April 25 Further Adventures with Videographers

What would you show if you had to try to capture the essence of Daejeon in a half hour video? That’s not entirely a rhetorical question—in fact, it’s exactly what Mike and Donna James have to figure out. We’ve already been to a church, a temple, a baseball game, a university, a high school, a research center, and a Buddhist art gallery. We have been to the burial mounds at Gongju, the train station, the subway station, an orchestra rehearsal, the arboretum, a kimchi factory, and the public market where ladies sell fruits, vegetables, fish, and spices of all kinds and colors and smells. We have met with the Mayor, had coffee at Starbucks, and toured a park where, in the sixteenth century, a poet and resistance leader plotted the effort to drive out the Chinese. And of course, we have eaten Korean food in traditional restaurants and from street vendors.

What else is special about Daejeon? Korea has two National Cemeteries (like our Arlington National Cemetery), and one of them is in Daejeon. We visited it with a veteran of the Korean War who still speaks reverently of Douglas MacArthur and the Incheon invasion nearly sixty years ago. The cemetery is a beautiful and somber sprawl of neatly lined tombstones and soaring monuments to those who sacrificed their lives for the freedoms which South Koreans enjoy today.

Daejeon has another special park, Ppuri Park, which is dedicated to memorializing each family surname in Korea. Each name has a monument which recounts the history and significance of the name. (They have Kim, Park, Lee, and a hundred others, but no Chakoian.)

Since the video is about the sister city relationship with Seattle, you would have to show Seattle Park, ideally when it is filled with children from the nearby elementary school—maybe, because the principal knows that you will be filming, dressed in their traditional Korean costumes.

You might want to show a view of the city from a hillside in the morning and from a nearby mountaintop at night.

You’d want to capture the excitement of young people out on the town in the evening,

and also the traditional stores, whole markets dedicated to traditional Korean costumes

and to ginseng, which can be used to flavor food, make tea or candy, or put in huge glass jars to scare the neighbor kids on Halloween.

And of course, if you were an avid golfer like Mike James, you would have to do at least one segment on the growing popularity of life-sized virtual golf.

It has taken me almost three months to absorb Daejeon. How do you show it on television in thirty minutes? Good luck, Mike and Donna!

April 22 Adventures with Videographers

On Monday morning I had the opportunity to spend about an hour and a half with my friend Professor Cho’s current events class at Chungnam National University.

The class is conducted in English, and rather than simply lecture the students, I used the opportunity to ask them questions and then to discuss several topics with them. It was fun, for me at least. We covered a wide range of issues, including gender dynamics in Korea (why is it that Korean men don’t cook? One student said that he certainly does, and expects to cook for his wife; several of the women students immediately offered to marry him); reunification with the North (which students generally agreed was inevitable, difficult, and maybe not such a good idea); and the global economic crisis, which concerns them greatly (with some difficulty I convinced them that it was not entirely the fault of the US, although Ronald Reagan does bear a major share of the blame.) Three of the students were from Malaysia and one from China, which made the discussions even more interesting. They all seemed bright, thoughtful, and well informed.

The rest of my time this week has been spent with Mike and Donna James, two very fun and highly professional videographers from Seattle who are creating a half hour video about Daejeon to be shown on Seattle television. I have been accompanying them on their schedule of sight-seeing and interviews, which has been educational for me and maybe somewhat helpful for them. In the first few days of their visit, they have interviewed students and faculty at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (known as the Korean MIT and a very impressive place); explored cancer research at the Korean Research Institute of Biology and Biotechnology, which has a joint project going with the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center in Seattle; talked with high school students at a public school specializing in foreign languages; and of course, checked out the fans, ballplayers, cheerleaders, and food at a Hanwha Eagles baseball game.

Probably the most dramatic contrast came on Sunday. We started the day at an evangelical mega-church (7,000 members, 3,000 of them children) here in Daejeon, interviewing the head pastor in his plush office and then attending the service. It was rollicking and intense in the same highly choreographed way many fundamentalist services are conducted in the US—the loud music, the videos, the charismatic calls.

From there we went to Dong hak sa Temple, where the head priest (a woman) made tea for us while she sat crosslegged on the floor and patiently explained the Four Noble Truths.

In the main temple, worshipers meditated in silence. In the courtyard outside, throngs of tourists like me snapped photos of the red and pink lanterns that had been hung in celebration of the Buddha’s birthday on May 2.

April 16 Signs and symbols

After more than eight weeks in Korea, I actually spent time this week with “foreigners.” I was invited to a dinner and talk at the Solbridge International School of Business. The invitation came from Prof. Emanuel Yi Pastreich, an American and friend of Mayor Park; the faculty members I met and spoke with were from many countries with many perspectives on business and business issues. The evening’s guest speaker talked about advanced technology research and the need for international networks of exchange in order to manage to increasingly high costs. From there we went on to discuss the applications of technology, market forces, various roles of government, and social and cultural impacts. I realized that (except for Patti), these were the first non-Koreans I had met and interacted with since coming here. I am glad that my experience thus far has been so intensely and exclusively Korean, but I also enjoyed the wider range of perspectives in a very interesting conversation. A French-Canadian professor who specializes in management issues related to biotechnology firms and who has been in Kuwait the past two years was fascinated by my experience at the Hanwha Eagles game. We will try to go together to a game in my final few weeks.

Another realization I’ve had since coming here is the power of symbols. When you don’t speak the language, symbols can take on a whole new level of usefulness—stop, men’s room, exit, etc. Most symbols seem to be pretty universal now, and we take them for granted. For example, when I see a cross on the top of a spire (a pretty common sight in Korea), I can assume that there is a Christian church beneath it.

One major exception to that is the swastika. Imagine walking down a street in a Seattle neighborhood and seeing a large swastika painted on the side of a building. You would immediately report it as graffiti of the most offensive sort. But not so in Korea.

The symbol itself is actually thousands of years old, showing up in Bronze Age pottery, and the word “swastika” originates in Sanskrit, meaning a lucky or auspicious object. It was incorporated into Hinduism and later Buddhism, where it represents universal harmony and the balance of opposites. Since its adoption by the Nazis in the first half of the twentieth century, it has virtually disappeared in the west except when dredged up by neo-Nazi groups as an emblem of anti-Semitism and white supremacy.

In Korea, however, the symbol retains its original Buddhist meanings and it’s not unusual to see a swastika on Buddhist temples and even on stores or businesses. No matter how often I see it, to these western eyes it’s still very jarring.

April 12 Temples

My friend Professor Cho Sung Kyum, who teaches journalism at Chungnam National University here in Daejeon, got it into his head that I had to see some of the lesser known temples here in the area. The big, popular temples, like Donghaksa, are too wealthy and the monks and nuns therefore too proud. So he took me to Gapsa Temple, on the other side of the mountain from Donghaksa, and we wandered the grounds on a warm late afternoon. (A “temple” typically consists of many buildings—an administrative building, the dormitories for the monks, and several temples where prayer is conducted.)

Just up the hillside from the temple complex is a small guest house, operated by a nun, and although she was leaving just as we arrived (“Otherwise, I would make tea,” she told us), we sat on the steps in the silence and enjoyed the peace and solitude.

Next Professor Cho took me to Sinwonsa Temple, even more remote than Gapsa.

At the back of the Sinwonsa complex is a temple devoted to traditional Korean shamanism, or nature worship—the Buddhist monks will have nothing to do with it, and the paint is quite faded. That was the only temple we saw all day that was packed with people, seated on the floor in meditation and prayer. Professor Cho explained that it is the “temple of a thousand religions,” because each person who comes there has his own personal interpretation of God and his own way of worshipping.

On the walk back to the car from Sinwonsa, we passed a house with some tables and chairs scattered out front. “Shall we stop here for supper?” Professor Cho asked me. “It might be rather unhygienic. Do you mind?” How could I pass up an offer like that? At this point I’m supposed to say that this humble, unhygienic home restaurant created the best Korean food I’ve ever tasted, but in fact, the food was just ok. However, I have lived to write about it.

The other temple I visited this weekend was Hanbat Stadium, home to the Hanwha Eagles, Daejeon’s professional baseball team. I went on Sunday afternoon with my friend Chon Byung Ik and his son and son’s friend. Hanbat has 13,000 seats, and when we arrived at the top of the fifth inning all of them were filled with chanting, screaming, singing fans. (The starting time of the game had mysteriously changed from 5 pm to 2 pm, apparently not an uncommon occurrence.) After about a half an hour of wandering around the small stadium, we found four seats—two together for the boys, and separate seats for Mr. Chon and me.

The game is identical to American baseball (at maybe the AA or AAA level), with a few small exceptions.
· There is no seventh inning stretch.
· At the end of the fifth inning, both teams take the outfield to do stretching exercises and sprints.

· Whenever a relief pitcher comes in, the team in the field “warms up,” as they would at the start of an inning—the first baseman throws ground balls to the infielders and the outfielders play catch.
· Drums, whistles, and cheerleaders keep the fans in a deafening frenzy throughout the game.

· A game can end in a tie.

The Eagles’ printed roster is broken out by position, and each group has its own slogan. For the outfielders, it is “There isn’t a ball that these outfielders can’t catch!” (One highlight for me was the appearance of outfielder and former Mariner Victor Diaz, who now plays for the Eagles.)
The infielders’ slogan is a bit more problematic: “They don’t allow a single pitch!” I had visions of the shortstop tackling the pitcher each time he was in his windup, but in fact, many, many pitches were allowed as the Eagles fell to their arch rivals from Busan, the Lotte Giants, 7 to 4. The loss did not seem to bother the fans too much, especially the one dressed up in his chicken hoodie for no apparent reason.

April 9 Would you like silkworm larvae with that?

April marks the beginning of cherry blossom season in Korea, and even though the weather has been unseasonably cold, some trees are beginning to bloom. Monday after work a group of about fifteen co-workers went to the annual Cherry Blossom Festival at Chungnam National University in the Yuseong district of Daejeon. Festival is a bit of an overstatement—we walked in the gathering darkness along a path around the university library lined with cherry blossom trees and food vendors, all of whom were selling corn on the cob, tempura ginseng root, rice cakes stuffed with red bean paste, roasted chestnuts, and stir-fried silkworm larvae (which have a sort of nutty taste and, when washed down with large quantities of rice wine, are not as bad as they sound.)

Unfortunately, the last few weeks I have been bothered by a minor virus infection of my right eye (a problem that recurs every few years) and so I have had to go to an ophthalmologist here in Daejeon. My friend Lee Lim Moo found an ophthalmology clinic (associated with one of the universities) which is supposed to be among the best in the country and we have been there several times for treatment. The hospital in which the clinic is located is modern and spotless. They have a special team which assists “foreigners,” serving as liaison with the various specialists. The equipment is modern and the diagnosis corresponded exactly with the diagnosis provided by my eye doctor in Seattle the last time the problem occurred. There is one major difference, however. My initial visit cost me about $10 for intake with the international support team, about $20 for tests, diagnosis, and prescription, and about $15 to purchase the needed medicine: anti-viral drops, an ointment, and general lubricating drops. Follow-up visits have cost about $10. (These are not deductibles I am talking about here. This is the total cost, with no medical insurance.) In my experience, this is roughly 20% of the cost of equivalent treatment and prescriptions in Seattle.

The cost difference caused me to wonder whether Koreans receive inferior medical care overall. In fact, the average life expectancy of a Korean is 79.10 years, a full year longer than the average life expectancy of an American (78.06 years.) Of course, access to affordable medical care is only one factor in life expectancy; diet and an active communitarian lifestyle are also factors, along with the fact that there are not 280 million guns circulating among the mentally ill of Korea. However, in 2004, the US spent $6,096 per capita on health care (the average for rich people, poor people, insured people, uninsured people, etc.) That’s 15.4% of GDP and rising. Korea spent $1135 per capita (5.5% of GDP) on health care, with better outcomes, as measured in longevity, infant mortality, etc. I don’t pretend to be a health care economist—I’ll leave that to my friend Doug Conrad—or a proponent of a particular health system redesign—my friends Chuck Richards and Bill Blake are the experts in that—but as a pretty good analyst, I can look at inputs and outcomes and know when a system is highly inefficient. What we have in the US doesn’t even really qualify as a system. Oh, and my eye is much better, thank you.

But that doesn’t mean I am an advocate of everything Korean. When I came home to my apartment last night, my ceiling lights did not work. Very irritating. Today I managed to convey to my landlady (who speaks less English than I speak Korean) that there was something wrong. She came to my apartment, flicked the switches several times, acknowledged the problem, called the building electrician, and then, while waiting for him to arrive, looked into all of my cupboards and my refrigerator to see what kind of food I had on hand and then rifled through all the papers on my desk, including all of my medical care receipts. After examining them closely, she expressed concern about my eye, which I assured her was getting better. I guess landladies are the same the world over. The electrician replaced the light switch and now I have light again in my apartment.

April 5 Gyeongju

Patti and I took the KTX (Korean Transport Express or bullet train) from Seoul to Daejeon. The train travels at 200 miles per hour, is clean, comfortable, and affordable. (Each ticket was less than $15.) Best of all, the trains leave Seoul for Daejeon every half hour; you can buy your tickets in advance, but reservations are not required, and you don’t have to go through security before boarding a train. (Why couldn’t we have something like this in the US? Imagine an alternate universe where you could board a train in Seattle and be in Los Angeles in 6 hours, Chicago in 10 hours.) (Oh, wait, that would require investing money in a national transportation infrastructure. Never mind.)

Our leisurely day and a half in Daejeon was highlighted by my friend Lee Lim Moo taking us and another diner, Ms. Chan, out to the most elaborate sushi dinner I have yet experienced. (It even topped our over the top lunch with the vice mayor.) Anything that swims, crawls, or squirms in the sea was deposited on our table, including live sea slugs which, although Patti and I passed on them, were demonstrated to be both squishy and crunchy in the mouths of Mr. Lee and Ms. Chan.

Having somewhat recovered from our dinner by the following morning, we caught a train for Gyeongju, the ancient capital of the Silla Empire (57 BC to about 1000 AD) in the south of Korea.

In the center of town are dozens of burial mounds covering the tombs of royalty. Most have been excavated, and the artifacts found inside, as well as discovered throughout the area, are housed in one of the great museums of Korea, the Gyeongju National Museum. Unfortunately, the day we visited the museum was also the day that busload after busload of children from other cities descended upon it, swarming the museum and somewhat distracting us from the quiet contemplation and appreciation of the jewelry, pottery, and statuary.

Near the burial mounds is Cheomseongdae; built in the 7th centur, it is the oldest astronomical observatory in Asia. It kind of looks like the leaning tower of Pisa, except that it doesn’t lean, and instead of having pizza afterwards, we had bowls of Chinese noodles in broth.

The day after we settled into Gyeongju, we caught a city bus to the hills on the outskirts of town and Bulguksa Temple, an extensive Buddhist complex and World Heritage Site. Bulguksa, in addition to being an ancient, sacred place in Korean history is also an active monastery with monks chanting prayers in each temple and conducting their daily business as they have for over a thousand years there. Unfortunately, it also was overrun with hundreds of running, screaming, out-of-control school children the day we were there. Patti and I decided to drastically increase our donation to Planned Parenthood.

Farther up the mountainside we visited Seokguram Grotto, a large domed chamber constructed in the 8th century containing an enormous stone Buddha surrounded by smaller statuary. There were no children. It was nirvana.

In addition to being “the museum without walls,” Gyeongju’s other claim to fame is that it is the epicenter of the barley pancake sandwich—two silver dollar sized barley pancakes with a red bean paste gluing them together. I bought a box of forty to bring back to Daejeon to share with the office and they were gone within about ten minutes of my arrival.

On Saturday Patti and I took the bus to Incheon Airport and said our good-byes as she returned to Seattle. The bus ride back to Daejeon was quiet and lonely, but it’s helpful to remember that in only five more weeks I’ll be seeing her again—in Seattle.

March 29 I'm a Seoul Man!

Of course I caught an early bus and got to Incheon Airport about three hours before Patti’s plane arrived—just to make sure I wasn’t late. Some folks from the Seoul office of Daejeon Metropolitan City met us at the airport, took us out to dinner, and then dropped us off at our hotel, the Kukdo. The Kukdo is large and modern and very nice, a step or two up from the kind of back-packer dives we usually frequent. There was even a sign at the entrance to the dining room, asking people not to come to breakfast in pajamas and slippers.

Friday morning we mastered the Seoul subway system, which is large and complex—in fact, it carries more passengers per day than any other subway system in the world except Tokyo and Moscow. There was a subway stop a block from our hotel, so getting anywhere in the city was pretty fast and convenient.

We spent most of the morning at Gyeongbokgung Palace, one of five enormous palace complexes in Seoul. The rooftops alone were worth the visit.

We popped into the US Embassy in Seoul to get some papers notarized (and because we are, finally, proud to be Americans) and stopped to rest at a peaceful little city park with a huge, ancient, and delicately carved stone pagoda where an elderly man came up to us and asked me how old I was. He, it turns out, is eighty-four. He looks much younger.

Walking back to our hotel, we passed a Starbucks with the sign written in Hanguel, Korea's unique alphabet developed in the 15th century. It really does say "Starbucks Coffee." (Well, actually, "Se-ta-bok-se ko-pi," since there is no "f" sound in Korean.)

During our remaining time in Seoul we took a city bus tour, went up Seoul Tower in Namsan Park for a view of the city (which appears to extend several hundred miles in all directions),

attended a traditional music and dance performance at Korea House, hiked up a hillside to some shamanist shrines, ate a lot of rice cakes, and went to several museums, including the War Museum, which is enormous, quite informative, and very moving,

and the Seoul Museum of Chicken Arts, which is very small, not easy to find, and, well, dedicated entirely to the role that chickens have played in Korean culture and history. Since we were the only ones there, we got a personal guided tour during which each chicken-related artifact and icon was very carefully explained to us.