Analogue: A Hate Story (Or, Joseon Korea in Space!)

It seems that Korea and Koreans are represented pretty well in the indie game market. Dust: An Elysian Tail, by half-Korean developer Dean Dodrill, incorporates a number of Korean elements in the story and design and has sold over a million copies. On a smaller scale, the visual novel Analogue: A Hate Story from Love Conquers All Games is explicitly based on Korean history. In case the hanbok and Hangul on the box art didn't clue you in:

Image courtesy Raide and Love Conquers All Games

The idea is that you are some kind of cyberpunk data hunter. For this job, you've been tasked with fishing out information from a long-abandoned space colonizing vessel, the Mugunghwa, which was originally launched in some unknown year by the (obviously fictional) United Korea Space Federation.

Mugungwha at a grave site in Uijeongbu, South Korea

As you work with the computer's AI system and access the ship's logs from high-ranking passengers, the science fiction background quickly takes shape: Joseon Korea in space! A cool conceit, but I would have loved to see it explored more in depth. I appreciate that Love tried, however, and it's pretty obvious that she is deeply interested in the topic—the game is available in Korean as well as English, so it might be a fun way to get in some language practice? Even though Love isn't Korean, she obviously did her research (and very helpfully names it in the credits!). But there are Korean scholars out there who are better equipped than I am to comment on the accuracy of her portrayal. Anyway, on to the game itself!

During the job you interact with two different AIs, who show you different logs from the long-dead residents of the Mugunghwa. Those logs comprise the story of Analogue. There are also dating sim overtones, as your dialogue choices with the AIs determine if you leave the job with none, one, or both of them downloaded to your own computer. More importantly, your choices dictate which logs they decide to show you. The easiest way to "hack" the game is to remember to show every log to both AIs. (You can't talk to the AIs directly; the game's conceit is that you communicate by answering their yes/no questions and showing them log entries you want to know more about.)

There's also a small but significant element of the story that takes place in a faux-*nix command line, which tickles me to no end (as a Linux user myself). This is where the game's one and only puzzle comes up, and it's a bit of a doozy. I thought it was, anyway; I had to look up a solution online.

Analogue is generally pretty forgiving. You can't really die—I guess maybe only if you don't solve the puzzle you can, but that's it. Your choices aren't so critical, either. This isn't to say that none of them matter. If you're too rude to Hyun-ae (the main AI), or too disinterested in her, she'll disconnect and you'll lose the game. If you neglect to talk to the AIs (by showing them certain logs), you won't unlock all of the content, and you certainly won't be able to finish the game. But otherwise, you can't really lose.

As the story is presented achronistically (achronologically?), it's hard to tell what's happening at first. This is a point in the game's favor, as it makes repeated play-throughs more rewarding. I don't think I really understood things until I unlocked my third or fourth ending (out of seven total).

It's important to save! There comes a point in the story, maybe like halfway or two-thirds in, where you're railroaded into finishing the game with whatever AI you're engaging with at the moment; if you want to get the other AI's ending(s) and you haven't saved in good time, you'll have to start from the beginning.

Overall it's cute. I don't think it's quite as holy shit!! as some of the breathless reviews on the website make it out to be, but I think it's a mildly interesting story presented in a really clever and creative way. I would have loved to see more backstory and less dating sim, but maybe she tackles that in the sequel, Hate Plus.

PSA

Wow, let me dust off the ol' K-blog for the first time in a long while!

I wish I were posting here again to relay some positive news—a vacation or even a new job in South Korea, a friend's new blog, some great news out of the peninsula—but that isn't the case.

I want to tell you about my friend Bob. Bob, a gay ex-Navy man, and his husband, Hoon. Both of them were some of the warmest, most open, most generous people I met while I was in Korea. This is out of an amazing group of coworkers and friends I managed to accrue—I honestly had a wonderful time in Korea due in large part to the fantastic people I met, Korean and foreigners alike, and even among those examples they stand out. (The "hell is other foreigners" tag notwithstanding; it's my default "other foreigners" tag and I wouldn't have much use for a new one.)

Bob is quite a few years older than most of my Korean and NEST contemporaries; the draw of retirement and the beginnings of failing health prompted him to leave the Korean ESL world after a solid decade in the field. Hoon was unable to come with him at the time, so he remained in Korea.

Unfortunately, Bob's been facing an uphill battle since coming back home. He is unable to work much these days (aforementioned failing health), but receives no additional disability support to supplement his $500 / month Social Security stipend. And it takes money to bring someone permanently overseas.

All of this is not helped by the fact that, during the entirety of Bob's tenure in South Korea, the Korean government did not recognize same-sex marriage (and continues to fight this losing cultural battle, even today); we all knew Hoon as Bob's husband and vice versa, but the title was nothing more than a social nicety. Likewise, national, federal-level same-sex marriage was not established in the US until after Bob had already moved home, so the US embassy couldn't have done much to help.

Would being legally-recognized partners help? I don't know, it might have. But that's water under the bridge.

I know the Internet is full of a lot of tales of woe, or ridiculous potato salad kickstarters, or anything else, but I can assure you that the couple involved with this are among the kindest and most generous people I've had the pleasure to meet. Do I understand entirely the reasoning or legality behind all of the obstacles, both American and South Korean? No. Hopefully it will actually be easier than this for them to be together; hopefully it won't take as much as Bob is expecting it to take. But do I think for a moment that this GoFundMe is a graft, a fraud, a pity party? No. Never in a thousand years. Bob was always the giving one: having dinners, thoughtful gifts, good advice, even job openings. He would never ask other people to give if he didn't have to.

If you have the means, please donate. If you have the audience, please signal boost. If you have the legal connections and advice, please get in touch.  These are two sweet people who deserve to be able to live out their lives together.

The Queen's Classroom: The Only K-Drama Worth Watching

Okay, maybe not entirely true, but never before has television moved me to tears. To tears!

I usually dislike television and that goes double for K-dramas. The last K-drama I tried to watch was 꽃보다 남자 (which just goes to show how often I could be roused to give a shit), and I couldn't even finish. 여왕의 교실, though, I would marathon until the wee hours of the morning. Here is what is good about it:

1. The kid actors actually look like real people instead of Botox'd and plastic surgery'd automatons.

2. The kid actors also aren't awful and awkward in their acting (but maybe I couldn't tell because I was too busy reading subtitles).

3. The kid characters are well-developed and a lot like actual kids. Anyone who's been in the kiddie hagwon business will recognize a few of their own students in the show. I know I did.

4. Satisfying character arcs for everyone, kids as well as adults.

All 16 episodes are available (with subtitles) here:

http://www.viki.com/tv/11843c-the-queens-classroom

Gentleman, Or: PSY Trolls Everyone

The video for PSY's new single is hilarious, and the song is damn catchy. It definitely made me a bit homesick for the sketchy bar districts in Seoul, even if I have decided I'm officially too old for that shit.

For those of you who want the Korean lyrics to this new earworm, here they are (courtesy of jumpersjump). It took me longer than it should have to find proper Hangul lyrics instead of awful romanized crap, so I'm doing my part to signal boost:

젠틀맨

알랑가몰라 왜 화끈해야 하는건지

 알랑가몰라 왜 말끔해야 하는건지

 알랑가몰라 아리까리하면 까리해

 알랑가몰라 We Like We We We Like Party 해 ~

 있잖아 말이야

 이사람으로 말씀드리자면 말이야

 용기 패기 똘끼 멋쟁이 말이야

 너가 듣고픈말 하고픈게 난데 말이야

 Damn! Girl! You so freakin sexy!

 Ah Ah Ah Ah~ I’m a…

 Ah Ah Ah Ah~ I’m a…

 Ah Ah Ah Ah~ I’m a mother father gentleman

 I’m a…

 Ah I’m a

 I'm a mother father gentleman

 I’m a…

 Ah I’m a

 I’m a mother father gentleman

 알랑가몰라 왜 미끈해야하는건지

 알랑가몰라 왜 쌔끈해야하는건지

 알랑가몰라 달링 빨리와서 난리해

 알랑가몰라 난리난리 났어 빨리해

 있잖아 말이야

 너의 머리 허리 다리 종아리 말이야

 Good! feeling feeling? Good! 부드럽게 말이야

 아주 그냥 헉소리나게 악소리 나게 말이야

 Damn! Girl! I’m a party mafia!

 Ah Ah Ah Ah~ I’m a…

 Ah Ah Ah Ah~ I’m a…

 Ah Ah Ah Ah~ I’m a mother father gentleman

 I’m a…

 Ah I’m a

 I’m a mother father gentleman

 I’m a…

 Ah I’m a

 I’m a mother father gentleman

 Gonna make you sweat.

 Gonna make you wet.

 You know who I am~ Wet PSY!

 Gonna make you sweat.

 Gonna make you wet.

 You know who I am~ Wet PSY!

Wet PSY! Wet PSY! Wet PSY! PSY! PSY! PSY!

 Ah I’m a mother father gentleman

 I’m a…

 Ah I’m a

 I’m a mother father gentleman

 I’m a…

 Ah I’m a

 I’m a mother father gentleman

 Mother father gentleman

 Mother father gentleman

Birdland Incident

There's a jazz club in downtown Uijeongbu. I had walked by it loads of times but never screwed up the nerve to go in until I had scant few months remaining in Korea. We all make mistakes; this was one I wish I hadn't made. I will miss it dearly when I leave.

I went last night with a few friends, two guys and one other girl. The guys and I are somewhat regulars, and in a country full of Koreans it's pretty easy to remember the weiguk sarams that keep coming back. The musicians always chat with us a bit, or say hello if they see us on the street. The girl with us, on the other hand, had never been before.

At the end of the night, I complimented the singer on her rendition of "Fever," a song I had requested a few months ago but that they didn't have.

"Thank you, I did it for you!"

Which warmed my heart.

Then she turned to the other girl. "You, I think you must be a good singer. Your face is so beautiful!"

Heart dimmed, just a bit.

Glorious Vacation: Day 1

I realized I should probably document my glorious vacation as well as I can, for posterity and all that jazz. So: a belated account of my first day in Gwangju!

After an afternoon to rest up and dry off in my motel room, Day 1 of the Glorious Vacation was spent on a museum binge. The Gwangju Museum of Art, The Gwangju Folk Museum, and the Gwangju Biennale (some kind of international art exhibit; apparently there are Biennales in other cities but Gwangju is the first I've ever heard of one) are all next to each other, so I hit all three in one go!

The first one was the Gwangju Museum of Art, which I think I accidentally snuck in without paying the 500 won entrance fee. My bad! The three main exhibits were: a variety of Chinese artists ranging from standard to kind of modern/avant garde; three kinda weirder Chinese artists; a Zainichi (Japanese of Korean descent) artist named Lee Ufan who is THE MOST BORING ARTIST WHO EVER ARTED. I still don't get modern art, you guys.



A whole gallery full of that. I just...what? It would be neat wallpaper or fabric, but framed art? Seriously?

The best part of that exhibit was the little biographical placque about the fellow who donated most of these incredibly boring pieces of art. The highlight: "Hopefully, his honorable and admirable spirit everlastingly continues to radiate."

I LOVE KONGLISH, YOU GUYS. I love how dramatic and pseudo-poetic this sounds in English because I can pretty much guarantee this is a word-for-word translation, with only word order changed (for the sake of grammar). Occasionally when Jong-min translates snippets of Korean subtitles in American news stories back into English, they sound more or less like the above—and it's not because Jong-min speaks weirdo quasi-archaic English.

There were some really cool art pieces too, that appealed to my more conservative, representationlist tastes. I really liked one that included a link to their  blog right in the painting. How Andy Warhol of them!

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to get a Chinese-speaking friend to translate it for me.

Here's the painting in particular that I liked:



Someone can earn all of the gold stars by telling me what the character in the painting means/represents!

Alas, finding anything else online seems to tax the limits of Google Image Search. They will just have to stay burned in my memory forever! (Because I forgot to put my memory card in my camera, d'oh!)

I wandered outside the art museum and followed the signs to the Gwangju Folk Museum. I love the Folk Museums in Korea, they're kind of tacky (and frightening, if you include some of the badly-stuffed animals....somehow weasels get the worst of it) but they're still pretty neat. I love old school museum dioramas and a Folk Museum is always, basically, a giant diorama. The best part was a display of all the different traditional Jeolla dishes, which was adorable and also kind of redundant. If I had to summarize the provincial cuisine in four words, those words would be: PICKLE ALL THE THINGS.

Also (and I'm glad I still had my notebook with me wherein I noted the most hilarious/interesting/appalling things) there was a mat made from human hair. I can't imagine reclining on a cushion lined with hair from my own  head, but then people shed SO MUCH it would be a waste not to use it for something "back in the day."

I still had plenty of time to kill before typical museum closing time, so I decided to cough up the 14,000 won (expensive, considering the last two museums were 500 won each) for the Biennale. It was a mix between really cool concepts and a bunch of hyper-academic nonsense. There were two installations in particular that I really liked.

The first was by a Mexican artist named Pedro Reyes, called "Imagine." I guess it would qualify as performance art? He collected like 1,200 unused weapons and, working with a whole team of people, turned them into musical instruments, The installation had a couple of the instruments on display, as well as a couple movies running simultaneously: one being the construction of the instruments and the other being performances on the instruments. They did a pretty cool version of "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" and, of course, "Imagine." Here's the guys just jamming out:


pedro reyes: imagine - musical performance from designboom on Vimeo.

The other one was called "The Shoes Diary: Adidas Tragedy Series" by Agung Kurniawan, from Indonesia. He did a small series of reconstructing Adidas shoes (there's a pretty big Adidas factory in Indonesia, apparently?) to make them really uncomfortable (in addition to painting designs) and had people wear them. The discomfort was to remind the wearer of all the trials and tribulations that political/civil rights activists go through.  He expanded it for the Biennale; his whole space was set up to look like a shoe store, and a TV in the corner played a video of his original demonstration of the piece back in whenever. There were a few different violent political activism incidents made into a different shoe (Gwangju, of course, was one of them; Libya, China, Egypt, and Cambodia were included as well). Both the shoes and their box were altered, ie the Chinese  sneakers had the outline of a tank.



I GUESS I LIKE THE COMMODIZATION OF TRAGEDY AS WELL AS A CLEVER WAY TO REMIND US COMFORTABLE RICH PEOPLE WHAT THE COST OF OUR CHEAP DISPOSABLE GOODS IS. Or something.

There were four massive galleries in all, so by the time I left it was near closing time and also definitely very dark. After a long, uncomfortable bus ride back to my motel, I scrubbed off in a jjimjilbang and had some ramen. Back at the motel, I had the worst time falling asleep because OMG ELECTION NIGHT OMG OMG, it was like going to bed on Christmas Eve except that you might end up with a whole truck full of coal instead of any presents. But hurrah, my anxiety was unfounded!

Obligatory Korean Tourist Spot #7: Take Me Out To The Ball Game

Korean baseball games are things of legend among American (and I guess Canadian) foreigners over here. Most people you talk to here have been to at least one ball game. "They're so much better than at home," is something you hear a lot.

Which is probably true. I haven't been to a ball game in the states since I went to see the Reading Phillies and left my copy of Foundation  under my seat (that's all I remember about the game), so I'm not the best person to compare the two. What's different? In a nutshell:

• Cheerleaders.
• Loads of potential IP infringement with reappropriated songs from Lady Gaga, Chubby Checker, The Beach Boys, DJ DOC, whoever wrote "It's a Small World After All," and probably others.
• Extremely organized cheering.
• I mean extremely organized cheering. Old news to people in Korea reading this, but for family back home: each player has his own cheer, which is some famous song with the lyrics altered and the player's name thrown in. There are speakers and a guy leading the hand motions and everything. You also only cheer (for the most part) when your team is at bat.
• (From what I could tell from the Koreans around us) a lot less hate on the umpires.

Half the fun for me was watching everyone else in the stadium, less so the game. That said, we had pretty decent seats along the third base line so there was a good view of the action if I wanted to watch.

I'd go again—with a camera this time—but we'll see if I have the chance before I go home!

Division of Labor

INP has an interesting little write-up about Chuseok and men and food preparation, which got me to thinking about my own Busan (the Boy).

When we live together, the cooking gets divided more or less evenly, because the Boy is (praise be to the homemaking gods) competent in the kitchen. If anything, the Boy cooks dinner more often than I do. We each have our "signature" dishes, and whoever cooks is (well, partially) determined by what we feel like eating. Whoever doesn't cook does the dishes. Plus I gladly go on dessert-making binges that last us for weeks. Balance is maintained.

Of course, the Boy doesn't live in a country that expects its men to be the only breadwinners and works them 60 hours a week, so he has plenty of time and energy to learn how to cook. Also, I don't think his mom ever threatened to make a eunuch out of him if he set foot in the kitchen (a threat some of my male Korean acquaintances have gotten from their grandmothers wielding big fuck-off knives).

My running joke that if Sweden and the Boy don't work out, I'll come back to Korea, enter into a marriage-of-F6-visa-convenience, and open a 24 hour breakfast place. A marriage-of-visa-convenience only, note; the prospect of shifting from the kind of relationship I've had for approximately a million years to the kind I could expect with most Korean guys is a depressing one.

Multimedia Monday: Culture Shock

Usually foreigner-in-Korea blogs/"vlogs" make me cringe (like Eat Your Kimchi...seriously? seriously you guys?), but this girl doesn't make me crawl the walls, so that's a point in her favor.

Anyway, the topic in the book this week is "culture shock," which is a good one for conversation fodder. There were also a whole lot of foreigner-in-Korea videos about it, and all the assorted little things that are different when you come to Korea.

Speaking of "little things," it's too bad that I couldn't show them the infamous "Royale with cheese" dialogue from Pulp Fiction, but so it goes.

It seems Expat Kerri has a whole series of videos on this very topic. Normally I would write this off as an egregious and self-indulgent exercise in nihilism, but hey, it was good listening practice for my kids, so thanks Kerri!

Before I played this for them, I asked them two things:

1. What was confusing for her?

2. Why was it confusing?

This particular entry happens to be about the Korean expression, "밥 먹었어요?" but as I said, she has some other entries too.



It segued into a short little lesson about how in English we say "What's up?" or "How are you?" as a similar greeting: people don't say it because they necessarily care about the answer, but because it's become a convention among greetings. Likewise, I pointed out, if you're doing really bad, you still tend to say, "I'm okay" or "I'm fine" because you understand the person is just asking to be polite, not because they really want to know your sob story.

If you want to download this or other videos to use in class, I recommend using YouTube downloader HD. For other videos (some useful, some not), please check out my Multimedia Monday tag.

What I've Learned From Editing Student Speeches

There is an English speech competition soon, and part of my duties as native speaker include editing (and later recording into cell phones) students' speeches. These contests happen periodically within school districts; this one is a national tournament, so far as I can judge from the poster in the hallway.

Here are some thing I've learned, whether about Korea or my students, silly or serious, from editing past and present speeches:

• Pollution is basically to blame for every evil that befalls us in this modern age.
• My elementary school students have more focused ambitions, dreams, and goals than I did at their age. Heck, they have more of them than I do now.
• Hangeul is the greatest thing ever.
• Except maybe for bibimbap, which releases poisons from the body and also cures asthma and diabetes.
• Korea's brand of oriental medicine is the best in the world.
• 동의보감 was put on UNESCO's "Memory of the World" register in 2009.
• Korea should be one country again.

Olympic Fever

I am, at best, apathetic about the Olympics. All I can see is: wasted resources! Cheating! Glorification of jock pageantry! And so on.

Never mind rooting for America. Why should I root for America? I didn't choose to be an American; there's so much about America I find alienating and antithetical to my very core that it's no wonder I never get homesick.

Yet as an expat in a foreign country, I find that I actually give a shit about the Olympics. I finally get what the appeal is.


Last Friday, my friend/former coworker Jenny (Yeojoo) and I went, as we usually do on Fridays, for a couple of beers and some anju. The hof we were at had the Olympics on, of course, and it was the men's archery gold medal match between South Korea and Japan. Everyone's eyes were glued to the screen. The hof patrons had temporarily coalesced into an amoebic hivemind of patriotism. Despite being only one beer deep, I had to resist the urge to yell, "Dae han min guk!" and pound the table appropriately.

There was no question for me: I wanted South Korea to win. I wanted that smug Japanese bastard with his douchebag sunglasses to eat shit. Not just me; we. An entire nation. Every arrow shot was another blood pressure spike towards a heart attack. We cheered when a Japanese arrow strayed (relatively) far from the mark for a paltry eight points. We let out exasperated sighs when a Korean arrow missed the bull's eye by what looked to be a mere neutrino of displacement. The idea of victory became more than victory: it became almost a cosmic, mystical sign. A mark from the universe or some distant deity that this country was blessed above all nations.

I found myself getting frustrated with the Japanese archer. Why was he so good? Why did he insist on making it so difficult for South Korea to win? Why did he just get another bull's eye?

Every Korean bull's eye netted a loud cheer from the bar. When the last one secured victory, the hof exploded with joy. One particularly drunk individual, too young to be an ajosshi yet, yelled what we were all thinking:

"Dae han min guk!"

Why does South Korea elicit drunken groupthink cheers from me, but not the US? I've come up with a few reasons.

First and foremost, in a lot of respects, South Korea is very much an underdog. I guess you could argue they're not, but the pervasive attitude I've encountered, among adults and students alike, is that South Korea has a reputation for being weak.

"People think South Korea is easy country," one of my students explained. "But in 2018 [Ed note: when the winter games come to South Korea] we will strike back."

And really, what's more American than an underdog story?

There's also great good guy/bad guy drama with the Korea-Japan rivalry. Korean participation in international sports has a built-in compelling narrative. (Maybe I'd be more patriotic if the US were still in the midst of the Cold War?) If America loses, so what? But if South Korea loses to Japan? Oh shit. Wailing. Gnashing of teeth. Rending of garments.

And, finally, South Korea is a place I chose. Everything that happens here is imbued with that choice; it reflects back on me and, ultimately becomes an extension of myself. Likewise I also root for Sweden in the Olympics, because Sweden is yet another choice.

Tonight (KST) is the bronze medal match in men's soccer football between Korea and Japan. This shit just got real. I'm holing up in my apartment tonight and avoiding what will either the celebratory or dejected throngs of people. Either way, they're guaranteed to be three sheets to the wind.

Dae han min guk! South Korea, fighting!

Obligatory Korean Tourist Spot #6: Happy August From Jeju!

I'm back from my trip to Jeju. I've actually been back since, uh, Tuesday, but between starting intensives (read as: extra classes) on Wednesday and losing my phone (in my goddamn apartment and the first person to make a joke about how I need to clean gets their clock cleaned because MY APARTMENT IS SPOTLESS) I haven't had the energy to blog anywhere about anything.

Well, it's the weekend, and the phone situation will be sorted on Monday, so here's my BIG FAT VACATION POST!

Day 1: Lava Tube, Shamseonghyeol Shrine, Jeju Folk and Natural History Museum

Okay, a lava tube is a type of cave. Unlike the vast majority of the world's caves (solutional caves), these aren't formed by water over millions of years; lava tubes are the remnants of flowing lava. In some respects they are a totally different beast than solutional caves. (At least, if you're the kind of person to distinguish between different kinds of holes in the ground. Like me.)

The one I went to is Manjanggul, and it is (part of) Asia's longest lava tube. The part you can visit is 1 km in length, the whole thing is 7 km. They have bats but I didn't see any, they hang out far away from where the people go. :(


The entrance to the lava tube.


I believe this formation is technicially known as rope lava. The formation has to do with inner, hotter lava pushing the cooling, more hardened lava around, but I'm not entirely sure and there is no Wikipedia entry on this!

Also the lights look like Daleks.


Lava stalactites!


The midway point.


Close-up of the midway point.


A lava column.

This was the second of two literally breath-taking moments (I audibly gasped at each one). The first was unfortunately impossible to photograph without things like a tripod and extra lighting, but I can try to explain:

For a long while, the lava tube isn't very high. Maybe about ten feet from floor to ceiling. Then you turn a corner and suddenly opens up into a much vaster, bigger room, maybe fifty or sixty from floor to ceiling. Even more. And on your left is a beautiful rockfall of black volcanic rock, with splashes of what the signage says is quartzite. Amazing and impossible to photograph for obvious reasons.

This second one, the lava column, marks the end of the lava tube open to the public. Every cave has at least one trademark formation that you see on all of the brochures and ads and whatever else; Manjanggul goes with this lava column. So here's a picture of a better picture of it that I snapped after the tour:



(If you're wondering, my cave's trademark formation is The Chapel/The Frozen Waterfall, and The Giant Ear of Corn.)



Leaving Manjanggul.


Then, I had to hightail it back home because my pants were kind of ruined (sudden downpour, wet cave). The day was still young after I got myself situated so I decided to follow the brown road signs to some walkable sites. (Convention in Korea is that cultural/historical/touristy stuff is designated by brown road signs instead of blue, though also you could tell from names like Samseonghyeol Shrine anyway.)




The whole grounds had a very cool garden/park vibe to it. I would have sat and caught up on reading/writing, but mosquitos just thought I was too delicious. None of the pictures I took there really captured that garden atmosphere, except maybe this one.

This is the hole in the ground from which the first Jeju-ers were thought to have emerged, at least as far as the Jeju mythos is concerned. It's been a designated shrine/special area for thousands of years; this is the closest most people can come to it. They have assorted ancestral/shamanstic/(maybe touristy?) rites on April and October 10th where apparently they...I guess walk up to it and do stuff? The signs didn't really say.







Where people still prepare for the aforementioned rituals; also this used to house a prestigious Korean Confucian school.



It's so weird (to me) to see these buildings my brain parses as "old and historical" used in a contemporary/modern context.



Shrines/altars to the three important shamanistic gods of Jeju, at least two of whom are sea deities, if I understood my time in the folk museum correctly. Again, note how it's roped off.

Once I had enough of being mosquito dinner, I decided to go to a nearby museum!



The pictures are mostly really boring, I guess. The most interesting thing to me was a video about the rituals the Jeju women divers still do early in the new lunar year to appease the aforementioned sea deities.



The women divers of Jeju are really important. Each city in Korea has its own cartoon mascot. Seoul's is Haechi, some Chinese monster that, like, judges your soul when you die or something. Uijeongbu has a girl and a boy in hanbok that I'm sure must be important but hell if I know who they are. The mascots for Jeju are a cartoon version of a woman diver and the "stone grandfather" statues all over the island, like this one:



So I don't have many museum pictures, and the ones I do have suck and are boring.

Afterwards I caught a cab to a jjimjilbang that a friend who used to live in Jeju recommended. I find the jjimjilbang water is really great for drying out mosquito bites and I was really suffering from my walk around the shrine. I also have an unofficial goal of visiting as many jjimjilbangs as I can in Korea, so two birds and one stone. I wanted to relax outside my motel room a bit, so I brought some reading and writing to the co-ed hang-out part upstairs...and promptly fell asleep at 10.30. I didn't leave the jjimjilbang until noon the next day. Oops!

Day 2: Love Land, Students at the Beach

Jeju is a popular destination for Korean honeymooners, at least in part because of a surprisingly obscene (and yet sadly heteronormative) art park called "Love Land."

Have a truncated, G-rated version of the park!










I sincerely hope my boyfriend never makes a face like that when we kiss.




"American Love." If I had been a friend of the sculptor, I would have suggested the name "Love American Style," but I guess they didn't have any American pop culture junkie friends.




Awww.



Yeah, I dunno.

After Love Land, I decided to be a lazy bum and go to the beach. I picked a beach off the tourist map that looked the closest and after some minor transportation snafus, arrived in the early afternoon. I think I was in the middle of my second or third go-round splashing in the ocean when I heard a familiar voice: "Katherine teacher!"

Two of my students were going to Jeju with their parents during the same vacation break, but I didn't seriously expect to run into them. Small world! I splashed around with them for a couple of hours, met their parents in my soaking-wet, bathing-suited, not-wearing-clothes-on-top-like-Koreans-do, hairy-legged, state and waved them off when they eventually left. (I stayed on much longer to finish reading my book.) I camped out in a PC bang for a couple of hours to charge my mp3 player and catch up on life, and then I had a quick shower in my motel room (no hot water!) and zoned out with a documentary on Arirang about Samarkand and Uzbekistan and some famous Imam from Uzbek or buried in Uzbek or something.

I had forgotten how awful, twee, and stupid Arirang can be, because after this really interesting documentary came a terrible PSA for Korean liquor, involving a foreigner in a hanbok rapping (poorly) about the different varieties of Korean liquor and why they're great.

Because the foreigner community in Korea is big-yet-small, I'm sure I'm only a few degrees of separation removed from him; I might have even met him or been at a bar or party at the same time as him. Nevertheless: seriously, man? Have some dignity.

Day 3: Seogwipo: Yakcheonsa, Cheonjiyeon


There are two major cities on Jeju island: Jeju and Seogwipo . I decided one day spent on the opposite side of the island wouldn't kill me and got a bus to Seogwipo, where I planned to see Yakcheonsa Temple and Cheonjiyeon waterfall.



The entrance to Yakcheonsa Temple.



The main prayer hall, which is the largest Buddhist prayer hall in Asia (supposedly).





I wonder what English camp at Yakcheonsa is like...






For the first time on a temple visit (because it seemed so very touristy), I worked up the nerve to go inside the prayer hall.





I love temples. Even with so many tourists it somehow retained an incredibly tranquil atmosphere. If there is any such thing as reincarnation then I must have been some kind of monk in a past life because a life full of thoughtful reflection a temple like this, or even the sesshin I did years ago, is so appealing that if the Boy and I ever break up I'll just run away and become a nun.

Cheonjiyeon was slightly underwhelming in comparison.



It's supposed to have mythic healing properties (and is apparently rare in that it's a waterfall that flows directly into the ocean but I don't know how true that is?); I guess it's more of a mythology site than an aesthetic site. Speaking of mythology:



A Greek mythology museum in Jeju? Dafuq....?


Proof that I was in Jeju!

Apparently Cheonjiyeon also makes dreams come true:





The familiar stone stacks where out in abundance at Cheonjiyeon. Here's an especially nice one I found opposite the entrance.



I made one next to it but like the moron I am forgot to take a picture when I finished! Oh well. This one is much better, anyway. =P

These two trips more or less exhausted my reserves (I went on a nature hike near Cheonjiyeon but the pictures of that are kind of boring so just trust me when I say I did it), so I got a taxi to the bus depot and hopped on a bus back to Jeju-shi. Just in time, too, because when we rolled into the terminal at Jeju-shi it was dark.





Day 4: Baller Pants, Beach

I promised myself I'd buy certain things in Jeju: miniature stone grandfather (check), Jeju chocolate (got at the airport), one piece of clothing. Clothes from Jeju are a distinctive orange/brown hue because they dye them with persimmons (I think it's persimmons?) and I like "local" clothing for souvenirs (my sarong from Indonesia, for example). Lucky for me, there was a tailor's near my motel, so on Day 4 I worked up the nerve to try and navigate a complicated economic transaction in my mediocre Korean.

And I was successful! I didn't get them until the next day but they are amazing and they fit perfectly and it's a color palette I love.

All of my goals were accomplished so I decided to be a lazy bum and spend my last day at the beach.

I picked a different beach than the one I went to before, because while it was close, it was also crowded (meh) and not very picturesque (bummer). This one was more famous, more expensive (meh), but beautiful:



The only downside was that at low tide the designated swimming area (go beyond the buoys and people get mad at you) was REALLY shallow: I'd be out way far and in water that was only up to my knees, at a distance when my feet would normally no longer be touching the floor. The waves were also not much to speak of (that is, just wake from motor-powered rafts going back and forth beyond the buoys).

It picked up at high tide though, and I got some good swimming in. I love the water. Maybe I should be a swimming monk.

I also tried some Mount Hallasan Soju (Hallasan being the big mountain in the middle of the island I didn't climb because SCREW MOUNTAIN CLIMBING AT 30*C I'M GOING TO THE BEACH), which is the same as regular soju, but whatever. I was drunk on the beach and I didn't care. I dried off at the beachside bar with some beer and kimchi bogeumbap, the first not-from-a-convenience-store meal I had the whole trip.



I hate when Korean meals come with a fork because I never know if it's just what that restaurant does, or if they associate white people with chopstick failure. There were no Koreans nearby for me to spy on, either.



And some light beach reading.

Once the sun started to go down, I paid my tab and went back to my motel room to shake the sand out of myself and have one last night of exploration.

I found Jane's Groove, my favorite bar/club from Seoul that moved to Jeju years ago, but it was closed. I had a few more drinks at a nearby bar, Cult, and then called it a night. And a trip.

Multimedia Monday (On Tuesday): How to Get a Korean Boyfriend

There's been a string of mediocre topics in my advanced textbook ("favorites"? traffic?), so here's some awful K-vlog dross to fill in:

Multimedia Monday: Korean Hip-hop Edition

This was the last weekend of the International Music Festival up here in Uijeongbu. Because I'm a cheap clueless git, I didn't see any of the performances except the guy playing the piano on an old-timey penny farthing bicycle:

Don't ask me to explain, because I can't.

This past Sunday night was the finale concert at the Uijeongbu Arts Center (a very posh place, by the way). The big deal was that Tiger JK, a Korean-American rapper of some renown, was giving a free concert with his wife Yoon Mirae. Since this was the festival's grand finale concert, it was stupendously well-attended. Not surprising, since Tiger JK was born up here in Uijeongbu and lived here until his family moved to America when he was twelve. Definitely some regional pride involved.

It was a good time; I wasn't blown away musically, but that's to be expected. Hip-hop is a genre I've only recently begun to appreciate. Plus, with rapping, a lot of the enjoyment comes from knowing the language and appreciating turns of phrases and word play. My Korean is just not up to par for that. That said, Yoon Mirae has great stage presence. I loved her.

It was also cool to see a pop concert that was obviously about showcasing talent and not just being a pretty face on a hot bod. Before Tiger JK and his wife took the stage, there were of course some opening acts of a similar ilk, whose talents seemed far more focused on singing and rapping than on choreography. The gorgeous weather and ambiance of the venue was just the cherry on top: not too humid, comfortable temperature, clear skies, families laughing, old guys selling goofy flying light-up toys or ice cream on the outskirts of the audience.

My mind wasn't really properly blown until after the concert, when I looked up Tiger JK on YouTube and found this:  the multicultural hip-hop group "Sun Zoo," featuring Tiger JK, Yoon Mirae, and Roscoe Umali, produced by Illmind. Don't worry if your Korean is as bad as mine, it's in English. It's very NSFW, so plug in your headphones; Mom and Mom-mom should probably just skip this one entirely.

Yoon Mirae has the second verse and Tiger JK has the last verse. I'm going to be listening to this on repeat for the next few days.

What I want to see happen (or what I want to find out about if it has happened) is a K-pop/Korean hip-hop star from Uijeongbu sampling "Suicide is Painless." That would make my life.

Teacher's Day Aftermath

Wow, apparently I've been away! I have no excuse other than a sense of feeling very busy and hectic, though my schedule isn't really any more or less terrible than normal.

Anyway, it was Teacher's Day on Tuesday, and naturally I am obligated to share with you my haul. It is, to be honest, more and nicer than what I was expecting (nothing).

While in high school, Teacher's Day may actually be about thoughtful gestures from the students themselves, with younger ones it seems much more like a parental thing. It's hard to tell, because this is my first Teacher's Day here in Korea (in 2009 I was in Indonesia, remember?).

I have to say, the parents at this school are definitely much more considerate and thoughtful than at either Cassandra or Sherlock; I'd say on a monthly basis food or soy milk juice boxes appear on the table in the teacher's room, from so-and-so's mother, and not for any particular reason that I can discern (Teacher's Day, midterms, etc). They didn't disappoint on Teacher's Day, either: the food fairy left us donuts, grape juice boxes, and these delicious and addictive and void of nutritional content crispy salty rice rolls.

Anyway, I'm sure that the flower and the chocolates (from the same student) are less from a student and more from a parent. Likewise with the orange leopard print silk scarf (though maybe the student picked it out). It's not my normal style but I like the bright color. I'm thinking about switching this with the similar, but much less cheerful, silk scarf I have covering my eyesore of a TV I never use.

I do burn incense on it, though (as you can see in the photo) and I don't like to accidentally ruin gifts. Shit I buy for myself, on the other hand? Fair game!

Also note my ghetto-fab "vase" aka "water bottle with some washi tape." I can't tell if it looks cute, or if I look like a douchebag hipster "upcycled crafting" type.

Just for the lulz, here's some teaching-related stuff on Etsy my fellow teachers may enjoy, appreciate, and/or laugh at.

'Teacher's Day!' by Kokoba

Gabblehatch $22.00	Cookstah $8.00
ohiopicker $68.00	SpaGoddess $9.00
HesedBooksAndG... $18.50	midmoderngoods $24.00
kryan2designs $18.50	ChildrenDreamB... $8.00
Juunikyuu $7.35	hairbrainedsch... $15.00
CanemahStudios $150.00	MidwestFinds $65.00
carriedawaybag... $24.00	juliaedean $14.00
DumbKidDesigns $6.00	Palimpsestic $10.00

Treasury tool supported by website testing