Tag: south korea

Alex and Chickpea Do Korea

5 tips to save you money/ time when arriving in South Korea

Posted on by Alex

1. Get your Alien Card early. You should ask your co-teacher to bring you to immigration on your first or second day in your city. The earlier you get this card, the easier life will be. You can’t open a bank account or get a cell phone without this card.

2. Ask if any of your teachers has a spare cell phone. These days, people change cell phones like they do socks. Chances are someone in your school has an extra phone lying around. If they let you borrow it, you can then take it to a cell phone store to get a pre-paid plan, which is the most economical (unless you want a smart phone or use your phone incessantly). I got my plan through a place called NRC in Daegu. They have an office near Banwaldong. Super cheap.

3. Set up a KEB (NOT KB!) bank account. This is the best bank account for a waygookin: cheap fees for sending money back home; online banking that also allows you to transfer money overseas, which no other bank has; mostly English-speaking staff; and a check card that you can use overseas when you have your vacation in Thailand or China.

4. Check your ondol. When your teacher first shows your apartment, make sure you ask about the ondol (heater). Find out what buttons control the water heater and what buttons control the floor heater. Find out how to turn it off correctly and set the temperature correctly. Too many friends of mine didn’t figure these things out early and had very large gas bills.

5. Treat your teachers to pizza or chicken on your first payday. Not only is this polite, but trust me, if you do this one kindness, it will be repaid 10-fold throughout the year and you will always have food on your desk.

Alex and Chickpea Do Korea

The Gwangalli Eobang Festival in Busan, South Korea

Posted on by Alex

It was the best damn fish I ever had.

I don’t know what kind of fish. Or what all the spices were that the lady cook rubbed in. Frankly, the whole operation looked rather rustic. But for the next several years, the taste of that whole, sizzling fish will follow me. The juicy, flaky white meat falling from my chopsticks in one hand. The cold beer in my left. The heat, tang and salt mixing together in perfect harmony.

Now this was the fresh fish experience I was looking for in Busan, South Korea’s famous port city. Forget Jalgalchi Market. The best fish in Busan was in a small stand on one of Busan’s sandy beaches.

Chickpea and I were at the Gwangalli Eobang Festival — a three-day event celebrating Korea’s fishing heritage. Eobang means spirit of the fishermen in the coastal areas, so along with the normal trappings of a Korean festival — mascots, food tents, arts and crafts — there is also several ritual-like performances about fishing in the old days.

If you’re around Busan in the spring, I highly recommend it: if only for the food.

Here’s a look at the Gwangalli Eobang Festival:

Alex and Chickpea Do Korea

A look at the Daegu Orions Basketball team [video]

Posted on by Alex

As the basketball season comes to a close here in South Korea, I wanted to post a montage of two games we attended. I’ve even included footage of our home team, the Daegu Orions, winning one of those games — a rare sight indeed! The video also features my favorite parts of basketball in Korea: the strange mascots, generous audience contests and always entertaining cheerleaders.

If you want to learn more about the Daegu Orions, check out this post by the team’s biggest fan. (Hint: She writes for this blog.)

Alex and Chickpea Do Korea

Isn’t South Korea close to Japan?

Posted on by Alex

Yesterday, Chickpea and I were talking about the tragedy in Japan and speculating about  our friends’ and family’s geography skills. Do they know that just a few hundred miles of water separates us from the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster that is Japan?

I can’t help feeling like we dodged a bullet here in South Korea. Sendai, the hardest hit city in Japan, is about 700 miles from us in Daegu – about the same distance from south Florida to North Carolina or San Diego to Mendocino in California. There’s still some worry about possible effects from the explosions at Japan’s nuclear reactors, but we probably won’t be affected. The winds and distance are in our favor, for now. (This has not stopped the English teacher community from speculating.)

UPDATE: The New York Times has an interactive map showing where the radioactive plume is headed.

Luckily, South Korea does not have to worry about its own earthquakes. They’re possible, but rare and not powerful. This is a good thing, because roughly 80 percent of all buildings in South Korea are vulnerable to quakes. That includes about 9 out of 10 schools. Not what I want to think about while writing this post at my elementary school desk.

Japan, on the other hand, was prepared. Looking at photos of the devastation, it’s hard to believe that Japan was possibly the most prepared nation for an earthquake/tsunami disaster. They’ve had early warning systems in place years before the 2004 Christmas Day tsunami. After all, tsunami is a Japanese word. If this quake had hit another country, we might see a catastrophe two or three times as deadly.

Still, it’s been tough to get the images of this tragedy out of my head. That might not seem like a feat, since the media is awash in pictures of the tsunami carrying away cars, homes and people, but with a new school semester I actually haven’t read one article about it before this post. Just a few clips on CNN were enough for me. It’s painful to watch these clips, knowing that dead bodies are beneath the water rushing through those streets. You can’t see them, but you know they are there.

It makes that 700 miles just a little too close for comfort.

On a more positive note: If you’re near Daegu next weekend, there is a benefit concert at URBAN in downtown Daegu. All the info is on the DIY Daegu Live Facebook page. It sounds like a great way to help out and cheer yourself up at the same time.

Alex and Chickpea Do Korea

North Korea upset over ‘birthday’ balloons

Posted on by Alex

Earlier this month, I posted an item about North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il’s birthday and the “birthday balloons” sent up north by member of the South Korean government and activist groups.

Well, as it turns out, Mr. Kim doesn’t like balloons. At least not those with propaganda pamphlets and instant noodles attached.

From the Korea Times:

“The ongoing psychological warfare … is a treacherous deed and a wanton challenge to the demand of the times and desire of all the fellow countrymen to bring about a new phase … through all-round dialogue and negotiations,” a North Korean military official told the regime’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

A defense official said the North warned of firing on South Korean facilities involved in “psychological warfare” in a “self-defense action,” unless the South suspends its propaganda campaign.

This talk probably won’t deter South Korea, which is set on releasing another round of balloons soon, containing information about the revolts spreading across the Middle East.

 

Alex and Chickpea Do Korea

Welcome to Korea: Should I give my principal a gift?

Posted on by Alex

In the few months before Chickpea and I arrived in South Korea for our new teaching gig, one of the things we stressed over was what kind of gift to give to our co-teachers, principal and vice principal. According to blogs and advice of former native English teachers, gift-giving is a large part of Korean culture and new teachers often give several gifts to the important people at their school. And when you consider how much your Korean co-teacher(s) help you acclimate to a new country, a token of thanks seems reasonable, no matter where you’re from.

But Chickpea and I didn’t want to just bring some oranges or beach sand in a glass bottle. We wanted to make an impact! We wanted to bring something so unique, that when our principal went out for drinks with the other principals around Daegu, he could brag with pride and make all the other principals lower their heads in shame.

Alex and Chickpea Do Korea

Isn’t That Nice: South Korea sends birthday balloons for North Korea’s Kim Jong Il

Posted on by Alex

Yesterday was North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il’s birthday. And as they’ve done sporadically for years, a group of South Korean activists sent some birthday balloons.

Of course, those balloons carried about 100,000 anti-North Korea propaganda leaflets  to the North Korean people, but you know, we all get birthday presents we don’t fully appreciate.

Honestly, I’m fascinated by this low-tech psychological warfare. It’s so old school — sending propoganda by helium balloon to incite the masses.

Apparently, it actuallly works. In 2008, The Economist wrote a story profiling a North Korean nurse who came across one of these pamphlets dropped from a balloon. She says  it planted a seed in her mind for a better life and before long, she escaped to South Korea.

In fact, North Korea has been so bothered by these balloons that in the winter of 2008, it threatended military action if the balloons continued to flow across the border (they were bluffing, as usual). Although the South Korean government stopped its own balloon wars in 2004, but they wouldn’t take a stand against human rights activists releasing the balloons. Then, after the North Korean attack of a navy submarine and increased tensions, the South Korean defense ministry announced it would begin the propaganda war anew. When North Korea attacked the residential island of Yeonpyeong, the military immediately responded with 400,000 of its own propaganda balloons. The balloons released yesterday was openly supported by South Korea’s president, President Lee Myung-bak.

Balloons typically carry DVDs and leaflets about the uprisings in Egypt, anti-communist writings, dollar bills, transistor radios and plenty of insults against Kim Jong-Il, including calling North Korea “the Republic of Fat.”

But balloons aren’t all fun and games for South Korea. Last summer, the South Korean government panicked when residents of a small town near Seoul reported 40-50 objects resembling parachutes landing on a nearby mountain. When police and military personnel arrived, they found the objects were just balloons released by a nearby school.

Alex and Chickpea Do Korea

Not-so-much News Flash: Forever 21, purveyors of party dresses and trendy club wear, hails from South Korea!

Posted on by chickpeainkorea

Sorry for the absence, folks — I know you’ve been awaiting a new post with bated breath. Alex and I have been a bit busy for the past few weeks, what with a Christmas trip to Seoul, a New Year’s trip to Busan, Winter Camp woes, and tackling the Korean postal service in between. Posts about all of that and more are forthcoming, but today I discovered something of such utter importance that it warrants an immediate update.

Forever 21 — aka the greatest brand to ever grace the hallowed hallways of malls across the world — was created by a South Korean husband-and-wife duo. Yes, that bastion of cheap fashion, the purveyors of sublimely trendy and fabulously hideous alike, the paragon of party dresses and trashy club wear, is all the brainchild of Dong-Won Chang and his wife, Jin Sook, who opened the first store (still called “Fashion 21”) in LA in 1984 in an effort to bring South Korean trends to Korean Americans.

How have I lived in Korea for five months without discovering this sooner?! This explains so much, like: Why Forever 21’s sizes are so laughably small; why there is so much glitter and bows involved; and why I love it so much.

But here’s the 21-dollar question: Why don’t they have a store in Daegu?! Show some Korean love! I don’t want to go to Seoul every time I need a cheap bedazzled accessory, t00-small stretch jeans, or weird graphic tee. Actually, now that I think about it, all of Korea is like a giant Forever 21. I see all of those things en masse every time I walk down the street of my little Chilgok suburb, and piles of trendy junk occupy the lion’s share (fashionista’s share?) of Daegu’s largest market, Chilseong Sijang.

But I’d really love it if we got one, anyways.

Alex and Chickpea Do Korea

New Year Festivals in Korea: Insert foot and mouth

Posted on by Alex

I had planned New Year’s Eve for over a month.

In true Korean tradition, Chickpea and I would take a train to the small city of Pohang on Korea’s east coast and head to Homigot , known for the large, eerie hand reaching out of the ocean. The annual festival would keep us entertained all night long — concerts, soju, fireworks, traditional games, soju, mascots to pose with, free food, more soju — until the sun’s rays peeked up over the East Sea horizon.

With thousands (millions?) of others across the country, we would watch as the first sunlight of the new year cast its glow on the Korean Peninsula.

Then, someone put foot-and-mouth disease in the proverbial punchbowl.

South Korea has suffered from an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease since April, but it looks like efforts to contain it have not been entirely successful. And so, many festivals in the eastern provinces have been canceled. Look for a list of cancellations here.

If you don’t care about the festivals, though, you can still head to Homigot or some of the other places to watch the sunrise by your lonesome. The cancellations are not to protect your health: humans very rarely contract foot-and-mouth disease.  Agricultural officials are more worried that thousands of people tromping through these provinces will spread the disease to other areas.  Since FMD-tainted meat cannot be sold, this would have a deep economic impact on Korea’s domestic and export meat sales. That means more expensive galbi for those of you in Korea.

Plan B? Visiting a petting zoo.

Just kidding. We’re heading to Busan and watching the sunrise from a large mountain. You should, too.

Alex and Chickpea Do Korea

Welcome to Korea: Toilet paper at the dinner table?

Posted on by chickpeainkorea

Yes, it’s true: One of the strangest things for a Westerner to see upon arrival in Korea is that TP is no longer relegated to bathroom functions — it’s a multipurpose paper that serves in place of Kleenex, paper towels and even napkins.

I can’t tell you how weird it was for me the first time I sat down for lunch with my co-teachers and someone plunked a roll down in the middle of the table.

And have you ever tried drying your hands with two-ply tissue paper? It’s not super effective. But it sure is efficient. Why use myriad different paper products when all your cleaning needs can really be served with one? Oh, those clever Koreans.

— Chickpea

I find it strange that while there is toilet paper all over the lunch room and restaurant dining areas, there is rarely any in the public bathrooms. Which is not cool when you consider most public bathrooms have these:

— Alex