Holy Huh? Korean Cosplay

Last weekend, as we headed towards the convention center hosting the 7th Seoul International Rice Cake Festival, we began to notice some oddly dressed people. For instance:


No, it was not Korean Halloween. Unbeknownst to us, the convention center hosting the Rice Cake festival was also the gathering ground for Korean cosplayers. Cosplay is generally best known as a Japanese phenomenon, in which young people dress up in costumes of varying degrees of elaborateness representing characters from anime, manga, video games, movies, and the like.

When we got there, the costumes became even more epic, from the girly...


...to the martial......to the classic....



to the "would-be-arrested-wearing-this-in-the-USA."

And then of course, to the "Holy huh?"



If anybody knows any of these costumes, I'd love to hear who they are representing.

We debated the ethics of posting these pictures without having spoken to the individuals but decided to do it because a) it was a public street b) it was too good not to post and c) if we post a picture of you wearing a cow suit on a ski slope, why not a picture of you wearing a chicken suit on a bridge?

Honestly, they looked like they were having a lot of fun, and there are much less wholesome things for teenagers to be up to on a Sunday morning. Still, an unusual thing to run into when you're just looking for some rice cakes.

Oh, the Korea. You never know what's coming next!

Swine Flu Update: Korea

According to the Korea Herald (watch out--that site's a popup monster), there have been three cases of swine flu in South Korea so far, all with clear ties to the first case in Korea, a missionary who had just returned from Mexico.

As you can imagine, the response here has been entirely level-headed.

Honestly, we've already seen:

1. A parent pull her child out of a school trip to China because of the swine flu. (Current reported cases in Korea: 3-4. Current reported cases in China: 0.)

2. A temporary ban on all pork products from the US or Mexico. (It's not possible to catch the bug from cooked meat.)

3. No fewer than four students, with no direct or indirect connection to any of the infected, who have asked me if their typical spring allergy symptoms were a sign of swine flu.

I've sent them to doihavpigflu.com (via BoingBoing) to "check their symptoms," then seized the teachable moment to explain how and why the media blow everything out of proportion.

Google vs. South Korea

Check out this article (via Slate's The Big Money) on Google kowtowing to South Korean net police.

The ROK just started enforcing a new law requiring all websites with more than 100,000 members to store detailed ID confirmations for use in future investigations of "misconduct" (do be defined, of course, by the authorities). In effect, this means anonymous posting of any sort has been banned.

Of course, any mention of this new law has been scrubbed from English-language media in South Korea. It's still unclear whether or not this will have a similar effect on Blogger. (Google has basically shut down YouTube in South Korea--you can view videos, but you can't post comments, post new videos, or even, in some cases, log into an account to create playlists.)

Democracies that Censor the Internet: ROK

This article in Foreign Policy lists five democratic countries that censor web content--and South Korea is among them.

As described in the article, the South Korean web censorship mechanisms are mostly directed at blocking any and all propaganda from the North, though ISPs carry out a lot of protect-the-children censorship. Of course, like most censorship programs, South Korea's casts a much wider net than necessary--CareerBuilder.com, for example, seems to be blocked in the ROK.

Given such strange cases, I can't help but wonder how many "accidentally" blocked or crippled sites simply have powerful domestic competitors here? I'm looking at you, Naver! Fastest web portal in Seoul!

Give me a break, gimme a break . . .

. . . break me off a piece of that KicKer Bar!
Don't know what they did with all that money they saved on brand development . . . they sure as heck didn't spent it on taste.

(E-mail subscribers: click through to the blog if you can't see the photos.)

Karma Chameleon: Hot Water and Internet

As you probably read in the previous post, Nana and I have been without hot water in our bathroom since getting back from winter break. Wednesday evening, our old-school ordeal finally ended when Josephine, our absolute savior of an administrative assistant, sent a boiler repair guy out to our apartment, then kept him on the phone through his entire visit so as to ensure he didn't just cut and run when the going got tough (as many an ajeoshi has done in the face of our farcical luck). This made for a pretty late night for Josephine, and left us forever in her debt.

Then, with our two weeks of cold showers ended in an unexpectedly painless fashion . . . our router failed, so we've been without internet for two days. I told Jo it felt like I was one of those cartoon characters trying to shore up a leaky dam--stop the flood in one place and it starts shooting out somewhere else.

Anyway, for now, we're back online and in touch with a new router from E-Mart--a router whose wireless function seems to, well, function this time. So anyone who's been trying to get in touch with us the last couple days, sorry if we haven't replied!

Fan Death: Koreans Aren't the Only Ones

Korean fan death gets a shout-out in this humorous editorial by Joel Stein on American hysteria over nut allergies. Just goes to show that, when it comes to medical mass delusion, South Koreans aren't alone.

Editor's Note (by which I mean, um, my note, in an attempt to head off the inevitable nut-allergy horror stories): Yes, I know, nut allergies exist, and severe nut allergies can be deadly. But: 1) nut allergies are fairly rare, and severe nut allergies are incredibly rare, and 2) the draconian measures taken to safeguard supposedly-allergic children are, in my humble opinion, every bit as absurd as doctors telling you not to sleep with the fan on.

North Korean Discipline

Here's to wasting no time making that previous post a lie:

A funny little article from Weird Asia News (site N-quite-SFW; article below is) about how, in a North Korean prison camp, "the punishment is always death." The list of camp rules reads like a joke. Here are the first five:

1. Do not attempt to escape. The punishment is death.

2. Never gather in groups of over three people or move around without the guard’s authorization. The punishment for unauthorized movement is death.

3. Do not steal. If one steals or possesses weapons, the punishment is death. The punishment for failure to report the theft or possession of weapons is death.

4. Obey your guards. If one rebels or hits a guard, the punishment is death.

5. If you see outsiders, or suspicious-looking people, report them immediately. The punishment for abetting in the hiding of outsiders is death.

You can read the rest here.

Nana Drinks Weird Stuff For Your Entertainment: McCol

It's McDonald's! It's Coca-Cola! If they sold it in Starbucks, it would be every imperialist's dream beverage!


Except not.

It is very hard to describe this taste, except to say that it is not good. After taking my obligatory swig, I poured the rest of it down the sink. Justin thinks it smells like tuna and tastes like barbecue sauce. I can be a bit more specific.

In Korea, they have a barley tea (pictured at left). If you mixed it with Pepsi/Coke, that's what McCol would taste like.


In fact, that's probably what it is. "Maek," in Korean, means barley - "Maek-ju," or "barley alcohol," is the Korean word for "beer." So "McCol" is actually "Maek-Col," or "Barley Cola." Hence, in retrospect, the picture of the stalk of barley on the can.

Mediocre Korean skills FTW!

I've seen the best minds of my generation . . .

. . . well, not exactly starving hysterical naked (she's calmly eating a corndog), and I doubt the whole "best minds" thing . . . but destroyed by madness--she's got that one covered.

Why else would any sane teenager be wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt with the cover of Allen Ginsburg's Howl and Other Poems on the back? Bonus: it's the exact same edition of Ginsberg I have sitting on my desk right now.

They put the strangest stuff on T-shirts in this country.

Everland, Take Two

For the second year in a row, APIS dodged the whole Halloween question by packing the students off to Everland--you can read our general impressions of the place here.

And you can see our general impression of the food in the images below.


Mmmm, buttered chewy corn on a stick.
Tastes like home!

Anyway--Everland. The overall feeling one gets from a visit to Everland is something like, "I'm trying to be Disneyland and failing miserably, but in the process coming up with something quirky and fun."

Take, for instance, the Hurricaine, a combination rotor-pirate-ship that's the first ride you see upon entering the park (after a good kilometer of gift shops, that is--they got that part of the Disney experience right!).
Yes, that's the Epcot Center in the middle. The Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building are on the left, naturally, with the Statue of Liberty nearby.
What's more, in the middle of a hurricaine so powerful that it blew the Epcot globe all the way to Manhattan, while cloning the Empite State Building through sheer force of awesome (yes, that's the Empire State Building behind Lady Liberty), we happy-go-lucky Americans are all dressed up like 80s Eurotrash and/or colorful turn-of-the-last-century circus clowns, dancing in the streets.

I'm especially fond of the androgynous fellow in the yellow sailor-suit-raincoat, who is apparently holding onto his hat and his leg, just in case either should start to blow away.Also, this guy. I think I knew him in college. And wish I hadn't. I'm also impressed by the fact that you can see he hasn't shaved for days. This is the worst storm in history, people. He may have time to don his best turqouise suit and flail around on the docks like a fish, but shave? Please.

Just around the corner from the Hurricaine is a charming little 1950s-nostalgia street. (American 1950s, that is--the 1950s in Korea didn't offer a lot to get nostalgic about . . .) The street is lined with old magazine covers and ads, most of them benign, like this one:
Others, I suspect, would not quite make the Disney cut.Finally, in another Disneyesque move, Everland as a whole tries to project a vaguely European feel. This is evident from the moment you set foot in the parking lot, at the edge of which the park has erected a giant wooden block clumsily painted with what, I think, is supposed to be an Italian hill town.

The theme continues in Alpine Village, ironically located at the lowest elevation in the park.


Yes, Herr Kessler, I can read the sign below. My German hasn't vanished yet!
Of course, they don't seem to care where it is in Europe, as long as it's European, and in this case, vaguely Alpine.
Here, for example, it seems the same monster storm that blew Epcot to Manhattan deposited the Jungfrau at Chamonix. Impressive.


The Alpine Village also included a halfhearted Korean attempt at German food, which was slightly troubling.
Though if I hadn't been on the clock, I might have been tempted to try the beer.

Stay tuned for a glimpse of Everland's wacky little zoo . . .

Bob Harris (via BoingBoing) on the DMZ

BoingBoing, one of my favorite websites, just posted a photo-essay by Bob Harris on his recent trip to the DMZ, the empty strip of land separating North Korea from South Korea. Nana and I have been wanting to take said trip for some time now, but work keeps getting in the way.

Check it out: Link.

Foundation Day Excursion: Herb Island

A few Fridays ago was Foundation Day here in Korea--a national holiday celebrating the mythical foundation of Korea by the god-king Tan'gun in 2333 BC. This mythical foundation story is also part of the central creation story of Taejong-gyo, a particular breed of Korean shamanism, and the Foundation Day holiday is celebrated as a religious feast by those who still practice this ancient religion today.

But for most folks these days, Foundation Day is an excuse to get out of the city for a little while during one of the most pleasant seasons of the year. Our Foundation Day excursion brought us to Herb Island, about 40km northeast of town.

Herb Island
Herb Island defies description. In theory, it's a botanical garden devoted (you guessed it) to herbs, and that reason alone makes it one of the nicest-smelling spots within an hour's drive of Seoul. In reality--well, Nana described it best as a sprawling Cracker Barrel, in Engrish.

At first, the afternoon started out just about as normally as an afternoon can in Korea, in a little hilltop cafe, with an "herb pizza" (actually quite good) and a "beauty tea."
You'll have to tell me if it made me more beautiful.
After lunch, we perused one of the greenhouses and a few of the herb-themed shops. The Herb Bakery was a bit of a disappointment (for some reason, people here can't seem to make bread without sugar on top), and while the herb candy (below--the sign says "eucalyptus") was good, it was also ridiculously marked up.
From there, though, the afternoon took a nosedive into the weird. First, we stumbled upon this unexplained--nay, inexplicable--life-sized witch.
Then, we lost thirty minutes wandering through a labyrinth of country kitsch . . .
. . . which, for whatever reason, included an impressive collection of antique or antique-looking phones, scattered throughout the grounds.



Needless to say, most of these were for sale.

The weirdness escalated when we found, tucked away on a big deck at the back of the complex, a row of little pavilions with top-down, 3D dioramas built into the walls.
Bathtime, anyone?
Hands-down, though, the weirdest sight of the afternoon was this hanging blue Santa twisting, lifeless, in the wind. In front of a 15-foot man-made waterfall, of course.
Which even the statuary found a little perplexing.
"Oh, please."

We capped the day off, naturally enough, with Herb Island's mascot--a giant, anthropomorphic persimmon.
I never thought I'd see the day when a five-foot fruit was more shocked to see me than I it. Yes, that persimmon is covering its mouth in surprise.

On the Relative Merits of Xenophobia

At least we don't have to worry about drinking any Chinese milk here in the Korea. Of course, we can't get real cheese, unsweetened potato chips, or good old-fashioned American beef--but at least the Korean market's violent fear of foreign foodstuffs has gotten something right: don't import anything edible from China. (Though I can say from experience that appliances, by deceptively German-sounding Haier, are quite alright.)

Food for Thought: Korean Emoticons

Koreans, like most East Asians, use very different emoticons from the ones Americans use. In the US, we're familiar with the horizontal emoticons:

:-)
:-(
:-/
:-0

With these emoticons, emotion is expressed mostly with the mouth, though there are a few exceptions, like >:-).

Korean emoticons are vertical:

^_^ happy
\_/ angry/evil
-_- sighing
^_^" nervous (that's a sweat drop)
<_> sad
=^_^= blushing

Also, as you may have noticed, the mouth doesn't really change--instead, emotion is expressed with the eyes or with other features.

Now, none of this is really news to the East Asiaphiles of the world. However, just the other day, I saw a really interesting usage that set my amateur linguist brain aflame. At the end of a very happy/thankful e-mail, an acquaintance wrote:

^__________________^

Upon further inquiry I learned that, in some circles, the length of the mouth can be used to indicate the strength of the emotion being conveyed (not, mind you, the fatness of the face conveying it). I guess the idea is that, the more characters you type, the more time/effort you spend? Any thoughts, intarwebs? (By which I probably mean Leslie.)

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

A philosophical question:

At what point does kimchi become rotten kimchi, and cease being just kimchi? Seeing as the main ingredient of kimchi is rotten (okay, "fermented") cabbage to begin with.

I say it's sometime between the moment it falls into the food trap in the kitchen sink, and three weeks later, when the new tenants of your apartment find it (and promptly drown it with bleach).

In other news, starting tomorrow, Nana and I will be in China through the 28th, when you can expect a few rushed China posts before we hie on to Halifax.

Moving Right Along

Here I am reporting to you LIVE from our new apartment in Wolgye-dong (our former dong was Jungye-dong. And now I have "A Whole New Dong" from Aladdin stuck in my head. Thanks a lot).

Our moving odyssey commenced last week, as we received the prized new keys on Friday.

Saturday's highlights:

After finishing up at the school, Dr. Kim took us to a used furniture store to buy a new couch for this place. Our last one felt kind of like sitting on a faux-leather wrapped concrete stoop. We got a really nice squishy floral print jobby and Dr. Kim, ever generous, also threw in a cherry-red leather chaise that Justin can stretch his knee out on after a long day on his feet. Dr. Kim did all the haggling for us and then lent us his truck for some schlepping. Plus, the school picked up the tab, since the furniture will stay in the APIS family after we go. Dr. Kim is a hero.

I had to stick around here while the air conditioning man installed the AC unit (wrongly, we suspect) and the used-furniture people delivered the couches and our new wardrobes (no closets here, unlike Brownstone). I passed time by scraping scum out of the kitchen cabinets with a pie server and spraying down the mildewy bathroom. Don't get me wrong - I like this new apartment. The neighborhood is much closer to the school and the layout is cozier. But I do not have a particularly high opinion of whoever lived here last, nor of the cleaning ladies who did the place on Friday. Sweeping is good, but it's not cleaning. I've set out trays of baking soda in two of the cupboards and two trays in the bathroom alone, which today I've also sprayed down with bleach (hence any incoherence in this post).

While I was here, Justin was off nearly getting arrested. In Dr. Kim's truck. In our boss's truck. Attaboy, Justin!

As Justin tried to leave the parking garage, the garage ajeoshi ("aa-juh-shee," means "old guy") started yelling at him in Korean and gesturing in a way that seemed to indicate that Justin was not allowed to have parked there. This is clearly not the case, as we've parked there in a different borrowed car before - it's a pay garage. He kept shouting and gesturing and called over somebody in a police-style uniform (could also have been some form of building security) to back him up, so Justin called Paul, our trusty Korean-speaking school administrator. Then, an ajeoshi from upstairs who recognized Justin from our regular comings and goings of the past year, came down and started yelling at Garage Ajeoshi, which was apparently a good thing because it culminated in Justin being released.

What we suspect happened based on info from Paul was that the ajeoshi, upon seeing a whitey in an American truck, spotted the chance for a shakedown. Unfortunately, he did not bank on Justin being a dumb whitey who did not understand that he was being shaken down. Instead of producing extra money, Justin attempted to clarify the situation. The presence of the uniform, perhaps intended to turn up the heat, instead made attempted bribery about the last thing Justin wanted to do. Silly whitey!

After that misadventure, we returned the car and spent yesterday working our backsides off moving via Korean taxis, which, fortunately, are dirt-cheap over short distances. The five-minute ride from our old digs to our new ones usually costs between $2 and $3. We worked all day and took four loads back and forth, unpacking and repacking the roller bags at each end, leaving our old Brownstone apartment covered in unused cardboard boxes and plastic packaging which you can't throw away here but you also can't recycle until recycling day, which is Saturday. So we were looking stuck.

Every week, in addition to Recycling Saturday, Brownstone celebrates what we call "Random Recycling Day," a day other than Saturday in which the recycling ajeoshis (that's your new vocab word for today, in case you haven't noticed) show up with the truck and you can bring things down. Random Recycling Day occurs on no perceptible pattern - perhaps it is a lunar calendar? - and is just as likely to happen on Wednesday, Thursday, Tuesday, or Friday as the Monday we desperately needed it to be.

But lo, the gods were with us! We cracked the curtain this morning and the recycling team was there. Perhaps this was some form of cosmic repentance for the whole parking-shakedown thing.

Then the professional movers arrived, and let me tell you, these guys are PROFESSIONAL. First of all, they looked genuinely distressed that we had packed our own possessions into cardboard boxes. We thought we might have to unpack it all for insurance reasons (they can't insure anything we packed) but since it was all nonbreakable, they were willing to move as-is.

These two guys went through our apartment like the Red Army through Berlin. You name it, they packed it. They dismantled the bed and boxed the bed linen. They took down all four sets of curtains for us, including un-drilling (word?) the curtain rod and manually unhooking the curtain from its rings. One guy managed to carry out the bookcase all by himself by standing against the skinny tall side and tilting the bookcase over onto his back. It was unreal.

And then came the even MORE amazing part. It's not inconceivable that movers would dismantle the bed, and it's logical (although not guaranteed) that they'd reassemble it at the new apartment. But have you ever heard of movers making the bed? And those curtains that they took down for us? Well, they re-hung them for us over here. Seriously. Part movers, part interior decorators.

And the funniest thing was how they seemed to think that I, as a girl, shouldn't be doing anything. When they saw me pick up a bookcase and start to move it across the kitchen, they both lunged at it, horrified, and tried to take it away from me. I'm twenty-four and five-six, and although I'm no linebacker, they're not that big, either. I just kept wondering what they would have thought if they'd seen the stuff I moved yesterday. Like, you know, the thirty-five inch computer monitor. Or the refrigerator. Stuff like that.

Well, I didn't argue with them. I respect people's culture, and if people's culture tells me to sit on my butt while other people move heavy objects, well, that's the culture for me! Also, after yesterday's refrigerator extravaganza, I feel like my whole body has been worked over by a meat tenderizer. So maybe they have a point.

Anyway, Korean movers = success, especially because we didn't have to pay for them. Dr. Kim got Brownstone to pay for the movers because technically they broke our lease - we had to move because they wanted to sell our apartment. Have I mentioned that Dr. Kim is a hero?

You know what else is a success? KT internet! We blogged about our early internet woes (here, for instance, or here) last fall, which was on a different provider, Qrix (or something like that). We switched to KT last year and had excellent service with no disruptions all spring. Unfortunately, we were unable to communicate to the installer that we wanted all of the room ethernet ports turned on, so we were forced to snake fifty-foot cables through the apartment, duct-taping them to the floor, to have service in the offices.

Today, internet timetable is as follows:

11:00 AM: Service in Brownstone apartment.
11:00 AM-12:00 PM: Computers in transit to Benest apartment in Wolgye
12:30 PM: Installer arrives at Benest apartment.
12:45 PM: Service in main room of Benest apartment. Installer requested to activate other ports. Server leaves to find assistant.
1:10 PM: Assistant arrives and tinkers.
1:30 PM: Internet service in all rooms.

Coming from the US East Coast, which is under the fascist jackboot of Comcast (caution, link has music), this is as mindboggling to me as movers who hang curtains. Way to go, the Korea!

Here we go, Nutters, here we go!

On our way to the bus stop Friday morning, Nana and I discovered what was perhaps the crowning achievement of Engrish culture: a cheap white t-shirt with a Steelers helmet on it that read, no joke, "Peanutsburg Nutters, Football Champions." Also, instead of the tiny "Steelers" stencil next to the hypocycloids was scrawled "Amonde" (Konglish for "almond").

Looks to me like someone here hired a Browns fan with a strange sense of humor.

Note: Did you know that the humor website Engrish.com is apparently blocked here in Korea? Very strange what gets blocked around here.