Category: Life in Korea

Caveat: 쌀떡볶이

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Working at the Gift Shop

The gift store owner, Chad, is aware of my background as a former resident of Korea. He and his wife apparently have membership in some kind of international junk food subscription service. It’s kinda of eccentric and cool.

So they bring in to me, the other day, this box full of Korean junk food – the kind you’d see at any 7-11 in South Korea. There were these one snacks in that box that I remember buying quite regularly in the store in the first floor of my apartment building: 쌀떡볶이 [ssaltteokbokki]. It was quite amazing, to get a package of these in Craig, Alaska.

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So I got them and ate them, and it made me nostalgic.

Chad and Kristin are very cool bosses.

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Caveat: Tree #1419 “Somewhere in Glory County”

A Daily Tree / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree is a guest tree from my past. I took this picture on December 16, 2010, when I was living down in Yeonggwang, Jeolla, South Korea. It’s in front of a building where a coworker lived – we were carpooling to work and had stopped there to pick him up.

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I don’t mind driving in snow. But this ice-with-rain-on-top that we get here is terrifying. So Art and I didn’t go to town shopping today. We stayed home. We have plenty of food. It was so slippery on the road, I didn’t even walk the dog.

picture[daily log: walking, 1km;]

Caveat: Tree #1410 “The Korean redwood is an urban dweller”

A Daily Tree / Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree is a guest tree from my past. It’s in front of my place of employment in Ilsan (Goyang), Korea (marked by the long vertical orange sign with blue lettering). I took this picture in March, 2015. I believe it’s one of the dawn redwoods (metasequoia) that are so ubiquitous in newly urbanized parts of South Korea.

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I went back to my job at the gift shop, today. I was deeply anxious that I’d forgotten how to do my job, given I’ve been away for a month. But it came back easily enough, as these things do. Perhaps being around Arthur all the time, I’ve developed an anxiety around my own forgetfulness, seeing more danger and decline there than is warranted.

picture[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 8.5hr]

Caveat: Tree #1382 “A tree or three, and me”

A Daily Tree / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree is a guest tree from my past. And really it’s not so much a tree, as me – although there are undeniable trees present. Standing along pedestrian street in Ilsan, near my home, in November, 2011. My friend Peter (who’s visited me here in Alaska) took this picture.

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picture[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 8.5hr]

Caveat: Tree #1369 “Sedes koreanis”

A Daily Tree / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree is a guest tree from my past. It was a tree (among other trees) I saw in the forest on the north side Gobong mountain, in my home in Korea, in October, 2014. I saw semi-abandoned chairs there, which are ubiquitous in rural South Korea.

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picture[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 8.5hr]

Caveat: Tree #1300

A Daily Tree / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree is a guest tree from my past. I took this picture of a sunset looking west on Teheran-no, a major thoroughfare in the trendy Gangnam district in Seoul, in December, 2008.
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picture[daily log: walking, 6km; retailing, 8.5hr]

Caveat: Tree #1238

A Daily Tree / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree is a guest tree from my past. I took this picture while walking to work in April, 2017. I thought the ball looked forlorn and sad, so I took a picture – but the trees are interesting, too. I remember the exact spot where this ball was, along Juyeop plaza about half a block south of work.
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picture[daily log: walking, 6km; c114065083085s]

Caveat: Tree #1225

A Daily Tree / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree is a guest tree from my past. I took this picture in early June, 2015, standing in front of my place of work. I was noting the “gentrification” of my neighborhood in Ilsan, Korea, via the opening of a new Starbucks location.
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picture[daily log: walking, 3.5km; dogwalking, 3km; c100066057084s]

Caveat: Tree #1207

A Daily Tree / Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree is a guest tree from my past. The tree is guarding an entrance to the Samgakji subway station in central Seoul – just southwest of the former Yongsan US military base. The base is “former”, now, but when I took this picture in April, 2008, it was still active. In the haze in the upper background you can see the Namsan Tower.
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I went to work today – not a normal thing for a Monday, but I have a somewhat rearranged schedule this week.

picture[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 6hr; c117064063084s]

Caveat: Tree #1196

A Daily Tree / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree is a guest tree from my past. I don’t even know what year I took it – maybe 2012. But clearly it’s from the time around Buddha’s birthday holiday: the lanterns and temporary statuary in the river (which is the small book that bisects downtown Seoul, 청계천 [cheong-gye-cheon]) give it away.
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This year, Buddha’s birthday will be celebrated this coming Sunday, May 8th. It moves around (like Easter), due to the Korean lunar calendar. It used to be annoying when Buddhamas fell on a Sunday, because it would mean no extra day off from work.

picture[daily log: walking, 4.5km; dogwalking, 3.5km]

Caveat: I will pray for your lucky

Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / Life in Korea / Working at the Gift Shop

My coworker Jan, at the gift shop, likes to order various exotic herbal medicines and supplements, often from Asia. She ordered something from Korea not that long ago – I don’t know what it was (some kind of mushroom extract?). But when she got her product delivered, it included this note from the vendor.

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To Buyer,

Thank you so much for your purchase!!!!!
I hope you had a pleasant transaction as much as I enjoyed:-)
You are such a beautiful, gorgeous, perfect, incredible, fabulous,
fantastic, the one-of-a-kind, mind-boggling, and Excellent buyer!!!
Even though we are oceans apart, I feel it's my honour to have a
chance to get to know you through Amazon.com. That's why I love
having transactions on Amazon.com
I will try to meet your needs by providing better service and
products.

I will pray for your lucky,if you leave a good feedback on Amazon.com.
I wish that you are in good health and fortune with your family.
Hope to deal with you again. Thank you.
Have a wonderful day!!! Have a great day!!!!

Many thanks and Kind regards,
Kevin Kim

This made me nostalgic for my Korean students’ inimitable English style. This could have been written by one of them, easily. So much hyperbole!!!! So many exclamation points!!!!!!!!!

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Caveat: Tree #1000

A Daily Tree / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree is from my past. I took this picture at Jeongbalsan Park near my apartment, walking home from the cancer center, in September 2013.
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picture[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 6hr]

Caveat: Poem #1892 “Gangnam style”

A Daily Poem / Blank verse / Book 3 / Couplets and Quatrains / Life in Korea / Life is a Dream / My Poetry & Fiction 
ㅁ
I took the subway into Gangnam's heart
and walked up Teheranno, through the crowd,
immersed in human restlessness, alone -
until the dream unmade itself at dawn.

– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter).

Here is a picture of the familiar streetscape in Gangnam, Seoul, a few blocks north of the main subway station. I was here every day for a few months in 2010, when I was studying Korean language full-time. So it sometimes appears in dreams.
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Caveat: Tree #952

A Daily Tree / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree is under an elevated metro station from my past. Ten years ago this month I visited the Oksu station in Seoul, and took this picture. I don’t think the tree was the focus or subject of the picture, but nevertheless, there is a tree down there.
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picture[daily log: walking, 1.5km]

Caveat: Tree #923

A Daily Tree / Hiking & Travel / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree is from my past. It was witness to a rather ambitious hiking excursion I took with my brother in September, 2013, in southwestern South Korea – right during the time I was undergoing my 3-times-a-week radiation therapy for my cancer. This is on the mountain just west of Hongnong, between the town and the nuclear power plant on the coast. Hongnong is where I lived in 2010-2011. I remember being utterly exhausted from this trip.
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picture[daily log: walking, 2.5km; retailing, 6hr]

Caveat: Tree #911

A Daily Tree / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree (from my past) is watching hot peppers dry in September, 2009. I saw it on the island named Ulleungdo off the east coast of South Korea.
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picture[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 6hr]

Caveat: Merry Seollal

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

In Korea, “Chinese New Year” is not, in fact, Chinese. It’s called 설날 (Seollal), i.e. Lunar New Year. I would prefer if that’s what it were called in English – “Chinese” feels culturally narrow if not incorrect.
새해 복 많이 받으세요.
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Caveat: Tree #702

A Daily Tree / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree was outside my classroom window almost exactly 10 years ago, in December, 2010, in Hongnong Village, Yeonggwang County, Jeollanam Province, South Korea.
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I made a chocolate cake, to celebrate the impending winter solstice.
picture[daily log: walking, 1km]

Caveat: Tree #564

A Daily Tree / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree is a guest tree from the past. It’s a Dawn Redwood (metasequoia), along my walk-to-work route in Ilsan, Korea, taken in November, 2017. The trees look and feel like the redwoods I grew up with in far northern California (sequoia sempervirens), but unlike those, these Asian redwoods turn color and lose their leaves (needles) in the Fall. Also, they don’t grow quite so tall. I’ve been “homesick” for Korea a lot, lately.
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picture[daily log: walking, 2km]

Caveat: Tree #490

A Daily Tree / Hiking & Travel / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree is from my past. It was at a little historical park on the northern tip of Ganghwa Island, about 30 km northwest from my home in Ilsan, South Korea. I’d gone there when my mother was visiting me in Korea. I took the picture in October, 2013.
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From the promontory at the little fortress there, you can see directly into North Korea, across the river – this is the part of the DMZ where the border runs in the river. A few hundred meters away from that tree, this is a view across the river. Those mountains in the distance are in North Korea. There are little coin-operated binoculars and you can look into the North Korean town over there.
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Caveat: Tree #484

A Daily Tree / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree on the left foregrounds a view of Gobong, a prominent hill in Ilsan, my former Korean home. You can see the distinctive radio tower on the mountain. Nestled at the foot of the radio tower is the Yeochan Temple, which I often visited. I took this picture in Jeongbalsan Park a few blocks from my apartment in October, 2015.
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Caveat: Tree #480

A Daily Tree / Life in Korea / My Photos

This is a redwood tree. In fact, it is what is called metasequoia, or “dawn redwood,” a strange variety of redwood that loses its needles in winter. They are planted all over Seoul, though not native there.
I took this picture in January, 2009, in Goyang, Korea, a few blocks from my apartment.
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picture[daily log: walking, 1km]

Caveat: Tree #471

A Daily Tree / Life in Korea / My Photos

This tree is from my past. I took this picture in April, 2015. I’m standing on the foot bridge that goes over Ilsan-no (Ilsan Road) in Ilsan, right in front of my place of employment, the Karma Language Academy (which is the orange and white sign on the building on the left). Spring in Korea was always kind of smoggy and horrible, but the blooming trees were sometimes beautiful.
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picture[daily log: walking, 1km; chainsawing & woodsplitting, 1.5hr]

Caveat: Tree #456

A Daily Tree / Life in Korea / My Photos

These trees (which one do you like?) are just outside the southwest entrance to the Jeongbalsan subway station in Ilsan (Goyang), South Korea. That was my “home” subway station for the majority of the time I lived in Korea, few blocks from the Urimbobo apartment building where both my first and last apartment in Korea was located (there were other apartments in between, however). I took this picture in November, 2007.
The banner on the footbridge, interestingly, is advertising a local performance of the Nutcracker Suite (호두까기 인형) at the Ilsan Cultural Center which is on the right behind the bridge.
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picture[daily log: walking, 2km]

Caveat: peninsular psephological observations

Life in Korea / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

I decided to take a break from documenting my visit to Oregon and my uncle’s health crisis to address the elections held this week in South Korea.
As my sister said, off-handedly, just now, “there are no coincidences in politics.” Thus, the fact that the Kim-DJT summit in Singapore was held this week, right before the elections, can hardly be imagined but to have been some bit of orchestration on the part of the South Koreans. And the incumbent president Moon Jae-in and his left-leaning 더불어민주당 [deobuleominjudang ~ “together democratic party”] clearly had decided that the blustery leaders’ drafty summiteering would benefit them electorally. It did.
Arguably, Korea experienced a “blue wave” such as some are forecasting for the US elections this Fall. Which is odd not just because Korea isn’t in the US, but because this is a kind of Korean mid-term, and as such, just like a US mid-term, you’d expect things to swing the other way. Since Moon had won in 2016, it seemed that things should swing rightward for this election. That didn’t happen. The main right-leaning party remains in disarray following the impeachment scandals that led to Moon’s election, and Moon is benefiting from domestic fears that Mr T is going to mess things up for South Korea.
So it goes. It’s interesting to compare the 2016 electoral map and the 2018 electoral map. You see the “blue wave”, barely noticeable and somewhat ambivalent in 2016, engulfing the country this time around. I have the 2016 map in my blog post from that election. And here is this year’s, below.
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I like electoral maps. They’re interesting. Call me an amateur psephological cartographer.
picture[daily log: walking, 5km]

Caveat: What about alcohol?

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Life in Korea

Here is the Korean zeitgeist, as revealed in an offhanded comment by a sixth-grade girl who goes by Mindy:

Sometimes alcohol is necessary.

She said it in a chipper voice, as if conversationally stating the obvious. That would sum up the Korean perspective, easily enough.

[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: la même chose

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

Every Spring is the same, in northwest Seoul. Smoggy. So… every Spring I become grumpy and “under the weather” – almost literally.
Actually this morning isn’t so bad. But the weekend seemed so, and last week was horrible. Such is life in the megalopolis.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
picture[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: Random Poem #155

A Daily Poem / Banalities & Journaling / Book 1 / Life in Korea / My Poetry & Fiction

(Poem #456 on new numbering scheme)
신의 은총이 없었다면 저도 저렇게 되었을 것이다.

My coworker was sad. Her sister died.
The cancer had declared its wish at last.
The funeral was all the way across
vast Seoul. These Koreans mourn the dead
as they live - with kimchi and alcohol.
The grace of god descended, so we kept
our silences while poking rice with spoons
and fetching bits of food with chopstick-thrusts.
Of course my own unlikely failed demise
was apropos - but felt indulgent too.
I spoke about it with reluctance till
at last we drove back down the Han to home.
The night was cold. It carved heavenly paths;
expressways sought to give us maps of hope.
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