jonnyontheroad

Sites That Pay for Your Travel Writing

2011-11-08T16:28:00.002+09:00

So, you think you're a writer, huh? Well, now, isn't that cute. Let me give you some advice.

Stop it.

Get out.

You're wasting your time. Let me break it down for you: travel writing is dead.

Still here? Are you insane?! No one wants to read your writing, let alone publish it, NOT TO MENTION even pay you for it!!

Still here? Good. Because all that shit I said earlier is exactly that: Bullshit. Anyone who's scared off that easily doesn't deserve the info.

Sure, the publishing industry has fallen on hard times lately. Newspapers are throwing themselves off the ledge as fast as they can. Nobody buys magazines anymore.

But travel writing dead?? I think not. Sure, the marketplace for writing is changing. Competition for limited print space is fierce. But in a lot of ways, especially in emerging literary markets, it's getting even easier to break into. Not only do people WANT to read new, fresh travel stories, they want to publish them.

And they want to publish them SO MUCH, that they'll pay you to write them!

Here is a running list of publications (online and in print) that want to pay you to write for them!

(Just do me a favor: Read their submission guidelines; search their website; get to know the publication before you start bugging the editors.)

Worldwide

2Camels

A fan of festivals? So are 2camels.com.

"From downing a stein at Oktoberfest to cheese rolling in Gloucestershire to dancing in the streets in Berlin, our aim is to provide the travellers' perspective, warts and all."

Don't forget to include logistical info about where to stay and how to get there. Just make sure to spice up the experience. And keep it timeless - the kind of thing party-goers can expect year-after-year.

Not so much an, "I went here and saw this then had an egg sandwich" type experience. More a, "I was swept up in a crowd of ten thousand revelers, horns blew and champagne flowed" kinda thing, with a touch of history and culture added to the mix.

The spin: All things festival!
The contact: Paul Dodson. editor@2camels.com. Just follow these guidelines.
The pay: 20USD per article.
The length: 500-1,000 words. (Accompanying photos are welcome.)

BootsnAll

What started out as a group of American and Aussie friends traveling around the world in the '90s has become of the largest independent travel guides on the web.

BootsnAll is looking for articles with wide appeal. They publish Features (1,200-1,600 words), Photo Feature Articles (50-100 words/photo), Expert Travel Articles (1,200+ words), and Travel Essays (600-3,000 words)

Stay up to date with their Editorial Calendar for new pitch ideas!

BootsnAll owns all future rights to the articles they pay for. If you want to keep the rights to your article (but don't care so much about getting paid), you can submit a guest post.

The spin: Independent travel, anywhere!
The contact: Katie Hammel. Fill out the form here. (Katie does read all submissions.)
The pay: 20-50USD, depending on article type.
The length: see above

Read an interview with editor Katie Hammel here about what BootsnAll is looking for in freelance pitches!

Matador Network

Matador is to independent travel what Richard Branson is to flying. Sexy. Oh, and they are out to make it accessible to everyone.

With 12 blogs covering everything from travel videos to sports to the philosophy of the "inner journey", Matador has skyrocketed to the top of the travel blog world since its launch in 2006.

The blogs:

The Traveler’s Notebook – Travel writing, photography and expert travel tips

Matador Abroad – Study abroad, languages and cultural immersion

Matador Change – Voluntourism, sustainability and global development

Matador Life – Voluntourism, sustainability and global development

Matador Trips – Adventure travel off the beaten track

Matador Nights – Nightlife, events and the arts

Matador Goods – Travel gear, clothing, gadgets

Matador Pulse – Travel news from around the world

Matador Sports – How do you play around the world?

Matador TV – Filtering the best travel videos on web.

Matador Travel – Our vibrant and growing social network with over 10,000 active user

Brave New Traveler – Spiritual travel in the 21st Century

Join the community, get involved, do your research, and submit an article on the contributors' page.

The spin: Each blog has its own.

The contact: Each blog has a different editor. Upload your article here.

The pay: 25-60USD via Paypal

The readers: 1,092,756 a month!

Transitions Abroad
One of the longest-running go-to sites for all things cultural immersion (since 1977!), transitionsabroad.com publishes practical advice on moving to and studying, living, working, and volunteering around the globe. Don't be put off by the austerity of the website's design (which looks like it was built at the internet's inception) - they get upwards of 8 million visitors a year. And they are one of the best-paying sites for new travel writers anywhere on the web.

Current Needs! Articles on:

Working Abroad
Studying and Student Travel Abroad
Living abroad & long-term travel
Cultural immersion travel

The spin: Immerse yourself! But be practical about it. Work, study, and low-cost travel.
The contact: Dr. Joanna Hubbs. webeditorial@transitionsabroad.com
The pay: 50-150USD per article, depending on projected popularity.
The details: Review submission requirements here.

Gadling
Though not so independent (it's an AOL blog), Gadling's still got a sense of humor and a youthful edge.

"Covering fun, interesting, and relevant travel, Gadling is the premiere source for everything from general travel news to highly specific travel tips, from budget travel to adventure travel -- and for everything in between."

The spin: Um, travel? There's not much they don't cover.
The contact: Grant Martin. editor@gadling.com.
The pay: 25USD per post.

World Hum

Practical isn't the most important at World Hum, where the journey is the story and the story is the destination.

"Who are we? We’re storytellers of all kinds, from world renown authors and adventure photographers to videographers and bloggers on the backpacker circuit. What all of our contributors share is a passion for travel—and a talent for telling great travel stories."

World Hum has several options for writing submissions:

Travel Stories are first-person travel narratives.
Speaker’s Corner essays feature rants or raves about any travel-related subject.
Travel Interviews are interviews with travelers, writers, artists—anyone with something interesting to say about travel.
Lists explore a wide range of travel-related topics.
Audio slideshows explore travel through photographs, sound and narration.

The spin: Tell a great story
The contact: Eva Holland, Senior Editor. dispatches@worldhum.com.
The pay: Send a submission for specific payment info.

Unanchor.com

You remember that time when you read that awesome travel narrative about the guy who went canoeing down the Zambezi and ended up being the best man in a tribal African wedding? Ever wished you could steal someone else's travel itinerary? Now you can...well...buy one.

Unanchor.com needs travel writers to create 1- to 3-day city-specific itineraries for those, well, less-than-inspired tourists among us. Fortunately, access to elaborate indigenous ceremonies is not necessary. They're looking for itineraries that include destination specifics, maps and logistical information, and insider insight into the places on your list.

The spin: Exhaustive self-guided itineraries
The process: Fill out an Itinerary Writer Application here.
The pay: 100USD advance upon acceptance of itinerary, plus 75% of your itinerary's revenue.

Wanderlust
According to famed travel writer Bill Bryson, "There simply isn't a better magazine for the serious traveller." Though Mr. Bryson himself never really was very serious...

Wanderlust has been around since 1993 (in print), dishing up travel news, advice, contests, and more to like-minded individuals sick with the travel bug.

Wanderlust includes various features open to submissions:

Destination features – Covering a specific destination – a country or a region – or an activity, eg, horseriding in Chile, walking in Morocco. Should be both anecdotal and informative, written in the first person and in the past tense, and between 1,800-2,200 words.
Dispatches – Shorter, topical pieces (700-1200 words) describing a recent development in a destination of interest to our readers. Examples include an eyewitness account of a royal wedding in Uganda, a new walking trail in the Middle East, and slum tourism in Mumbai.
You did what? – A single page in the front of the magazine describing a truly outlandish adventure. Recent examples include being kidnapped off Colombia, rowing across the English Channel in a bath, and sleeping on every Scottish island. First person, 300-400 words.
Special-interest features – Do you have specialist knowledge on a travel-relevant subject? Topics covered to date include safaris, cycling holidays, New Zealand walks, family adventure trips. Must be authoritative – authors should have in-depth and regional or global knowledge.
Consumer articles – A practical guide of value to travellers. Explain how people can save money, or make their travels better and easier. The style should be direct and instructive, but easy to read and understand. Recent articles have included: finding cheap flights online; road safety abroad; making better travel videos

Visit their writers page for more details.

The spin: passion for travel
The contact: Dan Linstead, Editor. submissions@wanderlust.co.uk (read writers page for details)
The pay: 90-220 pounds The reader: Diverse; from 25- to 35-year-old single people seeking activity-based adventure holidays to mature, empty-nesters looking for soft-adventure and cultural experiences.

The Expeditioner
Some recent popular articles on theexpeditioner.com: "How to Last a Weekend in London for Under 100 Pounds", "An Insider's Guide to the Top 10 Destinations in Asia", "What's the Longest Non-stop Flight in the World?", "Top 8 Free Things to Do in NYC This December".

The spin: Travelers - not tourists
The contact: Matt Stabile. matt.stabile@theexpeditioner.com
The pay: 30USD per article
The length: 1,000-1,300 word narratives

Regional

Action Asia

For those of you with a heart for adventure of a physical nature, "bikes and hikes not buses and trains", take a look at Action Asia. Just make sure you've got photos to back up an edgy article - they rarely buy anything without the combo factor.

Areas of interest (in order of reader ranking):

Hiking / trekking, Diving, Mountain biking, Ecology / nature watching, Photography, Climbing, Surfing

They also have yearly special issues with a particular focus:

May/June - Biking Special

Sept/Oct - Great Gear Guide

July/Aug - Action Diver (Exhaustive country-by-country SCUBA dive guide)

Action Asia has been in publication since 1992.

The spin: Adventure sports in Asian countries (including Australia, NZ, and the Middle East).
The contact: Steve White, ed-in-chief. aa@bluincmedia.com.
The pay: 100USD per page for photos and words.
The readership: 25-49 year-old college grads. ~150,000 annually.

I'll keep posting more here as I find them. If you know of any I missed, please let me know in the comments!

Sleeping at Incheon Airport

2011-11-08T08:00:00.000+09:00

If you've ever glanced out the window flying into Incheon Airport (ICN) before, you might have noticed that it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It is, in fact, on its own island. It takes at least an hour to travel to Seoul Station, and that's not even accounting for traffic.

If you have an early morning flight out of ICN - or a late-night arrival - you're probably on the hunt for accommodation close-by. And if you're on a tight schedule (and a budget!) there's no better bet for a quick night's sleep than the airport's own sauna and lounge.

Spa on Air

For a mere 20,000 won (about 18USD) you can shower, soak, and sleep for the night in one of Korea's classiest sauna establishments.

[Note: if you don't want to spend the night, make sure you get to SOA before 8pm, when the price is only 15,000 won.]

Spa on Air is one of the most expensive saunas I've been to in Korea, but it's also one of the most regal. The individual semi-private showers with waterfall showerheads are a nice treat, and the all-granite interior lends a quiet elegance to the place.

SOA features gender-segregated bathhouses with hot and cold pools, dry and wet heat (steam) rooms, and individual shower stalls with frosted glass.

After winding down, throw on shorts and a t-shirt (provided) and head into the lounge area where couches, lounge chairs or floor mats are available to crash on.

If you want more privacy (or are a loud and chronic snorer!) you can book a private sleeping room for an extra 15,000 won (35,000 total).

Family room (extra bedding available)

If you're traveling in a group, you can book one of two family rooms for 40,000 won (per 12 hours). Each room sleeps up to 5 people.

[Note: This is in addition to the admission cost per person to the sauna.]

The best part: it's actually INSIDE of the airport!

[Spa on Air is located on the East side of the basement (B1) in the Main Terminal, past Cold Stone Creamery and Starbucks.]

To make a reservation for a private room, or for more information, call Spa on Air at 032-743-7042. (For international calls dial +8232-743-7042.)

If you're in the market for a bit more luxury, there are a few hotels and guest-houses nearby ICN, and some of them are actually reasonably priced:

Best Western Premier Incheon Airport (from 115,000 won)
Hyatt Regency Incheon Airport (from 200,000 won)
Incheon Airport Guesthouse (from 50,000 won)
...and a bit further away:
Oceanside Hotel (from 90,000 won)

2011-11-02T08:49:00.000+09:00

I finally finished the first episode of a mini-series I've been working on since early this year. It's about foreigners living in Korea with unusual superpowers.

The first episode, entitled "The Gauntlet", is an introduction to what the characters must go through in order to get their powers.

Free TESOL Training Course

2011-09-28T11:25:00.002+09:00

EFLClassroom has put up a Free self-guided TESOL Training course developed by the US Department of Education and the University of Oregon.

It's an open-source course featuring videos from classrooms all over the world. Unfortunately it's not accredited, but if you're just looking for some work-related self-improvement, then it's a great resource (did I mention FREE?) for you.

Check out the course here.

Butchering sharks

2011-09-17T20:43:00.000+09:00

At Jukdo market in Pohang, South Korea.

2011-08-18T15:42:00.001+09:00

I've been MIA for a while, on a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat. It was fantastic, and exactly what I needed, but I don't have the time or the energy to go into a description of it now. Instead, you can read my description of the retreat I did 5 years ago in Kenya here.

For more information on Vipassana, including retreats nearby you (you'd be surprised), visit the website:

Vipassana Meditation

Pohang Fireworks Festival 2011

2011-07-28T13:23:00.006+09:00

International Fireworks Competition 2011 - Program (English)

This is the program for the Saturday night show (7/30) at Bukbu Beach. It kicks off at 8:30pm, so get there super early if you want to sit in the sand.

Pohang Fireworks Festival schedule (Korean)

There are also fireworks on Thursday (Bukbu Beach) and Friday (Hyeongsan River Park - next to the POSCO bridge), as well as other festival activities all weekend.

Here's a map with locations of the events.

Here's a map of the Saturday night fireworks location with parking lots marked.

Where's Waldo? Korean poetry.

2011-07-28T13:02:00.003+09:00

A beautiful Korean poem, and obviously an ode to "Where's Waldo?"

내 눈엔...
너 만 보인다는말...
난...거짓말이라고 생각해...
내눈엔 많은 사람들이 보여..
그 치만..그 많은 사람들 중에서
" 너만을 찾게돼..."

In my eyes
To say that you're the only one I see
Is a lie in my mind
In my eyes, I see a lot of people
But among all of those people
I search only for you

FBI Background check for Korean visa

2011-07-13T13:57:00.004+09:00

The Waygook Effect has an excellent step-by-step guide (for Americans) to getting an FBI background check (with a Department of State Federal Apostille) for renewing an E-2 visa to teach English in Korea.

Check it out here.

Where the sun doesn't shine

2011-07-12T16:38:00.004+09:00

My Korean-English phone dictionary often makes me chuckle, with humorous definitions or odd word choices. It makes me wonder who wrote the examples, and whether they knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote them.

Here are two excellent entries that I stumbled upon recently. I'm still trying to find a good way to work them into my daily routines.

1. 지우다 (ji-oo-da): have a miscarriage; have an abortion; commit feticide; cause [induce] abortion.

그녀는 그의 아이를 가졌으나 지웠다 She received the dear pledge of his love, but she had it aborted.

2. 항문 (hang-moon): the anus; the back passage; the fundament. where the sun doesn't shine.

(I can't even begin to describe why I was looking this up.)

I think the lesson here is this: If you want to avoid an abortion, you should only receive the dear pledge of someone's love where the sun doesn't shine.

Supergook

2011-06-29T10:48:00.000+09:00

I've been working on a movie with some people in Pohang, and after about six months of filming and trying to get footage from the different cameras onto my computer, I managed to wrestle out a preview of the first episode.

The actual episode will be coming shortly (hold your breath!).

UPDATE Nov '11: You can watch Episode 1 of Supergook here: http://vimeo.com/31436139

In Support of Public Intoxication

2011-06-18T23:13:00.000+09:00

Drinking is a big part of Korean culture - that's not news. Drinking is heavily encouraged almost everywhere.

Public intoxication is not a crime here (or if it is, it is never enforced). It's not uncommon to see grown men passed out in parks or on the sidewalk. Hiking groups carry soju and beer with them on the hike to drink along the way. Beer is sold on trains and in bus stations for the ride.

Perhaps one of the most transparent endorsements of public drinking is the attitudes of convenience store owners. They keep corkscrews and bottle openers behind the counter, so you don't have to wait until you get home to enjoy your adult beverage. You can drink it on your way out the door.

Motorcycle

2011-06-12T13:12:00.001+09:00

I bought a motorcycle. 400,000 won (~400 USD). It's awesome.

Mudfest T-shirt

2011-06-09T16:00:00.000+09:00

Tired of shitty Korean festival T-shirts?

Get a Mudfest Shirt.

Korean Flight Attendants

2011-06-08T09:34:00.000+09:00

In the US back in the mid-20th century, and up into the 90's, flight attendants possessed a certain mystique. Airlines flaunted their stewardesses like bikini models, bringing sex appeal into the air in a way that would change airline travel forever. Well, until the 2000's, anyway, when some airlines (*cough* Delta *cough*) started hiring average-looking people (and men) to vend microwave meals along their aisles. American flight attendants have lost the allure they once possessed.

In Korea, however, where discrimination based on appearance is smiled upon, the attraction is still alive and well. Young Korean girls dream of growing tall enough and pretty enough to fly the skies with Korean Air. Their beauty, grace, and impeccable grooming is internationally renowned, as it is for many Asian carriers.

Several universities in Korea actually offer a "flight attendant" major, where (girl only!) students can practice their manners, dress and geography skills to perfection.

At Uiduk university, the freshmen are required to stand by the front entrance at times, in their standard student uniforms, to greet every car and/or pedestrian that enters the campus.

Mud Festival: Keep your Shirt On

2011-06-08T09:16:00.000+09:00

I went out to Boryeong over the weekend with a couple of friends to make arrangements for the Boryeong Mud Festival trip in July.

Along the beach the city council had posted entries in a photo contest from last year's mud festival. There were probably three dozen photos in total, and all of them were quite good. Most focused on foreigners enjoying themselves in the mud.

One of the pictures, though, was a bit surprising.

The actual photo isn't blurred

My friend Justin and I, discussing opinions on the presence of the photo along the beach, felt shock and a bit of mild outrage, but couldn't decide who was causing it - the girl who posed so carelessly for a professional photographer, or the photographer who entered it into a contest.

Justin brought up the issue of privacy, which is always heavily guarded in Korean society. If this were a picture of a Korean girl it would NEVER get posted. This is true. Koreans tend to think of foreigners as a funny sideshow, without rights or feelings of our own.

But then again, Korean girls don't flash strangers.

It's not surprising that girls do this at mudfest. Some girls get drunk and like to flash people. Big deal. If you want to take a picture of some poor drunk girl's breasts and keep it for your own personal records, that's fine by me (and apparently her).

I don't know if the photographer had the girl's permission to share the photo. But to post it along the beachfront in a photo contest is in extremely poor taste.

Soccer Tennis - 족구

2011-05-27T15:39:00.000+09:00

I used to go to a lot of pretty intense soccer camps when I was younger. During breaks we would pass time by inventing new games with a soccer ball, from juggling competitions to obstacle courses. A common favorite was soccer tennis, played two-a-side on a regular tennis court.

Sepak takraw in Myanmar

I was somewhat familiar with sepak takraw, the SE Asian sport played with a small wicker ball over a volleyball net.

But I never considered soccer tennis more than a distraction during times when we weren't actually playing soccer.

It turns out that it's a real sport all on its own.

On a sunny day you will find a group of old-ish men playing the game leisurely (though the games often get quite heated) in many parks around Korea. But it's not just old people who play. Koreans take soccer tennis (called "jok-gu" [족구] in Korean) very seriously.

Last weekend my soccer team was booked on a pitch next to a 족구 tournament, where teams of four uniformed players squared off against each other on a series of lined turf courts. Each team had a coach, and each match had three referees officiating. Some of the teams were amazing to watch, with flying kicks and spins and smash winners every other play.

I never knew it was such a serious sport. And not only in Korea, either. Apparently the origins of the global sport date back to as early as the 1920's. I feel like I completely missed the boat on this one.

http://www.soccertennis.org/

Energy Conservation - in English only, please!

2011-05-23T23:41:00.001+09:00

If you care about the environment, then let's hope you speak English! Or maybe POSTECH is just trying to keep foreigners off the road, under the guise of being green...?

BURMA: Faces

2011-04-21T08:45:00.000+09:00

Some faces of the people (and other creatures) I encountered on my travels through Myanmar in February 2011.

Driving in Korea: Traffic Cameras

2011-04-20T08:22:00.001+09:00

One of the worst things about driving in the US is the paranoia. It often seems that the main duty of police departments in many states is to trap and ticket errant speeders - on the highway, in the city, or on a dirt road behind your house. No matter where you go, a cop has the jurisdiction to pull you over and give you a ticket. They lie in wait - in hiding - for HOURS, as if speeding were the nation's biggest crime problem. (It's obviously not, and everyone knows that it's how police departments get paid. In a budget crunch there are suddenly more fast drivers on the road!)

Speeding is not a problem. It seems much more dangerous for speeding drivers to be constantly distracted, worried that every shadow and light flash on the road is their next ticket, braking and speeding and changing gears and lanes, always attempting to outsmart or outspeed the law.

Korean cops don't really bother with traffic violations, at least on the scale that their American counterparts do. The police officers that are on patrol serve more as a reminder that they're around than a threat of any particular action. Though I've heard it's possible, I have NEVER seen a Korean cop in hiding, trying to catch an unsuspecting traffic violator. Police cars here literally do not turn off their red-and-whites. Ever. It's as if they are actually trying to PREVENT crime - imagine that! - drawing attention to their presence instead of slinking around in shadows and trying to catch you red-handed.

Perhaps this is material for another post. I'm slightly off-topic here.

Cameras have replaced cops in Korea as the babysitters of the roadway. Speeding is controlled almost exclusively by CCTV. Cameras with radar guns are mounted above the street at varying intervals to take pictures of speeding violators as they pass. Tickets are mailed to the driver.

Korea doesn't even try to hide the cameras - not only are they out in plain site, there are street signs WARNING you of their presence ("Police Enforcement CCTV in 200m"). GPS units - a staple in virtually every Korean car nowadays - warn you when they are approaching and tell you when to slow down.

[If you're speeding, the GPS flashes red and beeps to warn you that a camera is approaching - the red exclamation point in the video - and stops once you pass under it.]

Though this kind of enforcement might never fly in the US (*sob* violation of privacy!), it works for Korea. It's a pain in the ass to keep speeding up and slowing down every few kilometers, so drivers tend to maintain a consistent pace. It actually makes the police force seem like they're trying to solve a dangerous situation, instead of using a dangerous situation purely as a money-making scheme.

Burma: Shwedagon & Kyaitikyo (Video)

2011-04-11T11:25:00.000+09:00

I took a bunch of video footage when I was in Burma but had trouble making heads or tails of it after coming back. It was too random.

This is my first shallow attempt.

Double Parked

2011-04-06T22:13:00.004+09:00

Last night I came out of a friend's apartment building to discover my car trapped behind a double-parked sedan. To make matters worse, there were empty parking spots on both sides of me! Back home in the US, I might have been excused for whatever crime of passion this discovery drove me to.

But in Korea, where space comes at a premium (population density is 15 times higher than in the US), it's really not such a big deal. Double parking is such a common practice that people post their cell phone number on their windshield so that trapped drivers can call them when they want to leave.

So I was only mildly annoyed when I found myself blocked in, in anticipation of the struggle to communicate my dilemma in Korean over the phone and then wait for the owner to come down and move his car three feet in either direction.

But then I actually took a glance around the offending car. He hadn't posted his cell phone number anywhere, the jerk! I stole a quick look to see if anyone was in earshot of a shattering windshield. The security guard in his nearby quarters put a swift end to that idea. I decided instead to knock on the guard's door. This seemed a situation that warranted some official police-like action.

He seemed quite surprised to see me, even after I explained the circumstances. He shook his head, and put his hands out in front of him and moved them forward in a motion that suggested pushing. Alright! I almost shouted. Let's go kick his ass!

But then I realized he wasn't talking about pushing the owner around. He was talking about the vehicle.

The car was, in fact, unlocked. The parking brake was off. And the car was in neutral. I could have done a lot more than shatter the guy's windshield. I could have pushed his car off a goddamn cliff. (For the record, I didn't.)

His car slid out of the way with such a gentle nudge that it should have been a crime.

Saunas and Jjimjilbangs [찜질방] in Korea

2011-03-26T18:53:00.001+09:00

You gotta love Korean bathhouse culture. Sure, it can be a shock at first. *Gasp!* The Nudity! But with an open mind and a free spirit (a touch of near-sightedness doesn't hurt), being naked in a room full of other naked people can quickly become second nature.

When I arrived in Korea 2+ years ago, for example, I never expected that I would ever be able to utter the following statement with a straight face:

Getting a full-body naked scrub-down from a Korean man in his underwear is pretty damn awesome.

Now it's pretty much one of the first things I say when I meet people.

Recently, while visiting a jjimjilbang with a friend, I shared my vision for a website (in English) that catalogued and ranked all of the jjimjilbangs throughout Korea. It would be a place for foreigners to find new and exciting nudist experiences throughout the country - indoor, outdoor, milk baths, tea baths, salt, sodium bicarbonate, whirlpools, massage baths, ice rooms, hot rooms, steam rooms, and, well, should I go on?

Then - today - I found one.

Jjimjilbang and Saunas in Korea

Tagged by location and descriptors like 'nice view' and 'fitness center', the reviews are pretty easy to search, and include plenty of pictures and access information. So far the scope and number of places reviewed looks pretty limited - 8 in Busan, 6 in Daegu, 6 in Seoul, and a few further afield - but it's a great starting point.

If you'd like to contribute reviews to the site, the author - Sophia - has posted her email on the homepage.

So throw off your inhibition and underwear and head for the door - there's a lot of scrubbing to be done.

Drinking? Hire a Designated Driver!

2011-03-21T12:47:00.000+09:00

The drinking culture is alive and, well, drunk in Korea. Couple that with the fact that almost everyone has a car, and you can see where things have the potential to go. So what's a man to do when he wants to go out and get smashed, but doesn't want to leave his car at the bar?

Enter: The Designated Driver for Hire

In many Korean cities and towns there is a service called Daeri Unjeon [대리운전] (lit: "substitute driver"). When you're ready to go home, the substitute driver will show up at your place of drinking and drive you home - in your own car. Someone else will come to pick up the driver later.

The kicker: When I used the 대리운전 for the first time over the weekend, it was the same price as a taxi. Exactly.

Apparently this service is catching on in some US cities as well.

The next time you're at the bar, ask the staff for the number for a substitute driver, and store it in your phone. You never know when you might need it.

"Management Training"

2011-03-21T00:46:00.004+09:00

On Friday the English department at the university had its annual MT, or "management training" retreat.

The MT is, in theory, a time for the fourth-year English majors to co-mingle with all of the incoming freshmen, and to inculcate in them the honorable traditions passed down to them throughout generations.

In reality, it's the night where freshmen students learn how to get really drunk. And not just with their senior counterparts, but also with...wait for it...their professors.

The afternoon started out quite tamely. The students had rented a "pension" (Konglish for a rental house that sleeps a dozen or more) out in the middle of nowhere and carted in a busload of booze, meat, and, well, fresh meat. There were six foreign professors in attendance. While the seniors grilled up stacks of sliced pork, we taught a few of the freshmen how to throw a frisbee and taught them an impromptu game we made up that involved large cardboard tubes, a frisbee, and drinking.

Later we played some games that the freshman organizers planned, such as:

"Contest Line of Eating Foods that Should Not be Eaten by Themselves, Like Onions, Garlic, and Hot Peppers,"
"Rolling Dice and Moving Pieces of Tape on a Large Circular Piece of Paper,"
"Drinking Random Cups of Liquid,"and
"Blowing Up Balloons and Drawing Faces on Them" (I don't think this last one was a game but rather just a waste of balloons.)

We also played a team game in which the organizer would yell out a word or name ("Elephant!" "King Kong!" "Super Junior!"), and all eight blindfolded team members would pose. More people doing the same pose meant more points.

I'm not sure what the winner got, which means there must have been some less-than-forthright-judging methods, because I - of course - performed spectacularly.

The night also included much karaoke, cake, dancing, and this guy:

He and his friend sang this song anytime someone was forced to drink in any game they were playing. Which was pretty much every turn of every game.

Get a University Job in Korea (and...shhh...without an MA!)

2011-03-21T00:40:00.001+09:00

The EFL business has been booming in Korea for the last ten years, and it isn't letting up. EPIK has been increasing recruits, new private academies are opening every day, and foreign teachers are still arriving by the planeload.

But with the global economy in a recession, teaching English abroad has suddenly become much more attractive. The market is competitive - two years ago getting a teaching job in Korea was as simple as applying. Now stories of EPIK or private academy applicants being turned away are increasingly common.

Which makes scoring a university gig - among the most coveted of positions in the EFL world - seem like a pipe dream. Particularly if you don't have a Master's degree.

But there's hope. You don't need an MA, or even an English degree, to get a job teaching in a Korean university. Perhaps it's a sad reality, but often the only thing required is a foreign face and a university degree.

You Can Get a University Job in Korea

Without a Master's Degree!

It helps if you have one or more of the following:

1. Friends

There are LOTS of universities in Korea, and many of them do not post job openings online. Some of them don't even have websites. Many small universities in Korea don't have the staff or time to spend filing through a long list of applicants. They want to hire someone quickly, and without much ado. Knowing someone who already works in a university is the easiest way to get your name on the top of the hiring list.

Which brings me to number 2.

2. Persistence

If you don't know someone who works in a university, find someone. Visit the English department at a university and introduce yourself to someone - Korean or foreign - and let them know who you are.

A friend of mine got a university job at a uni on a certain Korean island by looking up an email list of professors and firing off a couple of messages to let professors know that he would be visiting and wanted to sit down for a chat. Although the university wasn't hiring at the time, he kept in touch with his contacts there and when a position did open up, he was already in the loop. The professors knew him, and could put a face to his name.

3. Experience

There are 4 kinds of experience that matter:

- Teaching English
- Teaching in Korea
- Teaching adults (high school or older)
- Teaching in a public school

I'll be honest - you probably won't be able to get a university job without at least a year of prior teaching experience. If you don't have a Master's degree, don't expect to move to Korea with a university job. You'll probably need a year or two of experience here before they'll consider you.

3. Luck

Call it what you will - fortune, timing, destiny - sometimes getting the job has nothing to do with qualifications. It is all about being in the right place in the right time. Every Korean university operates a little differently - and hiring decisions are up to the specific department head. So cross your fingers, throw your chips in the pot, and hope for the best.

(A little bribery never hurt anyone, either ;) )

BURMA: Shwedagon Paya

2011-03-11T17:26:00.000+09:00

I don't often travel to see things. Sure, things - buildings, temples, skylines - can be quite eye-catching, but they often give you little appreciation for a place without an understanding of their context. People are much more interesting to me. People explain things. People are vibrant and dynamic and exciting. People define the culture out of which things arise. Yet there are some destinations - some things - in the world that, regardless of the height of your expectations, still live up to (or surpass) the hype. (I've heard that the Taj Mahal in India and Angkor Wat in Cambodia are two such places.) For me, even three visits wasn't enough to satiate my appetite for Shwedagon Paya in Yangon, Burma.

Burma is one of the most overwhelmingly (about 90%) Buddhist countries in the world. And for the Burmese Buddhist there is no more important pilgrimmage site (domestically, anyway) than Shwedagon Paya ("paya" meaning, roughly, "pagoda" in Burmese). Sitting like a giant golden Hershey kiss on the highest point in Yangon, Shwedagon looks over everything, and everything looks up to Shwedagon. It greets the first rays of sunlight in the early morning and puts the sun to sleep at night. Even at night it remains illuminated by floodlamp, when it shimmers in stark brilliant contrast to the inky Burmese night sky. It outshines the moon.

To be fair, the dome is probably worth more than the actual moon itself - especially if the legend of its entombed relics is anywhere close to factual. Supposedly, soon after Gautama the Buddha first achieved enlightenment 2500 years ago under the bodhi tree in northern India, two Burmese merchant brothers encountered him with gifts of sweet cake. In thanks (or perhaps trade), the Buddha gave the brothers eight hairs from his own head (I wonder how many hairs they collected on their journey before they found an actual buddha). The brothers brought the future relics back to Burma and presented them to the king, who promptly enshrined them on the highest hill in the city now known as Yangon. Enshrined along with it were a staff, water filter, and part of a tunic from three previous buddhas. The king erected a giant stupa erected above them in their honor.

To pay tribute to the relics contained beneath her, the Burmese have clothed Shwedagon in a golden bejeweled dress that would likely give the country's central bank a run for its, well, money.

The riches:

5,448 diamonds (including a 76-carat jewel at the top)
2,317 rubies
Lots and lots and lots of gold. (The entire stupa is covered in actual gold plates.)

By day the soft translucent marble of the pagoda platform cools the bare feet of pilgrims and tourists that flock here. Under the cool evening sky it glows like warming coals under the reflection of the giant golden dome above.

In accordance with Myanmar astrology, 8 planetary posts surround the pagoda - one for each day of the week and two for Wednesday - AM and PM. Pilgrims locate the post for their own birth day to pray for blessings as they pour water over the buddha image and animals that represent their day.

The pagoda is best seen at sunrise and sunset, though plan to spend a few hours - at least - strolling around the platform or just sitting in silence and soaking it all in. Monks often enjoy approaching foreigners to practice their English.

To visit: Everyone must take off their shoes, and foreigners must pay 5 USD (per entrance, not per day). It's totally worth it. Like I said, I visited three times. And that doesn't count the times I went just to hang around outside.

On Life, Offline

2011-03-04T15:54:00.001+09:00

I changed jobs last week (from EPIK to a university gig), which means that I moved apartments as well. And even though Korea is supposedly the most wired country in the world, I do not have internet in either location yet.

I have a lot to write about but not much time to do it in. I'm in the midst of unpacking, editing footage from Burma, writing scripts and filming a movie mini-series, taking an online writing course, training for a barefoot 10k race, and preparing a semester's worth of lesson plans for my new job as a university professor. I'm also trying to sleep in there somewhere.

So pleeeeease excuse me for a week or so until I get my sh*t together enough to get back to posting on a regular basis.

BURMA: Getting there

2011-02-21T19:27:00.000+09:00

For a few months last year, entering Myanmar was a piece of cake. The government had decided to re-instate 'visa on arrival', which meant you could show up at the Yangon International Airport and pay $30 to get an instant visa. Then, overnight, visa on arrival was rescinded quietly. So quietly, in fact, that none of the airlines or passengers flying into Yangon the next day knew about the change. Hundreds of fresh-faced foreigners arrived at immigration with their passports open only to be turned around and told to wait (and pay) for the next available flight back to Bangkok.

Though there is speculation about whether visa on arrival will ever return, as of my visit (January 2011) it wasn't on the program. These days, getting into Myanmar can be something of a catch-22: You don't want to book a flight until you're sure you can get a visa - but you can't get a visa until you have booked a plane ticket. The Myanmar government requires a full itinerary, contact number, and proof of purchase of a round-trip plane ticket before they will issue a visa to enter their country.

When I told him that I wanted to come visit him in Yangon, my friend Ara told me that I'd have to fly into Bangkok and spend a day there in order to get a visa to visit Myanmar. I wouldn't be able to get one in Korea. I said "Ok, no problem" and then I promptly forgot about it.

Two weeks before my trip was scheduled to begin, the price of flights to Bankok had skyrocketed, hundreds of dollars more than I was prepared to pay. Air Asia flights to Kuala Lumpur, however, were still reasonable.

I had to find out for myself if I could get a Myanmar visa in Korea. I looked up the website for the Myanmar embassy in Seoul and called their office number. A nice Korean lady picked up immediately - the one with an automated voice who tells you when a number has been disconnected. I called the other number. Korean lady again. I sent them an email. (I'll give you one guess how that turned out.)

Several days had passed. The longer I waited, the higher prices climbed.

Eventually I found a travel agent in Seoul that specializes in group trips to Myanmar. (Koreans rarely travel unless they're in a group.) They had a couple of documents on their website about visa applications, so I called them on the off-chance that they would arrange a visa for a foreigner here. I spoke to a guy named Song who said yes - IF the Myanmar Embassy accepted my application, I would be able to get a visa.

So on a Monday morning, with everything riding on two little obnoxious letters, I bought my plane tickets to KL and Yangon, printed out a two-week trip itinerary, wired Song $50, and sent my passport off to Seoul. If everything went according to plan, the visa would be in my passport by 5pm Friday.

I was cutting it close. My flight was scheduled for Saturday.

I must have texted or called Song every day for news of my visa. The second day he told me not to worry. "We haven't heard anything from the embassy," he said. That was apparently a good thing.

Friday afternoon at 3pm I finally got a text message from him, saying that he had my passport in hand. My visa was secure.

Saturday at 10am - the morning of the flight - I visited his office; a small, cramped room on the 10th floor of a large apartment building near Jongno tower. His secretary answered the door, smiled, and turned to point at a single blue passport sitting alone on a table in the middle of the room. Mine.

Back from Burma

2011-02-17T11:25:00.000+09:00

I just got back from a two-week sojourn to Myanmar. Unfortunately Blogger is blocked in the country so it was very difficult to post any updates while I was there, but I'll put up some notes in the next few days as I sort through pictures and video that I took.

*side note: I will continue to refer to the country both as Myanmar (the name recognized by the government) and Burma (the name recognized by many of the people), to thoroughly confuse anyone who isn't paying attention.

Thanaka - Burma Rouge

2011-02-01T14:07:00.004+09:00

One of the most striking things I noticed when I set out on my first day in Yangon for a stroll through the city was the women. Burmese women are beautiful, innocent and quite elegant. Their pressed blouses and the cut of their long skirts, hugging their hips tightly, exude a graceful sensuality that is lost among the low-cut tank tops and miniskirts of Western pop culture. Like people in most of the developing world, they don't leave the house unless they are well-dressed - according to conservative conventions - and wearing makeup.

Burmese makeup is unlike any I've ever seen. Many of the women - and small children, as well - paint a thick stripe of gold-colored paste in a wide stripe across their cheeks and sometimes their forehead. Thanaka - made from grinding the bark of the Thanaka tree into a powder - is actually very beautiful if applied well, with a bright gold streak running down the cheek under the eye, fading as it reaches the ear. I found my glance lingering on the face of many a young woman as I passed, and my heart warmed when their bashful eyes met mine and they broke into a wide, inviting smile.

But thanaka is not merely makeup - it has a myriad of uses. It's also good for the skin, protects against sunburn, and its scent is intoxicating.

Or maybe that was all of the curry I never stopped eating...

Blogging in Burma

2011-02-01T14:04:00.000+09:00

The first time I tried to log in to Blogger from a cyber cafe in Yangon, Burma's former political and current economic capital city, I got a message saying "Access has been denied." I got the same message for Gmail and Twitter, though Facebook appeared to be free from internet censorship.

There are ways around the censors, though, and the cyber cafe employees are always close by to help you get through to a blocked site. In my case, that involved a site called www.stupidcensorship.com, which re-routes the web address through a masked url. I'm sure there are others.

Korean Text Message (SMS) Slang

2011-01-26T17:13:00.000+09:00

I taught a couple of my students some English SMS (text message) abbreviations the other day - btw, idk, brb, ttyl, etc. - and they in return they taught me a little bit about the art of the Korean text message. Many of these I knew already, but I did pick up a few new tricks.

Some of these are common in spoken language as well, but this is primarily a list of slang expressions used in chat rooms and text messages.

If you know of any more, please add them in the comments!

ㅎㅎ
ㅋㅋㅋ
ㅋㄷㅋㄷ
Laughing

ㄷㄷㄷ
Trembling from fear, maybe the sound of teeth chattering (deu-deu-deu). [from 덜덜]

ㅂㅂ
Bye-bye.

ㅇㅋ
OK

ㅇㅇ
Yes / I understand / I agree / Shut up (ng ng)

ㄴㄴ
No no.

ㅎㅇ
Hi. Short for 하이.

ㅗ
This can be used as a middle finger.

ㄱ ㅅ
Thanks (short for 감사합니다).

ㄱㅊ
It's OK (short for 괸찮아).

쩐다
Expression of anger, excitement, happiness, or any intense emotion. Kind of like "damn!", though it's not a bad word.

샘
Teacher (short for 선생님).

Korean Emoticons

(Used often by girls in particular)

^^
Happy face. By far the most common Korean emoticon in existence.

ㅠㅠ or ㅠ.ㅠ
Sad / Crying face. Perhaps a close second to ^^. Korean girls are very dramatic.

OTL
This is an entire crying person, who is so distraught he's on his hands and knees.

ㅡ ㅡ
Angry face.

ㅇㅅㅇ
Cute face.

(ㅡ_ㅡ)Zzzz

Sleeping.

This funny clip from 거침없이 하이킥 (High Kick) explains a few more in detail.

Get Travel Directions in Korea

2011-01-24T18:16:00.002+09:00

I've seen some questions lately in Korea forums about getting directions.

If you don't know already, there is a FREE travel helpline for foreigners in Korea (in English, Chinese, and Japanese).

(Area code) + 1330

They can give you information from bus timetables to Mexican restaurant locations nearby, and in my experience they are generally on - or very close to - the money.

You MUST dial the local area code (02 for Seoul, 054 for Gyeongbuk, etc.) + 1330.

If you're dial the wrong area code, they won't be able to help you. If you're in Seoul and call 052-1330, they will tell you to hang up and call the Seoul extension.

Korea area codes

Seoul 02
Gyeonggi 031
Incheon 032
Gangwon 033
Busan 051
Daegu 053
Jeju 064
Daejeon 042
Ulsan 052
Gwangju 062
Gyeongnam 055
Gyeongbuk 054
Jeonnam 061
Jeonbuk 063
Chungnam 041
Chungbuk 043

Publish Your Travel Articles

2011-01-24T13:09:00.006+09:00

If you've ever considered publishing your travel writing but never knew how, here are some guidelines for magazines who want to publish your articles in print or online.

It's divided into three sections: General Travel, Asia Travel, and Korea.

Check back for updates.

General Travel

Matador Network
"The world's largest independent travel magazine" consists of 12 blogs, each with a different focus such as sports, traveling for change, and destination guides.

To contribute, read the full submission guidelines and upload an article on their contributors' page.

Draft guidelines:

1. Write an original draft that does not exceed 2,000 words.

Do not send an article that has already been published somewhere else, including any work that has been published as a blog.

2. Check your spelling, punctuation, grammar, and — important — facts. Submissions sent with numerous errors are unprofessional and will not be considered for publication.

3. Submissions received without all the accompanying information requested on the submission form will not be considered.

4. Do not include photos in your submission. If you have photos you’d like the editors to consider, please include a link to an online photo album in your draft. The same applies for photographers interested in submitting materials for a photo essay.

Matador Network pays $25 (Paypal) for published articles.

BootsnAll
A "one-stop indie travel guide," BootsnAll.com publishes

(Click on the links for guidelines specific to each.)

BootsnAll is looking for feature articles related to travel, which appeal to a wide audience (rather than an audience specific to people researching one destination). Articles can certainly be about one specific destination, as long as the theme or topic might interest a broad group of people. Large and famous cities and places do have some potential if your angle is really unique and attention-getting, but lesser-known places just don’t have a large enough audience on our site.

Feature Article Requirements & Rights Information

Word Count: 1200-1600 words is preferred, though the word count will actually relate more to the topic of the article and to the number of points covered within it. We will generally accept anything from 1200-2800.
Pay: $50 upon publication.
Photos: One big, beautiful, eye-catching photo (that tells the same story as the text) is required for each item on your list. The photos don’t have to be yours - they just need to be Creative Commons licensed.
Publication Rights: We are only interested in articles that aren’t yet published, and BootsnAll owns all future rights to the paid pieces you publish through us. If you prefer to maintain future rights, please submit your article through our unpaid articles program.

Asia Travel

Action Asia
"At the forefront of adventure travel since its inception in 1992, Action Asia is a 'must read' for outdoors types who want to do more with their time off than simply hang out on a crowded beach."

Action Asia does accept unsolicited submissions but please note the following points on the content:

It should be based in Asia (though we stretch the definition to take in Australia, NZ, Siberia, Central Asia and even parts of the Middle East).
It should be adventure-based - bikes and hikes not buses and trains; boarding in the surf not boarding a cruise.
Great pictures are crucial. They need to be available as large files too. At 300dpi, a typical double-page spread pic is tens of Mb and even small spot pics are 1-2Mb minimum.
It should be as edgy and off-the-beaten-track as possible eg. no general travelogues on the 'adventure' of discovering Thailand please. It has been discovered. Tell me how you biked the entire coastline or helped open up some new climbing routes. As a further pointer, places such as much of China and India, Central Asia, Papua New Guinea and the more remote Indonesian and Philipine islands would all make good subjects.

If you have a story that fits these requirements, send the text and some sample low res pics to Steve White (Editor-in-Chief) at aa@bluincmedia.com.

Action Asia typically pays $100 per page for a package of words & photographs.

Korea

10 Magazine

From their submissions page:

If you would like to become a contributor for 10 Magazine’s blog or website, just send an email to contribute@10magazine.asia, and tell us how you would like to contribute. Some ideas:

Article photography

Writing Articles

Blog entries

Website management

Vlogging

Video editing

Here are some additional guidelines from Assistant Editor David Carruth:

1) We prefer receiving a query first to establish the possibility of an article but will consider completed article submissions. However, interested writers should know that they may have to edit their article considerably to meet our standards and formatting requirements.

2) We're looking for anyone who is passionate about living in Korea and sharing their experiences and expertise with others.

3) Most of our feature articles are written by volunteers and freelancers. Other content is usually written by the staff.

4) As most of our writers and photographers are not legally able to be compensated for their submissions, 10 Magazine does not generally pay its contributors, though we do sometimes offer gift certificates of various kinds.

Article length depends on the content and its location in the magazine, but they generally accept pieces between 500 and 1500 words.

The Wisdom of The Mistake

2011-01-17T21:01:00.005+09:00

Under the shade of a papaya tree and the watchful, knowing eye of Nzomo, my Baba's elder brother, I bound the goat's four legs together as tightly as I could. Baba had taken refuge in the house. He didn't like to watch animals being slaughtered, even if it was to celebrate his daughter's sixth birthday. Vicky stood next to me in a faded floral-print dress, her arms leisurely folded behind her back. Her dirty brown toes dug into red rubber flip-flops as she watched the process intently.

“Ni sawa?” I asked tentatively, squinting up at Nzomo. “Is it OK?” He smiled at me – approvingly, I thought – and I released my grip on the goat's legs.

The goat thrashed wildly and instantly kicked off the rope I had so carefully wound around its ankles. It sprinted away and Nzomo and I immediately took off after it, followed closely by the cheerful laughter of our gang of little spectators. A hundred meters later Nzomo had the goat's ear pinched between his thumb and forefinger, and we led it back to the papaya tree in a triumphant parade. This time Nzomo did the binding, and it held.

I was fortunate to discover early on during my two years in Kenya the wisdom of the mistake. Settling in to a new environment, after all, requires a little exploration, a little education, and a lot of mistakes. Success is sweetest when you struggle a bit to get there.

[This post has been entered into Grantourismo HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition.
http://grantourismotravels.com/2011/01/10/grantourismo-travel-blogging-competition-january/
http://www.homeaway.co.uk]

Marco Polo In the Classroom, or, "Oh my God there's so much blood!"

2011-01-13T18:01:00.021+09:00

It started innocently enough. I just wanted to plan a simple classroom game that got the students to move but required them to use English to play.

If you never played "Marco Polo" in the swimming pool when you were younger, well, you probably didn't grow up in America. Marco Polo is a blind-man tag game based on hearing only. In the game, one kid - eyes closed - is "It". Whenever he yells "Marco!" the rest of the players must yell "Polo!", unless they are underwater. When "It" finds and tags another player, that kid becomes "It" and the game continues until Mom is ready to go home or someone wants to play a better game like "Sharks and Minnows".

Cartoon used by special permission
off the mark / one-a-day calendars

I thought this was a great set-up for an English-speaking game in the classroom. In "Classroom Marco Polo", one kid is "It". Everyone moves around in a designated space until "It" yells "Stop!" Then "It" must ask a practiced question like "What's your name?" or "What's your favorite food?" The other players must answer as many times as the question is asked.

"It" can take one giant step in any direction to try to tag another player. The other players can move their bodies to avoid being touched, but if they move their feet they become "It".

In the cut-throat version of the game, whenever a student is tagged, he becomes "It" but then must leave the game after tagging another player. The last player left without being tagged is the winner.

Unfortunately, whenever you let repressed, over-disciplined high school students - especially boys - loose in a game that involves blindness and physical contact, accidents are bound to happen. Glasses will get knocked across the room; kids will fall down; and one boy will swing his hand around wildly until he punches another boy in the mouth and splits his lip, which erupts into a crimson geyser across tables, chairs, and the floor. Seriously. So much blood.

I slowed down the bleeding with a wad of toilet paper and took the boy to the teacher's office, where they called his mom. All I really understood from the rushed conversation was "waygook shigan", or "foreigner time", so I had to fill in the rest of the conversation for myself. It went something like

"Hi, this is I-dong High School. Your son was in class with our foreigner-in-residence and now he's bleeding to death. Please come pick him up."

Personally, I didn't think the cut looked that bad. It just bled a lot. But I saw him the next day, after his visit to the hospital, and his lip was bandaged up so heavily he could barely speak.

Classroom Marco Polo Rule #1: No punching.

Pohang Polar Plunge 2011

2011-01-07T19:19:00.000+09:00

To celebrate the beginning of a new calendar year, I convinced a group of 9 intrepid English teachers in Pohang to jump in the ocean on January 2nd. It was a blast, and not as torturous as you might expect swimming in freezing water to be. After we got out, we were all quite exhilarated and happy, and only mildly cold.

Pohang Polar Plunge 2011 from jonnyontheroad on Vimeo.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-04T19:36:00.000+09:00

I celebrated the start of 2011 by climbing Jirisan to watch the sunrise.

Here's a video:

Sunrise on the Summit from Jonny ontheroad on Vimeo.

Celebrating the Sunrise

2010-12-27T23:43:00.000+09:00

The traditional American celebration of each new year isn't too distant from your average Friday night frat party. People get drunk, dance, and try to find someone to make out with at midnight. Of course, this night tends to find people dressed better, drinking actual champagne instead of High Life (the champagne of beers!), and making haphazard "resolutions" attempting to correct all of the bad decisions that probably led them to the party in the first place. What it all really amounts to is just a more expensive hangover.

Of course, lots of Koreans celebrate in the same way. People in every culture like to find any excuse to get drunk and make out with the company secretary.

Many Koreans, however, like to plan their boozing around the rising of the first sun of the new year, at one of Korea's numerous Sunrise Festivals. These are usually organized in cities near the ocean with a strategic advantage for watching the sunrise. The most popular destinations, not surprisingly, are on the east coast, where they think the sun rises first.

Homigot [호미곶], Pohang

The easternmost point on mainland Korea.

I had thought about making the trek out to the Homigot Sunrise Festival, nearby Pohang, until my co-teacher told me that I would spend 3-4 hours in traffic just getting out there (it's usually a 30 minute drive). In the end, it was a moot point. The Homigot Sunrise Festival for 2010 is CANCELED due to the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

The cancelation may actually be a good thing, if you wanted to get a photo of the new year sun rising through the Hand of Harmony. No more crowds.

Seongsan Ilchulbong Sunrise Peak [성산일출봉], Jeju

A UNESCO Heritage Site on "the Hawaii of Korea"

God I love Jeju. I'm always looking for an excuse to go back. But flights are always booked solid months in advance of any sort of Korean holiday. I haven't even checked. Plus I don't like crowds.

Ulleung Island [울릉도]

The ACTUAL easternmost point in the country.

I couldn't find any info about sunrise festivals on this island, because it's tiny and mostly considered only as a stopover point to gaze at Dokdo or eat some squid. But Naesujeon Sunrise Observatory offers spectacular views of, predictably, the sunrise, from a platform high above the surrounding landscape. Even if all 10,000 island residents were there, it would probably still be the least crowded sunrise festival in Korea.

Jirisan National Park [지리산]

The highest point on the mainland.

Height matters, especially when it comes to catching the first rays of sunlight on New Year's Day. At 1,915 meters, Jirisan is actually the first place in South Korea to glimpse our golden ball of heat. Mountaingoers will tackle the trail around 2am to reach the peak for a sunrise champagne/soju toast.

You'll find me on the trail.

Happy 2012!

Passing Your Korean Driver's License Test

2010-12-23T13:58:00.008+09:00

The other day I wrote about the requirements for getting a Korean driver's license, one of which is taking a 20-question computerized test. On Monday afternoon, after 22 months of living (and driving...oops!) in Korea I finally I rode my scooter out to the Driver's License Agency office in Pohang.

The test was easy enough; though the time limit is 30 minutes, it didn't take me more than 10. I passed with a score of 80% (the passing mark is 60%, or 12 questions).

The hardest thing about the test was trying to interpret the English wording of each question. It had been translated quite confusingly from Korean, and at times it was hard to tell what the sentence was trying to convey - not unlike trying to decipher the "food" options on your average Korean menu.

Usually, though, it was easy enough to guess the correct answer by identifying a few key phrases in the options:

"slow down"
"drive carefully"
"watch out"
"be alert"

And avoiding options with the phrases:

"don't pay attention"
"speed up"
"keep driving at the same speed"
"don't think about the child in the road"

Most of the questions consisted of a picture with 5 or 6 multiple choice options. I was instructed to choose the 2 best answers based, usually, on driving safely and what to watch out for in the accompanying scenario.

For example, given the following picture...

...you may be asked:

In this scenario, which are the safest ways to proceed? (Choose 2)
Speed up to pass the pedestrian before she crosses the road.
Be alert for parked cars backing out into the road.
Honk your horn to make the pedestrian walk faster.
Reduce your speed to give the pedestrian time to cross.
Stop your car in the middle of the road and look for any other pedestrians or parked cars.

Another question was an animation of a car driving down a road, switching lanes, and turning left at a traffic light. Other cars would move around in the simulations and pedestrians would cross in front of you. The question asked me to identify the two most dangerous situations in the animation.

Though most were common sense, on a couple of questions I had to guess completely, since they covered things like fines or administrative stuff. I don't know how I scored on them - the test never gave me a breakdown of my results.

[If you still want to prepare for the test, check out this excellent Korean road guide prepared by the Osan US Air Force base.]

The hardest part of the whole day was actually FINDING the Driver's License Agency office. What should have been a simple 30-minute trip turned into 2 hours. The map that the agency provided on their website was mind-numbingly terrible. At one point I stopped at a government office to ask for directions. A helpful employee looked at the map quizzically for a few minutes, crossed it off, then turned the paper over and hand-drew his own map on the back that turned out to be impressively accurate.

If you're trying to find your own local DLA branch office, I suggest more reliable sources (Google maps, Daum maps, any bum on the street) for directions to get to your particular testing center.

the DLA's version

Google maps: got it right.

Safe driving!

The North Korea Situation

2010-12-21T16:16:00.003+09:00

Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed. The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth. - The Boy Who Cried Wolf

**Disclaimer: I reserve the right to make or not make wild accusations and gross assumptions without any scientific basis or expert knowledge.

A lot of people back home ask me what is up with North Korea. I know it has been dominating the news lately, what with the bombing of Yeonpyeong Island, Lee Myung Park's threats of retaliation, Kim Jong Il's threats of nuclear war, and the US involvement in South Korea's military training exercises yesterday along the disputed maritime border. But I'm not worried.

For the most part, South Koreans tend to ignore Kim Jong Il completely. They don't pay attention anymore to the angry, bespectacled little Korean man who keeps crying wolf. When something serious happens - a boat sinks, or a bomb explodes - some will hold candlelight vigils and call for blood. Yet his threats of war, or a nuclear holocaust go largely unheeded by the public. Even the news of an actual, isolated attack will blow over within a month or two, and he will disappear from media coverage for a time.

Soon after I arrived in Korea, I asked my co-teacher whether she worried about the situation with North Korea. "Not really." She seemed surprised at the question. If the North attacked, Mrs. Yoon said, she wouldn't be able to go anywhere to escape. What's the point of worrying about something you can't control?

The fact is that Kim Jong Il is a loose cannon. No one is completely sure what he is capable of. In addition to the recent bombing, which killed two soldiers and two civilians, in March 2010 he was blamed for torpedoing a South Korean Navy ship, killing 46 soldiers. (China, Russia, and North Korea disputed the results of the investigation.) Yeonpyeong is the third attack blamed on North Korea in the 16 years that Kim Jong Il has been at the reins, and the second this year.

But crazy and violent as Kim Jong Il may be, he's not stupid. He knows that, while the South Korean public may ignore his persistent wolf-cries of war, the military and global political machines will not. They can't afford to. His reputation as a wild card, as someone who is capable of anything, is the best thing going for him right now, and probably forever. Like a child with a hair-trigger reaction and a penchant for tantrums, Kim Jong Il knows that his "parents" don't want to do something to provoke an outburst. They'll do anything to appease him, even if that means ignoring the occasional broken lamp and trash fire, and giving him a regular allowance.

But he also knows that there's a line. If he crossed that line, and instigated a war with South Korea, he must know that China and Russia would likely abandon their support for him, and the South Korean-allied forces would crush him and his regime quickly. He wouldn't just be sent to his room, with his Xbox and coloring books. He would be sent to boot camp.

To be fair, though, it's not all Kim Jong Il's posturing that is to blame for escalating tensions. South Korea patrols and conducts regular military exercises in disputed waters in spite of North Korea's claim over the territory. Perhaps they are more likened to kid siblings, who pull each others' hair and call each other names, trying to push the other across the line. The one who starts the fight, after all, gets sent to his room. The other, even if he ends up with a black eye, gets an ice cream cone.

Kim Jong Il and the Boy Who Cried Wolf are like two sides to the same coin; the one claimed that a wolf was attacking his sheep, while the other claimed that he was a wolf. Whether or not Kim's claim is valid remains to be seen. In the end, though, the lesson is the same. The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth. A wolf is no match for a human with a spear.

On a lighter note, here's Kim Jong Il Looking At Things:
http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/

English Teachers Desperately Needed in Ulleung-do

2010-12-21T13:14:00.001+09:00

The two EPIK teachers on Ulleung Island (120km east of the mainland) will be leaving soon, and EPIK is looking for one elementary school and one middle school teacher to take their spots beginning in March 2011.

The perks, above and beyond the regular EPIK contract benefits, include

a 500,000 won monthly "rural" bonus
10 extra days of vacation
relocation allowance
resident ferry rates - 5,000 won one-way
north korea would never, ever attack you

For more info on the position, the island, or the people you would be replacing, check out their blog: http://notanothertourist.blogspot.com/2010/12/wanted-teachers-in-ulleungdo.html

Gochu Soju

2010-12-17T19:44:00.001+09:00

I went out for dinner last night with the members of the Pohang Climbing Center. This is apparently a drink concoction they enjoy - sliced hot green peppers in soju. Considering how terrible soju is, anything would probably be an improvement. Gochu soju wasn't actually that bad.

Getting a Korean Driver's License

2010-12-17T17:07:00.017+09:00

homegirl is dangerous. she's a korean driver.

Three things happen within two minutes after you get into a car in Korea:

1. You think "Well, I suppose red lights must mean something different here."
2. You paw furiously at the seat cushion in search of a seatbelt.
3. You swear to God that you will never drive in Korean traffic if he gets you out of here alive.

Whoever coined the moniker "The Land of the Morning Calm" clearly wasn't talking about traffic in Korea. It takes travelers a while to understand the organized chaos that is driving in this not-so-long-ago-underdeveloped country. Eventually, though, after their third hour on an overheated bus they take back their oath to God and decide it's about time to get a Korean driver's license.

In this post I'll walk you through all of the 3 steps necessary to get yours. [Note: Though these instructions are geared more towards Americans, most of them will apply to other nationalities as well. For your own specific licensing requirements, call your local testing site. See the note at the end of this page.]

1. Get your foreign driver's license notarized

getting through the embassy

There are few steps involved in getting your Korean license. For citizens of some countries, however, there is an extra step - a step that is especially aggravating if you chose not to live in Korea's populationally irresponsible capital city. For Americans it involves traveling to Seoul (an $80 and 6-hour round-trip from Pohang), visiting the geriatrically-slow US embassy (appointments on weekday mornings only!), and having your US driver's license notarized (a $50 service).

You could also visit the US embassy outpost in Busan during one of the public notary's visits, which occur, from what I can tell, every third quarter moon in August. [Editor's note: American Citizen Services provides consular services in Busan once a month.]

Once you DO have that special piece of paper with that special embossed seal on it, though, the rest of the process is relatively simple (though still not quite as much of a piece-of-cake as some other sites make it out to be).*

2. Visit your local driver's license office

Find your local driver's license office [운전면허시험관리공단] here.

When you visit your local office, you will need the following:

Affidavit affirming the validity of your driver's license (other countries' requirements may differ slightly) [대사관 확인서]. See Step 1.
Foreign driver's license
Alien Registration Card (ARC) [외국인 등록증]
Passport [여권]
3 recent (w/in 6 mos.) passport photos
17,000 won (6,000 for the computerized test; 5,000 for physical exam; 6,000 for printing the actual license).

3. Pass a written test

Once you submit all of the necessary documents and undergo the 5 minute "physical exam" (basically an eye test, performed at the driver's license office), you will need to take a 20 question computerized test, which is administered in English.

For more specifics on the test, read Passing Your Korean Driver's License Test.

If you pass, they will ask you to surrender your foreign driver's license while you are in Korea. I'm not really sure why this is a requirement, since it's easy enough to get it back. The next time you're about to leave the country, go back to the driver's license office, show your passport and an airline ticket and they'll return it.

Even if you're just mulling over the idea of buying a car while you're in Korea, start planning to get your foreign driver's license notarized now. It's cheaper and easier if you don't have to make an extra trip to Seoul at the last minute.

And don't worry about timing. Though you may not buy a car right away, your Korean driver's license will be good for 9 years from the date of issue (compared to 1 year for an International Driving Permit!), regardless of the expiration date on your foreign license.

After that, you're legal to roam Korean streets at will. Just hope that God still has your back.

*Note: The Seoul government's English website states the following: Foreigners with a license issued from the following countries are not required to provide an embassy certificate. (U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, Belgium, Poland and Italy). I assume this is referring to that special piece of embossed paper. As any foreigner knows who has lived in Korea more than 2.5 days, every single Korean will give you different information, even if they work for the same department of the same government organization. Even if they sit across from each other at the same desk. Even the same person on two different days. So this may all be changing as I write. Call your own local driver's license office. Again, find and contact your local driver's license office [운전면허시험관리공단] here.

High1 Ski Video

2010-12-13T22:49:00.000+09:00

I went to High1 Ski Resort over the weekend with some friends. I made a short video with some of the highlights from Saturday.

The Eight-Legged Playboy

2010-12-01T22:43:00.001+09:00

바람둥이[Param dung-i] - literally "wind person" - is a popular expression in Korea that means "playboy", likening a man's mind to the capricious nature of wind. It's probably one of the first non-critical phrases that many foreigners remember, because, hey! it's always fun to share a laugh with a Korean when you call someone out on their infidelity.

Last week I learned a couple of new expressions that are also useful for talking about an uncommitted Korean's love life.

양다리 [Yang dari], meaning "both legs", refers to someone (a man or a woman) who is getting a little sum'n sum'n on the side, i.e. someone is sitting on both of their knees.

Santa wants to fill BOTH of their wishes!

God gave him 8 legs for a reason!

문어다리 [Mun-eo dari], a derivation of 양다리, means "octopus legs". As you can probably deduce, a 문어다리 doesn't limit him or herself to just one extra lover. Just because you have two hands doesn't mean you should only juggle two balls, am I right?!

Incidentally, if you're actually talking about octopus tentacles, the word is 문어발 [Mun-eo bal], or "octopus feet".

Evil Spirits: They hate red beans

2010-11-26T16:42:00.000+09:00

Yesterday, one of my co-teachers moved into a new apartment with her family. Today, following the Korean custom to ward off evil spirits, she made red bean rice cake [시루떡] for everyone.

According to another teacher, this tradition can be traced back to the Silla dynasty, when Seol Chong [설총], son of the famous monk Wonhyo and princess Yoseok, used red beans to eradicate evil spirits (called dokkaebi in Korean) from his house.

Dokkaebi [도깨비] are mischievous mythical creatures said to be the transformed spirit of inanimate objects. They were traditionally depicted with only one leg, probably because of the belief that they were the embodied spirit of useful objects that had been misused or neglected, like a broom. Nowadays they have two legs - because a one-legged monster isn't really that scary. They love to play pranks and tricks on people, or challenge wayward travelers to wrestling matches. (A one-legged wrestler isn't too believable now, is it?)

Legend has it that Seol Chong once returned from a battle or something to find that an evil spirit had slept with his wife. (Apparently his broom wasn't the only thing that had been feeling neglected lately!) His first reaction, apparently, was to whip up a batch of red bean rice cake, which scared the...ahem!...mischievous spirit away. As he later bragged about this feat to his neighbors, a legend was born (along with, perhaps, an illegitimate child).

And that, folks, is how traditions begin. Kinda like Christmas!

An Asian Combination

2010-11-23T13:00:00.000+09:00

I had one of the most unusual side dishes I've ever seen for lunch today: seaweed and asian pear.

This side dish usually includes radish slices instead of pear, but the school nutritionist is young and apparently quite daring. It turned out exactly as you'd probably expect it to: like bobbing for pears in the ocean at low tide.

The Most Stressful Day in Korea

2010-11-19T16:01:00.002+09:00

My high school is conspicuously absent of a third of its students today. They, along with every other high school senior on the peninsula, spent 10 hours yesterday in the most important round of testing they may ever face in their entire lives: the Korean SAT [수능]. Considering that they haven't taken a day - nay, even a waking hour - off from studying in over a year, I think it's well deserved. Though it is probably not very restful for many. This is, after all, suicide season.

Like most Americans, I grew up being told that I could be anything I want to be. There was constant reinforcement of this message from every media; that if you try hard enough, and are dedicated to your dream, that it is achievable. A closed door can be opened with enough force.

There is no such message in Korea. The door simply disappears. Students who score poorly on the K-SAT have to wait another year, when they are allowed take it for a second and last time. If they don't get a "doctor" score - one high enough to get into medical school - they will never be a doctor in Korea. (Of course, they could always move to that great shining beacon across the Pacific, The Land of Opportunity.)

The outcome of yesterday's exam will determine the possibilities for each student's future. It will light a fire under some dreams, propelling one student to a career as a doctor, just as it consumes the hopes of another as they smolder in the ashes of failure.

Though yesterday was an important day for the seniors, one which will make or break their plans for the future, stress wasn't limited to the students. Education is one of the biggest expenditures for Korean households - life savings are spent, debt racked up - and the hopes and dreams of every student are shared as fervently by parents, siblings, friends and teachers.

My senior year of high school was one of the easiest years of my life. It was full of positive messages pointing to endless opportunities in the future. After I was accepted into college, it became a carefree time of utter irresponsibility. I had no cares or worries of my own, much less of others. My parents didn't care what I chose to do, as long as it made me happy.

In Korea, where the lingering tenets of Confucianism make status and title all-important, one day - one test - will decide what that status and title are. It's no wonder that 48% of Korean students have considered suicide. The hopes and dreams of an entire nation rest heavily, tiredly, on 18 year-old shoulders.

Single-serving drip coffee bags

2010-11-17T12:50:00.000+09:00

Though tea may be a more traditional Asian drink, coffee popularity is on the rise in Korea. Single-serving sachets of instant coffee are ubiquitous in teachers' offices and lounges across the country, and many restaurants place instant coffee machines by the door for customers to get their fix on their way out. Coffee shops are becoming BIG business - in my neighborhood alone there are about a dozen.

Single-serving drip coffee bags, produced by the ever-inventive Japanese since the 1990's, are a relatively new product in Korea. They must have received a big marketing boost lately. A couple of months ago they were being offered as gifts with the purchase of bags of coffee. Now they're being sold in packages in Family Mart, empty or in pre-filled with a measured amount of coffee grounds. They're a great option for camping aficionados who don't want to pack a french press or deal with grounds in the bottom of their "cowboy coffee" cup.

Though I'm not a fan of the excessive amount of wasteful packaging that goes into most Korean products, this semi-reusable all-paper filter beats the metallic plastic instant-coffee sachets that they could replace.

Alliteration is Awesome!

2010-11-03T16:41:00.003+09:00

Today I introduced a new lesson plan called "Alliteration is Awesome!" And it was. Once, at least.

Over the last two weeks the classes have been learning and playing "Scattergories," one of my favorite word games ever. If you don't know about it, go play it now. It's up there with Boggle and Scrabble.

In the classroom, all of my students have loved it - even the lowest level boys go screaming-wild crazy over defending their answers, or attacking the answers of the other teams.

Today, after playing Scattegories for the last two classes, I taught my highest-level freshmen girls' class a new activity called "Alliteration is Awesome." It was one of the most memorable classes that I've ever taught. The girls were as creative, energetic, and enthusiastic as I've ever seen them. Of course, it was a high level class, and they were girls, and they usually have quite good energy anyway. We'll see how it plays out in the other 19 classes I teach. For now, though, I'm enjoying the momentary high.

The point of sharing this with you, though, was not to talk about me and my brilliant new lesson plan. I wanted to share the two-sentence stories that the girls came up with in the activity, to show you just how creative and funny they can be. I gave them points for the number of M's used, creativity, and grammatical correctness. People often say that Korean students have trouble thinking outside the box. I think they just haven't gotten the opportunity.

Here are their stories, to illustrate alliteration with the letter "M" (with only minor edits by yours truly):

Team 1
Mickey Mouse and my model mother ordered more and more medium steak and mustard sauce by mobile phone in the metro on Monday.

Team 2
Miss A and Mighty Mouse met in the membership club to show their music on Monday. Marc Jacobs made marble macaroni and took the metro at midnight. He gave the marble macaroni to male mammoths.

Team 3
Many monsters’ mothers and Magneto’s model mom made a party called “Merry X-Mas in Mexico.” At midnight Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse met a mini monkey’s mama who was eating miracle meat with mushrooms, which was the main menu in Mary’s mild room until next morning.

Team 4
My mother’s monkey, the monkey’s mom, Mickey Mouse and the main male model Mike made a milk shake and a meal in the mountain on Monday morning. The monster and Minnie Mouse met many members of Mickey Mouse’s friends in Mexico City, Mexico on a Monday in March.

Team 5
Mandy Moore and Mary met in the Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse Garden while they were making Monkey Magic bags on Monday morning. Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse marry in the Mama & Papa nightlclub in Pohang in the morning.

Team 6
Many monkeys and their moms meet other mother monkeys and father monkeys at the museum during Merry Christmas season. Min’s mom met Mike at the music shop to go see a musical and enjoy the moment. They went to see the movie “Mission Impossible” in which appear muscle boys.

Rock Climbing in Busan - Amnam Park (video)

2010-10-29T16:23:00.000+09:00

Last Saturday I went rock climbing in Amnam Park (Busan) with some friends. Here's a video.

Rock Climbing in Busan - Amnam Park

2010-10-27T10:07:00.002+09:00

On Saturday a group of climbers headed to Busan to hit the cliffs in Amnam Park. It's a beautiful area of multi-layered amber red rock heavily forested with Asian evergreens and walking paths that hug the rugged coastline. Many sections of cliff are bolted and graded for climbing, and we scrambled down the steep hillside to the first climbing spot in a slender ravine where a couple of girls were already at work/play. Fishermen cast their lines from an outcropping in the ocean and the waves lapped rhythmically at the pebbled shoreline. We spent a couple of hours on two of the routes, where I tore up my hands on the coarse stone.

In the afternoon we hiked and rappelled and scrambled to another rock wall called "The Shark", I believe, which jutted up from a large slab that stuck out into the turquoise water. It contained two smaller routes ("The beach's girl" and "Jaws") with overhangs that proved quite difficult (for me, anyway) but which were a lot of fun trying to figure out.

On the way back to Pohang we stopped near Busan University for some Korean-style Mexican food at Taco's Family, one of the few places I've found in Korea that actually serves decent enchiladas.

Check here for a video of the park and climbing.

A Korean Fortune - Saju [사주]

2010-10-21T11:33:00.001+09:00

I am a flower. I have lots of water in me. I should seek fire and trees and mountains. South and East are good directions. 2014 will mark the beginning of a good time for me. I shouldn't have more than two children (though if I want more, adopting is OK). I know this, because my birthday tells me so.

Saju [사주], or "human's life", is an ancient form of Korean fortune-telling which uses your birth date and time to reveal aspects of your personality and character, including predilections, positive attributes and talents, and needs. It is based on five elements that are said to make up all things:

water
fire
earth
trees
metal

The Chinese characters that represent these elements also have corollary meanings, like animals, directions, and family members, so the reader can glean answers to many of the client's questions from the eight original characters formed by their birth date.

Many Koreans believe strongly in the power of the saju, and consult theirs regularly in times of change, particularly before a big move, job change, or prior to a wedding, to see if they or their children are compatible with the spouse-to-be. The fortune teller, or reader, will often become a sort of counselor to her clients, advising them on a particular action based on the revelations in their saju.

On the 6th floor of Home Plus (CGV) next to the shiwae bus terminal in Pohang, two fortune tellers spend their evenings behind lace curtains in cozy plywood huts, reading birth dates and tarot cards for a steady stream of customers of every age.

Saju consultation: 9,000 won.
Tarot reading: 4,000 won.

I went to visit Min Jung, my friend Tony's girlfriend, who has been studying saju for four years under the tutelage of a 75 year-old buddhist monk living in the mountains around Gyeongju. Min Jung is an incredibly peaceful, yet warm person who I immediately felt comfortable around. We had been rock climbing together on a couple of occasions before, so I already knew her from those outings as well.

She invited me into her small "office" and pulled two giant tomes off of the small bookshelf beside her chair. She asked my birthdate and time, spent a few minutes consulting the books, then drew two rows of four Chinese characters on a blank sheet of paper with a calligraphy brush. She spent another few minutes whispering to herself while she circled characters and drew lines between them, writing other characters beneath them with numbers and dates.

When Min Jung had finished, she began to describe my "human's life". Saju is not "fortune-telling" in the sense that it reveals your future (although Min Jung did tell me that from 2014 would be a good time for me, and that I would be healthy into old age), but rather a picture of your character and how you relate to the world around you. Your character affects your future, though, and your saju can tell you what factors to consider when it comes time for a decision - where you should go, what kind of job you should hold, or what kind of person would be good for you to marry. I asked her questions about food I should eat (stay away from pork, eat lots of leafy greens), sports I should play (be careful with water sports), people I should befriend (look for fire, trees, mountains in others), colors that are bad for me (black and white).

I left feeling quite good, but unsure how I felt about saju and Korean fortune telling. Most of what Min Jung told me about myself I believe, but not because my saju told me I am that way. I believe it because I have already witnessed it in my own life - it confirmed much of what I already knew about myself, or what I felt but had never put words to before. I don't consider myself a very superstitious person, and I definitely don't believe in fate. But I was surprised at the accuracy of my saju, and everyone I know who has heard theirs has felt the same way. For now, I guess my jury's out - not that it matters, in the end. Beliefs are only shadows, after all, of what really is.

POSCO in the news

2010-10-14T16:52:00.000+09:00

POSCO, the world's third-largest steel producer, and the corporate behemoth that comprises Pohang's financial lifeblood, is in the news for a couple of reasons today.

They have just resumed operation of Korea's largest blast furnace - the fourth largest in the world - after a 3-month hiatus for repairs. According to The Korea Times,

[POSCO] also said that its daily production capacity is over 14,500 tons, equivalent to manufacturing 14,500 vehicles, and the production is at the top level of the industry.

14,500 vehicles' worth of steel production - PER DAY?! Boy, do I take the industrialization of the world for granted.

Furthermore, the plant expects an annual production capacity of 41 million tons (which would bump them up to the world's #2 producer). To put POSCO's importance to Korea into perspective, the entire country of Korea produced 48.6 million tons of steel in 2009. Korea is the world's sixth-largest steel producer.

[Interestingly, steel production has been falling significantly over the last three years for all of the world's major producers except China and India. I couldn't find any info about this production change on the World Steel Association's website, which unsurprisingly paints a rosy picture of steel production.]

POSCO is also reported to be launching a program in partnership with the city of Busan to build a waste-to-energy power plant capable of producing 25 megawatts, or enough electricity to meet the demands of 40,000 households.

This marks the country’s first attempt of creating power from RDF, which refers to a fuel produced by shredding and dehydrating municipal solid waste including such materials as plastics.

Rock Climbing in Pohang

2010-10-12T16:53:00.003+09:00

A few weeks ago I went camping and rock climbing with my friend Tony and his girlfriend in Juk-jang, a small town about 45 minutes outside of Pohang. We camped out next to a small creek and spent the morning and early afternoon climbing. I made this video about it.

The dog in the video is Shu, and belongs to Tony's girlfriend Min Jung. Shu is quite typical of the size of most Korean dogs. Korean women in particular love little dogs, and while I have always been partial to bigger canines, the little guys have started growing on me. I made another video just for Shu.

A little off the top

2010-10-12T10:47:00.001+09:00

I have been spending a lot of time lately in self-reflection and meditation, trying to address my weaknesses and shortcomings. Trying to be the man I want to be. One of the biggest obstacles I face on a daily basis is my ego; the part of me that attaches itself to material or physical possessions; the part of me that is selfish and proud and greedy.

On Friday I shaved my head.

Yesterday I arrived at school to students and teachers agape and gasping, as Koreans are never shy to do. They're the kind of noises and stares that are impossible to interpret, that contain no judgment, that mean only that something interesting is happening.

One of my students was not so ambivalent. "WHY?!!" He practically screamed at me. "I don't understand why you cut off all of your hair!!" He seemed to be on the verge of tears. I tried to explain how convenient the hairstyle can be, how I can roll out of bed without worrying about a bad hair day. He couldn't understand. He loved his hair. He appeared to be genuinely distraught.

Mr. Lee, one of my co-teachers, saw me in the hallway today. "In Korea, when someone gets a drastic haircut like that, we say that their character has changed." I smiled, thinking of my own attempt to influence my character in recent weeks, but then I thought again. Changed in a positive or negative way? "Usually negative," he replied, chuckling.

Kimchi gold

2010-10-06T22:08:00.000+09:00

As I wrote on Monday, kimchi is in short supply around these parts. NPR has also picked up on the story, which they blame on "heavy rains" - presumably a result of the typhoons that have been hitting the country lately.

The Journey

2010-10-04T17:25:00.000+09:00

by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Where's all the kimchi??

2010-10-04T16:23:00.001+09:00

The other day I breezed through my cafeteria's buffet line, filling my tray with the usual rice, soup, and usual assorted side dishes. When I reached the end of the table, I was confused. Had I missed the kimchi? I went back for a second look. It wasn't there. The other teachers must have eaten it all, I thought. I checked the student line. Still I found nothing. A wave of disappointment crept through my body. I've been in Korea too long, I decided.

Kimchi is, needless to say, a staple of the Korean diet. They don't eat meals without it. It's taken for granted that when you visit a Korean restaurant, you will be given a never-ending side dish of kimchi. It was unnerving to see a Korean meal without the fermented dish. When I sat down I asked another teacher about it. "Kimchi has gotten too expensive these days," she said. "The school can't afford it." More expensive than pork? I asked. It was one of the side dishes that day. She told me people are joking that when you go to a restaurant, you order kimchi and they give you samgyeopsal (roasted pork) for free.

I've heard two theories about the recent skyrocketing in price.

1. Typhoon season destroyed a lot of the cabbage and lettuce crops.
2. President Lee's "Four Rivers Project" is razing the countryside and causing too much degradation of farmland and nature.

Whatever the reason, I miss my kimchi.

Testicle Friends

2010-09-29T18:11:00.003+09:00

When I was a kid, I attended a small private Christian school. (Maybe that's not the best sentence to open with considering this post's title, but hey....) It was so small that, in my first grade class of 9 students, there were no girls.

We were all very close at the time. Sure, there were a few dorks (Peter, Evan) in the group that we all picked on. And a couple of us (Danny, Joseph, me) mighta sorta been bullies and I might have once - maybe - hit a kid in the face with a flat dodgeball and made him cry. But we were always invited to each other's birthday parties, we had a clubhouse in Joseph's parents' toolshed, and we would slink around at church potlucks like a gang of little James Deans, dressed in our Sunday best. We were inseparable, but let's be honest - mostly it was because we didn't have a choice.

In 6th grade I moved to public middle school. Some of the kids moved to different states. We were pen-pals until the weather got warm or until we forgot to write anymore. We lost touch. I don't even know how I would search for their contact information anymore.

If I had grown up in Korea, this band of 9 little Christian brothers would be my "불알친구". That means, quite literally, "testicle friends".

These boys would be testicle friends in Korea

Testicle friends are Korean men who grew up in the same town, went to elementary or middle school together, and perhaps stripped naked at night to go skinny dipping in the river that ran through their village. They might just have a baby picture together in which their ball sacks are visible. Whatever the case, they were close enough friends that they, at one point or another, saw/touched/smelled/witnessed each other's male organs. And after such an event, I suppose, there's no turning your back...err...the back of your scrotum on 'em.

Today Mr. Shin, one of my co-teachers, told me quite matter-of-factly that his group of testicle friends still meets twice a year, in or near their hometown. He described the group as one based on the purity of childhood innocence, when there are no preconditions or ulterior motives for friendship. "It's a carefree environment," he told me. "Some of my friends are very rich, powerful people now. But I don't care about that." Well, since everyone has a different job now, what do you talk about? I asked him. "We just drink," he said. "A lot."

Hopefully testicle friends make your wife this happy.

Obviously, as the term so eloquently suggests, testicle friends are men. So, you may eagerly interject, enough about all this ball talk. Tell us about the lovely Korean ladies and their league of labia friends!

Unfortunately, even in this age of gender parity and sexual equality, Korean women (generally) do not share in this tradition. Women have too many responsibilities to have lives of their own. As Mr. Shin conscientiously put it, "Women should follow their husbands."

They are free to join their men in the reunion and become best friends with the other women who also happened to marry into her husband's group of gonads.

108 Bows (108 배) : Korean Buddhism

2010-09-19T18:00:00.009+09:00

Korean Buddhists bow a lot.

It's a meditative practice that encourages reflection and concentration. Though three bows is common, the more dedicated followers often practice 108 bows [백팔배], a long tradition whose number is particularly significant for the following:

There are 6 bodily pathways that lead to suffering: eyes, ears, skin, nose, tongue, mind.

There are 6 objects that lead to suffering: something you see, hear, feel, smell, taste, think about.

There are 3 time periods in which you suffer: the past, the present, and the future.

[6x6x3 = 108]

(the interpretation may depend on the temple you visit, though, and other explanations may differ slightly.)

108 sounds like a heck of a lot, I know. It is. And though it feels a little awkward at first, you get into a rhythm pretty quickly. The whole thing takes about 20 minutes.

I've done 108 bows several times in templestays or at a meeting for Buddhist teachers that I was invited to. Every time, though, they put on a recording of a deep-throated man lyrically chanting 108 prayers in Korean over a meditative soundtrack made up of a flute and bird noises.

Though I was told just to "focus on things you want to change in yourself", I always kind of wanted to know what the guy was saying. I didn't want to think I was bowing all along to commit my soul to Kim Yun-A or something (though I would. Oh GOD would I).

Over the weekend I did another templestay at Golgulsa, and finally got an English copy of what (I think) the Korean man with the nice voice is actually saying. Some are more abstract than I would prefer (hard to focus on), and many are just not practical, but I imagine it still affects your mindset positively, much like visualization or repetition.

If you have knees, I highly suggest you try it. I can even send you an mp3 file of myself reading the list if you need motivation. (Visit this page for a video instruction on bowing.)

My personal favorites are #8, 25, 31, 34, 50 and 104. I bow, uh, extra hard when those come up. I think it goes without saying that I love #11, too, because - let's be honest (Buddha wants me to be HONEST, right??) - I really, really love myself.

Leave me a comment to tell me your favorites, or which prayers you wish Buddha had put on the "bow list".

108 Bows

Before bowing, I prepare the proper mindset:

- Bowing is one way to purify myself.

- Through bowing, I learn how to humble myself and how to have a healthy body and mind.

- I bow to realize that others' lives are just as valuable as mine.

- I bow to get rid of my selfishness.

- I bow because it is the desire of my true self.

- I bow for all living things, and for peace in the universe.

1. I bow to wonder where I came from and where I am and where I am going.

2. I bow to appreciate my parents for giving birth to me.

3. I bow to think about who I am.

4. I bow to find my true self.

5. I bow to always appreciate my body and spirit.

6. I bow for the well-being of my body and spirit.

7. I bow to think about my true desires.

8. I bow to find myself and to learn how to control myself.

9. I bow to appreciate the life I live today.

10. I bow to give thanks for being alive.

11. I bow to think about how much I love myself.

12. I bow to be able to always love my family.

13. I bow to feel happiness and peace of mind through love.

14. I bow to look for happiness only through love.

15. I bow to know that unchangeable love is flowing through the universe.

16. I bow to the teacher who has shown me the right way.

17. I bow to feel that love originates inside me.

18. I bow to reflect that my teacher's lessons are inside me.

19. I bow to feel that all living things, and the universe, are inside me.

20. I bow to remember that my ancestors and gods are inside me.

21. I bow to ask for forgiveness from the people I have hurt, because it hurts the whole universe.

22. I bow to take care of myself and not to do bad things.

23. I bow to rid myself of arrogance.

24. I bow to rid myself of false humility, even if I am in bad circumstances.

25. I bow to call attention to the good in others, but not the bad.

26. I bow to keep others' secrets.

27. I bow to rid myself of hatred of others.

28. I bow to rid myself of anger against others.

29. I bow to not repeat anything I have not heard.

30. I bow to not repeat anything I have not seen.

31. I bow to always be ready, but not to expect things to be easy.

32. I bow to avoid expecting obedience from others.

33. I bow to avoid expecting difficulty in my life.

34. I bow to make the best of each moment in my life.

35. I bow to live a righteous life.

36. I bow to repay even the smallest debt of gratitude.

37. I bow to not put my own needs over the needs of others.

38. I bow to not be stingy to others.

39. I bow to not harm others in order to get ahead.

40. I bow to try not to obtain valuable things with little effort.

41. I bow to have the power to control my desires.

42. I bow to reflect that life is more valuable than anything else.

43. I bow to know that suffering comes from an attached mind.

44. I bow to avoid making foolish mistakes out of ignorance.

45. I bow to try to attain deep wisdom.

46. I bow to learn to be nice to people, even if I have negative feelings toward them.

47. I bow to avoid clinging to the strong in order to hurt those who are weaker than me.

48. I bow to be honest with myself, and also to avoid flattering others.

49. I bow to be true and honest with myself above all others.

50. I bow to know that happiness, unhappiness, and desire are all within my mind.

52. I bow to realize the value of living a smooth, peaceful life.

53. I bow to avoid looking back at the past, and to not worry about the future.

54. I bow to own possessions, but not to be controlled by them.

55. I bow to know that I can find peace by being patient.

56. I bow to know that having a repentant mind is the best mind.

57. I bow to find freedom through wisdom.

58. I bow to control my mind, not to be controlled by it.

59. I bow to be diligent in my efforts to improve myself.

60. I bow to be thankful for the hard times I have had, because they have made me strong.

61. I bow to keep my original pure mind, even when time passes.

62. I bow to pray with a thankful mind for everything.

63. I bow to be thankful that I can find myself in silence.

64. I bow to reflect on the value of living a pure, honest life.

65. I bow for the people who are working in bad conditions.

66. I bow for the people who are starving, poor, and living hard lives.

67. I bow for the people who work to provide me with healthy food.

68. I bow to have a generous mind, even if I don't have enough for myself.

69. I bow for the precious lives of my children, who I have brought into the world.

70. I bow for my partner, who became one with me through love.

71. I bow for all disabled people.

72. I bow for friends who have been beside me, sharing my laughter and tears.

73. I bow for moderation, even when I have enough to waste.

74. I bow for a humble mind.

75. I bow for humility, so that I can always put others first.

76. I bow to realize that nature is being destroyed.

77. I bow to realize that all lives are interconnected.

78. I bow for all the lives destroyed by the greed of humanity.

79. I bow for all the ecosystems that are recovering after being hurt by humanity.

80. I bow to listen to the sounds of life that are all around me.

81. I bow to realize that my life is the movement of my soul.

82. I bow to realize that the object of love and longing is life.

83. I bow to feel my soul being purified when I hear the sound of a clean, clear stream.

84. I bow to give thanks for being able to hear and enjoy the beautiful songs of birds.

85. I bow to be refreshed by the feeling of a cool breeze.

86. I bow to be thankful as I breathe in fresh air.

87. I bow to be thankful for the sight of beautiful wildflowers that are always present.

88. I bow to give thanks for the mountains and landscapes that speak to me through wind and snow.

89. I bow to the Earth, which feeds all living things.

90. I bow to the sky, which gives life to all living things.

91. I bow for my own peace.

92. I bow to hope for peace in everything around me.

93. I bow for the peace of my neighbor.

94. I bow for peace within countries that have been separated for no reason.

95. I bow for peace between countries arguing for political reasons.

96. I bow for peace and harmony among all religions.

97. I bow to hope for peace in all dead and living things.

98. I bow to hope for peace between human beings and nature.

99. I bow for a mind that is enlightened and peaceful

100. I bow for harmony between the poor and the rich.

101. I bow for harmony between the sick and the healthy.

102. I bow for harmony between those who have learned and those who have not.

103. I bow for those who have fallen into darkness.

104. I bow to accept all of the things I have done.

105. I bow to be thankful for all of the people who love me and take care of me.

106. I bow to be thankful for all of the good and beautiful things in my life.

107. I bow to be thankful for my life and to reflect on the lives that are yet to be.

108. I bow for myself, realizing that my own precious life is like the universe.

and if you're still here, I'm thankful for you!

What's up with the bowing? Visiting a Korean temple

2010-09-19T17:00:00.000+09:00

If you've ever visited a Korean temple for more than just the 산채 비빔밥 (mountain vegetable bibimbap), you've witnessed a procession of Buddhist followers removing their shoes, entering the temple doors, bowing three times (or more) in front of a giant Golden statue of Buddha, and leaving. If you ever dismissed this behavior as nothing more than simple idol worship - lord knows I always did! - you missed the point. Big time.

Although there does happen to be a giant golden statue of a buddha in the temple, and the practitioners do bow in front of it, they are not actually bowing to the statue, or even to Gautama, the one they call the Buddha. (Ok, maybe one or two of them are. But think of them as the crazy lady teetering in front of the train station who blows her nose on her dress.) When you bow in a Buddhist temple, you are bowing to a more tangible buddha - the one inside of you.

Korean Buddhists bow in two ways:

1. A half bow: Enacted by bending at the waist, palms pressed together in front of chest. Performed at the beginning and end of a full bow sequence, whenever they see a monk (to recognize the buddha inside of them), and pretty much whenever they enter or exit a building on the temple grounds.

2. A full bow: Usually with a thick cushion in front, bowers will press their palms together in prayer position, kneel on the pillow, and lay their forearms and forehead on the ground in front of them. With the forehead still on the ground, they will turn their palms face-up and raise them above their ears. Then back down again, a return to kneeling position, and a roll-back onto the toes and they're up and voila! that's one.

When Korean Buddhists enter a temple (shoes off and through the SIDE door, please - the main door is for monks only!), they find an open spot on the floor, and perform a sequence of three bows (or three half-bows, if they are lazy, handicapped, or tired): one half bow followed by three full bows followed by one half bow.

Significance:

For the Buddha (whichever buddha you want, I suppose)

For the Dhamma (Buddha's teachings)

For the Sangha (the community of practitioners)

More dedicated (or bored) followers will tackle a full 108 bows (or more): one half bow followed by 108 full bows followed by one half bow.

A Personal Buddha

2010-09-14T10:44:00.001+09:00

I had an essay published in this month's edition of The Gyodeung [교등], "The Korean Buddhist Teacher's Association Newsletter"! It was one of five essays printed in the publication, along with three others from actual monks. Since the newsletter editors published the essay in Korean, here it is below in English.

A Personal Buddha

By Jonny Finity

The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands.
– Robert Pirsig

I grew up in a Christian family. We were very active in our church, and until middle
school I attended a small private Christian academy. I read my Bible daily and prayed to God,
and I tried to believe really hard that I would go to heaven. But doubt plagued my mind. Hell
is a terrifying place to imagine, especially for a child, and I remember days from my
childhood when I was sick with fear and guilt for the sins I had committed. My doubts
compounded my fear – to doubt means to not believe completely, and didn’t Jesus
say “whoever believes in me shall not perish, but shall have eternal life”? I felt sure that I
wasn’t believing strongly enough. I couldn’t talk to anyone about my uncertainty, because
everyone I knew was in the church. It was unsettling to be a part of a community that didn’t
question what they were taught. It seemed fake and insincere. I believed what Tom Robbins
wrote in Another Roadside Attraction:

Real courage is risking something that might force you to rethink your thoughts and
suffer change and stretch consciousness. Real courage is risking one's clichés.

Later in my life, when I began to learn about other world religions, more questions
arose in my mind. I knew I was a Christian only because I had been born into a Christian
family and dutifully exposed to the faith. What would have happened if I had been born into a
Hindu family in India? Would I have been condemned to eternity in hell by the chance of
birth? Many religions teach the existence of mutually exclusive deities; you can’t believe in
all of them, and if you don’t believe in the right one you’re out of luck for eternity. The
Christian image of God had begun to fade in my beliefs. There were too many good people in
the world to be condemned to an eternity of torture just because they believed something out
of ignorance. And I have met many mean, spiteful Christians who would go to heaven just by
believing something they were taught.

I can’t recall when or where my first introduction to Buddhism occurred, but I
remember being drawn to the idea that certain eternal truths reside within all of us. They
cannot be taught by someone else or read in a book – we have to realize them for ourselves
through insight and reflection. According to Alan Watts, a British philosopher, “Buddhism
has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by some kind of cosmic lawgiver.”
Even the Buddha said, in one of his most powerful and meaningful quotes,

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything
simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply
because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on
the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have
been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find
that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all,
then accept it and live up to it.

Though I have never considered Buddhism to be a religion – rather, a guide to living – the
Buddha is nonetheless a religious figure. And what could be more honest and unpretentious
than a religious leader who tells his disciples not to believe anything he says, but to put it to
the test? And so I did.

In 2006 I was invited to participate in a 10-day Vipassana retreat in Nairobi, Kenya.
I had never really meditated before (“meditation” was something of a bad word in my
childhood church, akin to “New Age” or eastern religions), but I believed in the power of the
mind and was eager to try. 'Meditation' used to conjure up in my mind images of relaxation,
of peace and tranquility. It was, perhaps, an old man seated by the bank of a bubbling river, contemplating its nature, or a long-haired hippie in a commune, visualizing peace and
harmony for all of mankind. I thought that a 10-day retreat would give me time to myself, to
clear my mind and figure out answers to some of the questions that had been bothering me
lately. I never thought that I would actually be asked to work.

'Vipassana,' 'insight' in the ancient Indian language of Pali, is what the Buddha
called the technique of meditation 2500 years ago that led him to his enlightenment. His
enlightenment was basically the revelation of the truth of nature; impermanence, or change.
Most people would probably contemplate this for a few moments and shake their head. Duh!
This is a simple concept to understand. But the Buddha didn't just understand this idea at an
intellectual level. He understood it at an experiential level within the framework of his own
body, through careful, constant self-observation. This experiential understanding is the goal
of Vipassana, and it resonated with me more than anything I had learned before in my life.

We practiced seated meditation for 11-12 hours per day, beginning with ‘anapana’,
or ‘breathing’ meditation, and progressing to an hour-long ‘determined sitting’, during which
we were asked not to move at all. It was excruciating at times. After an hour of sitting in one
position, my knees felt like they had been beaten with a sledgehammer and my back was a
spasm of fireworks. At first I was skeptical. But I stayed, and gave it a chance. This was the
teaching of the founder of Buddhism, Gautama the Buddha. I figured ten days wouldn't hurt,
though after the second and third days I have to say I felt like bolting. But I stayed, and I
learned. The Buddha said “It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil
ways,” and I practiced meditation with a pure mind and heart. When I became distracted or
angry thoughts entered my mind, I practiced equanimity. My resolve became stronger, my
mind clearer. For a few beautiful moments I existed in the present and only the present,
without thought of the past or the future, and I began to understand what Jesus meant when he
spoke of heaven.

Roaming the world at will

2010-09-13T10:10:00.002+09:00

A friend sent me a poem recently that resonated strongly with the way I often feel. It's quite sad, yet simultaneously heroic.

The Men Who Don't Fit In
by Robert W. Service

There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: "Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in.

Everyone who resists or shuns the path in life prescribed for them by a society built on status, power, progress, and materialism will inevitably feel as if they "don't fit in" whenever they come back into contact with that culture. Money has a loud voice. But it's not the only voice that matters, and it's easy to forget that in a society where we are increasingly disconnected from the things that make life worth living.

This line especially makes my bones cringe:

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.

There is definitely an increasingly big part of me that wants to settle down, start a family, an help to build an honest community based on fairness and sustainability. But never does that image involve me being a "steady, quiet, plodding one."

For me, "winning" is building fulfilling relationships, trying new things, experiencing everything life has to offer - gain and loss, success AND failure - without fear or judgment.

Taegukgi (태극기)

2010-09-10T19:28:00.015+09:00

The Korean flag

The Korean flag is full of meaning. Though, depending on who you consult, it can mean many different things.

Elements of the Taegukgi [태극기]:

- Taeguk (the red and blue yin-yang symbol in the center): represents the cosmic forces of yin (blue) and yang (red) that gave birth to everything in the universe. Blue implies hope, while red is supposed to signify nobility. They combine to represent the creation of the truth (truthiness?) of the universe.

- White background: represents one, or all, of the following things: purity; the brightness of the Baeguiminjok [배귀민족] - people wearing white; and the desire of the Korean people for peace. Who knew white meant so many things? It's harder to keep straight than Ricky Martin.

- Gwae [괘] - in the four corners: represents movement and harmony. They also function conveniently as those optical illusions where you stare at them for 30 seconds and watch the dots appear.

Geon [건]: heaven (or sky), spring, east, humanity, father, metal, and justice.

Gon [곤]: earth, summer, west, righteousness, mother, and/or fertility.

Gam [감]: moon, winter, north, intelligence, daughter, water, and/or vitality.

Ri [리]: sun, autumn, south, courtesy, sun, fire, and/or wisdom.

It's sort of like a choose-your-own-adventure, all wrapped up into one convenient national icon!

* An interesting note, in answer to the question posed by Kevin: it appears that Korea chose to represent only four of the eight ba gua (also called gwae [괘], yi-ching, or tri-grams), all of which can be seen below in earlier versions of the flag, as a matter of simplicity and convenience.

In April 1882, an official Korean-Chinese meeting was held to discuss the question of the Korean flag. The "teaguk" emblem was proposed for the first time during this meeting. Official documents of the Korean Royal court state that the Chinese delegate Ma Chien-Chung promoted the use of the Yin-Yang spiral in red and blue and eight combinations of the Yi-ching, and imposed his views to the Korean delegate Kim Hong-Jip. Ma Chien-chung explained the symbolism of his proposal. The eight Yi-ching diagrams matched the eight Korean provinces, and red was the colour of the King whereas blue was the colour of ordinary people. Korea eventually adopted its flag under Chinese pressure and used it for its first diplomatic mission as said above.
The first version of the "taeguk" was very close to the original Yi-Ching diagram, which includes eight subdiagrams. The deletion of four of these subdiagrams is reported in the diary of Prince Pak Yeong-Hyo. The Prince showed the original flag design to James, the British captain of the vessel used for the mission. James found the design too complicated and proposed to delete four of the eight Yi-Ching diagrams.

It's interesting that they chose the simplified version, given the fact that the eight kwae matched the number of provinces (not including metropolitan cities and the special self-governing province, i.e. Korea's Hawaii).

These are some earlier images of the Korean emblem, as used in official delegations:

date unknown

circa 1893

source

Faces of Pohang

2010-09-06T15:16:00.004+09:00

People come and go. It's simultaneously the best and the worst thing about living here. You get to meet a lot of diverse, interesting people from every English-speaking country in the world, but within a year or two you have to say goodbye. Much like the cells in a human body, which die off and are re-born.

It's an inevitability of living abroad that the expat community is constantly fluctuating - most of the foreigners here in Korea are English teachers, whether in hagwons or public schools, and are serving a standard one-year contract. Many don't renew, for whatever reason. Other become mainstays, and form the backbone of the ever-changing local foreign community.

It's not only foreigners that shape the family of expats living abroad. Some of the strongest forces in the community are locals whose passion for English and new friends keeps the spirit alive.

These are some of their faces. I'll hopefully keep this page updated as I take more pictures. I'd like to create a running photo album of all of the people who have helped make Pohang into what it is for me.

South Korea: it's a 125cc, baby!

2010-08-30T15:21:00.002+09:00

Though it may be on its way to 50cc status...

Asian countries have been lauded in recent decades for their steadily rapid economic growth. For their prowess they earned the moniker "economic tigers," particularly the four economic powerhouses of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, with other southeast Asian countries recently dubbed "tiger cub economies". But tigers in Asia are severely endangered, with worldwide population estimates hovering around 3,500. Three of the nine original tiger subspecies have already become extinct.

Perhaps we should choose a better mascot for these still-thriving economies than an animal which, like it or not, is on a seemingly irreversible decline.

Perhaps we should consider an image still vibrant and visible throughout the continent, a representative of the asian worker's struggle, his pride in his work, her defiance of larger, looming economies that threatened to drive her off the road.

Perhaps it's time we thought outside the box.

I humbly propose: The Economic Scooter.

Any pedestrian traveler attempting to navigate an Asian city for the first time is quickly frustrated and annoyed by the seemingly endless throng of motorbikes and scooters that clog motorways across the continent. Southeast Asia, where the motorbike doubles as a minivan for the entire family, is particularly notorious.

Even in the developed Asian countries - the supposed "tigers" - the scooter hasn't lost its edge. Though consumers are buying cars in record numbers, the scooter market is still thriving. Businessman or delivery boy, no one is above a little scooter ride.

As the sort-of-proud owner of a scooter myself, I can attest to the following facts about scooters:

1. They are cheap. You can buy a brand-new scooter in Korea for 1,000 USD. I fill my gas tank once a week for 5 USD.

2. They are faster than cars.* Since scooters are often held to few, if any, traffic laws, they can go wherever, whenever they please. Go the wrong way down a one-way street? Cars will pull over. Run a red light? The cops will wave you past. Drive full-speed along a crowded sidewalk during market day? Pedestrians will move to the street.
*Within city limits.
3. They look more dangerous than they really are. I know how #2 sounds, but don't worry Mom! There's order amidst the chaos. After about a week of riding in traffic, you reach a moment of scooter zen, and your role becomes clear like water pouring into a stone-filled glass.

As a resident in and frequent traveler of Asia, I can also attest to the following facts about asian economies:

1. They are cheap. And by "they are" I mean "labor is."

2. They are faster than cars. Ok, that one doesn't make much sense.

3. In spite of - or because of - the frantic, heart-burning pace of the Asian Scooter economies, Asians are careful. They don't spend money just because they have a shiny plastic card that says they can - though they understand the danger (which is why, I suspect, it is illegal for Koreans to gamble in Korea). The memory of poverty is still fresh in their minds. I don't think most Asians want to belly up to an all-you-can-eat buffet with their American counterparts. They're generally happy with their bowl of rice and small helping of side dishes.

4. They are built on a foundation of collective values. You may discount this one as irrelevant, namby-pamby, or idealistic, but let me give you some advice: don't. The Korean word "jeong" [정] - variations of which exist in China and Japan - is difficult to translate, but loosely means "togetherness, love, sympathy, feeling," and just about any other feel-good word that makes you want to give someone a hug. Though much of Koreans' behavior and interaction is dictated by a seemingly draconian Confucian culture, Koreans also feel bound to each other through jeong - not as a burden, but as a blessing. This influences all manner of conduct, including business transactions, conversations, and how to behave in traffic. In my experience, road rage is a rarity throughout Asia. When I zip past a Korean sitting still at a red light, it seems - though I can't be sure - the driver simply thinks "he must have somewhere very important to be."

Boryeong Mud Festival

2010-07-27T17:54:00.004+09:00

If it's festivals you want, festivals you can get in Korea. There's a kimchi festival, bullfighting festival, mask festival, whale festival, fireworks festival, sunrise festival, ice fishing festival, film festival, ginseng festival, and a bodypainting festival - and that's just off the top of my head. On any given weekend there are a handful of festivals going on in various cities throughout the country.

Among the expat community in the country, however, no single festival garners nearly as much attention as the Boryeong Mud Festival. In a country as conservative as Korea - where beachgoers don't take off their shirts and shoulders are considered indecent - the Mud Festival is one place where naked flesh is not only expected, but required.

Boryeong mud is famous for its nutritive properties; it is used to make cosmetics, soaps, lotions, and other toiletries. During the Boryeong Mud Festival it is applied more, well, liberally.

The city trucks tons of mud from nearby mud flats onto the festival grounds, which abut the beach, and dumps it all onto inflated slides, obstacle courses, and mud wrestling pools. There are stations for painting your body with mud, stations for throwing mud at other festival-goers, even a "jail" station where festival staff will spray you down with mud (and for which you had to wait about an hour).

The Boryeong Mud Festival is about getting dirty, and for many people, in more ways than one. There are no (enforced) public drunkenness laws in Korea, and the prospect of getting drunk on the beach and smearing girls (or guys) in bikinis with mud is too much for a repressed population to resist. It attracts a wild crowd. Every third person is carrying a pitcher of beer in broad daylight, and perfect strangers indulge in public displays of affection without remorse.

This, not surprisingly, is the chief complaint of the abstaining portion of the foreign population, who refrain from attending because they "aren't really into spring break."

For the most part, though, the dirty, drunken foreigners carousing the streets of Boryeong are a peace-loving lot. Beyond that, Boryeong is good at confining the party atmosphere to a limited section of the town. And besides, you're not into it, the mud madness is not that hard to escape.

In fact, if getting muddy is your MO, the festival itself is not the first place you should go. As I mentioned before, Boryeong trucks all of the festival mud in from mud flats nearby. Interestingly, neither festival staff nor Boryeong city officials advertise this fact, and no one asks. Most festival-goers are content to wallow in the watered-down buckets of mud that Boryeong locals dump on them.

The mud flats (갯벌체험장) are actually less than 5km from Daecheon Beach (where the 2010 Boryeong Mud Festival was held), at the river delta near Daecheon Station. During low tide, the field of mud extends for hundreds of meters on either side of the river.

When my friends and I arrived on Sunday morning it was high tide, but the mud was only covered in ankle-deep water. I quickly stripped and covered my body in the dark, sticky muck beneath my feet. Aside from two Korean tourists and a handful of festival staff, the only sign of life around the mud flats were the seagulls, hunting for crabs. One member of the staff even helped to bury me in mud - he seemed so amused that I wondered if he had ever seen any foreign tourists out there.

Shortly before we left, the staff began setting up futsal goals for a tournament which would start in the early afternoon. Unfortunately we couldn't stay and watch - our group bus was scheduled to leave soon after it began. I cleaned off in a row of showers above the rocks and we caught a taxi back to our hotel.

The mud flats were the highlight of the festival for me, and I realized that I didn't even need to be at the festival to enjoy them - they're there all the time! (Although the showers may not be up year-round, and I doubt taxis would pick me up after frollicking in the muck.)

Dirty travels!

(Photos courtesy of Darin Novak (Boryeong Mud Fest 2009) and Nadia Hugo, one of the only other sober people awake at 8:30 on a Sunday)

If you're looking for more non-mud-related things to do during the Boryeong Mud Festival, here's a tourist map of the Boryeong environs:

Photos of the Hood

2010-06-29T11:52:00.001+09:00

Mid-term Time

2010-06-29T11:43:00.002+09:00

It's that time of year again, when EPIK teachers across the country breath a collective sigh of relief and hagwon teachers shoot collective evil eye darts at EPIK teachers. Exam time! For high school teachers at least, this means half-days of little or no work supervising students as they write their mid-terms.

Though for many of us EPIKers, the start of exams actually spells the end of easy street - the week before exams most of my classes are canceled to give teachers an opportunity to catch students up on material yet to be covered in the curriculum. Sometimes students will choose not to have class at all, opting instead for a period of "self-study".

This morning students took their English exam. I snagged a copy of the 1st and 3rd grade tests, and thought I'd share some of the exam Qs with you here, just in case you were wondering what Korean students are actually supposed to be learning. This will also give you a good idea of the disparity between students' "testing level" and their "speaking level." Though most people would say that the latter is a more important skill when it comes to language, it matters little to Korean students, since it's not on the test.

The majority of my students, even some of those in high-level ("testing level") classes, struggle to put a single sentence together. One common scenario takes place each day as hey line up outside of the classroom door. They look at me with blank faces, pointing at the door and motioning for me to open it. I pretend I don't understand, and invariably one of them will yell "Door!" or "Open!" I gaze back at them blankly, and say "What door?" or "You want me to open what?" They continue to mumble to each other until someone finally steps up and says "Open the door, please," at which point I unlock the door and let them into the classroom. Sometimes they will forget the "please," and depending on how long it has taken them to form this simple sentence, I'll let it slide.

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Here are some sample test questions from the first (fresh/soph) and third (senior) grade mid-term exams. Go ahead, test yourself!

1st grade sample Q's:

8. According to the following passage, why don't Calvaria tree seeds germinate?

In some cases two species are so dependent upon each other that if one becomes extinct, the other will as well. This nearly happened with trees that relied on the now-extinct Dodo birds. They once roamed Mauritius, a tropical island located in the Indian Ocean. However, they became extinct during the late 19th century. They were over-hunted by humans and other animals. After they disappeared, the Calvaria tree soon stopped sprouting seeds. Scientists finally concluded that, for the seeds of the Calvaria tree to sprout, they needed to first be digested by the Dodo bird.

1. As the seeds were too old to sprout in desert.
2. As two species are so dependent on each other.
3. As the Dodo birds ate all the seeds of Calvaria tree.
4. As the Dodo birds roamed Mauritius, a tropical island.
5. As the Dodo birds did not digest the Calvaria tree seeds.

14. Which underlined word is incorrect?

A highway was 1 built through our suburb some months ago. After that, the noise at our sports field was so unbearable that 2 complaints led the authorities to hold a public hearing. I outlined ow the noise 3 affected our games, and ended by telling officials the only time it was quiet enough to play was between 4 pm and 6 pm. One official 4 eyed me doubtfully and said "I don't understand that. Traffic is 5 smoothest between four and six." "You're right," I said. "That's when it isn't moving well."

18. Which of the following underlined phrases is incorrect?

New Zealand is 1 a little larger than the UK. Its largest city, Auckland, has over one million people living in it. 2 In area, though, Auckland is about twice 3 as big as London, England, which has a population of 7.2 million people. You can see easily that Auckland is 4 less crowded than London. There are fewer cars, too, but more boats. In fact, Auckland is called the "City of Sails" because more people own sailboats there than in 5 any other cities in the world.

3rd Grade Sample Q's:

Page 1: Definitions. Select the appropriate word from the word bank below to fit the definition.
Word bank: network, prosperous, contraction, progress, utter, emit, grab, cultivate, let go over, expert, intense, stagger, habitat, instinct, puzzled, organize, sink, surge, disturb...

1. Which option below refers to a different person?

A teenage boy played 1his new rock album for his father, who was a classical music fan. The father declared that this was terrific music, and 2he began to explain why he found it artistically admirable. Rather than being pleased, the boy was annoyed. "Can't I have anything to myself?" 3he asked. 4He wanted, in the matter of music, to feel that 5he was the expert and his father was taking it over. In the matters of music, clothes, or ways of talking, the parents' purpose may not be to control but to feel solidarity with their children. Yet the children may experience their parents' moves to accept or imitate their behavior as a power-based invasion.

10. Choose the number where the selected sentence would be most appropriate.

However, these superficial judgements are usually revised after a longer exposure to the foreigner's speech.

We judge a foreigner's knowledge of our language by the number and sort of mistakes he makes. ( 1 ) We are inclined to think he knows our language quite well if he does not make many mistakes. ( 2 ) It does not usually occur to us that he may be avoiding taking risks and confining himself to doing only what he knows he can do right. ( 3 ) A person who does not have expert knowledge probably judges a foreigner's ability in his language by how good the foreigner's pronunciation is or by how hesitantly he speaks. ( 4 ) He tends to assume that poor pronunciation is equal to a general lack of knowledge of the language, and that broken speech is confined to those who do not know the language well. ( 5 )

23. Choose the appropriate selection to fill in the blank.

Children don't need all of their time schedule. I am a stay-at-home mom with an eight-year-old and a six-year-old. I don't schedule play dates. My girls don't go to dance, gymnastics, piano lessons, or sports camp. They don't want to, and that's fine with me. They play outside in the daytime and do absolutely nothing structured: they go for walks, ride bikes, go to the beach, a park, or a picnic. My acquaintances worry for them, but they need not. My two girls always stay curious about the things aorund them. Sometimes they give an ingenious solution to a problem others can't imagine. I think this could be achieved _______.

1. by playing competently with peers
2. by expressing their negative feelings
3. by interacting positively with other peers
4. by getting the opportunity to think on their own
5. by going to sports camp which attract their interest

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These are just a few of the questions on the midterm, which is written collectively by all of the grade's English teachers (except me). Most of them choose passages out of the textbook and re-word them to confuse the students. Some of the teachers run their questions by me before submitting them, to ensure that they make sense. Others don't, with sometimes hilariously confusing results. On one exam, a teacher wrote a question in which the student had to choose between "immigrate" and "emigrate" in 5 different places. The way the passage was worded, either word would have worked in every single instance. Luckily another teacher brought the question to me before the test went to the printer, and we fixed it.

World Cup!

2010-06-11T16:27:00.001+09:00

The World Cup starts tonight. And yet again, and as with any international sporting event hosted at a different longitude, I'm faced with the challenge of planning my schedule around a different country's time zone.

Luckily, 2 out of 3 matches will kick off before midnight Korea time. The third match, though, airs daily at the ungodly hour of 3:30 AM. For weekend matches this won't be a problem. Rare is the Saturday that sees me in bed before 5AM. But the weekday matches are another story. You can never predict the big plays, the upsets, the accidents or the tragedy, and so I'll feel compelled to watch every minute. I can already see the rags of work motivation I currently wear slowly melting away.

I asked one of my co-teachers about the school environment around time of the World Cup. "The principal will give the teachers a pass," she said. For what? "For sleeping at their desks."

Since all of the teachers already zonk out at their desks without hesitation and at any time (including the teacher quoted above), I assume - and hope - that this means we'll be allowed to sleep in class.

Korea Fighting!

Here's the full world cup schedule (in K-time):

For more detail visit the Fifa World Cup match page and click on "convert to your time" at the top.

Prescriptions in Korea

2010-04-29T10:20:00.000+09:00

Two days ago I had surgery to remove an ingrown toenail, and the doctor prescribed a cocktail of drugs to help me recover.

If you've ever had a prescription filled in Korea, you are aware that pharmacies never give you (or even show you) the bottle, labels, or any printouts for the drugs that they dole out. Instead, they arrange all of your pills in convenient single-dose packets that you can tear open and take all at once.

Korean drug cocktail (example - not actually mine)

The obvious drawback is the lack of information about the drugs. Coming from America, where the corporate medical machine's rewarding of over-medication requires a healthy suspicion of doctors and prescriptions, this practice can be quite off-putting. In general, though, Koreans trust their doctors and follow their advice.

Yesterday, during my day-after follow-up visit to the surgeon, he informed me that I could stop taking the painkillers. The only pain I experienced from the surgery had subsided about 8 hours after the surgery, so I didn't need it anymore. Since I didn't know which drug was which in my string of plastic baggies, I pulled it out for the doctor to identify.

He looked at the group of multi-colored pills and poked them for a second before turning to the attending nurse. He said something to her in Korean and she pointed to a white pill marked "LOX". He turned back to me. "You can take this one out. And this small one, too, you can stop taking. It is a digestive." I wondered why I needed a digestive, but I didn't ask. After all, he told me to stop taking it. I didn't care much about what he told me NOT to take.

So yesterday I took the two pills out of each packet, and saved the painkillers in case I needed them later. As I did so, though, I wondered what kind of painkillers they actually were. Then I started to wonder what exactly was in the OTHER pills I was still taking. This morning I pulled out the receipt that the pharmacy printed out for me, and used the Korean prescription names to discover their English equivalents.

To my surprise, I discovered that the drug that he told me to take out (LOX) was actually loxoprofen, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory. It struck me that, two days after surgery, this one might still be important to take.

The small one, that he claimed was a digestive, was actually misoprostol, often used to prevent the gastric ulcers that non-steroidal anti-inflammatories have been known to create. (Also, incidentally, sometimes used in the US to induce labor in pregnant women...)

The digestive was actually the large green pill (marked BEARSE), which I was still taking (and which I suspect is the cause of the digestive trouble I had this morning).

I was also still taking another antacid pill, which I suspect was thrown in for good measure, in case the misoprostol failed in its duty.

Luckily, I was still taking the antibiotic (cefalexin).

As it turned out, there was NO painkiller in the packet at all!

Maybe I should be more pissed off about this. It seems like an honest mistake, though - the doctor wasn't trying to hurt me. Maybe he actually was trying to tell me to stop taking the anti-inflammatory, and I misunderstood. I'll ask him when I see him tomorrow.

The real danger, in my opinion, is the practice of giving drugs out in little unmarked baggies. If you're visiting the doctor in Korea anytime soon, make sure to have the doctor spell out everything he prescribes you, and ask the pharmacy for a printout of the prescription information. I don't know if they can even do that, but, as in almost every life situation, it never hurts to ask.

Five Minutes in a Korean Hospital

2010-04-27T13:15:00.003+09:00

My toenail fell off about six months ago. On Monday morning I went to the hospital because the new nail was growing into the side of my toe. The doctor recommended surgery, which would be quick and the ingrowth was "almost guaranteed" not to return. He said I shouldn't worry; it would be cheap.

We scheduled the surgery for the Tuesday morning, and I went to get a shot of antibiotics and an X-Ray to make sure the infection hadn't spread to the bone. I was given a ticket and told to pay on my way out; the bill, including the surgery, antibiotics, X-Ray, and doctor visit, totaled 25,000 won (about 22USD).

This morning I went back to the hospital for my surgery. After a 5 minute wait I was called through the surgery doors and a nurse handed me some floral print pants and shirt. He led me into the operating room, where a team of 5 nurses scrubbed my foot with iodine. The doctor injected several shots of local anaesthetic into my toe, and the heavy numbness crept in and overtook it.

I didn't watch, but I heard the sound of toenail cracking, and after 5 minutes of what sounded like bone being chiseled and pried and filed, I heard him say "Finito. We are finished." He wrapped my toe in gauze. "You will have to pay some extra money for this," he told me quite seriously.

I got another shot of antibiotic and stopped by the payment desk on my way out. The gauze wrap cost me 2,040 won (2USD), bringing the grand total of consultation, injections, X-Rays, and surgery, to 27,040 won (24USD).

Not only was my hospital visit incredibly cheap, it was also extremely efficient. All hospital records are computerized, so my information was sent ahead of me to each office I visited. When I arrived at the Injection Room, for example, the nurse looked at the name on my ticket and pulled up the injection order immediately. I walked around the corner to the X-Ray office and the nurses called my name and told me what they would be doing. At the pharmacy the English-speaking receptionist had my prescriptions printed out and waiting for me.

And although I did have to wait 2+ hours on my initial walk-in visit to see the foot doctor, a computer monitor on the reception desk displayed all of the patient names in the room in the order in which they would be seen. I could easily see where I stood on the list so I could estimate my wait time. When I saw that I was number 7 on the list, I went outside to get some coffee and walk around in the meantime, without worrying that my name would be called in my absence.

Though this is the most serious procedure I've had done, I've received health care in Korea twice before (for an eye infection and a sore neck). In every instance the doctors and attending nurses have been attentive and courteous, the process has been quick and efficient, and the actual service has been world-class.

This whole experience reminds me of, but stands out in stark contrast to, Glenn Beck's raving diatribe on the health care he received for hemorrhoids.

Dokdo Rocks! and rubber bands.

2010-04-09T11:12:00.011+09:00

The Korea Times reported today that two Korean-American groups in the US (Korean American Leaders Association [KALA] and BYON International) are strategically distributing 100,000 rubber "Dokdo bracelets" in continuation of a PR campaign that has included a 2008 full-page ad in the NY Times and a 30-second video played in Times Square in 2009. (See the ad and video below.)

NY Times ad

Two questions have immediately come to your mind: "Why?" and "What the hell is Dokdo?"

To answer your second question, Dokdo is Korea's name for two rocks, also called the Liancourt Rocks and Takeshima, in the middle of the Sea of Japan (or the East Sea, Korea's name for the Sea of Japan. They love re-naming things). As the NY Times ad above illustrates, the islands have been disputed territory with Japan for just about all of eternity. You can catch up on Dokdo's disputed history here.

View Dokdo in a larger map

The first question is the better one. If you ask this of your friends in Japan, they will probably answer with the second question ("What the hell is Dokdo?"). Even if they have heard the islands called by their Japanese name, Takeshima, they likely didn't hear much else about it. From the Japanese people and residents I've talked to, very few care about Dokdo/Takeshima at all. On the Japanese side of the dispute, the matter seems to be entirely political.

On the Korean side, however, politics is the least of it. Sure, there is economic potential in Dokdo as a commercial fishing outpost and a theoretical source of gas deposits. But for most Koreans, Dokdo has become a symbol of the entire country and its long history of fighting against colonial and imperial powers. It's almost as if South Koreans wouldn't know what to do if they weren't battling for something. So they've adopted the political fight for Dokdo as a very personal one.

Some Koreans have responded to Japan's personal affront on their property by removing Japanese condom advertisements, decapitating birds, cutting off their fingers, setting themselves on fire, and committing suicide, and riding motorcycles around the world. (One Japanese man was going to repond, but he was too busy watching human tetris.)

The author of this 2006 San Francisco Chronicle article about the "Dokdo bikers" was, in my opinion, spot on in his assessment of Korean pride over the dispute.

The conflict is partly over fishing rights and sea boundaries, but deeper down, Korean passion is fueled by enduring bitterness over Japan's harsh, 35-year occupation of Korea that ended in 1945 with Japan's defeat in World War.

According to the Korea Times article, the bracelets read "Dokdo is Korean Territory" and "East Sea is Korea", and will be distributed in NY and NJ.

KALA co-chair Hwang Sung-Ho compares Dokdo to the Falkland Islands in the article, complaining that Americans know about the latter but nothing of the former. Seriously?

Dokdo / Takeshima / Liancourt Rocks

First of all, the the Falkland Islands are 65,000 TIMES LARGER than Dokdo (Dokdo is 187,500 square meters, while the Falkland Islands cover 12,173 km², or 12 billion square meters), people actually LIVE there, and there was a war fought specifically about the territory. Secondly, though some Americans might recognize the name "Falkland Islands", I doubt they could tell you anything about them.

Comparing Dokdo to any other islands, territories, or land under dispute anywhere else in the world is just asking to be criticized. Brian Deutsch brought up this argument on his blog after the 30-second ad for Dokdo aired in Times Square on March 1st.

The ad, though rather clever I think, serves only to draw attention to the differences between the islands rather than similarities. And as Brian pointed out, the ad's comparisons would never normally point to Dokdo as a logical conclusion here.

* Complete this series of analogies:
America: Hawaii
Italy: Sicily
Indonesia: Bali
Korea:

I'd be absolutely shocked if you answered anything other than Jeju.

Jeju, Korea's largest island, is a frequent vacation and honeymoon destination for Koreans. Dokdo is not. (Although Dokdo once played host to a wedding, the event was more of a protest to Japanese claims on the island than to celebrate the atmosphere of the rocks.) Though the islands receive over 100,000 visitors each year, they are overwhelmingly Korean, and they do little more than set foot on a closely guarded visitor area.

This dispute is likely to continue until both countries bring the issue to the International Court of Justice, as Japan has suggested. Korea rejected the proposal.

In the end, there's little that arguing (or cutting off appendages) will do to change reality. One commenter on Brian's blog put it best:

The only reality that we can quantify and analyze is our own reality, and in our reality, these are the facts about the Liancourt Rocks:
- Japan has claimed ownership of the Rocks, designating them Takeshima under Okinoshima, Oki District, Shimane Prefecture.
- Korea has claimed ownership of the Rocks, designating them Dokdo (Dok-do, Tokto) under Ulleung-eup, Ulleung County, North Gyeongsang Province.
- Due (in part) to historical political strife, as of today (2010/MAR/02), the two countries have not resolved the issue of ownership of the Rocks between themselves.
- Since both nations list the islands as part of their respective countries, the Rocks are disputed territory.
- While the Liancourt Rocks are currently administered by the Republic of Korea, as we all know, possession DOES NOT necessarily equal ownership.
- Japan has indicated that they are willing to settle this matter in international court. Korea has indicated that they do not. Therefore, the matter is neither resolved internally between the two countries, nor externally in international law.

Those are the facts. All the facts point to the Liancourt Rocks being disputed territory. Anything else - including personal beliefs - would be incorrect.

Acupuncture in Korea

2010-04-03T15:03:00.007+09:00

I hurt my neck the other day doing yoga when I fell over during a headstand. Coincidentally, I had been looking for an excuse to visit the acupuncturist, and here Fate was kind enough to present me with one.

Some of my friends have had acupuncture done before, so I knew basically what to expect; I just wanted to know if it really worked, and how it felt. I also love Dr. Kim, the traditional Korean doctor down the street from my house. Lisa and I went to dinner with him and his wife earlier this week. They are extremely generous, loving people - their family spent four years in Uzbekistan while Dr. Kim gave free treatment to local villagers, and he has also spent time in Sri Lanka doing the same. He has a very calming demeanor, and I can't help but smile when I'm around him. He speaks English rather well, but he speaks it in such a way that he seems to be mulling over each individual word for maximum meaning and impact before speaking it, so he has a very slow, melodic manner of communicating that is entrancing and endearing.

Anyway, I visited his office at 9am Friday before school. My neck had been killing me all through the night; I slept terribly, and could barely lift my head from the pillow in the morning. I wasn't sure I'd be able to go to school that day. I only had two classes scheduled, so I wouldn't have felt terrible about it, but I wanted to see how I felt after Dr. Kim's treatment.

His office is very pleasant, with lots of natural light and a heavy (but not overpowering) smell of herbs. I waited for about 5 minutes and was called back to see him. I told him my story and that my neck was extremely sore. He held my wrist and felt my pulse for about a minute (though he didn't time it), after which he declared that my condition wasn't serious. He recommended that I do several acupuncture sessions, which I agreed to.

His desk is within the same room as the patients' quarters; small, well-apportioned cubicles with modest beds and a heat lamp. I took off my shirt and socks as instructed, and sat in a legless chair on the bed with my knees propped up over a pillow. He came in and, using a small metal tube that seemed to work much like a ball-point pen, inserted several small metal needles in my skin - three near my shoulder blades, one in the outside of my left food, and one in the outer flesh of my left hand, which I had balled into a fist. He left me in that position for about ten minutes, with a heat lamp directed toward my back.

After he removed the needles, I lay down on my stomach and he placed two large heating pads over my shoulders and neck, for another ten minutes.

The third treatment was fire cupping, in which Dr. Kim sprayed alcohol into four clay cups, lit them on fire, and placed them down onto my back. The fire went out immediately and created a suction effect, drawing skin into the cup and blood into the skin. Again he directed the heat lamp to my back and I lay there for another ten minutes. He applied a large herb patch over one of the cup marks, and gave me some herbal medicines to take three times a day. The cost? 6,400 won (6 USD). I made an appointment to come back and see him the following day.

bruise marks from cupping

Although my neck didn't feel 100% better, the pain had decreased significantly. Where before my neck was suffering from sharp, shooting pains whenever I moved my head, now the pain had dulled substantially and I had regained some of the range of motion in my neck. I felt elated, as if I had been dosed with anti-anxiety medication, and practically skipped my way to work.

Throughout the entire day, including the night, the pain in my neck never increased. I had expected the effects of the treatment to wear off, particularly overnight. But I slept soundly and when I woke up this morning for my second treatment, my neck felt quite spry.

I think I may have to start listing Dr. Kim as my "family doctor" from now on.

Acupuncture is extremely common in Korea - most of my co-teachers regularly visit their local traditional Korean doctor when they have aches, pains, or illness. It's almost always their first line of treatment.

For more on health care in Korea, see below:

Five Minutes in a Korean Hospital

A Penny for your...Eye Infection?