to the feudal lord.

Shintoism - Shinto, "the way of the Kami (gods)", is such a widespread practice in Japan and, along with Buddhism, creates quite the mix of philosophical rather than religious beliefs. There are various forms of Shintoism: Koshito - the Shinto of the Imperial House, Jinja (shrine) Shinto - the largest group, Kyoha (sectarian) Shinto aka Shuha Shinto, and Minzoku (folk) Shinto. It is guestimated that about 84% of the Japanese population believes in some kind of Shinto and/or Buddhism. How this percentage is arrived at is unknown, but with most Japanese attending shrines and/or temples at key moments in their lives, then perhaps this number reflects the number of "Christians" in the US, as that  number often counts the "Christians" who go to church twice a year - Easter and Christmas - and therefore term themselves as "Christians".

In any regard, I rented a bicycle for about a dollar a day and peddled around in Ohori Park, around the lake. To the east and southeast of the lake are large Shinto shrines with massive pillars. The first had such huge tree trunks holding it up that it would take three adults to circle their arms around the massive supports!

wooden structure - absolutely massive!

cement structure

In China the color red symbolizes the ridding of evil spirits. That's why the color is so heavily employed (the hanging of red lanterns, the wearing of red clothes, the giving of red New Year's cards) at the beginning of New Year's along with the explosion of red fire crackers. In China it is also an elemental and directional color for it symbolizes the element fire and the direction south.

In Japan, red symbolizes auspiciousness and happiness. Red is a powerful color in Japan, and is heavily a part of both Shinto and Buddhist rituals. Not only is it for auspiciousness and happiness but represents strong emotions rather than ideas; it connotes energy, vitality, heat and power. In more modern times it represents love, intimacy and sexual desire, but most importantly, and this applies heavily to the religious underlying principles, it represents life force and the energy of the people.

Water - purifying to the body and the spirit and therefore its presence within all Shinto and Buddhist temples alike. This spring is at the center of one of the largest Shinto shrine areas I entered.

And back to Ohori Park and the beautiful lake. The first day I was in Fukuoka the weather was hot, steamy but very gorgeous. The second day, however, cooled down very quickly as the clouds began to roll in. Yep, typhoon season. I returned my bike and the majority of the second day was spent in a tea shop reading a book and waiting for the time to pass so I could go to the airport and return on the evening flight to Korea. (click on pictures to enlarge)

Detrimental Wooden Chopsticks

In Korea, one of the most popular disposable items is chopsticks. Even some people who do not use a disposable lunchbox or a plate can not avoid disposable chopsticks. People use disposable chopsticks because of their convenience and lightness in contrast with metal chopsticks. However, the advantages of disposable chopsticks make us forget about the indirect harm that they do. Though disposable wooden chopsticks are thin, they are strong enemies of human beings and Earth.

 

One aspect of their harmfulness is their effect on the overall health of human beings. Chopsticks contain enormous chemical substances to make them white; therefore, using disposable chopsticks means eating chemicals. To cite an experiment that proves chemicals in disposable chopsticks are tremendous, let’s consider fish. Every fish in a tank died within twelve hours when they were put in water with disposable chopsticks. This seems to strongly point to the fact that the chemicals in disposable chopsticks soaking into the water resulted in the death of the fish.

Another aspect alerting people to the fact that disposable chopsticks are detrimental to life is the need to destroy trees in order to obtain wood for the chopsticks manufacture, and this causes a chain reaction. Disappearing woods can cause extermination of animals. For example, animals in Kenya are losing their habitats and disappearing at an alarming speed. This kind of situation not only threatens wildlife but also results in disappearing forests, which in turn result in less industrial pollution in the atmosphere being cleaned by the green leafy foliage of trees, case in point, the yellow dust that descends upon Korea every spring. Korean broadcasting station, MBC, reported that fifty thousand trees are annually cut in China just to make disposable chopsticks. This mass cutting of trees in China very negatively effects the amount of yellow dust blowing into Korea as the roots of trees no longer hold the soil in place or retain the earth’s moisture which supports a humid rather than an arid environment.

The final reason that disposable wooden chopsticks are hazardous to our planet is that they are discarded easily, and therefore, their chemicals leach into the soil damaging it and eventually spreading outward. Cleaning up discarded chopsticks requires great expense and wasteful effort, both of which could be so easily avoided if they were disposed of properly to begin with. Unfortunately, many chopsticks are tossed aside by people in the mountains and on picnics because people incorrectly assume that the chopsticks are wood and wood only and therefore are naturally biodegradable. When this happens, people must be employed to pick up this chemical attack on nature as chopsticks do not easily decay because of the chemical compounds that they were treated with. To put emphasis on why chopsticks should never be created, let alone tossed aside, the disposable chopsticks need at least twenty years to biodegrade, and that is an unnaturally long time for a thin piece of weak wood.

Using disposable chopsticks is of course very convenient, but they contain a lot of chemicals, cause the disappearance of forests and natural habitats, and definitely pollute the environment. For these three reasons, disposable wooden chopsticks are undesirable, detrimental, and death inducers of both nature and living organisms. Disposable chopsticks are of course convenient but at what a cost! Certainly people need to reconsider their consumer habits and think beyond convenience to the broader issues facing our own health and the health of our planet.

________________________________________________________

This phenomenal information came from Lee Seul, a student of many years ago, who wrote her five-paragraph persuasive essay in such a meaningful way that I asked if I could have a copy to share with future students as a model. She gladly gave me permission. Well done! I did clean up a few spots and reorganize a little data but overall, this is a writing example from my freshman writing class, and what an example! Thank you Lee Seul! I'm still appreciating this information.

빨리 빨리 - Quickly, Quickly!

I think every foreigner comments on the Korean 빨리 빨리 culture. It seems, from the foreigner's perspective, that there's little long-term planning but a lot of rushing, rushing once a decision has been made. A fairly recent example that quickly-quickly comes to mind is the rush the government put on foreigner's needing fingerprinting to validate their benign moral existence in Korea. The government passed the ruling and wanted to implement it fully within about 6 months. Impossible given the huge number of foreigners residing within Korea! My educated guess is at least 2% of the near 50 million population. In the end, the full institution of the law was postponed an additional year beyond the 6-month trial implementation period (to be fully expected, of course!) I wonder where this 빨리 빨리 attitude came from. The Chosun Dynasty is famous for its slowness of pace, the lack of change and the stagnation of society. Is this 빨리 빨리-ness a reaction to the dull pace of an agrarian society that measured itself only by the changing seasons? I'm hoping one day in my studies to bump into some quote or passage that reveals where this rush-rush originated from because it seems antithetic to the pastoral leisure of an agriculture society, which Korea was until arguably the 1970s.

It's interesting to note other repetitious expressions that come from other societies in relation to the speed which something must be done. In Swahili, "pole, pole", slowly, slowly is the traditional term but is now becoming more "haraka, haraka", meaning quickly, quickly. Was the repetition 빨리 빨리 a spin off a dead colloquialism of the past which appears to still exist in Swahili? French uses "vite, vite" for quickly, quickly but I am unaware of a repetition for slowly, slowly [let me add that I never studied French either but happened across this expression]. In the calming Greek rural society the young are scolded to eat "siga, siga" or slowly, slowly to benefit their digestion. Do the Greeks also have a contemporary repetition for the speed that the younger generation finds preferable? Hmm, language and culture cannot be separated -- language explains culture, and culture language. 

The History of Budae Jjigae

Koreans have eaten jjigae (very thick stew) perhaps since time immemorial, but with the coming of the Korean War when food was scarce, a new kind of jjigae was born - budae jjigae, almost literally "military stew". With the advent of the US soldiers, who were considered rich next to the impoverished Koreans who lived a hand-to-mouth subsistence, Koreans were first introduced to what it was like to have a surplus of meat. They themselves didn't have the surplus but the Americans did, and around the US military camps some of the US army supplies of canned meats like hot dogs, spam and other packaged meats sometimes found their way into the Korean economy. With the meats that were given to them, exchanged for work, or gleaned from the garbage, Koreans made jjigae by adding the meat to boiling water and whatever else they might have along their their ubiquitous red pepper paste and kimchi.

Although the jjigae was "born" in the Korean War, it ironically came to be called Johnson tang - tang is another kind of soup, not quite so thick or hearty as jjigae. The stew was named after US President Lyndon B. Johnson, and here's the irony, Johnson became president (1963-1969) a decade after the Korean War, the circumstance that actually "created" the thick soup. Therefore, it appears that calling the stew-gumbo Johnson tang was due to the stew's gaining popularity around Korea as Korea had more access to military supplies because many US soldiers continued to be employed in South Korea and pass through South Korea on their way to fight in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam war, the time era when Johnson tang became more widely known, was a time of economic development for the Koreans, particularly as many South Koreans fought in the war as hired soldiers, earning valuable income for their homeland. Thus, with the exposure to the US military goods, namely canned meats, a new food tradition was started in South Korea and has continued to grow in popularity since. 

Budae jjigae, "military stew", is linguistically tainted however with a shadowy military past and connotations of impoverishment, particularly around US military camps. Therefore, in the late 1990s Uijeongbu, a city bordering the north of Seoul and where a large number of military personnel reside, tried to remove the military connotations from the now-popular food by stipulating that henceforth the jjigae was to be referred to as Uijeongbu jjigae. Not many restaurants complied, but other restaurants picked up on the new nomenclature and began calling their stew Uijeongbu budae jjigae. In Uijeongbu and in other spots around Korea, there are budae jjigae streets where a high concentration of budae jjigae restaurants offer variations to the stew: curry budae jjigae, stir-fried budae jjigae, among others. With budae jjigae, about anything is possible for the pot, examples being ddeok, cheese, beans.

The popular Korean dish that was born of adversity is still popular today, and now is called a "fusion food", a new term applied to foods which are a combining of homeland Korean chow mixed with some foreign element, e.g. cheese kimbap is another fusion example and the first time I had it, I just about gagged! In Korea (not surprisingly) there is even a Budae Jjigae Festival with thoughts that it will help "revitalize the economy" and "make us remember the meaning of the Korean War"; it is also said to "unify the local community" although no one has explained to me how this will be a result of eating the stew.

Budae jjigae has even been spread to Japan and from Japan it has been brought back with other "fusion food" changes. I think budae jjigae is a good example of how Korea has changed over the past century - it has gone from being a proud homogeneous society to one that accepts the blurring of cultural lines as long as something Korean still shines through the cultural borrowing.

Credit in outlining this information and particularly for the pictures

goes to my students Lee Cherin and Choi Yeonhee.

Tasting Korean Culture

March 1991 was when I first came to Korea. I lived in Kwangju, a city in a remote area, and because of its remoteness, I learned more traditional culture than my friends who were teaching in Seoul (capital), Incheon (western port city), Daejeon (central city), Daegu (eastern central city), and Pusan (thriving southeastern port city). Because Kwangju wasn’t a port city and there were 35 foreigners registered in the city of over 1 million at that time and because the American air base being retained there since the Korean War was being shut down, there was hardly any access to western food via any black market or even western culture or even much English for that matter. During that first year way down south my five colleagues and I were forced to go somewhat Korean, and I loved it! We certainly learned a lot! These slides via food show some of the cultural contrasts that have occured in South Korea within the last two decades. 

 

 



Bibimbop: Origins and Brief History

Soju and the Provinces



Chuseok at Emart
Seolnal: Lunar New Year's Day

March 14, White Day

Pepero Day

Pica Foods and Diversity



 

Red Peppers Introduced to Korea

The Birth of Ramen Noodles

 

 

Kimchi ... Gimchi, Korea's National Dish
Japan Korea Kimchi Dispute

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

RAS 2013 Garden Party

Every year the Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch holds a huge book sale event at alternating locations - the British embassy and the American embassy. This year it was hosted at the British embassy in its beautifully landscaped gardens with awnings set up to shelter the books, food and guests in this annual leisure event.

As a member of the RAS for several years now, I offered to help set up the book tables along with a number of other volunteer members. Only members, no member spouses or family members, are invited to this exclusive event. The purpose is to have a book selling event with food nibbles, some traditional entertainment and a mixing of scholars for networking and broadening friendships ... and of course for marketing the written treasures.

The tables were laden with books organized into topics - history, culture change and development, politics, the colonial period, the Korean War, shamanism, religion, poetry, traditions, and the list goes on ... as did the tables. Members are given a sizable membership discount price in this single annual event, and the scholars do look and do purchase.

An event could never be held without food, and caterers are brought in to prepare luncheon tidbits and have platters ready for the guest-members when they arrive.

And then of course entertainment! This year there were two kinds of entertainment: first the traditional singers sometimes accompanied by the gayageum and piri and the traditional cowhide drum - not pictured. Following that were some phenomenal 풍물 dancers, also called 농각 or literally "farmer's music" dancers. The dancers drummed and beat on their cymbals while twirling the ribbons and tufts around on their brimmed hats. These guys were exceptionally good, leaping high in the air as they twirled their bodies while further twirling their beribboned hats.

And then the star performer came out with an extraordinarily long ribbon. The longer the ribbon, the more skilled the dancer! With the long ribbon he twirled it perpendicularly to the ground then got it in the vertical swirl ... to jump over the ribbon on its descent as if it were a jump rope ... He was able to sit down and twirl ... He was able to lay down and twirl (some talent!) ... and most adroitly, he was able to do a handstand and twirl. And I didn't understand how this was physically possible as he had to be particularly nimble in inverting himself otherwise the circular motion would be disturbed by interference with the ground and then his hands, which he had to constantly move as the ribbon came around in rapid revolutions. He made the rapid spin of ribbon look easy. Amazingly nimble!

The RAS was well-pleased with membership attendance, the setting, and their book sales. And so now members can start saving up for next year's book extravaganza.