Dokgalbi Street infighting at Myong Dong (+ Culinary Note)

This actually happened during Week 1, but I didn't think of it then, and I haven't had a chance to write about it until now.

On the same day I toured the Jjimjilbang, I went with some friends to the shopping district of Chuncheon known as Myong Dong. It covers a few city blocks on the surface, goes up a few stories into the sky, and even decends beneath the street. (For the curious, Seoul also has a Myong Dong, but it takes up an area about the size of downtown St. Louis, depending on where you draw the boundries of that American district. You actually have to tell the taxi drivers which part of the Myong Dong you want to go to in Seoul or else you'd face a good hour's walk.) Myong Dong features several speciality shops and even more general merchandise shops. Zippos are incredibly expensive here, as is American paraphenalia in general, though cheaper Korean-made brands abound. Myong Dong is also home to Chuncheon's Dokgalbi Street, a side alley which features only one menu option: dokgalbi.

Dokgalbi is a fantastic dish that is a Chuncheon speciality. (I actually ate at the best dokgalbi establishment in Chuncheon recently, not on Dokgalbi Street, and thus have eaten the "best dokgalbi in the world".) Essentially, it is chicken marinated with spicy sauce fried up on a griddle that sits in the middle of the table. Other ingredients include cabbage, rice cakes, onions, and, if one desires, lettuce, garlic and extra spicy paste on the side. It is usually eaten in this way. The chicken will cook slowly, and while it cooks, one may pick at the rice cakes and vegetables. Whatever ingredient is being eaten, it should be picked out of the griddle with chopsticks, placed in a cool lettuce or mint leaf and any extra condiments. This is then wrapped and placed in the mouth. The griddle's ingredients are usually quite hot, and despite the cool leaf will burn the fingers a bit. After most of the meat and vegetables are gone, one can order rice which will be fried on the griddle once again until crispy. It is all quite delicious and one order can stuff up to two starving American stomaches, three moderately hungry ones. This is, incidentally, one of the very few native Korean dishes that one should eat with the fingers, and it is the second best meal I've had in Korea since my arrival. To drink, one usually has soju, a watered down version of vodka, though at this particular instance in the Myong Dong I had Coke. (This was a mistake, as I consumed it during the meal. The sweet flavor of the cola and the carbonation did not mix well with the spicy bouquet of the dokgalbi. Alcohol is to be much prefered, or if one cannot consume this, simple water. The spices are powerful and will not be offended by the sweet nothings of corporate beverages.)

Competition between the Dokgalbi Street establishments is fierce. Restaurant owners will come out to the front of their business to usher people in. They will offer free drinks, free rice, free desert, whatever it will take. (This is slightly odd as a single serving of dokgalbi, which is not very expensive, will feed at least two people and Koreans do not take tips. I wonder where they make their money...) If there are no potential customers to badger, the owners will insult each others' dokgalbi as they assert that theirs is the best ever made and no self-respecting native Korean (or even tourist) would dare even set a toe in anyone else's establishment. It makes for good dinner entertainment, at any rate.

Meeting Children at the Jjimjilbang

As I said before, last Saturday I went to the jjimjilbang, a Korean bathhouse. Today, I remembered that a rather strange cultural situation presented itself while I was waiting in the common room for the girls to finish in their bathing area. I was watching some sort of game show on TV (If I'm correct, the contestants were put through a series of intelligence tests by professors, and the particular one I was watching at the moment was they had to say a color though the word they were looking at was in a different color.), when these two elementary school girls sat behind me and off to the side. I noticed they were whispering to each other and staring at me, so I smiled at them briefly and kept watching the TV. Then one of them said, "Hi!" and waved to me. "Oh, good," I thought. "They want to talk!" I was just saying, "Hi" back when the other girl hit the girl who had just been so friendly to the alien in a strange land and said something which sounded very chastising. The first girl stared at her friend blankly for a second, when suddenly a light came on in her head. "Oh!" she said, and then, facing me and bowing slightly, "Hello." (This actually sounded more like "Herroh", but 'r's are hard for Koreans.) I laughed to myself a little at this, but we proceeded to have a friendly conversation, I speaking what little Korean I knew, they speaking their considerably greater amount of English.

I just found it humorous. From what I've heard (and now seen), Korea is a land of deep custom. When you address superiors, you are supposed to speak with in a more formal linguistic mood, and this changes the endings of your nouns, adjectives, and verbs entirely. Since I was considerably older than the girls, I suppose the second girl chastised the first for addressing me in so informal a manner, with a simple "Hi" and a wave of the hand. Apparently, a person of my stature deserves a full "Hello" and at least a slight bow.

I've had to learn the difference also and am constantly bowing to teachers who live with us in the dorm. I just didn't imagine (though I should have) that small children, who are quite sincere in learning a new language, would also take along all of their cultural norms with them in using that language with a native speaker, even to the point of modifying a language of significant equality, at least equal in comparison with their own. It didn't occur to me until after I was done talking with them, but someday I hope they learn that in America, the way you show respect is by treating the person you address as an equal. Formality in the U.S., I feel, is for occassion and situation (i.e. ceremonies and at school, or when in the presence of someone particularly important), not everyday usage.

I will not begrudge them the kindness they showed though. They did share their sugared ice with me after all, and they did keep a stranger company while he waited in a place without friends.

Quote of the Day

This phone smells fantastic! No, seriously! Smell it. SMELL IT!
-Julia Leb

Week 1: Adventures in Language, Cooking and Bathing

It's been an exciting Week 1 here in South Korea. Again, most of my days are spent learning Korean in the morning and taking various workshops in the afternoon, but I've been able to participate in some Korean cultural things, as well as some things that were just plain interesting. I have to keep this short (relatively speaking), as we have our first quiz tomorrow over everything we learned during the last week, but I'll try to hit the main highlights.

Cooking The most thrilling event was probably the fact that I took my first Korean cooking class. There were two dishes available to make. The first was called jabchae (잡채). This was the one I helped make. It's a hot noodle dish that is absolutely fabulous. It is made with various vegetables and meat items, and the noodle used is those translucent chinese noodles you can sometimes find at restaurants (called dangmyeon 당면 here). As the cooking instructor explained, this dish is essentially what you make out of anything you find in your refrigerator that you can chop up "prettily". (And EVERYTHING had to be chopped prettily.) The second option was a dish called pajeon (파전). This was essentially a pancake, but made with scallions as the foundation of the dish (the flour and water basically held it all together). As toppings, one adds various meats again, though I think these are usually seafood. It compares fairly well with that favorite Thanksgiving caserole, French Fried onion rings on greenbeans with cream of mushroom soup. Mmmhmm, good. The only real issue this night was that most of us ate before we came, so it was hard to finish all the food we made. The instructor scolded us soundly for this, and we will surely starve ourselves the next time to appease her wish that we might be made full off our labours.

Bathing The second most thrilling event (though some of you may disagree given what I'm about to talk about) was going to the jjimjilbang (찜질방) this Saturday. This was very relaxing and very welcome after a full week of trying to speak Korean with a Western language oriented mind. A jjimjilbang is essentially a bathhouse, and for about 6000 won you can enjoy hot baths, cold baths, herbal baths, various temperatures of saunas, showering areas where exfoliation is encouraged (and sometimes the natives will help you with this portion of your bathing experience). Everyone is nude. Everyone is bathing (or sweating). Everyone is having a grand old time in the aquatic arena, though it's important to note that you should shower before you jump into any of the pools. (If you were wondering, it is gender segregated, so no free shows.) If you're willing to pay a little extra, you can even have a full body massage with deep exfoliation so that you're essentially walking around in a new set of skin. (I opted out of this as the person doing the massaging was a fully nude 50 year old.) You can even sleep overnight in these places (for the same price), and it is the recommended option if you're just bumming around Korea a la European hitchhiking. I haven't been taking pictures of anything really, but don't expect to see any of this experience anytime soon anyway. I'd feel a little awkward about it, and I'm sure the old men would too. One piece of advice to note: When in the sauna, especially the hottest one, which I could barely stand for 5 minutes, it is a good idea to breathe out your mouth, rather than your nose. This is because rather sensitive areas can get, shall we say, uncomfortable from the intense heat coming out of your body. Beyond this is a non-segregated area (p.j.'s required) where one can watch movies, play video or computer games, get refreshments, read, or even just fall asleep.

Church I finally made it out to a local church on Sunday for worship, a large Methodist congregation. It was encouraging that there were several other ETAs who wanted to go and who are also interested in doing Bible study during the week. They seem quite sincere about their faith, and I feel that they will be a blessing to me (as I hope I am to them) in the coming weeks and year. We first went to the Korean service in the morning. This was incomprehensible, but very nice. Those of us who have just had a week sounding out hanguel stumbled through the words projected on the wall behind the altar, though we did not know what we were singing. Some of the hymns were familiar, as they used Western tunes, but for all I know they were using entirely different texts from the English equivilants associated with those hymns. I did understand one word in the sermon (besides Jesus and Christ), and that was πιστις, which is actually Greek, not Korean, meaning faith, but it was still exciting for me. πιστις, πιστις the pastor kept saying. 네, 네, 아멘 (Yes, yes, Amen!) was my happy, silent response. The pastor welcomed us after the service into his office and extended his offers of help and hospitality. He gave us a delightfully tasty Vitamin C drink, and told us that if we ever needed help during our stays in Korea (or a meal, and given the cafeteria food, I may take him up on this), we should call the church immediately. This afternoon we attended the English service, which was actually more geared towards those learning English (everything was translated and the congregants were asked to parrot what the pastor, a different one, said as in our Korean classes). I found it both fulfilling and frustratingly poor homiletically speaking. I'm not sure that the pastor had necessarily prepared well, but it could be that I felt he focused too much on glory and not enough on the cross. But that could be just the Lutheran in me talking.

안녕히 가세요!