Demolition by ladder

Do they do this in the States? Maybe, but I've never seen it.

(Apologies for the low video quality. Blogger doesn't allow video files of more than 100MB, astonishingly. Watch a high-quality version on vimeo [password required: korea].)

Later in the day, we hiked up a mountain on the opposite side of the Hyeongsan River. I took a highly zoomed photograph of our apartment complex, and was pleased to see that the ladder was still there, barely visible.

Mom Zone

Let't talk Korean-English bilingual punning.

This is a photo of the hospital that we took Tek to back in January, when he had a really bad illness and we were worried it might be flu. (Because we didn't have any Korean medical insurance at that time, we had to pay the full cost of the doctor's visit: about $15.)

There is a pediatric clinic on the first floor, but the hospital primarily specializes in ob/gyn. The English name of the hospital appears in the koala bear logo at the top, as transcribed in the photo caption:

It says: MOM ZONE WOMEN'S HOSPITAL

The Korean name of the hospital is: Mam Jon Yeoseong Byeongwon. The first two syllables (pronounced "Mahm Jone") sound very close to English "Mom Zone".* The rest of it is "Women's Hospital" (여성병원 女性病院). So the Korean name would seem to be just a borrowing from English: Mom Zone Women's Hospital.

But wait! I am told that Mam Jon 맘존 is also a common, playful contraction of Ma-eum Jo-eun 마음 좋은, which means "kind-hearted".** So setting aside the similarity to English "Mom Zone", in Korean the hospital name means something like "Kind-Hearted Women's Hospital".

That's a pretty sophisticated bilingual pun.


* Korean has no "z" sound. The closest sound is "j". Koreans do not perceive a difference.
** Corrected from earlier.

What are they hiding?

During our first few weeks here, when we were actively looking for good places near Herren Haus to eat lunch, I realized that I was experiencing exceptionally high levels of anxiety when approaching a new restaurant for the first time. It took me a while to figure out why.

Take a look at these restaurant storefronts. Imagine you are walking by and trying to decide if you want to go in for a meal.

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Are they open are closed? Are they even in business? Is anybody eating in them? Are they filthy or clean? Is it floor seating or chair seating? Why would you walk into a restaurant when you don't know the answers to any of these questions?

A few of the restaurants have small "영업중" ("Open") signs hanging on the door (such as the last one, just above), but most do not. The windows are covered with thick paper or darkly tinted, making it impossible to see inside. There is no way to know what kind of place you are getting yourself into without opening the door and stepping inside.

Once I became conscious of the fact that I couldn't see inside these places, I understood the source of my anxiety. I remain perplexed that restaurants here go to such great lengths to hide their appearance from the outside world. In America restaurants are generally transparent: the goal is to entice people in by letting them see what it's like inside. Something else is going on here, but I don't understand what it is.

On the plus side, most of these restaurants have only one to four items on their menu, and those items are written on the facade. So you pretty much know what your choices are going to be, and you choose your restaurant based on what food you want to eat.

By the way, restaurant #2 (Cheongha Hanjeongsik 청하 한정식) is one of our favorite places. We go about once a week for lunch. Here is what a double order of their $6 Korean set meal looks like.

We've been going there long enough now that the owners are very friendly to us. And we've started to experience changes to the side dishes as different vegetables come into season.

Bonfire

The first full moon after Lunar New Year is an important holiday in much of East Asia. (The holiday is known as Yuánxiāojié 元宵節 in China.) Here in Korea it is called Jeongwol Daeboreum 정월 대보름. Every year the city of Gyeongju organizes  a celebration down by the river west of town. The major attraction is a huge bonfire meant to bring good luck in the coming year.

When we arrived in the late afternoon a lot of tents were set up. There was an incredibly long string of kites flying over the river.

I guess they wanted to get the kites in before nightfall, so they started reeling them in not long after we got there. It took a very long time.

Kite recalling

Since Tek is a boy in a bubble, when the volunteers saw him watching, they gave him two kites.

There was plenty of free tea and coffee. Volunteers carried around trays of tteok to give away.

Tek eating tteok. Although an American might be forgiven for imagining otherwise, there is no chocolate here.

There was a traditional Korean drum dance.

And this man played some lovely tunes on a flute, just before the mayor and other city officials were introduced to the crowd. Each one bowed deep and received applause.

This is the bonfire, or daljip 달집 'moon house'.

The banner reads 慶州市民萬事亨通(경주시민 만사형통) 'May all things succeed for the citizens of Gyeongju'

At the base of the bonfire you can see various affixed wishes and prayers, some written in Hangeul and some in Chinese characters. A number of ritual prayers were made.

Among the offerings were Asian pairs, a pig head with money in its mouth, and persimmons.

The bonfire was lit before dusk.

It was extremely dramatic. Initially there were huge billows of smoke. Sometimes people would jump the barrier in order to throw another prayer slip on the fire. They would be chased down by security personnel.

The fire took a long time to burn, eventually collapsing as the sky grew darker.

It was extremely hot, as you might imagine.

This 1-minute video shows the progression of the bonfire.

Having a small child, we left not long after sunset, when many revelers were arriving, having just gotten off work.

Happy White Day

Today, March 14, is "White Day". The holiday started in Japan in the 1970s, and has since migrated to other parts of Asia, including Korea. Exactly one month after Valentine's Day, the day is designated for men to give gifts to women (reciprocating for the tradition of women giving gifts to men on Valentine's Day). (If you're confused, check out this handy explanatory cartoon.)

Tek (and presumably all the other male members of his class) received chocolate on Valentine's Day from a female classmate.

According to Wikipedia, the most typical White Day gifts in Korea are hard candies, but as these displays show, merchants are selling a wide variety of products, including chocolate.

Home Plus White Day display

Home Plus White Day display

Window decoration at Tous Les Jours: "Bloom, sweet love of mine"

On sale in Tous Les Jours on the White Day table: Homer Simpson's favorite chocolate?

YA GPS post

At the risk of flogging a dead horse, I continue to be astonished at what's in the GPS database here. (Earlier posts here and here.)

It knows all the locations where accidents are common. It will give a verbal warning too: "Warning: 500 meters ahead is a high-accident location." But today is the first time I saw it tell me that my car might soon fall into the river:

It knows the marked direction of travel of every lane in the Home Plus parking lot!

And check out the detail in that rendering of the Home Plus facade, right down to the clock face!

The two photos above are of the GPS when it is on but has no destination programmed in.

Why does a speaker inside the apartment make me feel creepy?

Why does a speaker inside the apartment make me feel creepy?

Is it because the speaker can't be turned off and the volume can't be adjusted? The idea that the powers that be can broadcast a message into your home at any time of day or not strikes me as Orwellian. Is this a vestige of the days when South Korea was a highly militarized society? Or is it just a cultural difference that I'm instinctively misreading as an intrusion into freedom and privacy?

It's not that the speaker is often used, or that it broadcasts messages generated by the government. Most probably it is there in case of emergency, to give directions in the event of a fire or a North Korean missile strike. Erma tells me that in her parents' previous apartment building in Pohang, the speaker—regardless of why it was installed—was mainly used to broadcast the exciting news that the watermelon truck had arrived in the parking lot and was selling "sweet, delicious watermelon".

A few days ago, March 1, was one of the Korean Independence holiday. Known as "3-1" (3·1절) it commemorates the start of the March 1 movement in 1919, when Korean nationalists (rather impotently) proclaimed independence from imperial Japan. Although the movement wasn't successful, it did lead to the establishment of a provisional government in exile, which provided a framework for establishing the South Korean government after World War II.

Anyway, 3-1 is an important national holiday, and, as with the Fourth of July in the US, it's a day on which one is supposed to fly the national flag, known as the Taegeukgi 태극기. You know, this one:

Erma with the Korean national flag on 3-1 National Independence Day. The flag dates to the 1880s.

The managers of our apartment complex decided that they wanted to encourage all residents to fly a Korean flag for the holiday. Every apartment already has a flagpole bracket attached to an exterior railing. And the managers were offering free flags to any resident who needed one.

But the weird thing was that a few days before they holiday, they started broadcasting messages over the apartment speakers. Some were made at 8:00 pm (when we were trying to put the little one to bed). Some came in at breakfast, some at midday, some at dinner time. It just struck me as the weirdest thing. They were aiming, they said, for 100% participation. I was tempted to consider this ominous, but in fact nobody there was no actual pressure to put up a flag and nobody seemed to care too much about it one way or another.

Of the ten apartments pictured in this photo late on the morning of March 3, seven had a flag flying.

Where's Ermdo?

Here's some video of the final announcement, during breakfast on the morning of the holiday.

Korean GPS

I've mentioned before that Korea is a small country, and as a result the personal GPS systems know a lot more details about navigation than do those in the US. (At least, I think they do. I don't own a GPS, so I'm actually not sure how much the American models know about US roadways.)

Korean GPS knows the location of every traffic signal, every speed bump, every left-turn lane, every enforcement camera, and every speed limit. The information screen is dazzlingly complex.

Click through for a bigger image to reveal more detail.

The left-hand side shows a 3-D partial overhead view, with every building augmented in life-like detail. On the right-hand side we see details of the upcoming intersection, including the legal directions of motion in each of the five lanes (we're to turn left, so the two left-turn lanes are highlighted in blue), the presence of a traffic signal, and warnings about cross-traffic having U-turn lanes.

There's a lot of audio feedback too. By law the GPS isn't allowed to tell you where the speed limit enforcement cameras are, but they make it clear through indirect language like "약 500미터 앞에서 신호와 과속에 주의하십시오" 'About 500 meters ahead, pay attention to the traffic signal and your speed'. As you approach the camera, if the GPS detects that you are moving faster than the speed limit, a series of warning beeps will sound: boop-boop-boop-boop-boop! When you successfully pass the location of the camera, you are rewarded with a triumphant da-da-daaah!

The GPS can, of course, also give directions. But drivers leave it on even for routine trips when no destination is programmed in, in order to avoid speeding tickets.

I'm starting to get used to driving with it on. It's kinda fun.