The view looking downriver from the Donghodaegyo, yesterday afternoon.
Category: Life in Korea
Caveat: Scooter
It seems I see more and more of these tricked out scooters. Scooters are everywhere, and always have been. But lately, there seems to be this influx of some kind of European or Japanese style high-end scooters. I saw a “Hello Kitty” themed pink scooter with a trendy-looking woman riding it, walking home from work the other night. And this thing was in the parking lot a block away, the other day.
Caveat: The Land of the Morning Suicide
So many people commit suicide in Korea. They have a very high rate. And famous people keep setting the example. Today, it was the humuliated and profoundly unsuccessful former president, 노무현. I'm of the personal opinion that he was at least somewhat better than the current president… that's largely due to ideological issues. That there was corruption and gross incompetence in Roh's administration is undeniable. But he entered politics as a human rights lawyer and activist, and I really feel that his intentions were genuine. Somehow, I'm inclined to "read" his suicide as a confirmation of that. Truly corrupt people (compunctionless types) feel no shame. And no shame means no suicide. The truly corrupt go and lurk in a fog of false righteousness. But suicide is easy to "romanticize." It can be manipulative, too. So… who knows.
He threw himself off a cliff near his home village. He left a note — no ambiguity. He'd been in the midst of being investigated (or prosecuted?) for corruption charges. I guess he just didn't want to deal with it anymore.
Caveat: Apocalypse hagwon
The first hagwon (a Korean for-profit, after-school academy – think "night school for elementary kids") that I worked for was called Tomorrow School. I was under the impression that it was pretty successful, but it was a small, single-location, "mom and pop" business. The owners, Danny and Diana, showed either a lot of market savvy or else had a lot of luck in selling it when they did – basically, they jumped out at the top of the market, as far as I can tell. So, after my first four months, Tomorrow School was purchased by a rapidly growing chain of hagwon being built by LinguaForum corporation.
LinguaForum was not, originally, a hagwon business but rather a significant publishing house of language-teaching materials. I had the somewhat vague impression that they were building the chain of hagwon mostly to function as a sort of "lab school" environment in which to develop, test and promote their textbooks and teaching materials. In that respect, I liked them, because they showed a great deal of methodological sophistication in terms of their higher-level curriculum design and intentions. But they were new to the hagwon business, and their on-the-ground execution was pretty weak. I don't think they had a clue how to actually manage, capitalize, and compete in Korea's private after-school-academy market.
So, after taking on too much debt by growing too fast (mostly through acquisitions of mom and pop single-location hagwon like Tomorrow School), LinguaForum decided to abandon the field. They tried to arrange some kind of complex cross-investing relationship with LBridge company, which was a successful and growing but well-established local player in the Ilsan area hagwon market. I'm under the impression that more than one of the terms of the deal fell through, and neither LBridge nor LinguaForum were happy with the outcome.
Nevertheless, the consequence was that last July, LBridge acquired my contract from LinguaForum. Unfortunately, management flat-footedness (in the form of no small amount of arrogance, among other things) meant that although the LinguaForum hagwon chain ceased to exist (the parent publishing house remains), only about half the teachers and barely 10% of the student body tranferred over. I have the unconfirmed suspicion that the failed deal was bad, financially, for LBridge.
All of that, combined with the slumping economy (although, as I've mentioned before, South Korea, relative to other OECD countries, is doing quite well) and an intensely competitive hagwon business environment with lots of consolidation, cutthroat student poaching, etc., means that LBridge now finds itself it somewhat dire straits. Yesterday, it was announced to staff that there will be layoffs, campus closings, and shrinking teaching "teams" in the coming Summer term. I don't think I'm directly affected… my current understanding is that they're going to let my contract run out as written to the end of August. But end-of-contract "bonuses" are imperiled, apparently, and Korean staff (i.e. those who are working here as Korean citizens rather than under work visas, regardless of native language) are deeply and justifiably concerned about job security.
Enrollments have definitely been shrinking. There have been lots of complaints about the difficulty of the curriculum – yet, last fall, there were complaints about the lightness of it. To keep changing the curriculum in response to the tides of parental sentiment is a little bit of an unwinnable battle. You've got to adopt a curriculum and methodology, and stick with it. LBridge definitely has proven poor at this.
Mostly, however, it seems to me that success in the hagwon biz is about building and managing relationships with kids and, of course, parents. And my gut feeling is that LBridge is TERRIBLE at this. Unlike Tomorrow School or LinguaForum, LBridge leaves the major portion of the parent-relationship-management problem to the front-line teachers. While philosophically this may be a good idea, the fact that the management provides precisely zero training or support to the teachers who they throw into this role means that LBridge sets itself up for failure. The fact is that they basically treat their staff like wage-slaves rather than professionals (i.e. things like a lack of respect, a distrust of teachers' abilities to manage their own time, etc.), yet they think they're being clever by having their front-line people be the ones in charge of interacting with parents. You can see the mistake, here, I think. The parents, after all, are the paying customers. You don't want disgruntled and untrained staff being the ones who manage your customer relationships.
To connect this crisis to a business I know fairly well, it is like those tech companies that rely on their technical people to manage customer relationships. This, as we all know, rarely works. You need customer-relationship-management specialists – commonly known as salespeople. That's how for-profit business works. Far be it from me to parrot the likes of the Harvard Business Review, but it seems to me self-evident that in successful companies, intelligent and hard-working salespeople and marketers drive quality and innovation, and then the technical people make it happen behind the scenes, where they can murmur and grumble to their hearts' content. In the hagwon biz, that means having dedicated "parent-relationship-management" specialists, I think.
Danny, the owner of the Tomorrow School, understood this intuitively: he did almost nothing but focus on interacting with the parents, as far as I could tell, leaving the day-to-day management of his business to his wife Diana, and the classroom execution was left to the teachers from whom he expected a great deal of self-reliance and innovation (which is to say that, despite my complaints at the time – see my blog from a year and a half ago – he actually treated his workers more professionally than I've seen at LBridge… we always see things more clearly in retrospect, right?).
Caveat: 장수에 주말 여행했어요
On Saturday at 12 o’clock my friend Curt called me and asked if I wanted to accompany him to his home town, Jangsu, for a quick overnight trip. He had to go down for a “family meeting” and many relatives would be there. “It will be an adventure for you,” he commented.
I felt spontaneous, and said, “sure!” I met him at his hagwon at around 5:30, but at the last minute his daughter (who is 8) decided she wanted to come along, so we had to go collect her, and then he forgot to take a computer that he was going to give to his sister, so we had to drive back to the hagwon and get that. The result was that we didn’t get on the road until around 7:30.
The traffic wasn’t too bad driving down – most people who flee Seoul on the weekends do so earlier on Saturday, is my guess. We arrived at his home village at around 1 AM. The moon was full and the air was already summery, although fairly dry.
Koreans like to sleep in hot, stuffy homes, as far as I can determine, and Curt’s family homestead was no exception. But I was tired and slept soundly, and was awoken at 6AM sharp by the rapid, nonstop Korean of Curt’s mother’s voice. She is in her 70’s, but seems quite healthy and strong-spirited, like any good Korean matron. She kept a running commentary the entire day. Curt, at one point, observed with a wry deference that his mother “loves to talk.” I was enjoying the language input, without understanding more than a small amount. I perhaps would have tired of it, had I understood more, but as it was, it was just like being tuned to a Korean talk-radio station, but with all sorts of contextual clues to make it on the edge-of-comprehensible.
We did a small sightseeing drive at around 7 AM, to see the new dam that rose above his old village. Here is a picture I took looking down from the dam into the valley – the village proper is in the foreground, and the family compound is just out of sight among the alfalfa fields behind the trees in the lower left.
We walked around and I took some pictures of the family using both their camera and mine. Keep in mind, this is not the whole clan – just those who happened to come along on the sightseeing drive: Curt, his older sister, his daughter, his niece, and his mother.
After that, we drank some coffee back at the house, as more people showed up. Then at around nine, everyone went down to the restaurant that’s along the stream at the village turnoff at the main highway (highway 19). There were some 50 relatives there, quickly and systematically eating a typical Korean breakfast: rice, several kimchis (including a delicious and memorable cucumber kimchi I’d never tasted before), fish, other vegetable side-dishes, and a thin broth-type soup with some slices of what I thought was potato in it. After the breakfast there was to be the “family meeting.”
Curt snuck away to smoke a cigarette beforehand, and hinted that I might want to go do something else (which was a polite way of saying I wasn’t invited, I suppose – I wasn’t offended). Here is a picture of the spot behind the restaurant by the stream and the highway across the stream, where we talked.
So I walked back across the fields to the house. The house was swarming with children, who had no interest in practicing English with me (and who can blame them?), but they also seemed befuddled and frustrated by my poor Korean. I felt like I was embedded in a Kafka novel, for a while: lots of talking, but no communication whatsoever. One of the girls took my camera, and this is a picture I found in it later.
Eventually, feeling exhausted by the language-overload, I went on a walk. I went into the village and looked at the Buddhist temple complex there – apparently Curt’s father, who passed away in 2007, had been a major philanthropist in the restoration and expansion of the temple. Here is a view approaching the temple, and another showing the intricate woodwork and painting on one of the buildings.
Finally, the family meeting down at the restaurant was over, and Curt came and found me strolling around the village, along the river below the dam behind the temple complex. “Do you want to come while I pay my respects to my father?” “Sure,” I agreed, amenably. I didn’t want to intrude or be the uncomfortable foreigner in what was no doubt an intimate and personal thing, but I was dreading spending the next several hours waiting for him with nothing structured to do.
The drive to his father’s grave was quite long, unexpectedly. Almost an hour, as he is interred at a veterans cemetery southwest of Imsil, which is some ways west of Jangsu. We passed over a winding mountain road and into a much wider, more populated valley to get there. Curt placed a lighted cigarette on his father’s grave. “He loved to smoke,” he said. He poured a bit of Soju onto the grass, and his sister placed a plate with some fruit on the grave stone. Curt and his sister bowed deeply to the grave, and then his mother also bowed to her late husband.
After the ceremony, and after making sure it was OK, I took a picture of Curt standing by his father’s grave. He was teary and emotional. I felt awkward, and stayed mostly quiet, during the first part of the drive back to the house at Jangsu. We went back a different way, through Namwon and along a bit of the “88 Olympic Expressway” which reminded me in terms of feel and scenery of those odd, depression-era, two-lane tollways that snake around parts of Appalachia in Kentucky or West Virginia.
Returned to the house, we had a very quick but homemade lunch. I especially liked the fried dubu (tofu) and kimchi – much better than restaurant varieties. And then it was suddenly over. After some lounging around watching Korean music videos and listening to the grandmother lecture the granddaughters about who-knows-what, Curt, his daughter and I said our goodbyes and were back on the road at around 3 PM – although I embarrassed myself with some incorrect Korean in trying to say “nice to have met you.” I think I may have said something like, “That [romantic] date went well,” if it meant anything at all. But it wasn’t a date, was it?
Caveat: Roadtrip
Very spontaneously, my friend Curt called yesterday and invited me along on a drive with him down to his hometown in Jangsu (near Namwon, in Jeollabuk province). It’s a 4-6 hour drive, depending on traffic (we managed about 5 hours down, not counting time to go back to his hagwon for something he forgot).
So, I met his family, ate a lot, and saw a very different, rural part of Korea, all in a whirlwind that got me back home tonight at 10 pm. Just as it was starting to rain. I’ll write some more details later… I’m feeling exhausted, partly because after getting in very late last night we all rose at the crack of dawn this morning. It was a kind of annual family reunion (“family meeting” he termed it).
So, my thought for this evening, after a total of 12 hours in the car in just around 28 hours, is only this: tollway rest areas are roughly the same everywhere in the world. See picture.
Caveat: Koreagraphy
I had a student write “Koreagraphy – study Korea” for the vocabulary word (said out loud) “choreography.” I thought that was clever.
I’m feeling very scattered, lately. Today is a holiday: 어린이날 = Children’s Day. Pues, ¡feliz cinco de mayo!
The children were out in force, and being spoiled hither and yon, all over Seoul. I’ve never seen so many hyperactive children using public transportation. It was sunny and summery. I went on another long walk (as I suggested I might try to do, in my execrable Korean post from yesterday). And I came home, turned on my fancy new fan, and got crazy/creative in my little kitchen.
Always dangerous. I started out with a plan to make some stir-fry rice (bokkeumbap) but ended up using very unconventional ingredients: to the Korean standards (rice, onion, garlic, sesame seeds, red pepper) in some olive oil, I threw in peanuts, curry powder, dried cranberries, and in a moment of inspiration, half a can of pre-cooked lentils that I’d found at Homeplus a week or so back. Delicious.
Okay, then. Here’s a picture taken during my wanderings the other day: a view from the Guri subway station.
Caveat: What Recession?
South Korea is definitely struggling a little bit. But not a day goes by when I don't see some news item that seems to indicate that, at least so far, they're weathering things pretty well here, compared to many places. Of course, many "developing" countries seem to be handling this thing better than the "developed" ones, which lends some credence to my periodic casual assertion that despite its apparent prosperity, its membership in the OECD, etc., South Korea is still, at heart, a developing country.
The evidence today was more direct, if entirely subjective. I've been doing a lot of random-bus-riding. Well, not entirely random. But bravely just getting on buses to see where they take me. Today I ended up in Yeongdeungpo on a #9706, and then after walking around some, I took a subway to Gangnam. And there, lo and behold, there was a new Starbucks opening up, near the Nonhyeon subway station. Here I thought Starbucks was closing hundreds (even thousands) of stores, worldwide, to try to survive the recession. But not in Gangnam. Brand new Starbucks… only blocks away from two other Starbucks I've been to. I mean… as a shareholder, I have to go, don't I? Hah. Well, anyway. New Starbucks.
I studied Korean for a while, and then I read the most recent copy of the Economist and finally took yet another random bus back home. I had to stand the whole trip, which made me remember traveling in Mexico, where I remember at least once standing for an eight hour bus trip from DF to Morelia.
Caveat: Goyang City Limits; Happy Birthday, Buddha
I went on a really long walk. North from Ilsan to the edge of the Goyang Municipality (Ilsan is just a borough, or district, within Goyang City). I took some pictures, and then rode the #90 bus back. The bus was very crowded, because today is Buddha’s Birthday – everyone is going somewhere else.
Here is a road disappearing into the newly tilled rice paddies:
Here is a view of Geumchon in the afternoon haze (or actually, a fog was maybe rolling in off the Yellow Sea – the breeze smelled vaguely of salt):
Caveat: Unclear on the concept
I spent 20 minutes last night explaining the debate topic to my Eldorado 1 class. I knew the topic was a bit over their heads, but I had no idea by just how much.
The topic is whether or not South Korea should join the US in a "proliferation security initiative" – basically, should South Korea join other nations in working hard to prevent the nuclear proliferation problem. But it's a sensitive issue, here, since North Korea is the number one offender on the nuclear proliferation front, at the moment. And the South has ambivalences about its other neighbors, too: China is increasingly public about its military (including nuclear) capacity, and Japan is NEVER to be trusted in its non-proliferation commitments (for obvious historical reasons, from the Korean perspective).
The consequence is that while many South Koreans clearly want to side with the US in the non-proliferation movement, there are just as many that would like to simply ignore the situation, either because they don't want to offend the North for fear of antagonizing it (typically, those on the left), or because they would like to see the South developing (perhaps secretly) their own nuclear deterrent (typically, those on the right).
Anyway, I spent lots of time drawing maps and diagrams on the board, and explaining in as simple vocabulary as I could muster, the situation regarding nuclear proliferation. And then, as the bell rang, my student Ann timidly raised her hand, and said, "Teacher… which Korea?" I said that I didn't understand. She elaborated, "Here, Ilsan. Which Korea – North, South?"
"This is South Korea," I said, bemused. Her face brightened. "Oh, thank you. Good night." Oops! Sometimes you need to make sure basic concepts are clear.
In other news… my web-access problems at home are getting progressively more annoying. I couldn't get into facebook, last night. And unlike with my blog host, I was unable to "sneak" in using a proxy. I may be better off trying to freeload wifi off my neighbors, and not pay the $25 a month to SK Broadband. I certainly would never dream of trying to interact with customer service in Korean. I remember vividly my shock and dismay when I realized that the person at the customer service call center at my DSL provider in the US didn't know what a Domain Name Server was. Nothing is more depressing than trying to explain technical stuff to the technical helpdesk people. And to try to do so across a severe language barrier might just cause my brain to self-destruct.
Caveat: The Positive (The Urinal)
Basil and I were joking around earlier. I still meet with him sometimes for coffee or whatever, even though we’re no longer colleagues. We were “focusing on the positive” about being in Korea, and about working at LBridge (my current and his former employer). The joke was: well, one thing that’s nice about LBridge is the urinal in the men’s bathroom. It has a window, and you look out on the alleyway behind the school and the apartments across the way. There are lots of flowers and trees, the air is fresh, you can watch people walking by on the street below. I’ve watched a cat that lives among the bushes occasionally venturing out, when no one was about. So, one thing I like about LBridge is the urinal.
I decided that that made for a rather forlorn list, all by itself. I have probably spent too much time over the last 9 months thinking of things I didn’t like about this place, so here is a list of things I like about LBridge, that tries to add at least a few things.
the urinal
the fact that each teacher has a computer (my last two hagwon didn’t)
some of my coworkers (Peter, Christine, Joe, Jenica… sometimes Sean is nice, sometimes Sarah)
the color printers
the consistency in designed syllabi
… most of all: the students! the students are awesome.
Caveat: Hermits
I keep obsessing over the concept of Juche: the North Korean political philosophy. It's not that I agree with it, or even understand it. And North Korea, as a political or even cultural entity, scares me much more than it interests me. But I keep coming back to Juche as being some kind of secret key to understanding Korean national character. Not that I really even believe such a thing.
I've been reading a book by Simon Winchester, Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles. It's very interesting. At the beginning of the first chapter, he quotes The Description of the Kingdom of Corea, the English translation of Hendrick Hamel's 1668 book written in Dutch, which was the very first account of Korea by a westerner. The words that struck me: "This kingdom is very dangerous, and difficult for Strangers."
Out of curiosity, I found the original Dutch, too (which I find fascinating just because it's weird language… archaic Dutch):
"Dit lant bij ons Coree ende bij haer Tiocen Cock genaemt is gelegen tussen de 34 1/2 ende 44 graden; in de lanckte, Z. en N. ontrent 140 a 150 mijl; in de breete O. en W. ongevaerlijck 70 a 75 mijl; wort bij haer inde caert geleijt als een caerte bladt, heeft veel uijt stekende hoecken. Is verdeelt in 8 provintie ende 360 steden, behalve de schansen op 't geberghte ende vastigheden aanden zee cant; Is seer periculeus voor de onbekende, om aan te doen, door de meenighte van clippen ende droogten."
I like the way that the name of Korea is romanized… the way that it provides clues to both 17th c. Dutch phonology and 17th c. Korean phonology: "Tiocen Cock" represents what is now written in Korean 조선국 = joseonguk.
Anyway, the phrase " Is seer periculeus voor de onbekende, om aan te doen, " definitely sums up Kim Jeong-il's Hermit kingdom even today. And the account of the foreign Dutchmen being captured and enslaved by the Koreans for 13 years, until they finally escaped, stole a boat, and went to the relatively more hospitable Japan. It's hard to imagine late-medieval Japan as being more hospitable to strangers than some other country, but Korea was definitely much more inwarding looking than even Japan, I think.
OK. I was thinking about Juche. Inward-lookingness made into an explicit national philosophy. Inward-lookingness but with external hostility. Hmm… that could be my boss. It's a bad idea to make generalizations about "national character," and to project those generalizations onto individuals is even worse. But… it's so tempting.
Notes for Korean
일반 = general or universal
액세스하려는 파일은 일시적으로 이용할 수 없습니다 "file access cannot be completed at the moment"
일시적으로 = at the moment, temporarily
방법=means, plan, method, way, recipe
Caveat: Customs Detail; Emeralds; Raindrops
The dry season (aka winter) is ending.
Northwest South Korea is actually the wettest place place I've ever lived, except for those months in Valdivia, Chile. My hometown of Arcata, on the southern edge of the allegedly rainy Pacific Northwest, actually doesn't get as much precipitation as Seoul, but its rainy reputation is reinforced by the vast number of overcast days each year. I blame my Arcata upbringing for my somewhat problematic relationship with sunny days.
Anyway, despite the "on average" wet climate, here, it's all concentrated into the summer monsoon. So winter is dry. Drier than a midwestern winter, although bitterly cold just like Minnesota. But with spring, and warming temperatures, the moisture begins to come. Rainy days. And of course, since it's spring, everything turns stunningly green.
Some of my most vivid memories of "greenness" are from the spring of 1991, when I was assigned to a special "customs detail" outside of my assigned US Army support battalion, here in Korea. I was a "liaison" attached to a group of Korean truck-drivers / movers, basically. The movers were employed by the US Army to come in and move US soldiers from base to base, or to pack them up for their return to the US, etc.
Because there was a Korean government customs official involved, the US Army liked to send along a "throwaway" liaison to kind keep an eye on things, I guess. That was me — because my sergeant didn't like me, he gave me what everyone supposed was an onerous extra assignment. But I loved it. I spent a good portion of that spring riding around in a Hyundai 2-ton truck with a team of about 4 Korean blue-collar types who had very poor English, as we went from base to base, and from off-base apartment to off-base apartment, packing up and loading up US soldiers' worldly goods and transporting them around.
I remember riding in the back of the truck, watching the rain beyond the canopy, as the green countryside whirled past. Stopping in some hole-in-the-wall restaurant and having chili-ramen with cheese-whiz (some kind of weird lower-class Korean delicacy). Picking up a few bits of Korean. Standing aside in the barracks at Camp Boniface (the forwardmost post of the US Army in Korea, facing the North Korean border), looking uselessly officious, while the Korean customs official went down his checklist of "forbidden items," and the impatient infantryman-du-jour looked on. And then returning to my unit that evening, only to be told I was still responsible for that broken humvee or deuce-and-a-half truck, and working late into the night in the motorpool shop.
But it was during this "customs detail" in 1991 that I first fell in love with the emerald, rainy Korean countryside of spring and early summer. I flash back on these memories, stepping outside today to walk to work: the sting of a raindrop on my cheek, the flash of suddenly green treebranches lifted by wind.
Caveat: 꽃보다男子
I began watching a new Korean TV series.
I never got more than few episodes into the last one I tried, which was called 밤이면 밤마다 (which is translated, I think inaccurately, as “When it’s at night”). I couldn’t get into the rather rah-rah-yay-Korean-history premise, of these people working for the “cultural properties division” of some government agency, mostly bashing Japanese thefts of Korean national properties. It’s not that I don’t believe such things are happening, or at the least, have happened in the past. It’s just that, when couched in tones of unreflective nationalism it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
This drama was all the rage over the winter, here. It’s a Korean remake of a Japanese remake of an originally Japanese manga series: 꽃보다男子 (“Boys over flowers”). The premise is OK, I guess, and I’m trying my best to watch it partly because with a bunch of 10-13 year old students who are obsessed with it (especially the girls), I felt like I should try to know what it was about. Maybe over time, it will grow on me. So far, it seems the acting is of lower quality than some other series I’ve seen — partly, the problem is having a bunch of 20-somethings playing supposed high school students. I heard that the Taiwanese remake of the show reset it to college, and that might have been a better strategy here, too. I find the main actress’s efforts to be a wide-eyed innocent high school junior implausible when not downright annoying. And the “bad-boy” gang-of-four heroes are more of the entitled, tantrums-will-always-get-you-what-you-want young men that seem all the rage in Korean romantic comedy these days as lead characters. I’ll try to remember to report back, I guess.
Caveat: The Bus to Xenopolis
Subways are awesome. But I sometimes forget that subways still end up working a little bit like a teleportation system – one can lose one's awareness of the surrounding spaces. Today I did something I don't do often enough: I had a random public-transport adventure. Not really an adventure… I had heard that the 9711 bus would take me straight from Ilsan to Gangnam faster than taking the subway. I set out with no particular destination in mind, but when I saw that bus going by, I decided to try it. It wasn't really faster, but what it was, was a great reminder of just how freaking huge this city I live near is.
Seoul metro area (including the Special Admin Cities of Seoul and Incheon along with Gyeonggi province) has a population of around 23 million. I think, roughly, the area is the same size as Los Angeles county, if maybe a little bit smaller, even – but with double the population. It's one of the most populous cities in the world, and this bus ride really made that clear… more than riding the subway does. Better for seeing all the parts of the city go by, etc…
I've been feeling kind of down about "Korea" lately. Mostly, frustration with the extraordinarily slow and not very rewarding language-learning efforts, I think. But also puzzling about the cultural enigmas: is it possible for a society to be both cosmopolitan and xenophobic? I think so. Does that mean it's xenopolitan? Nice portmanteau word, but it doesn't quite work out to what I want, semantically. Xenopolis would just be a city of aliens, which rather more accurately describes NYC or LA, than Seoul. Nevertheless…
Just random thoughts, I guess. I wish I'd bothered to take my camera and taken some pictures from the bus ride. It just seemed so vast… 30 km of continuous high-rise apartments and businesses, and the expressway weaving along the north bank of the Han river like something out of Bill Peet's Wump World.
Still, I tend to feel so much more positive about Korea and about my experience here, when I take the effort to go out into it, rather than sitting and stewing in my apartment or neighborhood. I really like Korea. Weird country. But regardless… the alienation I feel, is mostly endogenous. Endogenic alienation? Does that make me endoxenic? OK, basta de neologismos.
Caveat: What the pho?
"What the pho" was the name of a Vietnamese restaurant I used to drive by in Huntington Beach when I was commuting from Long Beach to Newport Beach so frequently, 3 years or so ago. I thought of it because we went out for pho after work today at a Vietnamese "pho joint" near where we all live – "Team D" (Jenica, Peter, me and Christine and honorary member Joe, who is actually "Team A" but is Christine's boyfriend). The pho was good, but I think I wasn't doing very well at being sociable… I felt awkward, even though we've all spent time together I just felt I had nothing in common with any of them. Sometimes I feel like I'm trending too much toward being an anti-social hermit. I do great with the kids, but with adults it's like I lack the basic social skills necessary to be desirable company. It's almost bewildering.
I read in the New York Times, several days ago, the following quote of Yeats on the Irish national character (cited by Timothy Egan in an editorial), "…an abiding sense of tragedy that sustained people through temporary periods of joy." But, I was thinking… this could describe lots of people and lifestyles. In a fit of inappropriate overgeneralization, suddenly I wonder: are the Koreans the Irish of Asia?
Caveat: Bleeding on Stage…
Yesterday, I worked, and went into the city with Basil and bought some books after that. I was in a kind of antisocial mood, though. I'm not sure I'm very good at being friends with people, sometimes. Today… I did very little. Reading. A novel. A novella. Two different manga series. Plus Russell's History of Western Philosophy, which kept me in touch with my dislike of Plato.
I made some fried rice, added onion, kimchi, laver (Korean garnish seaweed) and tons of red pepper in a smidgen of sesame oil. It was very simple and delicious. I thought about snow, and listened to Cat Stevens and then Cold (they're an alternative rock group, their "Thirteen Ways to Bleed on Stage" is one of my favorite albums of all time — all the tracks on it are in my favorites list). And now, The Cure.
I have less than 5 months left on my contract. I'm currently feeling like I need to go back to the U.S. after this. That I have an obligation to. That I should. Why? My taxes being a mess, for one. My disconnect with my family, for another. But part of me doesn't want to.
What I'm listening to right now.
Cold, "Just Got Wicked." [youtube embed added 2011 as part of background noise.]
Caveat: Alligator teacher
Again, I’m reminded that many Koreans find my age more disconcerting or unexpected than just my foreignness, per se. Age means so much, here, and such different things than in the West. Not all good, not all bad. Just very different. I struggle with how best to present it, even to my students, when they exhibit so much interest in it. Morbid-seeming interest, from an American cultural perspective.
I’m not that old, really, but my excessively grey hair makes faking it impossible, as I’ve mentioned before in this blog. A self-respecting Korean with my “problem” would be dying his hair, 100% guaranteed.
Friday evening. Two girls, maybe 4th grade, walking arm-in-arm in the 3rd floor lounge. I’m sitting on the sofa, on a break between classes, and avoiding the staff-room downstairs, as I sometimes do between classes, functioning instead as a sort of unofficial hall-monitor. I don’t know the girls, which means they’re probably lower- or intermediate-level (since I have, almost exclusively, the most advanced classes). I’m known by many of the students at LBridge as the “alligator teacher,” because of my use of toy alligators as in-class diversions and props (see Sydney’s picture, for example).
Shy Girl, exaggerated whisper: “…alligator teacher!”
They stop and stand in front of me.
Brave Girl: “What is your name?”
Jared: “Jared. What’s your name?”
Brave Girl: “I’m Emily. … How old are you?”
Jared: “I’m 793.”
Pause. Rolled eyes.
Emily: “Not possible.” [This is pretty good language processing, for the level of students I suspect these two are.]
Jared: “OK. I’m 43.”
Emily: “Ohhh. You have young face.”
Jared: “Thank you.”
Shy Girl: “Old hair.” She reaches out and touches, and then they run away.
Emily, calling out: “Bye, teacher.”
Caveat: 이명밥
Hahaha. Anna sent this cartoon to me. She said in class today, “I think maybe you don’t like our president Lee Myeong-bak very much.” I answered, “He’s Korea’s George Bush.” From there, each listener or reader may draw his or her own conclusions.
The last syllable in the cartoon has been changed from his name (-bak) to (-bap) which is how Koreans write Spongebob’s last syllable, too. Not only that, but -bap means “rice,” as in my latest favorite dish, 해신볶음밥 (haeshinbokkeumbap = spicy seafood fried rice).
Caveat: 主體
I had this weird dream the other day, right as I was waking up. The dream had this unidentified guru-like person, who was advising me to practice “Juche” as a means to personal growth and salvation. He was pointing to a page with the Chinese characters for it (see title-line).
But then Ken interrupted (Ken is the archetype interrupter, in Jared’s dreamland), and I lost dream-traction… vaguely.
“Juche” (주체) is the Korean name for the official ideology of North Korea, as formulated by Kim Il-sung and his son, Kim Jong-il. It’s 2 parts Stalinism, 2 parts fascism, 1 part maoism, and 1 part feudalism. Well, that’s my own take on it.
Kim’s folly. Literally, it means something like “corism,” as in, “the ideology of core” or “ideology of the main subject.” But generally it’s translated as “self-reliance,” as it is strongly autarkic in character.
Interestingly, when I looked in the naver.com dictionary, I discovered that 주체 can also mean “indigestion caused by drinking” and also “a burden.” Nice bit of homonymy. Courtesy naver.com:
주체(主體) the subject;the main body;【중심】the core;the nucleus;『법』 the main constituent
주체(酒滯) indigestion from[caused by] drinking
주체 a burden;a bother;a handful ―하다 cope with[take care of] one´s burden
It was strange that it was the Chinese hanja that were in the dream, since North Korea no longer uses Chinese characters – their banning was, in fact, part of the culturally self-reliant practice of Juche, as it was developed in the 60’s in reaction to the Sino-Soviet split.
Speaking of weapons of mass destruction (we were speaking of weapons of mass destruction?), check out this “fake 404” from the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It made me laugh.
Other notes from studying Korean:
시(時) o´clock;time;hour (I recognized the hanja for this on a sign, recently. It was a cool feeling.)
Caveat: Corned Beef Hash
My friend Basil showed me a curious little hole-in-the wall place only a block from where I live that serves American-style "brunch" on Sundays – eggs, hash browns, pancakes, bacon. All those very American breakfast foods that are so bad for you, but so comforting, too. "Denny's food," is how I always think of it.
For about 8 dollars (which is very expensive for low-end restaurant food, here), I got corned beef hash, french toast, eggs over easy, two cups of coffee. It was a nice nostalgia trip, but, for health reasons, not good to make into a habit. It's a good thing I'm not into going to restaurants alone – that place is too close to be entirely safe. "LOL." And… so much for incidental meat, eh?
Anyway, it was cool. And then he and I spent some time trying to study our Korean. He's not as far along as I am, which of course is good for my ego, because I get to be knowledgeable and erudite about it, which in fact I'm not. But, exploiting relative differences, and all that.
나는 콘비프 해시를 점심 먹었어요. 맛있었어요. 그래서, 지금 행복해요. 잘 지내세요… ^_^ 내일 보겠읍니다.
Caveat: My Life as Colonel Sanders
I was going to write about this yesterday, while on the topic of my new haraboji look, but I didn't finish.
My feelings were hurt, recently, by a colleague. Indirectly… her comment was actually reported to me by some students. And it doesn't really matter: the actual comment was quite some time ago, I imagine, and the teacher making the comments has now completed her contract at LBridge and departed.
The background: KFC is a popular fast food chain in South Korea, and, just as in the States, the Colonel is the ubiquitous advertising mascot. But because of the fact of his being elderly and iconically European-American, he ends up being a kind of caricature stand-in for all older Westerners. Just as it seems vaguely racist and definitely culturally narrow to say of Asians "they all look the same," it's not unheard of in Korean society to just say that all older Western males are "that KFC guy." And that, apparently, is what this other teacher said of me, to her students. Repeatedly.
I didn't have much interaction with the colleague in question. She didn't seem exceptionally interested in interacting with any of her coworkers, as a matter of fact. But I will note that I always noticed she had a great rapport with her students, and they really seemed to like her, so I felt a strong level of respect for her, from a distance.
One thing I've learned, over these last few years teaching, is that you have to be very careful about the sorts of things you say about fellow teachers and other adults to the children – they will tend to magnify what they have heard, and most certainly they will internalize it if they find it entertaining or interesting or funny. Having a colleague make that remark to her students about one of the token foreigners at LBridge is kind of a case study into how these unpleasant cultural stereotypes are perpetuated and reinforced.
Anyway… my personal observation is, I don't really like being called "that KFC guy" to my students behind my back, and it hurt my feelings. But there's not a lot I can do about it, except try to prove by example that such cultural stereotypes are inappropriate and inaccurate. So… 아자아자화이팅!
Caveat: More haraboji than before
I got my hair cut over the weekend. And my students were quick to notice. One student, Zina (she of the musical performance) said, "but teacher… you are more haraboji than before!" Haraboji (할아버지) means grandfather, so her meaning was rather obvious: she meant it made me look older. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.
Having gray hair in this youth-obsessed culture is a double-sided thing. On the one hand, I probably get treated more respectfully than many foreigners do, given the xenophobic edges of Korean society, because of the traditional "respect" due to elders. But on the other hand, people find it incomprehensible, for example, that I don't make an effort to dye my hair. No self-respecting forty-something Korean would allow gray hair to show. It's not just strange, to Koreans — it's impossible. I must be older than I say I am.
I we were talking about appearances and self-image in one of my classes the other day, and I said something along the lines of "so, how can we improve our self-confidence about our appearance?" It was a slightly rhetorical question, to which I didn't expect a response (nor did I have one, myself, really). But Sydney raised her hand immediately and blurted out, "Plastic surgery?" In all seriousness, even. Although Sydney does have an odd sense of humor, the fact that such an answer was on the tip of her tongue must indicate something about this culture.
In the news, today, Kim Jong-il was reelected, just north of here. Really? How shocking is that!
No Title
this blog post is directly from my cellphone. note ad£¬below. aint technology wonderful?
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[below, added Monday night 2009-03-09]
I posted this as a test of the possibilities. I like that it’s possible. I’m disappointed that, since the Korean character-encoding is non-Unicode, it shows up as gobbledygook – but that’s my Korean cell-carrier’s fault, not my bloghost’s.
I wonder if posting html would work? I might experiment with that…
Other features that my bloghost could provide, in the “nice-to-have” category:
* turn the first line of the email into the title
* some indication that it was posted using SMS/email rather than from the website (e.g., that could show up instead of the uninformative “no title”)
* alternately, the ability to configure the above sorts of functionalities on the preferences page
x
Caveat: 그렇지?
I’ve been pondering the issue of whether or not I’m a Koreophile: I actually don’t think I am. When it comes to matters cultural, I think I may be more of a Japanophile (not to mention Hispanophile) than a Koreophile. Not that there aren’t a great number of similarities between Japanese and Korean cultures, as much as both sides would love to convince themselves and the world that there are none – as much as they despise each other, they’re linked by common history and proximity, rather like two annoying neighbors in a sitcom (but with more genocide). And I should perhaps consider the possibility that I would feel less fondness for Japanese culture (and more corresponding fondness for Korean culture) if I actually spent some time immersed in Japan, to provide a more authentic basis for comparison. It’s always easier to like something from a distance, from the outside.
Still, as a trained and passionate linguist, separately I keep my interest in and passion for languages in general. Also, I reserve a special passion for specific languages that seem exceptionally beautiful, elegant, interesting or unique to me in some way. Thus, although I may think I actually have a greater interest in Japanese culture than Korean culture, I find the Korean language much more interesting than Japanese. It would be difficult to explain why. Perhaps as a matter of comparison, I could reflect that although, because of my time in Latin America and my graduate work, I have a special fondness for and interest in Hispanic culture, I actually consider both French and Portuguese to be more interesting and beautiful languages than Spanish, as languages in themselves. In summary, I like languages for different reasons than I like cultures. Possibly, my feelings for specific languages are stronger than my feelings for specific cultures, too. Regrettably, it doesn’t make it any easier to get good at them.
Notes for Korean
그렇지 = indeed
그렇지? = is that so?
약속=appointment, date, promise
d받다=receive… a helping verb, seems to make a kind of passive
AV+[ㄴ/는]다고 is for indirect reported declarative speech with a descriptive verb (non-terminative)
V+고 있다 is continuous (progressive)
Caveat: Thank You, Flashing Neon Octopus
It was a rather disappointing day, I'm afraid. I was supposed to go to a 돌잔치 (which is a baby's first birthday, a very big deal in Korean culture) of a coworker's baby. I was planning to go with another coworker, Jenica, but at the last minute, she bailed. But she was the one who knew how to get there. I tried calling another coworker, Christine, who also knew where it was, but couldn't reach her. I suppose, if I'd been a bit more persistent about it, I could have gotten Jenica to give me directions that I could have used, to go on my own, but I was also not sure about the managing the cultural intricacies in solo mode. So I wimped out, and then felt bad about that.
I went downtown, and spent a very long time book browsing, in Youngpoong and Bandi&Luni's bookstores. I bought a few magazines, but the Economist, my main weekly staple, was still stuck on last week's edition, which I bought last week. I got an overpriced New Yorker magazine, instead, and yet another Korean vocab book to add to my collection of Korean textbooks that see too little use.
I was feeling depressed. I wandered around aimlessly for a while, and then I saw a flashing neon octopus. And I thought to myself: I still like Korea, despite everything. So I smiled.
I went into a Starbucks and ordered a 까페라떼하고 양파배글 (kkaperattehago yangpabaegeul = caffe latte and onion bagel), and studied Korean for a few hours.
Then I came home to Ilsan, and went into a hole-in-the-wall spot in the first floor of my building, that I've never visited before, and ordered some take-out bibimbap for a late dinner. It was a linguistic triumph! And then I came upstairs to my little home. I listened to Abba and Depeche Mode and cleaned my floor.
Thank you, flashing neon octopus, for restoring my sense of perspective. How did you do it?
Caveat: The Line 3 Show
seoul subway. the old lady got on at apgujeong. she had two enormous duffel bags strapped onto a dilapidated two-wheel baggage cart, with some plastic bags on top. it was almost as tall as she was. it fell down on the floor of the subway car. one of the metal pieces of the baggage cart's frame had broken, and she was struggling to improvise a way to connect the two ends, separated by 10 cm of bulging black duffel. she had a jar of something… and was pounding on one end, while trying to hold down the bulge. a tiny, well-dressed woman began to help… then a kind-looking man in a brown suit jacket got involved… then a tall man in a nylon pale green ski jacket started helping too, and he was talking in soft, gentle tones to the frustrated old woman. here in the vast city, these people were showing a unwonted kindness to the old woman, and to each other. others looked on: in bemusement, amusement, or sheer pleasure at seeing such an odd drama unfolding. various solutions to the problem of the separated metal parts were tried, one after the other. people were offering advice or suggestions… it was so interesting. there was a point when the problem seemed solved. i exchanged grins with the kind-looking man in the brown suit jacket. but it was a false finish. the woman began tugging her cart, and the pieces separated again. second round… the man in the ski jacket used a key from the key-ring attached to his cellphone to widen the aperture of one of the rusted metal ends of the cart, and successfully forced the metal part in, again. the small well-dressed woman sat forcefully on the bulging pile, to get the two ends closer together. the old woman pounded on the bottom end with her jar, while the kind-looking man held things in place. at last, the cart seemed well-fixed, again. they stood it upright, while the entire subway car barely refrained from breaking out in applause.
Caveat: Silent Regrets
No, it’s not what it looks like – it’s not another melancholy post.
Rather, “Silent Regrets” is the name of a website I go to to find downloads of Korean TV shows and movies that have been subtitled in English. It’s the best place I’ve found for that sort of thing. Recently, I finally got around to finishing 옥탑방 고양이 (“Rooftop Cat”) and started something new called 밤이면 밤마다 (“When It’s at Night”). Not sure how I like this new one.
I’ve also downloaded and watched a few episodes of a Taiwanese TV show called “Silence.” Not sure if I like it or not… and it’s harder to justify sticking with it, since I don’t feel the same pressing need to use something like a TV show to improve my nonexistent Chinese, as opposed to my glacially improving Korean. But anyway. I thought I’d put a little plug for the website… it’s nice that someone provides the aggregating service for the fansubbed Asian movies and TV shows.
Caveat: 지구를 지켜라 : 100살 모기 소송사건
On Saturday afternoon, I went to see a musical. More accurately, it was a children’s rock musical about global warming. The title was “지구를 지켜라 : 100살 모기 소송사건” (roughly: “Care for the Earth: The 100 year-old mosquito lawsuit”). I’m not sure if it’s the mosquito that’s 100 years old, or the lawsuit. Or both?
I went because one of my students, Zina, was in it. I understood only bits and pieces, of course. But basically, a bunch of children dressed as humans and various sorts of animals appeared to be debating the global warming situation on stage, and would occasionally burst into song and dance. It was awesome. It combined my love of watching things I don’t understand, with my interest in seeing my students perform and my interest in stage performances of all kinds. Not to mention the eco-angle.
I tried to take some pictures, but most of them didn’t come out so well. Here’s one with Zina on the far right, gesturing skyward.
I don’t think of her as particularly tall, but she was the tallest-but-one in the cast. Everything being relative, when you’re a fifth-grader, I suppose.
I bought the CD, after the show. Some of the tunes were pretty catchy. I wish I could figure out how to post a music track here. Maybe I’ll work on that.
Caveat: The Police State
I went into downtown Seoul yesterday evening. Sometimes it seems that Seoul is occupied buy roving tribes of riot police with nothing to do.
You ask yourself: so… where’s the riot? Of course, political riots are to South Korea what Apple Pie is to America. That means, lots of times, the riot police are bound to find something to do. Messy democracy, and all that.
Mostly, I try to avoid the riots. Seems like the prudent thing to do. All I saw yesterday, though, were random platoons of riot police marching to and fro.
The attitude barometer, special end-of-term edition:
* Number of students who have quit L-Bridge where I suspect I’m part of the reason: 1
* Number of times I’ve opened my resignation letter and edited it: 1
* Barrier-surpassing moments of Korean-language usage (outside of work only): 2
* Spirit-destroying moments of Korean-language communication breakdown (outside of work only): 1
* Number of students that have said something to the effect of “teacher, you’re so funny” while fighting off an apoplectic fit of giggles: 2
* Number of times I’ve told someone that I am “much happier than when I was in L.A.”: 3
* Number of times I really meant it (as opposed to the “fake it till I make it” approach I’m fond of): 0
* Days I was late to work this week: 2
* Total number of minutes I was late, minus total number of minutes I showed up early: -10
soundtrack:
Maná
Dead Kennedys
Velvet Acid Christ
Albinoni
Ruby Zoom
Carl Orff
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Cold War Kids
Paul Oakenfold
Caveat: HELLO!!MOUSE (Or, Why Koreans Must Study More English)
HELLO!!MOUSE in your carears you will meat many people. All are signillcant they desaeve you allantion.
Caveat: “Off topic you are!”
My student Eric was giving a speech. Harry, another student, leapt to his feet and, pounding his fist confidently on the table, proclaimed, "Off topic you are!" It was pure Yoda-speak. And I began laughing uncontrollably, which left Harry a bit uncomfortable. So I had to explain that Yoda, in the Star Wars movie, is a very funny-speaking character, but that, if you study his language carefully, you realize he's basically speaking English words with Korean grammar. Which means that Korean students can "do" Yoda, sometimes, without meaning to. I'm not sure my kids fully understood or accepted my explanation completely. But they realized they could make me laugh by ending sentences loudly and confidently with verbs.
"Homework what is?" they demanded, at the end. Good students. Funny students.
Caveat: Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood
Last night, it was snowing. Or sleeting. Or freezing raining. Something like that. A blustery, damp, wind-driven, granular sort of snow. And it didn't really stick.
Today, there are patches of white, but the sky is thickly hazy, yet it's quite windy. A western wind, it seems like. That's a spring pattern, here, a deviation from the north wind (bitterly cold) or south wind (warmer but wet) that normally seem to alternate in winter. And yet it's quite cold, which means that it doesn't FEEL springlike – it feels like Minneapolis, this time of year, with the winds having whipped up across the plains.
That haze is the famous Chinese pall, I'd be willing to bet. The Mongolian desert sands, from a 1000 km to the west, saturated with some juicy Chinese industrial wastes. A bit early in the year for that, but the direction of the winds, and the color of the sky, make me suspicious.
Walking to work, these days, it's almost inevitable that I run in to some students, former or current. I feel like a Mr Rogers, strolling like a conspicuous alien through his Ilsan neighborhood. Putting on my teacher "happy face" despite the occasional turmoil inside.
"Hi Kevin!" "Hi, Annie, how are you?" "Hello, Joseph. Don't forget you have a test tonight." And I get those weird, disorienting bows that kids give to adults in public places (but that are utterly absent from the inside-the-hagwon environment, which I suppose is a tribute to the hagwon's efforts to instill a more "Western" atmosphere).
Soundtrack:
Beastie Boys
임형주 (that 행복하길바래 song I like)
Radiohead
Madonna
Spagga y La Raza (Nueva York)
PM Dawn