Eumshik 1: Apateu

Korean food!

There's so much to say on this topic, it's hard to know where to begin. For this post, I think I'll limit myself to the food in our apartment.

We still haven't figured out the best way to shop for food. In our neighborhood, there are lots of syupeomaket (슈퍼마켓). But don't let the name fool you. These aren't what we'd call supermarkets in English; they are more like tiny neighborhood grocers carrying packaged foodstuffs, toiletries, and cleaning supplies, all piled on crammed shelves separated by narrow aisles. Some have a small produce section. As you might expect, the groceries at these places are pretty expensive, and the selection is limited. There's also a little fruit specialty shop, and one day there was a guy selling fresh vegetables from the back of his truck.

[Linguistic side-note: why syupeomaket instead of supeomaket? Where'd the "y" come from? Erma speculates that this borrowing is based on British English pronunciation, in which the "u" in words like "tune" and "super" is preceded by a "y" sound.]

In Shinchon there is a large, upscale department store, Hyundai. Like most department stores here, there is a full-scale food court and supermarket on the underground floor. The selection is much better here: you can get a wide variety of meats and produce, and a lot of packaged goods, included imports. But here, too, the prices are very high. This supermarket (and presumably others like it) also have some peculiarities from the American point of view. Different stations in the market belong to different vendors. These stations are manned by employees of the product makers rather than employees of Hyundai. As a result, the same product may be available in multiple locations at different prices, and the employees are working hard to get you to buy from them. While you're considering getting kimchi at one place, the lady at the kimchi counter next door is trying to entice you over there instead. Want garlic? Better check the prices at the three different produce stands where garlic is being sold.

Another interesting feature of food products sold here is that an unusually high number of products are sold with a smaller product attached to it as a promotion. I recently bought some soft tofu, and there was a free half-size packet of hard tofu taped to it. Sometimes this practice is taken to what seems like ridiculous extremes. Last time we went there, the quart cartons of Seoul brand milk had cup cartons of the same exact milk taped to them. (Yeah, okay, they were metrically measured packages, but I don't remember how many centiliters they were. They looked like quarts and cups.) And, craziest of all, the little jars of Bonne Maman jam had tiny 40ml jars of Bonne Maman jam taped to them. Perfect for your dollhouse!

Anyway, all of this food is really expensive, while simple meals eaten out are incredibly cheap. You can have a large, tasty, healthy meal for less than $4 at a restaurant. So it makes eating in a rather expensive alternative. Still, it makes us crazy to eat out all the time, so we do cook sometimes.

Another option for shopping are the supermarkets inside the giant discount chains like Homever and E-Mart. They work the same way as the Hyundai market -- multiple vendors -- and the prices are supposed to be better. But it still seems kind of pricey to us.

Anyway, if you're curious, here's what's in our house right now in the way of food. We'll start with the pantry:


1. Seattle Chocolates brand chocolates, brought from Seattle to be used for gifts.
2. Pickled garlic cloves, a delicious Korean side dish.
3. Digestives, the delicious cracker-cookie found throughout Asia. A remnant of British colonialism, no doubt, but no less delicious for it.
4. Instant ramen. Always good to have around for emergencies.
5. Two kinds of Chinese tea, one brought from Seattle. We've been drinking a lot of tea.
6. Packet of crackers given to us by Erma's father. He intended for us to eat them immediately as a snack, but we've saved them, brought them to Seoul, and kept them around for an emergency.
7. Seasoned fried seaweed squares, sometimes called laver in English, called gim 김 in Korean. Another delicious side dish, especially wrapped around some rice.
8. Some pretzels saved from our flight. Yep, you guessed it: emergency.
9. Bag of sugar. We tried to avoid buying this for a while, since we'll never use it up in 3 months. But we caved. We'll need it to prepare myeolchi (see below).
10. Sesame oil.
11. Trader Joe's trail mix. Brought from Seattle, now half eaten.
12. Black pepper.
13. Jar of Korean strawberry jam.
14. Sesame seeds in a little grinder. Ground-up sesame is a necessity in Korean cooking.
15. A tiny tube of sugar stolen from a local coffee shop. (Well, not really stolen. I mean, if you order a coffee, you're allowed to take a tube of sugar, right?) It was when we realized that we couldn't satisfy our sugar needs for three months on stolen cafe packets that we bought the bag of sugar (see #9).
16. Salt.

That was exciting, wasn't it? Let's do more.

In the narrow drawer next to the washing machine is some vegetable oil for cooking:


There's also some soy sauce on the counter, not pictured.

Then there's the fridge:


1. Milk. We bought this to make pancakes from a mix. The recipe only called for 280cc, so we have some left over.
2. Imported Japanese syrup (not genuine maple), again for pancakes. It was expensive, but not as expensive as the genuine imported Canadian maple syrup.
3. Bean sprouts (콩나물). Another Korean staple, used mostly in soups.
4. Tofu. I've been making simple stir fries.
5. Hot pepper paste (고추장). Another staple.
6. Bean paste (된장). A bit like miso -- used to make soup stock.
7. Some Gyeongju-style red-bean cookies, a gift from Erma's mother.
8. Butter. We don't have a butter dish.
9. Kimchi. This is cabbage kimchi, the prototypical kind most familiar to Americans.
10. Kimchi. Another type (총각김치), this one made from small daikon radishes.
11. Garlic. We've been unable to find whole unpeeled garlic anywhere. Koreans seem to buy their garlic pre-peeled in little bags.
12. Mandarin oranges. We've been taking these to school to eat as a snack halfway through our four hours of classes.
13. Yogurt. Also for school snacks.
14. Apples and asian pears. Erma's skill at peeling these (Koreans don't eat the skins) is improving steadily.
15. An onion and half of a very large scallion.
16. Barely visible, an egg.
17. Myeolchi (멸치), tiny little anchovy-like fish. These can be used in soups or seasoned and eaten as a side dish.
18. Hot pepper powder.
19. A larger variety of myeolchi.
20. Sliced whole-grain bread. We got this loaf at one of the many little bakeries that are popular here. They are very similar to the bakeries you find in Japan and Taiwan, with all sorts of odd pastries for sale.
21. Strawberry jam. For breakfasts we toast the bread in a dry frying pan, and eat it with butter and jam. And usually some fruit.
22. More butter.
23. Little yogurt drinks, called yogeureut in Korean. Very refreshing.
24. Orange juice, Minute Maid brand.
25. Bottle of water. Erma refills it and takes it to school.

And, finally, the freezer, two bags of frozen dumplings. (See the end of the Opiseutel entry for a list of some of the different names by which these are called.)


If that's not enough detail for you, send email or post a comment, and I'll fill in the gaps!

More about Korean food, eating out, etc. in future posts.

Kkachi

Today we took this picture of a magpie perched on a pole just outside our apartment.
The magpie, you will recall, is our gu bird.


There really are a lot of magpies around, especially on campus.

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.

HOT뜨거!

We've been eating lunch at the large dining hall in the student union building with some frequency. As I mentioned earlier, the dining hall has a number of different stations serving food, one of which is called Sestorang, written in such a way that is makes a complicated multilingual pun.

Erma pointed out that one of the other stations also has a multilingual pun name. Unlike Sestorang, which always features a meal cooked and served on a hot iron skillet, this one always serves a thick soup in a little earthenware crockpot. It's called "HOT뜨거!", which would be pronounced hot-tteugeo. Now, the second part of that, tteugeo, is an abbreviated form of the Korean word for hot, tteugeowo (뜨거워). When a Korean person touches something burning out, they'll pull their hand back and say the equivalent of "Yow, that's hot!" which is at-tteugeo. (The "at" part is meaningless, it's just an exclamation. It rhymes with "hot".) Not only does English "hot" mean the same thing as tteugeo, but if you pronounce "HOT뜨거!" it sounds almost exactly like the Korean for "Yow, that's hot!".

When you are served your food in the earthenware crockpot, it is in fact still boiling.

If any Korean speakers can correct or clarify my explanations, please leave a comment!

Jihacheol

It turned rather suddenly from summer to autumn this week. When we arrived it was still hot, muggy and in the 80s. Then one day the weather just flipped, and since then it's been drizzly and cool, with highs in the upper 60s and low 70s. Erma and I keep expecting the heat to come back -- in Seattle, the transition between seasons is hesitant and full of reversals -- but it looks like fall is here to stay.

Enough about the weather ....

Seoul has a fantastic subway system. When Erma last lived here, it was a simple relatively thing of four lines. Now it's a sprawling octopus with eight main lines, a ninth under construction, and a number of inter-connected commuter train lines. It probably should be considered in the same league as some of the great metropolitan subway systems like those of Tokyo, London, and New York. While some of the cars on the older lines are showing their age, the cars and stations on the new lines are beautiful. And most of the older stations seem to have been renovated recently.

Here's a map of the system, to give you an idea of its scope:


We get on the subway at Shinchon, about a 10-minute walk from our apartment. From there it's easy to get just about anywhere. The trains run at frequent intervals, even on weekends and holidays, and you barely lose any time when transferring from one line to another.

One of our first trips on the subway was to Homever, one of the large Korean discount department store chains (think Target), to buy some necessities for the apartment. Interestingly, the Homever is located inside the World Cup soccer stadium. (The World Cup was jointly hosted by Korea and Japan in 2002.) This gives it a rather odd shape, elongated and curved, as it follows the donut-ring circumference of the building.

The subway station at the World Cup soccer stadium seemed brand new. It was completed in late 2000, and I suspect that one reason that the line and its stations were built so nicely was in anticipation of the crowds of foreign soccer fans that would soon be pouring through it.

(It seems, sometimes, that countries like China and Korea make infrastructure improvements not for the sake of their own people, but out of fear of shaming themselves before Westerners. That's the attitude that was behind the celebrated ban of dog-meat sales before the 1988 Olympics here, and that is now behind the campaign against public spitting underway in Beijing in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics. Whatever the motivation, though, you can't quibble with the results.)

Before we headed up to Homever, I needed to pee. I knew the bathrooms in the department store would be fine, but I thought it would be a good idea to try out the subway bathrooms. Knowing how user-friendly they are could prove useful in a future emergency situation.

Well, the bathroom at the World Cup Stadium metro station was so nice that after I used it, I waited until everyone else had left, pulled out my camera, and took a few pictures. You'd never find a public bathroom this nice in the US.

Here is the entrance to the bathroom:


And here's the gleaming urinal area of the men's room:

I think the lone urinal on the far wall is for handicapped and/or children. About half the stalls had toilets, and half were squat toilets. (If you don't know what squat toilets are like, you can see a description and pictures here.)

We did finally make it out of the bathrooms and up to Homever. We were pretty surprised to find a very large contingent of riot police, complete with riot buses and riot shields and riot helmets and riot sticks, lolling around outside the entrance to Homever. They didn't appear to be there to buy inexpensive household goods, but on the other hand they didn't appear to be there to stop a riot, either. Mostly the young men were sitting around on benches trying not to fall asleep.

I wanted to, but didn't dare, take a picture of them. In this picture you can see one of their buses in the background, and if you look carefully at the larger picture you should be able to see the protective metal mesh on the windows.


There are a number of other great things about the subway besides the bathrooms and the fast and efficient transportation. For one thing, the signage is fantastic. Not only are there clear route maps at all the stations and on all the trains, but in every station there is a schematic three-dimensional diagram of the station (some of them are quite big and complicated, with over a dozen exits) and a little neighborhood map that shows places of interest in the immediate vicinity of the station. This is the one in the World Cup Stadium station:

If you take a close look, you'll notice that each place of interest appears to be labeled in three languages: Korean, English, and Chinese. In fact, this is a false impression. The three languages are actually Korean, English, and Korean again. I'll explain more about this in a future post.

Another great thing is that in many of the newer stations, there are glass walls separating the platform from the track, so that it is impossible for waiting commuters to fall in front of a train. The glass walls have doors in them, and the train stops at a precise location so that its doors line up with those in the wall. We saw these glass walls on the Singapore subway when we were there in 2000, and they were being retro-actively installed in many of the Hong Kong stations soon after that.

Some of the older stations in Seoul are also getting the retrofit treatment. This is the Shicheong (City Hall) station. You can still see some of the protective tape at the bottom of the newly installed doors.


But probably the best thing about the subway system is the great T-Money card, very similar to the Hong Kong Octopus Card that Erma and I came to know and love six years ago. Like the Octopus, the T-Money card is a rechargeable transit card that can communicate with other devices over short distances. This means that you don't have to slide or touch it to card readers -- you can just wave it nearby. If it's in your wallet or purse, you needn't bother taking it out, you can just hold the whole wallet or purse over the reader. And, like the Octopus, the card is turning into a general form of electronic money, usable at a number of retail outlets. Here's Erma using her card to get to the subway platform at the Shinchon station:


The reader, which controls the gate, lets her know that 900 won (about $1) is being charged from the card (that's discounted off the regular fare of 1000 won), and that a balance of 3300 won remains. (Depending on how far you travel, you may be charged a few hundred additional won when you exit.)

Many of the larger subway stations have small shops in them. When we went to the baseball game, the station by the ballpark had a baseball paraphernalia shop in it. Here's a picture of the window display:


Perhaps this is where all the Koreans are buying their MLB baseball caps!

But wait ... something's wrong. Take a look at that male mannequin. He's wearing a Red Sox jersey and Yankee pinstripe pants?!?? Shows what Koreans know about American baseball.

Erma and I have been keeping an informal and unscientific tally of baseball caps seen around Seoul. Red Sox and Yankees caps are definitely most popular, with Yankees caps seeming to hold a slight edge. Next most popular are the Chicago White Sox.

I still don't know if people are choosing these hats randomly, according to fashion or aesthetics, or based on knowledge of the teams.

I could go on with even more detailed descriptions of the subway, but if that's the kind of thing that really interests you, you'll just have to come over and ride it yourself.

Gu

Walking in Shinchon today, Erma and I noticed for the first time a large billboard-sized sign above the sidewalk on the construction site of a new highrise building. The sign pictures the official tree, bird, and flower of our gu, Seodaemun-gu. Who knew that each district of Seoul has its own officially designated flora and fauna? Turns out our gu tree (區木) is the pine (소나무), our gu bird (區鳥) is the magpie (까치), and our gu flower (區花) is the rose (장미).

Hangungmal Sueop

Had my first Korean language class today. There are twelve students in my section. It's a diverse bunch. Countries of origin include China, Japan, America, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Latvia. (It seemed as if our teacher had never heard of the latter.) My section has no Korean-Americans (or Korean-anything-elses), although there are many such students studying here (including Erma). (There are over a thousand students taking Korean here. I'll let you do the math to figure out how many simultaneous sections there must be.)

The presence of a Latvian in my class may be less surprising than it first seems. The school has just revised its textbooks. Our textbook isn't going to be ready for another week or so, so for now we are using photocopies. The teacher said that when the textbook does come out, there will be different versions for English, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian speakers. The number of Russian-speaking students must be increasing rapidly.

Erma has two Mongolians in her class! Even if those are the only two Mongolians in the entire program, that's a nationality that is vastly over-represented when compared with their percentage of world population.

The class schedule is intensive. We are in class from 9:00 to 1:00 every weekday. That time is divided into four class sessions, with a 20-minute break between the second and third session, and a 10-minute break at the other two junctures. During the breaks, the number of students crowded together outside the main entrance to the building smoking is impressive.

The teaching style is not as interactive as in America. There are obvious similarities with the Chinese-language classes I've observed in China. Our reading teacher, for example, spent most of the 50 minutes of her class session talking. When she wasn't explaining the reading, she was posing questions and then answering them herself if no students were forthcoming with answers. But in the other three sessions we did have a reasonable amount of time to practice speaking with the teacher and with the other students.

Most of my classmates took Level 1 Korean here. They have been in Korea longer than me, and have better listening comprehension and spoken fluency than I do, and are familiar with the teaching style here. They also share a common set of vocabulary and grammar patterns that only partially overlaps with what I learned when I studied in Seattle two years ago. So I definitely feel that I'm playing catch-up in the class. But I'm confident that this is the right level for me and that I will progress rapidly in this environment.

The homework load this first day was light, but I still spent about 3 hours on it. So I think I should expect that school days will be an 8-hour proposition. Among other things, that will probably translate into shorter and less frequent blog entries.