Subject: Korean Report Week 13
I love the flowers here. The most recent flowers to come into bloom are the roses, magnificent roses. There
are various rose gardens across campus with plants that are 3-5 feet tall and covered with large, majestic
blossoms of deep reds, pale pinks, whites, and sunny yellows. As one travels along the roadways, the
incredible rose-bush-lined roads beautify the ride. It makes me feel like Alice in the rose garden in
Wonderland, sans the Queen of Hearts.
Here's this week's report:
GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
When students have their Membership Training, they spend two days and a night together as a time for
all students in a major to get to know one another. Recently, the English Education students had their
Membership Training. They cook together, drink together, talk together, and play games. The games they
enjoyed most were: a staring game (you lose if you blink), arm wrestling, and the chicken game. The chicken
game requires that students stand on one foot; the other foot is held up with the knee protruding forward in
a chicken-standing-on-one-foot pose. They then hop around and engage in combat with the other players by
trying to knock others down by pushing with their elevated knees.
FESTIVAL!!!
Festival goes on for three days, starting at @ 5:00 P.M. and going until @ 1:00 A.M. daily. It is an annual
event of loud musical performances, games, food booths, and campus-wide drinking. Of course, Koreans
asked me if we have a festival. The closest thing I could think of was a county fair.
The outsider view: Banners started appearing all over campus on Monday. I saw the stage being set up
with lights and speakers and a big banner on Tuesday afternoon. I saw the chairs and tables being stacked on
the side of the campus streets on Tuesday afternoon. I saw the tents and booths going up on the sidewalks,
in the parking lots, and along the streets on Wednesday morning. I saw the truckloads of beer,soju, and
other alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages being delivered on Wednesday morning. I saw the students
wearing t-shirts to show their membership in various clubs on Wednesday afternoon. And then by late
Wednesday afternoon when I was in class, I heard the bands starting to play. As I left the Education Building
to return to my dorm, I had to navigate my way through the crowds. Students were now staffing the booths
for their organizations and selling a variety of foods and alcoholic beverages; I guess you don’t have to have a
license to sell alcohol here and drinking is not banned from campus. I doubt that ID’s are checked to make
sure that you are 20 (American age of 19), which is the legal drinking age here. On Thursday morning, I
walked through all the litter and saw the mess from the night before. (There are also no rules against
littering.) There were hired, older people out picking up all the trash, cleaning up the area so that it could all
begin again in the afternoon.
The insider view: On the second night of festival, I joined the audience in the stage area. The stage lights
lit up the entire area and the spotlight follow the MC and the performer. The MC bantered back and forth
with the performer; the audience laughed. Then the singer, a young attractive Korean woman, took the
stage and sang her song, engaging the audience in hand clapping, as she performed karaoke. Then another
female student came on stage and the scene got repeated. Although this is familiar in some ways, it is also a
reminder of when I was in Japan and we went to Tokyo Disney where Mickey Mouse spoke in Japanese.
Something was just a little off because of the language barrier. Later famous bands would take the stage. I
walked through the crowds and headed for the Education Building because I suspected that my friends, the
Beauties, who I hike the mountain with some times, might be in the vicinity of the English Education
students’ food and beverage area. I joined Jin, Jane, and Hayoung at their table; later Ahnna joined us. I told
them that I wanted to try soju, the Korean national alcoholic beverage of choice, which resembles straight
vodka. The students first delivered four little shot-glass-size clear plastic glasses and then brought one green
beer-sized bottle of soju. Jin handed the bottle to me and told me to open it up. So, I cracked the bottle and
then Jin used two hands (a Korean ritual) and poured a little soju into each glass. (It is also a custom here
that you should not pour your own drink and you should not have your own individual drink=another aspect
of “we” culture; instead, one bottle of beer or soju or coke or whatever is shared with one person pouring a
little in each person’s glass, regardless of whether they want any or not). We all toasted and I had my first
taste of soju. I have to say, it is not a drink I would typically order, but when in Korea…. My friends insisted
that I had to eat if I was drinking, so they ordered an egg dish and a large green onion and octopus pancake.
The students gave us fresh slices of pineapple on a stick for dessert. By the time we had eaten and drunk
together, my friends started to call me “onni”, which means big sister.
A short distance away, I could see my early childhood education students at their water balloon-throwing
concession. After a couple of shots of soju, I just had to go taunt them. There was a large plastic bucket full
of water balloons. There was a wooden frame with a screen over it; the victim stood behind the screen and
the water balloonist launched a water balloon at him or her. I grabbed a water balloon. My students, who
are sophomores, said that they would get a freshman to go behind the screen. I said, “but I don’t know the
freshmen; I want to throw at one of you.” Then I picked on poor Ju-Eon, the only male in the class. He
reluctantly, but obediently, got behind the screen, and I threw a couple of water balloons at him and got him
wet. Then I stood behind the screen and told Ju-Eon to throw balloons at me. He just couldn’t do it; it’s that
professor respect thing again! (I just can’t seem to learn my place here!)
That was enough fun for me, so I walked back to my dorm with Hayoung and showed her my family/home
pictures as well as my ever-emerging photo journal of my Korean experience (I think I have over 150 pages so
far.) which are housed on my computer. Hayoung told me that I was the first foreigner that she had ever
spoken with; I was genuinely touched that I was a “first” in someone’s life and wondered how many Koreans
had experienced me as their first native speaker and westerner.
I missed the final night of festival when the fireworks went off because I was in Ulsan.
ULSAN:
Ulsan is a port city on the East Sea in the southeastern part of the Korean Peninsula. It is best known as
the center for Hyundai Industries and boasts having the world’s largest shipyard, world’s largest automobile
plant, and world’s largest oil refinery. It began as a fishing port with a focus on the whaling industry. But
what brought me to Ulsan is the fact that it is where Eunju’s husband lives and works during the week. He is
a surgeon in the medical school there where he specializes in liver and kidney transplants. As one of the
benefits of his job, he is provided with a FREE three-bedroom apartment, so I got to see my third Korean
home. I think I can begin to generalize that most Korean homes are condominiums in large complexes. The
unique Korean features are the entryway in which to remove shoes before entering the condo and the fact
that each home has porch/patios on both ends of the condo apartment which are used for storage or for
clothes drying. Otherwise, the condos look like a typical three-bedroom, kitchen, living room, bathrooms
arrangement.
Eunju pointed out to me that much of Korean life is “floor life” at home while she noticed that Americans
typically have a “stand-up life”. Although there is a standard dining table, we sat on the floor around a small,
short tea table (shorter than our coffee tables) when we had a snack of fruit and tea/coffee---funny, I drank
the tea; the Koreans drank the coffee. Eunju preferred to sit on the floor rather than on the couch. And, she
preferred to sleep on the floor. Eunju and baby Songwon sleep on a quilt on the floor while Dr. Park (Sangjun)
sleeps in a bed in the same room. The baby does not have a crib. Psychiatrist Stanley Greenspan would
really love this atmosphere for parenting a young child because he advocates “floor time.” Eunju’s reference
to Americans having a stand-up lifestyle made me think about some of our language that supports this: “take
a stand”, “stand-up to the plate”, “where do you stand on that issue?” “he’s a real stand-up guy”. Hence, I
wonder how this effects our perspectives on things based on whether you are from a “floor” culture or a
“stand-up” culture????
It was on this visit that I got to really observe the use of the abuba. The abuba is like a blanket with
straps and mothers use it to strap their babies to their backs or to cover their babies when they have them in
a snuggie on their chests. One-year-old baby Songwon loves the abuba. Eunju would put him in it to comfort
him and hold him close to her while she walked about the condo or when we went out. She put him in it to
help him relax to take a nap. I’ll attach a photo of Eunju with Songwon in the abuba.
One of the best parts of this trip for me was that I got to eat some American food again. Eunju put me
up in the Hyundai Hotel on Friday night and we ate a buffet dinner there Friday night as well as a buffet
breakfast there on Saturday. While the dinner time foods are more “fusion” foods, that is, foods that are
based on western recipes but still have a Korean flavor to them, the breakfast foods were more American--omelet made to order, toast with butter, and bacon. As I was sitting on a chair at a table and eating with a
fork, I had the strangest insight: some foods are just easier to eat with chopsticks. Of course, Eunju just told
me that this was another sign that I was turning Korean. We went to a nice Korean restaurant on the East
Sea for lunch where we had a soup with both noodles and grated potato balls in it.
On Saturday, two of our graduate students took a two-hour bus trip to Ulsan to be with us. Dr. Park had
a day-long retreat with his co-workers to foster collegiality and cooperation, so the four women and baby
Songwon went sightseeing. However, it was a very rainy day, so we walked under umbrellas through a
beautiful forest, past lighthouses, to Dae-Wong Am, a rocky precipice on the East Sea where King Mumnu,
the 30th king of the Silla Dynasty, is buried. We were supposed to go to a nice restaurant for dinner that
night where we could see and eat porpoise (I would have asked to have something else!), but we had to
return to Daegu by 7:00 P.M. because JongGu had a special event. This was the night of a very important
dinner when her boyfriend met her parents for the first time; this dinner is a prelude to an engagement; she
was very nervous. If her parents didn’t approve, she wouldn’t be getting engaged or married.
BABY’S FIRST BIRTHDAY: TOL
Although age is calculated differently in Korea, there is a celebration to mark the baby’s first birthday.
Historically, there was a high infant mortality rate, so reaching a first birthday was often an indicator that the
child was a survivor. This celebration involves some ritual. The night before or in the morning, prayers are
said to thank the gods for the child’s birth and to pray for the child’s longevity. The child is dressed in
traditional clothing. A special table of various rice-based foods is prepared. And items are placed on a table
which are symbols of the child’s future. Traditional items included:
bow and arrow: the child will become a warrior; needle and thread: the child will live long; jujube (fruit): the
child will have many descendants; book, pencil, or related items: the child will become a successful scholar;
rice or rice cake: the child will become rich (some resources say choosing a rice cake means the child is not
smart); ruler, needle, scissors: the child will be talented with his/her hands; knife: the child will be a good
cook. Then the child is posed for photographs.
I was not invited to Songwon’s birthday because it is a family celebration and the expected, traditional
gifts are gold rings. (The rings are not worn but are cashed in to pay for the child’s education later.) I asked
Eunju about Songwon’s birthday because I was curious if they practiced any of the rituals. She told me that
they placed items on the table for Songwon to choose his future. The first item he touched was a toy
stethoscope, so they were all pleased that he would follow in his father’s footsteps. The second item that he
touched was the computer mouse, so they think he will be involved in technological aspects of medicine.
Linda Good, Ph.D.
Professor
Early Childhood Education Coordinator