Gwanak-gu

You'll remember from this earlier post that Seoul is divided administratively into districts (gu 구 區) and further subdivided into neighborhoods (dong 동 洞). Last fall Erma and I lived in Seodaemun-gu (서대문구 西大門區), Daeshin-dong (대신동 大新洞), near Yonsei University. This spring I'm living in Gwanak-gu (관악구 冠岳區), Bongcheon-dong (봉천동 奉天洞). This map shows the relative locations of the two areas of the city; click on a marker to see its label.


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(If you can't see the embedded map, or want to see a larger image, you can go here.)

Historically, the city of Seoul was north of the Han River (한강 漢江), and this is where the main palaces, major universities, city government buildings, and most of the sites described in earlier entries of this blog are located. But as the population of the city grew rapidly in the last half of the twentieth century, the fields south of the river became urbanized, and today there is as much city south of the river as there is north of the river.

Seoul National University was relocated to Gwanak-gu from its original location not far from the President's house in 1975. It is widely believed (and may be true) that the government relocated the campus in order to get SNU's politically active students away from the center of town. During the reign of the US-supported military dictators, college students were highly radicalized and spent a lot of time protesting, demonstrating and blockading. As you can see from the map, the current SNU campus is located in the steep foothills of Gwanak Mountain (for which the district is named). This area was once wild and remote; now the city has, in its relentless expansion, almost caught up to the campus. I said I live in Bongcheon-dong, but actually I live in Bongcheon 6-dong. The neighborhood has been divided into at least 11 sub-units. My guess is that since the dong was first demarcated, the population in the area has grown so much more dense that it became necessary to divide up the neighborhood into smaller administrative (or at least postal) units.

(Incidentally, for those of you keeping track, the reason I've just given for the relocation of the campus was the third interesting thing I learned from my teacher, as described in this earlier post.)

The dorm I'm staying in is about halfway between two subway stations on Line 2, the same line we lived near in the fall. It's less than a 10 minute walk for me to get to either one. Although I'm just off a major road (Nambu Sunhuan-No 남부순환로, which I suppose means Nambu Ring Road, although I'm sure nobody actually knows this name), my building is actually on a very narrow one-way street that runs parallel to the road, and there's practically no traffic noise. Which is good, because the place is overheated and I have to leave the window open day and night to keep from roasting.

These are the views to the right and left down my street, from just in front of my building.



I often feel like I'm on a movie set when I walk down this little street. Everything is small and clean vibrant, as if it was all a recently-built facade. There are always a surprising number of people walking around, as if they were extras hired to populate the set.

Two doors down from me, on the left, is a little tteok 떡 mom-and-pop shop.


(Did you forget what tteok is? It's described halfway down this post.)

There are certain types of shop that are over-represented in my neighborhood. They are: real estate agencies, beauty parlors, dry cleaners, and chicken restaurants. And on my little block only, services for little kids. This is one of several music studios for small children.


Every afternoon I've heard rhythmic shouts and chanting of children drifting in through my open window. At first I thought there must be a school nearby. There is, in fact, an elementary school in the neighborhood, but too far away to be the source of the noise. And in any case, the chanting continued into the late afternoon, long after school is out. I finally realized the source a few days ago: above the music studio pictured here, directly across the street from me, is a large Taekwondo studio. It too caters to children.

Let's proceed down the block.

Here's the hair salon, called He-eo Ateu (that is, "Hair Art"). It's actually only one of two on the block -- you can see the other in the first picture of the post, with the sign reading Miyongshil 미용실.


Just a bit farther down the street, on the left, is a small kids' stationery and toy shop. It's called Yeong Ateu 영 아트 (that is, "Young Art"). There are always two or three excited kids crowding in or rushing out any time I walk past. On the sidewalk in front are these two tiny video games with miniscule plastic seats in front of them. There's something really cute about the little kids perched on miniature furniture playing miniature video games. You also gotta love the hula hoops.



(You can see the sign for yet another music lesson place just behind the kids.)

On the corner of my block is a harin mateu 하린 마트, or discount mart. It's small, but carries all the daily necessities, from orange juice to alcohol to bread to packaged foods to toothpaste to toilet paper to slippers. It's not a large store, so they keep a good chunk of their wares out on the sidewalk. It's great to live literally less than 30 seconds from a convenience store. I don't know if it's open 24 hours or not, but so far I've never seen it closed. Need pancake mix or dried squid at 10:45 pm on Saturday night? No problem.


If you were standing next to that woman with the pink purse and glanced to your right you would see a fruit-and-vegetable seller, a taciturn middle-aged man who looks somewhat beaten down by many decades of a hard and lonely life. The first time I visited him he seemed stunned by my appearance. I said "hello," and he said, "Hunh?" I don't think it occurred to him that I would say anything in Korean. I repeated myself, and he said "hello" back. So far he's my main source of cooking ingredients. He also sells me tofu, pulling fresh blocks out of a big soaking barrel.

Not everything is a mom-and-pop store. There's a 7-Eleven on the same corner.


If you are coming from my dorm and turn left at this corner, the one with Young Art, the Discount Mart, and 7-11, you're on another little alley heading toward the main road. You're looking down that alley in the picture above. A little farther along it, on the right, are two restaurants, pictured below. One I think of as the restaurant with the longest name in the world. It translates to something like "Let's make it rice ...! Let's make it noodles ...!" It's where I had my first meal after moving into the dorm.


Next to it is "OH my chicken". I can't tell if this is supposed to be "Oh, my chicken!" or "Oh my, chicken!" I'd really like to know, but I suppose it doesn't matter. The Korean name is Omaichikin 오마이치킨. You'll notice the English word "chicken" in there. Korean, of course, has a perfectly good word for chicken, and that word (dak 닭) is ordinarily employed in the names chicken dishes. The English borrowing chikin is used, so far as I can tell, exclusively for deep fried chicken drumsticks, thighs, and breasts in the KFC style. When I said earlier that chicken restaurants are over-represented in my neighborhood, this is the kind of place I was referring to. There's one on every block.

Next is a Chinese place. It has a typical sign showing a chef pulling really long noodles. I'm a bit afraid of this place and its extraordinarily long noodles. Beyond it, with the yellow sign and red-and-white awning, is a gimbap shop. Gimbap 김밥 looks like a sushi maki roll, but it's made with plain rice, not vinegar rice. It's a commonly eaten food for a snack or an on-the-go lunch.


Finally there is my neighborhood fancy French bakery and pastry shop (or, if you like, boulangerie/pâtisserie), where I buy my bread for toasting and jam for putting on it. I'm not sure what "Self cake" is, but the rest of the sign is self-explanatory.

And that's one of the gazillion real-estate agencies, to the left of the pastry shop.

As soon as you emerge from the alley onto the main road, the world changes. Looking to the right, in the direction of the Seoul-Dae Ipgu 서울대입구 subway station:


And the left, in the direction of the Nakseongdae 낙성대 subway station:


Back to the right, that's my bus stop, marked by the blue sign on the sidewalk. As you can see, I've just missed both the #5412 and the #5528, the two buses that go to the main gate of SNU campus. I'm not worried, though. They come every five minutes during rush hour.


While waiting at the bus stop, I can contemplate this fellow and his fashionable suit. Apparently it is more fashionable if you wear it sockless with sneakers.


Finally, I wanted to throw in this picture. I stumbled across this restaurant a few nights ago, while wandering around. It's a chain that serves juk 죽, a thick flavored rice gruel (known as jook (粥) to aficionados of Cantonese food). There was one just a few yards down the street from our Yonsei officetel that Erma and I frequented last fall, so I felt really happy to eat there. It was like a bit of home.

Jangmi

It's really autumn here now. The days are cool and wonderfully crisp and sunny. The sunlight is bright but weak, and you can smell the incipience of winter in the air.

Took a picture on Yonsei campus today of roses in bloom. This is just outside the main library building.

The rose, as we discovered, is our gu flower.

Jungguk sarami manneyo!

Which is to say, 중국 사람이 많네요!

Which is to say, "There sure are a lot of Chinese people!"

Of the 1000 or so students studying Korean here at Yonsei's Korean Language Institute, it seems that at least half are from Mainland China. You hear Chinese spoken everywhere: in the hallways, on campus, even on the bustling sidewalks of Shinchon.

Perhaps this will not surprise most of you. Take a look at the map, and you'll see that Korea dangles off its monstrous neighbor most precariously. In addition to geographical proximity, there are over a billion Chinese people. Why shouldn't several hundred of them make the short journey here to learn Korean? After all, look at all the Canadians in America learning English. (Okay, sorry, that's a cheap joke.)

But it does surprise me. Not too long ago the Chinese weren't going anywhere. They were too poor and isolated. And then, when they did start going places, they all wanted to learn English. They went to the US, England, and Australia. Why would a Chinese person bother with little insignificant Korea?

But things have changed now. Not only are Koreans aligning themselves more closely with China than the US, in terms of their economic (and perhaps political) future, they are having a major cultural impact on Asia. Korean movies, TV shows, celebrities, and music have been extremely popular in China for the last decade. (When I lived in Hong Kong, there were Korean movies playing everywhere. That was over 6 years ago.)

So the Chinese here, and I expect they'll be here for a long time to come.

Yeon-Go Jeon

This weekend was the annual sporting competition called Yeon-Go Jeon (연고전). Over two days, teams representing the rival schools Yonsei University (the Yeon part) and Korea University (the Go part) meet in a wide variety of sporting events, including baseball, basketball, ice hockey, rugby, and soccer, in various sporting venues around the city. As Erma and I discovered, the competition serves as a focal point for school pride and student bonding activities. And it's also an excuse for a lot of beer drinking.

For reasons that are unclear to me, our Korean Language Institute provided two free buses on Friday afternoon to take students to the opening ceremonies and the baseball competition. The opportunity to leave class half an hour early and attend the Yeon-Go Jeon was available only to upper-level students like Erma, but because I'm married to her I received a special dispensation.

All last week student groups on campus were selling blue T-shirts in preparation for the event. Blue is the color of Yonsei, and all students attending Yeon-Go Jeon events are expected to show their loyalty by wearing the house color. As it happens, Erma and I didn't bring any blue shirts with us to Korea. We tried to buy some on Thursday. It didn't seem appropriate to get shirts from an unrelated department or extracurricular group (like the Electrical Engineering Department, say), but by the time we figured out where the foreign language student shirts were available, they were sold out. In the end we went without school colors. As it turned out, few of the several dozen KLI students who attended were in blue, so we didn't stand out too much.

Who thought we'd be returning so soon to the baseball stadium where we'd seen a professional game not long before?

When we got to the stadium, not long before the opening ceremonies were set to begin at 2:00, it was a madhouse. Yonsei students in blue and Korea U students in red were pouring in and taking up seats in their respective sections: Yonsei on the first-base side, Korea U on the third-base line.

Here's the view looking to our left. The dividing line between blue and red is directly behind home plate.


On the field, the flag squads for each side marched out onto the field and took up positions.



They waved their huge flags in unison to ear-splittingly loud music. The big screen alternated between "Yonsei TV" and "KU TV"

Scattered in among the blue-clad and red-clad flag-bearers were the actual cheerleaders. These guys looked like they had just escaped from a high-school musical production of King Arthur. They seemed to be taking their fashion cues from Prince Valiant. If you look at the large version of the picture below, you can see the guys wearing green, purple, and gold cloaks.



There were also some formations. The Yonsei squad made a big "Y" for Yonsei. (They also made a big "승" for victory, not pictured.)


The Korea U squad, naturally, retaliated with "KU".


Giant banners were unveiled in center field, while the wacky medieval super-heroes posed and strutted.


The various poses, formations, and dances were made to the accompaniment of extremely loud music played by live bands. There were two bands, one for each side, located on platforms in the stands. Monstrous sets of speakers pointed up into the crowds. One reason the music had to be so loud is that the two sides were competing against each other, trying to drown out the other side's cheers and fight songs.

It was a bizarre scene. In the picture below, you can see the flag wavers, the medieval-cloaked escapees from Solid Gold Dancers, and the suited dignitaries and officials from Yonsei (wearing blue visors). Amidst all the wackiness, several high-level administrators made welcoming speeches.


Just looking out over the crowd was an amazing experience. Look at this sea of red on the Korea University side. (You can also see massive speakers toward the bottom of the frame.)

When the official welcoming ceremonies were over, the band on our side got serious. Most of what they were playing sounded like recycled '80s dance tunes, refitted with Yonsei University-related lyrics. The students danced and swayed in unison. The costumed dancers had moved onto platforms set among the crowd, where they energetically led the students through the dance moves on each song. It was non-stop, high-energy exuberance.



When the baseball game started, nothing changed. No one seemed to take notice of the players on the field. The constant barrage of loud music, the dancing, the cheering, continued unabated. I only once saw anything that seemed connected to the on-field game: two geysers of smoke blasted up from one of the dancing stages when Yonsei scored a run.


One of the dance moves was a back-rub chain.


Here are the two dance leaders that were closest to us.


At one point the big scoreboard screen malfunctioned, and a Windows desktop appeared on it. It's rather alarming to realize that buggy Microsoft software is being used in a venue like this.


By the time the game was well under-way, the crowds had filled in considerably. In this picture the Korea U students are doing a dance in which they bow forward and then straighten back up.


As much fun and excitement as there was, and as much as I wanted to watch the game, the extreme volume became intolerably painful after a while, and I feared permanent hearing loss. Erma and I left after the 4th inning, with Yonsei trailing 4-1. (We don't know who won the game.)

If you want to see what Korean sports fans are capable of when they really pull out all the stops, check out this amazing video of soccer fans.

Saturday evening there was a big event on Yonsei campus to celebrate the end of the competition. Erma and I had dinner near Hongik University, one metro stop away from Shinchon. When we returned from dinner around 10:00, the metro cars were stuffed full of blue- and red-clad students, all heading the same direction we were. The Shinchon neighborhood was even more crowded than usual, and a large contingent of traffic cops were out in force to keep the crowds on the sidewalks and the traffic flowing.

In front of and inside shops and restaurants, knots of students were gathered, singing loudly and performing simple coordinated dance moves. Apparently the expectation is that these performances will engender gifts of free food and drink. Erma and I walked past an eyeglass store in which several kegs of beer had been set up. Cups of free beer were being distributed to Yonsei students. A few feet farther on another group of students were filing out of an ice cream shop, sucking on little cups of frozen sorbet; when they saw the beer next door, their eyes grew big as saucers, and their expressions fell quickly from smug self-congratulation to regret.

Shall we compare America and Korea? Why not.

America and Korea the same: Rowdy, beer-drinking college students having wacky fun.
America and Korea different: Rowdy, beer-drinking college students having highly coordinated wacky fun.

Also: Where does the cheerleading aesthetic come from? Who came up with the idea of dressing young men up like medieval European princes and having them lead fans through an unending series of macarena-like dance moves as a way of cheering for a sports team? One has to suspect it was the Japanese.