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.

I’m happy and excited that I’ll be having a photography exhibition this month! It’s called “Days in India” and will display 9 prints at the Guillaume Cafe in Seoul. Please check below for details on the exhibition and how to get there.

Exhibition details

The exhibition will be held at the Guillaume Cafe from the 9th of July until the 30th of July.

The opening night is the 9th of July and will run from about 7pm to 10pm.

Wine, food and other drinks will be available, free of charge!

If you’re interested in photography, India, or joining the Flickr in Seoul group I suggest you come along to the opening, meet some people and enjoy yourself.

To get there

• Address: Gangnam-gu, Cheongdam-dong 88-37, Insung Bldg #101, Seoul 135-954, Korea
• Phone: +82 2 512 6701
• Email: contact@maisonguillaume.com

The closest subway station is Gangnam-Gu station on line number 7.
You can take bus #472 heading north from Gangnam-Gu station.
Look for the large Smoothie King and Burger King, go up the hill and it’s on your left.

The flyer

Many thanks to my sponsors Guillaume, 708 Art and my friends David, Youngdoo, Hyunyo and Mel for their support and advice during this period.

This post has been removed due to its content causing offence.

I apologise for any inconvenience caused.

대한민극 (dae, han-min-gook) is the full name for the Republic of Korea.

War was on the brink, but I guess the world cup came along and quelled everyone’s killing mood, at least until after the tournament. Amazing that, North Korea and the South are both playing in the world cup, at least they’re not in the same group but can you imagine them playing against each other? Whatever the score, I would pack my bags and get ready to leave because one side could be angry enough to do something. Not really though, North Korea will probably get knocked out of the tournament in the first round.

South Korean fans are unbelievably passionate about their team in the world cup. Well actually, Koreans go mental for any sport if a Korean is taking part in it, earlier this year it was Kim Yuna and her ice skating performances (which were excellent, by the way) but now it’s the World Cup. Part of the Korean thing to do is first pick up a red shirt that displays a slogan like “Korea, fighting!” or “We can do it!” or “Go Reds!” or something like that and then go to a public place where they set up these huge TVs to watch the game live on. I unfortunately missed the first game where they played Greece, and I wished I went because as you probably know, Korea won and the atmosphere was suppose to be electrifying. The next game, played just yesterday was a different story. Picking up on the Korean mood, I got the impression most Koreans didn’t really care who their team was playing, once they beat them. Trying to have a conversation about their opponents brought only dismissals and the kind of remarks like “It doesn’t matter, once we win!” but I knew it would be a much tougher game then the first, it’s Argentina for feck sake! I was hoping for a possible draw at the very least, but the 4-1 loss was pretty shocking. I won’t turn this into too much of a football analysis rant, but I will say I thought the Korean side seemed stunned at the level of their opponents, the difference between them and Greece is just huge. During the match I kept noticing that whenever a Korean player got the ball and an Argentinian charged towards him (As they tend to do), the Korean player seemed to panic a little and pass the ball without much care, which led to a lot of repossession by the Argentinians. I just hope that match shakes things up for the Korean team and the fans a bit, that seriously strong sides are out there and they need to play as aggressively as possible and take the chances the Argentinians did (Such as attempting breaks through defence against the odds). So many times, one Argentinian controlled the ball from a tight spot and skipped around 3 or even 4 South Korean players before getting it into striking distance.

So the previous Greek game that caused citywide screams that could easily be heard from almost anywhere were absent, and a kind of dull mediocrity dominated most peoples moods the next day. It seems funny to me, you can see the older Ajooma’s who have no interest in football, looking a little confused as to the strange mood on the packed subway in the morning. Usually on a Friday, everyone looks tired but happy. South Korea’s next game is on Wednesday the 23rd and I’ll definitely be trying to join the atmosphere in a public viewing location in Seoul, I have to experience this buzz before it’s all over.

I made this video a while back but never uploaded it for some reason! It gives you a general idea about what my school looks like and how the students behave. In general, Korea students aren’t that much better behaved then western students; the same things that go on in schools in Ireland go on here too. You can see some of my teachers too, they’re really great, I get on with them so well and they like me a lot too.

The one major thing that’s changed since this video is my desk, it’s no longer here as I was moved to a smaller office across the hall. My new office is much quieter and I’ve a great desk ‘position’, it is a little more boring in there, though.

I know I haven’t been updating much the last while, but I don’t really like writing general updates and short banters, that’s what facebook is for. Also, not that much has been happening recently. But last week, I finally got away from working for a while and got to see and photograph the Buddhist lantern festival, held near Buddha’s birthday on May the 21st. The Buddhists’ are a quiet and humble bunch, really, and you don’t hear from them much during the year normally. Most of the year is spent fighting back crazy Christians who hassle people everyday and make sure no one forgets about their religion, the Buddhists’ just seem to meditate and hide away until this day comes around.

Money and religion can be a bit of a dodgy thing, the Christians here don’t make bones about it — it’s very frank that they pay to join a church and ‘donate’ about 10% of their pay every month to their respecting churches. I wasn’t too sure about the Buddhist temples, but many of them are ancient heritage sites so the government probably supports them to some degree. I learned one new thing about the temples and money around the time of the festival, though. Putting up a message/wish into an overhanging lantern in a temple is actually a significant ‘investment’, I heard prices in the couple of hundred dollars. Then there are the lanterns inside the temple buildings which only hold messages for the deceased relatives. These messages can run into the thousands of dollars. At one temple in the middle of Seoul we saw a sign hung outside saying “Be honest! Don’t lie about the money” or something like that (The Korean translation was weird), the message from another temple warning them not to forget about their Buddhist ideals and accepting money for their own personal gain. Whatever is going on, it’s pretty simple for me — Buddhists go about their own business and don’t bother anyone while many Christians make annoying people an incredibly popular pastime.

I went to the festival with the Flickr in Seoul photo group but we got a rubbish spot in which to shoot; missing many of the better parts of the parade. The parade itself, was also moving rather quickly made getting shots pretty difficult. I shot almost 300 frames of the people passing and the beautiful lanterns, and got less them 10 keepers. Afterwards, though, I kept shooting scenes around the parade and got some good results.

Check out some images I shot from a temple in Seoul and from the parade:

Last year the school’s annual three day trip was cancelled due to the swine flu pandemic. I was looking forward to going on the trip before as it was a good chance to break the ice with the students and have some fun, missing classes for three days is also something I wouldn’t complain about! So this year the chance came around again and the trip was set for three days in April — Monday to Wednesday, and a choice to go with either the new first grade students or the second graders. I wanted to get to know the first year students a little better, especially considering there are probably more better English speakers there then in the second grade. But the first year’s trip destination weren’t going very far, just outside Seoul and not moving around too much making it sound relaxing, if a little boring. The second graders however were heading down pretty far south to a very rural part of Korea called 남원 (Namwon) to see some cultural sites — temples, a castle, a mountain area and the largest steelworks plant in Asia. That tickled my fancy enough to go with the second graders and they signed me up. Funnily enough, they never even asked me at the beginning if I wanted to go, for some reason assuming that I wouldn’t be interested. But they were happy that I was and they made the arrangements quickly to have me come along.

Unfortunately the advantages of going on a trip further away, being able to see places otherwise you may have missed brings one inherit disadvantage, having to sit on a bus for so long. The whole trip was probably more then 50% being on the bus and the rest a mix of rushed site visits, eating and sleeping. I felt like a gleeful tourist the whole time, getting a free trip and seeing some great places, the students on the other hand hated pretty much everything. What can you expect from teenagers though? I never heard so much complaining in my life: “Teacher, my legs hurt”, “Teacher, I’m tired”, “Teacher, I’m bored”, “Teacher, I feel sick”, “Teacher, I hate the bus”, “Teacher, I’m hungry”. I think all that was missing was “Teacher, are we there yet?”. In true Korean ‘balli’ ‘balli’ fashion, as I briefly mentioned above, the visits to the actual sites were really short, maybe about 30 minutes or less at each one. Also the general plan seemed to just let students run loose around the place and not really teach them much. There were tour guides, but it seemed that they didn’t really tell them much besides what time to come back to the bus. I did find it a little strange that we travelled so far to spend such a short amount of time at the locations, but, alas, it was still worth it.

Take a look at some of the photos below, it shows some of the places we went to. I still have to get film developed so I might add more later.

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…

The time has come around again: fake beards, large green hats, face paintings, pots of gold, Guinness and all the usual Irish stereotypes and mythological things we don’t care much about. Who is St. Patrick and what exactly are we celebrating? I even have a hard time answering these questions sometimes when Koreans ask me: “He was a slave, yeah, and trained to be a priest then coming to Ireland and spreading Christianity”. Not that that matters any more as it’s turned into a pretty multicultural secular event. I’m happy enough with that though, and besides all the silliness and stereotyping, it’s a good thing in general for Ireland and Irish people, one day where people have a lot of fun and for such a small nation to get such a big stage. I mean… even in Korea!

The Irish association in Korea organises the event every year and takes up a part of Gwanghwamun in central Seoul. Jayeon and I headed in, meeting a band of enthusiastic Americans on the bus. I was wearing a green Ireland T-shirt but it was too cold to take off my top, so a sliver of green collar is all that showed. We spotted the party from a distance – floats, balloons and westerners taking plenty advantage of the canned Guinness on offer. We got one ourselves and a hasty “Drink Responsibly” stamp inked onto the back of our hands.

There were people, a stage, some stalls selling merchandise and the usual antics. The Irish ambassador in Korea made a series of usual history and culture speeches following by the British ambassador who remarked about this being the first time he was invited, and then the Korean mayor for that part of the city. After that was over, the march took off with a wacky mix of everything and everyone who seemed to want to go along. There was a marching band, a group of Harley biker guys, some cosplayers and furries (huh?), some Korean groups, cute dancing girls and then a bunch of drunks. Pretty authentic, like the gloomy weather that day.

It was great seeing something Irish going on as far away as South Korea, though. I just hope Koreans won’t remember Ireland as just drinking and acting the fool. Oh wait a minute – That’s kinda’ what Ireland is like.