tales from Korea

As you may have already read, a typhoon came right though Korea last week, on the 2nd of September – Typhoon Kompasu.

I had heard a typhoon was coming, but nobody around me seemed to take it too seriously and I pretty much forgot about it until early that morning. I woke up at about 5:30am and heard these really strange noises, something felt off and I went downstairs to check it out. I pushed the blinds back and my jaw dropped… trees almost being uprooted, whipping rain and debris flying through the air. I turned on the video camera and recorded some of what was going on outside (Although it was too windy to keep the window open for long) and I recorded some images from the news. Schools ended up getting delayed for two hours, which meant a nice sleep in for me! It was pretty exciting to witness, but very sad to hear about the loss of life and destruction the typhoon caused.

Check out the video:

Wow, I’ve been away from here for a while, it feels strange not to have posted in so long. Even though I never felt like I ‘needed to post’ just because I hadn’t done so in a while this has been quite a gap. Things have been busy, but very good.

I’m back in Korea after a short but eventful trip back to Ireland in which Jayeon and I had our marriage party with friends and family. We also managed to travel around Ireland quite a bit and ended up visiting visiting Blarney, Cork city, Kinsale harbour, Galway, Inis Mor and a few other places. But well I’m back in Korea and the teaching continues; my new contract has begun and will finish in August 2011.

I feel now that I’ve settled in quite a bit and have such a firm routine with school and activities outside of school, things that would have previously surprised, shocked and confused me don’t quite have the same effect they did when I first landed in Korea. I guess what I’m trying to say is, that ‘new place’ feeling of wonder and astonishment has firmly worn off, and I’m just living the routine. Of course, that’s a natural progression and I don’t think that’s going to necessarily impend my ability to continue blogging about things in Korea. Like many blogs that ramble like an online diary of someone’s life, I guess I feel a sense of reticence to blog about myself too much.

So, the story will continue, for another year at least. Let’s hope not too many month long gaps appear along the way.

It’s a new beginning for me, again. I’ve been in Korea now for about eleven months, the time has gone by very quickly yet at the same time it feels like I’ve been here for a while. I do think I have quite a good ability to adjust to how I live and even though Jayeon helped eased the transition, I’ve settled into Korean society quite well. I’ve really learned a lot about the Korean psyche and this learning process was speeded up through my wholly unique living situation. As you may know already from previous posts, I moved into Jayeon’s family home from day one when I landed in Korea last August, and we just moved out of her home about two weeks before into our own apartment. For a westerner to move into a Korean family home and live an extended sojourn there is to say the least, extremely uncommon. But the fact they her family had never met me before and even more importantly that Jayeon and I were not married at the time, seems almost like me living there would be impossible. I never fully realised the profoundness of this situation until I came over here and started living in it for myself. Trying to explain it to other westerners had them confused and asking questions, but explaining to Koreans had they absolutely perplexed.

In retrospect, a decision I made rather lightly (and with a great deal of naiveté) could have gone horribly wrong, and I think we were all lucky that didn’t happen. I lived with Jayeon, her mom, her grandmother, her brother and her young cousin. From the moment I stepped in the door, they had accepted everything about me. Their unemphatic welcomes had me a little worried at the beginning (In contrast to Irish welcomes), but I soon realised that it’s part Korean style and part that their acceptance of me meant there was not need for that kind of greeting. One main reason for moving in there was getting the chance to know them; Jayeon knew my family well by this time but I had never met hers even once in our three year relationship. And I really did get to know them, I got to understand a lot about Korean behaviour, idiosyncrasies and their overly practical often down-to-earth attitude. Her family are incredibly easy going people, a contributing reason for my moving in and we had a lot of good times over the eleven months we lived together. The language barrier presented problems, especially between Jayeon’s grandmother (Who can’t speak a word of English but can speak Japanese) and her mom (Whose English is basic). But I was fortunate enough to have three fluent English speakers with me: Jayeon, her brother and her cousin. Jayeon’s mom did make a huge effort to learn English and bought books and persistently and when necessary used her limited ability really well. I picked up a bit of Korean from overhearing conversations and together in a mixture of Korean and English, we got by. Her young cousin of just fourteen years old can speak English really well. I guess the 3 nights a week of attending English institutes after school is paying off.

A little sad to move out, but it’s great that we can finally have our own space. They miss us too.

Our new apartment is only about 100 meters away from her mom’s house. We can even wave and see each other! It’s great, if I’m hungry I can go over any time I want and eat her mom’s delicious food. But more than that, I had a wonderful experience and I’m glad I took that one opportunity for me to really get to know her family, who are now my family too. Without doing that, a trip to the ‘inlaws’ may have been the awkward experience a lot of other people dread.

I’ll never forget that one great year, thank you. 나는 올해는 절대 잊지 못할거야. 감사합니다.

I’ve been expecting some early morning warmth these days, a transition beginning to swing further to the side of spring, but alas, it hasn’t really been so. Only the the last few days have temperatures been keeping above freezing in the morning and holding themselves at about 10 or 12 degrees during the afternoon. I guess I shouldn’t be expecting the change to happen too fast, right? But it seems even Koreans are a little surprised at the slow crawl of spring and the constant gripping hand of winter. The new season has a lot in store for when it’s truly here: Blooming, including Cherry Blossoms and other Korean wild flowers, including the elusive national flower of Korea as well as a few nice holidays including the school trip in two weeks.

But more importantly, I’m sick of being sick, sick of being cold. What a complainer, eh? I usually don’t get too sick back home but I never really considered the whole spectrum of pathogens I’d be breathing and touching once I came over here. I’ve pretty much been sick for about 2-3 weeks, on and off. First there was a case of the cold followed by a relapse case of an auto-immune condition I have, which was a bit miserable. After that I seemed to develop a nasty chest infection (Most probably bronchitis), which can last anything from a few days to a few weeks. Needless to say, I haven’t been doing much the last couple of weeks beside sleeping, drinking water, taking medicine and complaining to Jayeon (To which she responds by hitting me for being so sick for so long). She puts it down to a mixture of exposure to new virus and bacteria as well as the blasted Yellow Wind from China/Asia.

While emerging one day from a subway station in Itawon I looked out over the top of the escalator steps and saw a dark yellow and gloomy sky. “What the f…?.” I was thinking. It looked a bit like a nuclear fallout, reminding me of the videogame I’d been played the few days previously. Jayeon informed me that this is the Yellow Wind; I guess I wasn’t expecting it to be so obvious and… all encompassing. It was disturbing, gloomy and a bit disguising.

I’m not even in China but I was probably affected more from a short walk through that dust then any other pollution in Seoul. I don’t know if it was this or a combination of things but so many people seem to have lung infections at the moment. Over half of the students at my school are now sick — a little higher then the swine flu pandemic last year. I don’t know about the rest of the population, though. Anyway all I can do is sit and wait through this transition of seasons and sickness and emerge with a body and a mind that’s ready to try some more challenges and adventures. Hey, I haven’t tried eating that live squid yet…

As it comes to the end of February, and my vacation days, the new school year is about to begin. Korea’s school term starts in March and runs until December, with January and February being the main vacation time with maybe two weeks during the summer for a respite. The vacation days I planned for this month are just about up – went by in a breeze, and I barely did anything. I went back to Ireland for the majority of it – nearly ten days; being at home as doing all kinds of things made it never really feel like a ‘vacation’, though. Not that I wasn’t happy to see everyone, it’s just that not much happened. It feels like the build up to the vacation was better then the pay off. But, I’m almost ready to go back, my mind is certainly not in school mode yet and with a new grade and double the amount of students to last year it may take some getting use to. The second half of my contracted year – I wonder what it’ll have in store for me, one thing I know for sure – It’ll be full on go for the next few months once I land back in my desk in a weeks time. No breaks for holidays, no vacations, just full on work. But, hopefully I can plan time for photography over the coming weekends, I have a few things in mind and looking forward to seeing what I can try to capture this year.

The end of a year and start of a new one, usually things go out quietly… One year rolls into another one, you can’t tell the difference and almost forget that it happens until you sign something and write the year date wrong. More has happened in the last 10 days then has really happened in the rest of 2009. My brother and his girlfriend had a baby, just a few days before Christmas. Jayeon and I announced our engagement, and just a day after, Jessie, the family dog was taken ill and had to be put down.

A few days of absolute joy, surprise, laughing and cheering as well as inevitability, incredible sadness and loneliness.

Jayeon and I haven’t made any dates yet, but it’s likely we’ll be married here in the summer of 2010. We won’t have anything high-key, you know us.

I want to congratulate Mark and Lindsay again, and wish the best for them and their baby.

I will miss my dog, terribly; I wrote a small document (13.3MB) with some memories of her.

Looking forward to this year… So many great things planned.

Special meals are worth special trips. This particular trip was to the East coast of Korea, outside of Seoul in the Gyeonggi-do region close to the ever-growing city of Incheon. There is an area famous not just for its delicious shellfish, but also the manner in which you can get it: Unlimited and grilled on a BBQ. You wouldn’t think it was possible to get unlimited shellfish, this type of food is usually mighty expensive, but as we got to the main strip with the restaurants it started to make sense why it was being offered. The reputation of this particular area brings a lot of people over, and that means more restaurants setting up – competition is rife and they’ll go to great lengths to get your into their place.

Coming into the town there is a man, or a lady, standing outside each establishment trying to flag cars down and convince them to try their place over their neighbours’. Luckily for us, the choice had been made already as Jayeon’s mum had picked out a place that was recommended online. We parked and headed upstairs; the place was very simple, wooden tables with a hole cut out for the bucket of hot coals, plastic chairs and no décor on the walls. The staff handed us two rather unexpected (to me anyway) tools – Pairs of gloves and a large blue plastic bucket. What exactly am I suppose to do with these? I hope I don’t have to pick my meal out of a fish tank. Luckily that was not that case. The gloves are for handling the shells and the bucket for throwing them into.

We tucked in to a load of different shellfish, some huge, some tiny. Some were salty, some were meaty, some had little taste and some too much. It was an interesting experience; again something Korea does well – making a shellfish meal a simple but delicious and no-frills experience. After we had stuffed ourselves silly, we took a walk down the harbour and market area, and I got too see the slightly darker side of this district. There was a pier lined with Spartan, vinyl cabins with smoke chimneys occupied by older independent fish merchants. There was a mark of desperation on many of their faces. Some chopped, piled and hacked all manner of fish and shells in a kind of solemn contemplation. We passed one woman who proclaimed she has had no sales that day, and begged to buy something. Jayeon’s mom paid 5000 won for some Oysters, she took her measuring cup and filled it to the brim, but continued to stack the overflowing cup and eventually poured it into the plastic bag. Her hands were scarred, worn, with thin fingers and blistered fingertips. She asked me to call her 할머니 (grandmother). The chimneys continued to bellow out an oaky scented smoke, which clung to our clothes for the rest of the day, constantly reminding me of the seeming dichotomy still relevant in Korea today – the division of the hidden traditional ways and the in your face modern capitalism.

The Korean market for phones is notoriously locked in. This seems to be the common viewpoint from the west, and one to a certain degree I agree with. From a Korean perspective, they’re simply proud of their domestic electronic giants and that by supporting their own market it will ultimately benefit their economy. I can’t really see how this can still be a worthy argument, especially considering that Samsung and LG are the second and third largest phone manufactures in the world. The number one is still Nokia, of course, but according to some Koreans I’ve talked to “Nokia came to Korea but just totally failed, no one was interested in their products”. I’m a bit sceptical of this, but no matter. Then the rumours of the iPhone came along, a popular Smartphone in the U.S. and Europe, it picked up the nickname ‘Next months phone’ because it has been constantly delayed for pretty much the last few years. Korean law has some nice regulations protecting the domestic market, but in fairness the government seems to be taking steps to loosen these regulations. When the iPhone passed the regulations just two months before, KT picked up the bandwagon and released the phone here just a few days ago. This is even after a release in China last year! The lone company who released it is KT (Korean telecom) and in my opinion, they made some smart choices about the hurried release. They could have accepted the Korean foreign phone failure attitude and just have directed the iPhone at a very niche market where they could have charged outlandish monthly charges they this segment would be willing to pay. But they released the phone with a heavy subsidy and several different pricing options marketed at a broader audience. The one ‘catch’ per-se, is the 24-month contract.

I never would have picked up an expensive Smartphone back home, for one simple reason: The chances of it being stolen are probably quite high. In Korea, this type of theft is extremely uncommon – most people have nice phones and with most phones being CDMA with no SIM card, stolen phones are essentially useless.

The iPhone cost W396,000 ($346) upfront with a W45,000 ($39) a month contract, this was my choice.

The slew of extremely useful features makes it for me, very much worth the money. I’m a happy man.

Ahhh, free from shackles of study. That sentence itself sounds likes a contradiction – academic freedom and all that but during my studies the last two years I was so busy with papers and research and this and that, I never had the time, patience or inspiration to partake in photographic adventures. That time is over – when work in school is finished, I can really do whatever the hell I want, no deadlines, no worries.

I joined the Seoul Photo Club a few weeks ago, their strict posting and commenting rules actually attracted me, and you know what? It seems to have worked really well at keeping the typical attention seeking posters away. Members are mature, insightful, critical and talented. I joined up with a few of the members on a day trip last weekend in which we went to the city hall area to see a photographic exhibition of works by Bae Bien-U – a talented and highly successful landscape photographer. We had a great time talking about photography, shooting and checking out the sights at the same time.

Here are a few photographs from that day:

The day was great and I’m looking forward to the next meet with SPC members.

In western countries when you go outside, leave your house and walk somewhere – you have a purpose, right? Even if the purpose is walking itself – it’s a pre-planned, cognitive decision to go outside and walk a preconceived path. You may even break that path, you may stop to chat with someone or smell the flowers, but you complete your activity and return home. I’ve noticed something quite different here in Korea, they have a special type of person, one that I’ve named the ‘Strolling Adjoshi’. The Adjoshi is a term used to describe an older man – The word ‘older’ being completely subjective, but is generally used to describe men who are thirty years or older. In contrary to what people do in the west, the strolling Adjoshi seems to roam with no intended purpose whatsoever; he is strolling around the streets simply because he can.

The strolling Adjoshi is a keen observer – he likes to watch closely what goes on around him – an interesting conversation to eavesdrop on, some teenagers hanging around the 7-Eleven to disapprove of, or checking out the imported cars lining the streets. It’s quite easy to identify a strolling Adjoshi – The prime characteristic is the wide-angle foot plant. Due to his slow walking pace and the constant rotation of his upper body, in which to observe, he assumes a wide footed balance in order to achieve this. This pace also makes the need to swing ones arms obsolete, as the slow speed means the need for the fast walking counterbalance is nullified. Due to the arms not being essentially ‘needed’, he usually keeps his hands firmly behind his back – one hand gripping the other arms wrist.

I’ve seen many strolling Adjoshi’s – I want to know more about them. What are their reasons for strolling? Maybe there are no reasons? The strolling Adjoshi is a cultural phenomenon – If only to Korea, one must wonder.