Elections in Korea

June 2 was election day in Korea (a long time ago, I know). I want to share a few photos, but they need context, so here we go:

A few weeks before the election was the beginning of the official Campaign Season (it's Korea, everything's scheduled). What this meant for us was that we woke up one morning to the sound of angry shouting into a PA system coming from town. Whenever anyone speaks to an audience in Korean they sound angry, and they almost always shout. So, we're hearing shouty angry urgent public announcements happening in town and our thoughts immediately turn to evacuation orders being given to the citizens of Yeoju in the aftermath of the shelling of Seoul. No such calamity-it's just campaign season.

I'm sure that campaigning manifests itself in other ways invisible to the untrained eyes and ears of a foreigner. But as far as I can tell, it consists of little more than dressing up ajummas in coordinated, numbered t-shirts and sashes, directing them to dance, bow and sing at busy intersections, and setting up mobile stages with large PA systems on the backs of trucks. The presence of the candidate should not preclude the speakers from blasting beligerrent sounding speeches or grandma techno. These trucks may be anchored to a specific intersection or may be found careening across town, audio blasting all the while. Often, the ajumma dancing teams will square off across the road from each other, accompanied by their aforementioned campaign trucks.

A coordinated bow to every car that passes.

Standardization is the fabric that binds Korean society and the Korean economy together, and so too is it the rule of elections in Korea--particularly when it comes to graphic design. Every candidate has a campaign poster that looks identical or similar to his or her opponents': terrifying over-sized head-shot on a crappy photoshopped background with a huge graphic of their designated number (we never figured out if the message was "vote for number 3" or "vote for me under category 3"). T-shirt design must have also been standardized and regulated, along with all particulars pertaining to the ajumma sashes, which seemed to be required by law.

A final, overwhelming element of Korean campaigns are the candidates' building-sized banners (they literally just hang them up on the sides of buildings). These are typically just oversized versions of the campaign posters, but many are much more fun. One, for example, shows Our Candidate wearing a shirt and tie (they all do--corporate middle-manager is the ideal) whilst carrying a broadly smiling and very old grandmother on his back. He too is smiling and photoshopped to perfection/oblivion.

For two weeks we couldn't escape the screeching noise and the aggressive visuals of the campaign. It was bad in Yeoju, even worse in Gyeongju and I can't even begin to imagine how terrible it must have been in Seoul. I'm glad it's over but I'm glad to have seen it. It was nuts.

The election results (an afterthought, as far as I'm concerned) delivered a blow to the ruling conservative GNP  party. It was a nationwide election for local seats and the opposition picked up more than expected. This is most relevant to the progress of the Four Rivers Project (terrible, massive river re-engineering without the use of environmental impact studies) and the possible re-location of government ministries from Seoul to a new city currently under construction in the heart of the country. Without going into these issues further, it should be mentioned that the President, Lee Myung Bak, is the former CEO of Hyundai Heavy Industries, which probably owns about 75% of all construction contracts in the country. Surprise!

If there is any sort of moral to this story: Democracy is ridiculous and funny no matter where you are.

June happened

...despite our best efforts to slow it down. We haven't had much unstructured time in the past month. We've either been at work, working on graduate school stuff at work, or working on graduate school stuff at home. It was kind of a relentless month and I'm not exactly sad to see it go. Still, we had some (structured and scheduled) fun in between the long periods of relentless productivity. 

Our greatest achievement (and subsequent disappointment) was our little garden on the porch. Eight or so tomatoes, about nine peppers, a couple of cucumbers, and some gourdy climbers whose identity we're still working on. Just a couple of weeks ago, the porch was a riot of green leaves, yellow blossoms and the smell of tomato.

Unfortunately, our tomatoes got blight and our viney plants seem to be suffering from nutrient deficiency, lack of root space or both. Our peppers, however, are performing valiantly, and we've harvested a couple of cucumbers. There are a few ripening tomatoes on the vine, but the tomato plants are, generally, big wait-and-see. Kate did some re-potting last night and we've begun a fertilizer-bombing regimen in a last-ditch hail mary attempt to salvage our plants and our dignities. 

In the meantime, I've been working to fight back the swarming hoards of spiders and little bugs that find their way through our screen windows. The spiders in our neck of the woods here in Yeoju are phenomenally huge and phenomenally numerous. I saw one about a block from our house whose body must have been two inches long, not including legs. They're not so monstrously huge at our house, but they're everywhere--mostly nesting in the cracks between our vinyl siding and under our roof overhang. Our livable spaces outside on the porch are mostly spider-free (it takes some maintenance) but the narrow balcony around back of the house is pretty solidly an arachnid habitat preserve. Every night and every morning I dispatch one or a handful of spiders with a wad of paper towel and a pounce, and I've also been known to go on holocaust-scale buggie killing sprees with a rag swatter. These only really happen when someone accidentally leaves a window open at night when the fluorescent lights are on, but they are a sight to behold when they do (I'm sure that Kate could provide a hyperbolic and humiliating account). While Kate worked to salvage our garden last night I used clear packing tape to seal the open seams between the screens and the windows and window frames. Now we're comfortable with leaving the windows open at night, which means more breeze and less AC, which isn't very effective anyway. We are slowly but surely bringing back the order of civilization to our home. 

Otherwise, we've been spending a lot of our time on the porch, especially in the evenings. It's quite nice. The monsoon season just settled in (it's raining pretty hard at the moment) which means that sunny days may be few and far between for the next four to six weeks, and the humidity is pretty bad. All of the Wisconsinites complain about the humidity and the heat, but it's frankly not much worse than the Chesapeake. It's the damned bugs that drive me nuts.

A few more photos of life at home, with a handful more on the photo blog:

http://nandkinkorea.shutterfly.com/1414

China, One Month Later

It's not very easy to write an account of a trip that happened four weeks ago. So this will mostly just be a "hey guys, I finally edited photos from our weekend in Shanghai" post (here: http://nandkinkorea.shutterfly.com/1382)

We took a Friday afternoon off at the end of May and flew to Shanghai that night. We spent Saturday walking around the city, ate good food, and relaxed a bit. Our greatest accomplishment on Saturday was visiting a cricket and bird market, where thousands of massive "fighting crickets" are sold. Think cockfighting, with crickets. The roar of these crickets was unbelievable.

Our trip was supposed to have coincided with a visit by Kate's grandmother and uncle, but a last minute change in their travel plans thwarted that. So, it was just a weekend in China. And a very good one, on the whole. We flew back to Korea on Sunday, after taking the Maglev train from PuDong to the airport (350km/h!)

Also, I want one (or three) of these:

Hayeorim Botanical Garden

This should be the first of several posts over the next day or two covering our travels and exploits throughout the end of May and June (they won't necessarily be in chronological order).

Two weeks ago we visited the Hayeorim Botanical Garden in the northwest corner of Yeoju County--about a 45 minute drive from our place. Our little Hyundai groaned and wheezed over the small, steep ridges between the Han River and the garden, but she made it. The garden itself was typical Korean: muzak playing over loudspeakers, parents letting their children run everywhere and trample the subjects of exhibition and life-sized fairy-tale characters in the playground. Oh, and the plants were nice too.

The full photo set:

http://nandkinkorea.shutterfly.com/1357

There was a great water-powered mill (or maybe it would be better characterized as a mortar and pestle). Water comes in from a steeply sloped stream/waterfall off frame to the left. It's diverted into a dug-out log (supported by the Y-frame stick) and falls into a cavity on the left end of the big lever/hammer log. When the log fills with water it tilts down sharply, dispatches of its temporary water load, and comes hammering back down on the other side, where a blunt end makes contact with a stone bowl (and whatever else is in it--there was nothing in this one). I imagine it would take a long time to get anything done with this, but at least it's relatively labor free.

Gyeongju, three weeks later

May happened super fast and June is already halfway over. Good grief. Here's a partial update.

Three weeks ago was the weekend of Buddha's Birthday, which gave us a Friday off. So we got on a bus on Thursday night and went to the south end of the peninsula to Gyeongju, which was the center of culture and power in Korea for the better part of the seventh through fourteenth centuries. In the 1980s South Korea's dictator/president declared that Gyeongju would be preserved from development. The result is that many of Gyeongju's historic sites (some of them UNESCO World Heritage sites), and it's traditional Korean architecture, has been preserved. Given that most of the historic areas/things/buildings in Korea have either been destroyed by war, colonization or development, the existence of Gyeongju is pretty exceptional. There's a small city outside of the historic district, but it's a really easy place to get around.

The main attraction of Gyeongju are the tumuli--grassy mounds that entomb old kings and nobles. Many are in a park in the city, but others are on the outskirts and some are even in the city itself. They  pretty much look like hills in Super Mario Brothers:

Since we visited on Buddha's Birthday, the city was packed with tourists on Friday. It was beautiful and sunny outside but it was a little hard to focus on the delights of the Silla kingdom with thousands of people pressing all around you. We rented bikes, which helped us dash in, around (and sometimes away) from the mobs of people. Our agenda for Friday included the big Tumuli Park in town, a walk around the grounds of an old fortress/palace (not really there anymore, but there is a beautiful green space), a visit to an old lotus pond (Anjapi), a couple of beers in the shadows of smaller tumuli in town at sunset and a mad dash around the outskirts of town after the sun went down. We climbed up one of the more remote tumuli after dark.

On Saturday the rain started. It came on and off, but was never quite a downpour. Our main agenda item for the day was to hike Namhan, a small mountain to the south of Gyeongju. Namhan was basically the Buddhist playground of the Silla Dynasty. There are thousands of small relics, shrines and Buddhist statues scattered around the mountain. We rode our bikes to one of the main hiking trails and hoofed up. The rain picked up when we were on the mountain and by the time we made it back down in the afternoon the drizzle was pretty constant (and not stopping). So we found dinner and a coffee shop (which was a minor miracle) and wrote postcards for the evening. 

Sunday was all rain, all day. We returned our bikes on Saturday, we walked to the Gyeongju National Museum, which mostly displays items (shiny ones) recovered from archaeological digs and tombs in Gyeongju. We were there with probably half of the tourists still left in Gyeongju. Korean museums are designed kind of like conveyor belts, and museum goers act in kind: Most galleries are set up explicitly to be circumnavigated counter-clockwise. Koreans respond by putting themselves in a single-file line and following the person before them. If it sounds nice, orderly and reasonable, imagine being poked and prodded by children and grandmas who think that you're not moving fast enough past the display cases. This was a prime opportunity for Kate and I to play our "we are ignorant foreigners" card and just do what we please.

We were back on a bus by about 4pm and reached home by 10pm or so. Not a bad bus ride, but we were super wet. A good three-day weekend.

Photos of the trip are on the Shutterfly page:

http://nandkinkorea.shutterfly.com/1254

Photos from the museum are in a separate album, but they're there too:

http://nandkinkorea.shutterfly.com/1326 

Ganghwado, 10 days later

A couple of weekends we visited Ganghwado (Ganghwa Island, do= island) for a Saturday and Sunday. It was our most extended weekend away from Yeoju so far. Ganghwado is an island just off of the west coast in the West Sea (Yellow Sea). It's separated from the mainland by a narrow strait and is only a 90 minute bus ride west of Seoul.For being so close to one of the most populous cities on the planet, it was delightfully quiet.

We arrived in the main town, Ganghwa, early on Saturday morning. There's not much to see in Ganghwa, so we walked around looking for a scooter to rent. No luck. Our tourist map showed a bicycle rental place near a museum, so we picked up two tiny mountain bikes with terribly uncomfortable seats for 2 days. Our plan: bike west across the island (10 miles) to a tiny fishing town called Oepo (Way-pa), find some fish markets, some beer and some rocks to sit on and find a place to stay. We took the flattest route across the island, so despite the pains of tiny bikes, we made it to Oepo by around 2pm. Had some amazing fish stew (I picked the head clean with chopsticks--the cheeks are delicious), found our rock, and sunned. On the way we poked around a dondae (fortress)--one of many many on the islands. They're basically just ringed walls of stone about 6-10 feet tall with 3 or 4 entrances and grass growing on the top. They're beautiful.

After sunning (and beering) we biked to the East of town to watch the sun set over the bay. I said "hello" to a four man army patrol that walked by our perch. They had been looking at us, but when I said hi they snapped their heads forward, blushed and tried to suppress smiles. On our way back to the hotel we passed them going the other direction and one of them gave a shout of "hello!" as we rode past. Koreans.

On Sunday we hopped a ferry from Oepo to visit Seongmodo, a smaller island to the west of Ganghwado. It was just a 10 minute trip, and we set off to circumnavigate the island on our bikes. This time around the road wasn't so flat, and we walked our bikes up a few nasty hills/mountains (and subsequently rode down the other sides in terror at the thought of our crappy brakes failing). On the west side of Seongmodo is a temple, Bomunsa, which we visited, along with a very impressive 10 foot industrial scrap metal woman (we weren't looking for her, she just happened). Kate bought some caramelized sesame candy from the Bomunsa market, we got lunch and we rode around the other half of the island to the ferry terminal.

Back on Ganghwado, we took a more circuitous route to Ganghwa to return our bikes (by 5:30pm). We cut south on the island and rode through small towns and on smaller roads through farms and over some hills. Most fields had been flooded and a lot of farmers were driving their tractors through them with machinery that levels the mud to prepare the fields for planting. We stopped at another dondae and had a few more funny Korean encounters. Korean Army guards saluted at us as we biked by a military installation (5 minutes apart) and I elicited a surprised, happy, but still confused response from an old man walking around a hospital parking lot in pajamas and an IV. Near the end of our trip we met a Korean who grew up on the island but who has been living in LA since the '80s. He was visiting with his family.

We made it back to the bike rental by about 5pm, the trip across Ganghwado having taken about 3 and a half hours. We rode 40 miles in two days on tiny bikes and our legs and butts were killing us. God ride, but I was glad to give my bike back.

A few days later Kate and I bought bikes here in Yeoju. Hers is a green cruiser and mine is a mountain bike. It had to be ordered by the bike shop because Korea simply does not have bicycles large enough for me. So there shouldn't be anymore exceptionally painful weekend rides.

Photos from Ganghwado:

Click here to view these pictures larger

This weekend is a 3 day weekend (Buddha's Birthday) and we're going to travel way down to the south end of the Korean peninsula to stay in Gyeongju.

Lastnight in Korea

From our porch lastnight. There was a time when I would have known about things like this in advance, but it's also fun to look up and be surprised at the end of the day.

The Moon and Venus (click for full size):