Category: My Photos

Here are some more pictures from last weekend’s hike over to Gamami.
First, of me – the town in the valley behind me is Happy, Harmonious Hongnong.

Next, walking down the highway near Gamami.

A little before that, looking down from the mountain, southward, over the Beopseong inlet.

Last, the (in-)famous nuclear power plant – one of the largest nuclear power production facilities in the world, from what I understand. “Springfield, Korea!”

Today, I went with my friend Peter (who’s finished his contract at hagwon in Ilsan and who is visiting me for a few days) on a long, long hike over to Gamami beach (가마미), which is the coastal part of Hongnong Town. It was a great hike. Here are a few pictures.

[This is a “back-post” added 2010-05-21]

Today, I went out to Hongnong to hang out with my FFT (“fellow foreign teacher”) and experienced severe apartment envy.  Not only do I envy the fact that she lives within walking distance of work, but also her apartment is just as big as mine and much cleaner and brighter (more and better windows) than mine.  Ah well… such random inequities are inevitable, right?  I will try to focus on the positives of my apartment in Yeonggwang.  It’s more centrally located and convenient to a marketplace and bus station.  And it doesn’t have Jehovah’s Witnesses lurking about on Saturday mornings – we shooed some off at her place this morning.
Anyway… I wanted to walk up the mountain west of Hongnong, but she wasn’t interested.  I’ll do that on my own, some other time, I guess.
Here is a picture of Hongnong Middle School, seen from the main drag.  Note the rural character of the community.  Heh.

Meanwhile, here are some pictures of my long walk around Mokpo yesterday.

[This is a “back-post” added 2010-05-09]

I am participating in a rather in-depth, week-long orientation and training program related to my new job. This is very disorienting – because I never had so much as an hour of orientation or training at any of my three previous jobs in Korea.

Some of the “cultural content” it is a bit redundant or boring, for someone who’s already been here a few years. But other bits are amazingly useful, and I find myself thinking, “gee, it would have been nice to have known that, say, 3 years ago.”

Overall, I think this will be good. Plus, the hotel where this is taking place is the poshest place I’ve stayed at in a long time – possibly since I had the Oracle 8i/9i certification at that resort in Pennsylvania in 2004.

Here’s a picture from my hotel balcony, looking west-southwest over Gwangju, as the sun is coming up behind the mountain behind me.

I like to invent little metaphors that sound like good names for rock bands.

Yesterday, walking around Gwangju, I ran across some monuments to the Gwangju democracy movement of 1980. Although the movement failed against the dictatorship of that time, it was a significant turning point in the evolution of South Korean politics.

I began to reflect on South Korea’s “protest culture.” A lot of people view this as a sort of political immaturity (even, or especially, South Koreans themselves), but I have a rather different take on it. Firstly, this “protest culture” is as innate and important to modern South Korean democracy as, say, a town hall meeting is to New England democracy. Secondly, however, I think the fact that people in this country feel free to begin a rally or protest at the drop of a hat actually makes South Korean politics a bit more genuinely responsive and, well, “democratic” than a superficial systemic analysis might suggest.  So rather than seeing it as a blemish on the South Korean polity, I see the protest culture as a sort of enhancement, if an imperfect one.

But it seems odd, doesn’t it, that a country still so steeped in Confucian culture and values would adopt protests and riots as a (more or less) legitimate means of political expression?  Thus I stumbled on the idea of a “Confucian riot.” Which sounds cool, and is maybe less oxymoronic than you’d think. And I was contrasting the idea, in my mind, with Japan. Japan doesn’t have the same kind of protest culture as South Korea – not at all. Perhaps, lacking a recent historical experience with in-your-face dictatorship (i.e. at least not since WWII, and arguably even before that), Japan never developed the need.  Japan is a more consensual polity, whether truly democratic or not. More like a “pep rally” than a riot.  And so I stumbled on the contrasting idea of a “zen pep rally.”

I’m just thinking about these things. This is not a polished thesis or even intended to be a well-structured argument. More like a suggestion for two contrasting metaphors for two intimately related but profoundly distinct societies.

Here is a picture of a monument to the “518” movement (the Gwangju uprising of 1980), in front of the central high school. And some other monuments I noticed, not far away.

I love public art. Probably, that’s one reason I like walking around Ilsan. And Fukuoka was interesting, this morning, too. Here are some pictures of public art (and/or interesting architecture).

Walking around Ilsan, near Baekma area:

Here is something tucked next to a building walking out the east end of the mall called “WesternDom” in Ilsan, on the way to Madu Station:

Here is a picture I took this morning, here in Fukuoka, Japan. It’s a digital clock that changes to show the time. But the pixels are made of little fountain spouts. So it’s an altogether new take on the “water clock” idea:

Here is a weird frog-creature-arch-thing in the Tenjin area (downtown) of Fukuoka:

Here is the somewhat famous ACROS cultural center in Fukuoka, with its rooftop gardens:

For contrast, some blossoming cherry trees along the river:

Lastly, some palm trees in the median of a major street near Hakata Station: