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.

March 25 "Fix this, please?"

I started the week by giving a presentation to an advanced management class of city employees. They were particularly interested in administrative systems, so I discussed the hiring, payroll, and budgeting processes in Seattle in rather excruciating detail. They actually seemed interested. Then I demonstrated some of the on-line systems Seattle has available for citizens, including the ineractive, map-based “My Neighborhood” application. They really liked that! My interpreter, Cho Jung Jae, pointed out that not many people in Daejeon were fluent enough in English or knew enough about Seattle to use this application. I tried to explain that I was showing it as an example of how a city government can leverage technology to deliver useful information to residents, and not because I expected a lot of Koreans to want to know where all the parks in northwest Seattle were located. I think the students were with me on that one.

Much of my work in Daejeon involves editing documents (brochures, surveys, speeches, presentations) so that they make sense to an English-speaking audience. This involves more than just copy-editing or even dealing with things like tone and nuance. Sometimes it drives some major discussions about purpose, organization, and overall content.

This week, however, I was given a catalog of products produced by Daejeon companies. The mayor wants to take it along and distribute it when he meets with Seattle area businesses in a couple of weeks. The woman who brought the 26 page draft to me said that the mayor was very concerned about it. “Fix this, please?” she asked.

Here are a couple of my favorites, verbatim from the catalog:

Organic Cotton Towel
Our Hanshin Towel co is producing LOHAS (Lifestyle Of Health and Sustainability) connection ability towel product that is becoming issue all over the world the latest as Republic of Korea towel company venture 1 specially, and has towel full text production know-how of 40 odd years and completes Italy and France computer automatic towel machine facilities in the world best and is producing world highest grade product with many patent and utility model

Solar Crystal Road Block
Features :
· Using solar modules interior LED lighting and EL Light. Implement the existing product as a color crystal greater durability Poet environmentally friendly products are very good night.
· My intensity of the exterior surface altitude geulhimeul minimize.
· To minimize contamination and discoloration caused by ultraviolet charge of increasing efficiency.
· No maintenance costs.

I’d probably buy one of each of these, just to find out what they are. Especially with no maintenance costs.

But no time for that now. I’m off to Seoul to meet Patti’s plane (hopefully, with Patti on it.) A few days in Seoul, a few days in Daejeon, a few days in Gyeongju (the ancient capital of the Silla Kingdom) and then back to Seattle for her and five more weeks of loneliness for me.

March 22 There is no wrong way

On Friday, I wanted to go to the Geology Museum, which is across town in the middle of a sort of high tech industrial park. The whole area looks a little bit like the Microsoft campus and environs. The bus that I needed to take me there passes through my neighborhood in a sort of zig-zag route, according to the bus map, but I wasn’t sure where to catch it, since the map doesn’t actually have street names or landmarks on it. I found a bus stop with the right route number and eventually a bus came and I got on.

The bus went this way and that, turning again and again. I did not recognize any of the streets. Then the driver pulled over to the curb and turned off the engine. He looked at me. I was the only person on the bus. He asked me something which I assumed meant where are you going? I told him where I wanted to go. He made me to understand that I had gotten on the bus going in the wrong direction. We both sort of laughed. He got off the bus to take his break but motioned for me to stay. After a while he got back on and drove the bus again. We retraced our path. We passed the place, across the street now, where I had gotten on. Eventually we came to the stop that I wanted, near the museum, and I got off. This led me to the realization that there is no wrong way. Some trips are longer and more random than others. But sooner or later we end up where we are going to go.

The next day I gave a lecture to a class of Daejeon Metropolitan City managers on Seattle city government and how it is similar to, and different from, city government in Daejeon. Many students stayed awake for the entire talk, which I illustrated with photos of Seattle—the Space Needle, the First Starbucks, the Alaska Way Viaduct (see it while it’s still standing!), etc. They were most interested in my perceptions of the differences between the two city governments and asked some thoughtful questions, including “What do citizens in Seattle complain the most about?” That was a good one.

On Sunday, Mr. Kang, who had taken me to Gongju last weekend, invited me to have lunch at his church. I could hardly refuse. The church occupies the sixth floor of a commercial building about a half mile from my apartment. It is apparently an unaffiliated evangelical congregation of about three hundred, and I got there just as the two-hour service was finishing. The “church basement” where we ate is of course on the same floor as everything else; I met many, many people, walked through the line, got my plate of rice, kimchi, and other assorted pickled vegetables from the ladies dishing up the food, passed on the “meat” dish, which appeared to be chunks of Spam and chunks of cheese in a spicy sauce, got a bowl of thick soup, and sat down between Mr. Kang and the minister on the floor (no cushions for these hard-core Christians) at one of the long tables. Mr. Kang’s wife even made a huge salad for us to share, because she was afraid that as a vegetarian, I would not get enough to eat.

One thing puzzled me and I don’t know quite how to ask about it. We removed our shoes when going into one of the rooms where the high school youth group meets. And we removed our shoes again when going into the kitchen/dining area. But people inside the chapel itself keep their shoes on! That seems very strange, certainly contrary to the Buddhist tradition of removing shoes before entering a meditation hall, temple, or monastery. Maybe because in the chapel, people sit in regular pews, but in the other rooms, seating is on the floor? Every day is a new challenge to understand what’s going on.

March 18 IT in Daejeon

After more than four weeks in Daejeon, I finally got to meet the City IT director—or Information Policy Officer, as he is called. Kim Su Cheon seems like a pretty sharp guy. His crew of 40 takes care of the technology needs of more than 2800 city staff. That sounds pretty difficult except that as I understand it, Daejeon does not do any application development. They get their systems handed to them from the central government in Seoul. So their main focus is desktop and network support, security, troubleshooting, and the usual headaches associated with all of those. Their network extends to a number of outlying facilities and they are implementing a network monitoring system. I hope to get back together with him in the next week or two to show some of the web-based GIS applications Seattle has implemented as well as to explore what they are doing or planning in the area of e-government.

I also managed to discover Seattle Park, one of the legacies of the sister city program. It is located next to a school, just a ten minute walk from my apartment. The cherry trees in the park are beginning to blossom, and a group of small boys was playing baseball. So now I’ve been to Seattle Park in Daejeon; someday I’ll have to visit Daejeon Park in Seattle.
There are other cultural connections as well. Daejeon residents seem to have a pretty good idea of the American diet: chicken, pizza, and donuts, washed down with a delicious cup of expensive coffee.