LATENIGHT - KOREA

Saturday, September 27, 2003

On the street in Hyehwa

My sleeping schedule is messed up. I'm not getting to sleep now until about 10am or later... often to be woken up by a wrong number around noon. Thankfully, it's not been a tough week since my middle school classes are on a two-week exam prep regimen. I'm only teaching elementary classes and "pre"-middle school classes. I even lucked out yesterday and had a class cancelled while the students went off to tests. My total teaching hours this week amounted to 17 classes worth. Not bad. It's the weekend now and today I finally got caught up on my sleep.

Today's also another special day of sorts. Yeji and I are celebrating our 1000th day. I suppose most Korean couples would be married by now, so I haven't really heard much about such an event. Boyfriends and girlfriends celebrate things such as 100th day and 500th day, as opposed to year anniversaries of dating. The present situation was a bit reversed as far as traditionally genderized things go. I got jewelry (a ring to replace mine that finally cracked after one-too-many poundings of my fist on students' desks) and she got electronics (an MP3 player which she had been mentioning for a while). The ring is pretty cool. She knows how sensitive I am about giving up styles I like (I am purposefully avoiding words like stubborn, conservative, and anachronistic), so she managed to have a ring crafted to fit my tastes. My old ring was silver with a knotwork band. The new ring is also silver, and has a band of entwined rope carved into a centre band that spins around on an outer ring. It's perfect.

In the news...
The won is skyrocketing. I transferred money last week and took partial advantage of it, but the real increase in the exchange rate came on Monday and has been continuing. It's basically at a 34-month high right now, and it's starting to look a lot like the lead up to the IMF crisis in 1997. I wasn't here for that, but I've heard quite a bit about it, and some of the locals are looking quite panicked. The Korea Herald reports that exports are to be up this year but at the current exchange rate, they could hardly be that much more profitable-- perhaps that's why they quoted the prediction figures in Dollars instead of Won.

One welcome source of foreign investment that has been announced, is that department store giant, Carrefour, is going to invest 250 Million Won next year in new locations and in renovations to old ones. Carrefour is the best of the department stores close to my apartment. It's also where I bought Yeji's MP3 player. As far as affecting my day-to-day life goes, this is pretty good news.

At any rate, the economy is teetering here. However, much of the increase in exports that was mentioned is taking place through business with China, so I suspect that this will help shield Korea from a lot of troubles. Still, the main market for Korea is the U.S.A. and if sales there don't pick up-- or if the Korean currency continues to go up, it's bad news for business (though good news for English Teachers since not only will our savings amount to more, but student enrollment in English classes goes up during poor economic spells). It's not all about government policy though, or foreign markets. Even uncontrollable things, like the damage caused to Busan's port by Typhoon Maemi are all contributing to a dire sense of impending doom.

Friday, September 19, 2003

Colourful coifs in Corea

This has felt like a bit of a long week. My schedule is completely blocked in at work, from 6pm until 11pm, every night-- but next week should prove to be a bit more relaxing. Soon, our middle school students will be writing exams. Parents often pull them out of hagwons during times like this, to allow them extra time to study at home. Our hagwon, on the other hand, is actually increasing their classload by adding preparatory classes, to convince them to stay in school. However, these classes are taught in Korean, a language to which I am perceived to be blissfully ignorant of. That means, I get about 6 hours worth of breaks, come next week. That's a nice chance to prepare last minute materials as well as get a snack to tide me over. It also means that on at least two or three nights next week, I will finish before most of my favourite local restaurants close.

I have a feeling that the break will just be temporary, however. Officially, the plan for our school is to have another foreign teacher hired by the early part of October. What I suspect will happen is that the school will make arrangements to divide and expand classes, filling up the time table-- but will fail miserably at acquiring a new teacher. We already had one that seemed fine, and she was let go after just two weeks for what was, at best, explainable as personality conflicts. I believe the problem stems from one certain Korean-American at our school, who handles the interviews. The teacher our school hired, was the only foreigner that he *didn't* interview. She was hired directly by management instead, and from where I sit, he did everything he could to get her pushed out, until finally our manager caved.

So what kind of foreigner is this guy looking for when he interviews? Apparently the main qualification seems to be a complete and utter inability to accept a job offer. The only people he has recommended are teachers who have other commitments, or are not free to work until such a time in the future that their application will have slid from the memory of manager. He's explained his philosophy to me before-- white foreign teachers are losers and not really necessary and blacks... (Don't even ask). He is also of the opinion that foreigners looking for work in Korea are desperate. When two interviewees cancelled today, having so easily and quickly found other jobs elsewhere, his reply to me was, "I guess they really needed the money."

Now as annoying as this all is, I don't feel threatened. My job has existed here longer than anybody's and I am too firmly entrenched to be displaced at the moment. In contrast, the harder he makes it for our school to find a new teacher, the more and more valuable I become (hence the unexpected raise in salary). I'm sure he knows that. I'm sure it bugs the Hell out of him, too. But I'm willing to bet he's justifying it from the "foreign devil you know" side of the coin.

Saturday, September 13, 2003

Selling fish at TaeJungDae

Typhoon Maemi
I didn't even notice it raining here in Seoul so for anyone who was wondering, we're all fine here. The south of Korea took the brunt of the storm, especially in my old province of Kyungsangnam-do, and CNN is reporting that the death toll from last night's hurricane could reach 100. A score of ships were sunk, roads were swept away, and in Masan, a shopping mall collapsed, trapping people underneath. All of this occurred toward the end of the Chuseok holiday, when people were getting set to return to their homes after visiting relatives. Power outages affected 1.4 million houses in the Busan area. Also in Busan, a dozen or more loading cranes toppled at the dock. This is going to have huge ramifications for the economy as this port is one of the main entry points for resources to enter Korea-- and each crane takes about 10 months to construct/replace, according to MBC.

Chuseok
This year, the autumn festival, Chuseok, fell perfectly on a Wednesday-Thursday-Friday which gave us all a much needed 5-day weekend. Yeji took the opportunity to travel to Japan for a few days of shopping and sightseeing. I stayed home and got caught up on some work here. I did a cartoon for Friday but so far have put off starting my column. I think I know what I want to write about but I've been a bit more intrigued about the fictional potential of a certain period in Miramichi history. To that end, I've been reading up all the available information on the time and people present on the river. The Charlotte Taylor website has single-handedly blown my mind with its wealth of information. It even has lots of information on John Murdoch, my first blood ancestor to live on the river.

My Chuseok gifts from school have been steadily improving too, I might add. The Chosun Ilbo ran a story saying that the poor economy has limited gift giving this season but this year's gift was the best yet-- almost $150 CAD worth of raw beef! I fried a bunch up on Wednesday and was eating it for three meals a day until I ran out of what I cooked. I guess it's time to go back to the freezer, thaw and cook some more. My first year here, I got a box of seaweed (kim). My second, if I remember correctly, I received a box of fish (Goolbi). The fish was delicious. I never ate the seaweed back then, but the more that I have become adjusted to a Korean diet, I am starting to wish I had a bit to snack on now.

Mmmmmmm. Meat. It was rather coincidental but I was really craving some red meat on the weekend. Yeji and I had met a friend of hers for dinner, Sunday and I had hoped to check out the new Sizzler restaurant in Hyehwa but we ended up going for sabu sabu. It struck me as tasting a bit more like the South American food that I had eaten before in Halifax as it came with a strongly flavoured peanut sauce and included lots of seafood. There was beef with it, but it was sliced very thin so it could be boiled almost instantly in the central pot on the table. That's nice from a gourmet point of view but I was more in the mood for quantity over quality. Tuesday's gift of beef was like someone reading my mind. Luckily, I've even stored away a bottle of HP Sauce for occasions such as this (as recommended by the Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver, who has been on TV about a hundred times in the last week for some reason.)

Note: This webpage doesn't support any criminal activities related to HP Sauce in any way whatsoever.

Finally, as Chuseok winds to a close. I am a bit startled to realize that I made it through the holiday without any songpyeon. I think I'll see about hitting the department store later in case they have some leftovers.

In the news...
Since I last posted, lots of things have happened from suicide protests by South Korean farmers at the W.T.O. (trying to protect Korea's status as a 'developing nation), to North Korea's 55th birthday, to brawls between politicians at government meetings leading to the imminent breakup of the governing party. Roh Moo Hyun's government has been pretty ineffectual at solving any of Korea's problems to date, so I suspect that last one won't make much of a noticeable difference.

I will link to a couple of Canada specific articles however. Most curious to Canadian interests are the recent spate of "Immigration Packages to Canada" on Korean home-shopping networks. The story I linked to was the original event but it's success has caused it to be repeated. Basically, it seems the companies involved, starting with Hyundai Home Shopping Network, are selling emmigration to Canadian. Thousands of Koreans have scooped up these exhorbantly priced packages with the hope of becoming citizens of Manitoba, of all places. Now it's obvious that the Canadian government has absolutely nothing to do with this. The figures quoted by the company as immigration statistics are out of date by several years, according to a friend of mine researching this on her end, from Manitoba.

What they are *actually* selling is immigration counseling (more clear in the second story), but seemingly under the guise of virtually guaranteed immigration (a promise they certainly can't make). The price tag for this counseling service runs into the tens of thousands of dollars which many average citizens are happily forking over to these snakes. What bugs me is that when the truth comes out, I can assure you that no one will be blaming Hyundai. Koreans will lose millions of dollars out of this and many of these people are doing this because they have been hit hard by the downturn in the economy already, and are putting the last of their savings into a perceived overseas parachute.

One more story is the arrival of the MosaiCanada art exhibit to Seoul. It features the work of 18 contemporary Canadian artists and will be shown in Korea until next month. I gotta confess. I know nothing about Canadian art and can't even name all the members of the Group of Seven. The only accomplished painters I can probably name are Emily Carr, Maud Lewis and my old college friend, Jonathon Labillois. Maybe I should take in the exhibit.

Saturday, September 06, 2003

Movies playing in Busan

Okay. Lots of stuff happened this week but I've been too preoccupied to blog about any of it. Jump ahead to next week for a recap. I will include a photo for the week. This one is from Nampodong in Busan. It was taken on last month's trip. You might recognize some of the movies that are playing.


	CHANGWON ∙ The Kyungnam to Kyunggi Journal ∙ SEOUL
	Saturday, September 27, 2003 On the street in Hyehwa My sleeping schedule is messed up. I'm not getting to sleep now until about 10am or later... often to be woken up by a wrong number around noon. Thankfully, it's not been a tough week since my middle school classes are on a two-week exam prep regimen. I'm only teaching elementary classes and "pre"-middle school classes. I even lucked out yesterday and had a class cancelled while the students went off to tests. My total teaching hours this week amounted to 17 classes worth. Not bad. It's the weekend now and today I finally got caught up on my sleep. Today's also another special day of sorts. Yeji and I are celebrating our 1000th day. I suppose most Korean couples would be married by now, so I haven't really heard much about such an event. Boyfriends and girlfriends celebrate things such as 100th day and 500th day, as opposed to year anniversaries of dating. The present situation was a bit reversed as far as traditionally genderized things go. I got jewelry (a ring to replace mine that finally cracked after one-too-many poundings of my fist on students' desks) and she got electronics (an MP3 player which she had been mentioning for a while). The ring is pretty cool. She knows how sensitive I am about giving up styles I like (I am purposefully avoiding words like stubborn, conservative, and anachronistic), so she managed to have a ring crafted to fit my tastes. My old ring was silver with a knotwork band. The new ring is also silver, and has a band of entwined rope carved into a centre band that spins around on an outer ring. It's perfect. In the news... The won is skyrocketing. I transferred money last week and took partial advantage of it, but the real increase in the exchange rate came on Monday and has been continuing. It's basically at a 34-month high right now, and it's starting to look a lot like the lead up to the IMF crisis in 1997. I wasn't here for that, but I've heard quite a bit about it, and some of the locals are looking quite panicked. The Korea Herald reports that exports are to be up this year but at the current exchange rate, they could hardly be that much more profitable-- perhaps that's why they quoted the prediction figures in Dollars instead of Won. One welcome source of foreign investment that has been announced, is that department store giant, Carrefour, is going to invest 250 Million Won next year in new locations and in renovations to old ones. Carrefour is the best of the department stores close to my apartment. It's also where I bought Yeji's MP3 player. As far as affecting my day-to-day life goes, this is pretty good news. At any rate, the economy is teetering here. However, much of the increase in exports that was mentioned is taking place through business with China, so I suspect that this will help shield Korea from a lot of troubles. Still, the main market for Korea is the U.S.A. and if sales there don't pick up-- or if the Korean currency continues to go up, it's bad news for business (though good news for English Teachers since not only will our savings amount to more, but student enrollment in English classes goes up during poor economic spells). It's not all about government policy though, or foreign markets. Even uncontrollable things, like the damage caused to Busan's port by Typhoon Maemi are all contributing to a dire sense of impending doom. posted by Ian at 9:15 PM - link ... 0 comments ... Friday, September 19, 2003 Colourful coifs in Corea This has felt like a bit of a long week. My schedule is completely blocked in at work, from 6pm until 11pm, every night-- but next week should prove to be a bit more relaxing. Soon, our middle school students will be writing exams. Parents often pull them out of hagwons during times like this, to allow them extra time to study at home. Our hagwon, on the other hand, is actually increasing their classload by adding preparatory classes, to convince them to stay in school. However, these classes are taught in Korean, a language to which I am perceived to be blissfully ignorant of. That means, I get about 6 hours worth of breaks, come next week. That's a nice chance to prepare last minute materials as well as get a snack to tide me over. It also means that on at least two or three nights next week, I will finish before most of my favourite local restaurants close. I have a feeling that the break will just be temporary, however. Officially, the plan for our school is to have another foreign teacher hired by the early part of October. What I suspect will happen is that the school will make arrangements to divide and expand classes, filling up the time table-- but will fail miserably at acquiring a new teacher. We already had one that seemed fine, and she was let go after just two weeks for what was, at best, explainable as personality conflicts. I believe the problem stems from one certain Korean-American at our school, who handles the interviews. The teacher our school hired, was the only foreigner that he didn't interview. She was hired directly by management instead, and from where I sit, he did everything he could to get her pushed out, until finally our manager caved. So what kind of foreigner is this guy looking for when he interviews? Apparently the main qualification seems to be a complete and utter inability to accept a job offer. The only people he has recommended are teachers who have other commitments, or are not free to work until such a time in the future that their application will have slid from the memory of manager. He's explained his philosophy to me before-- white foreign teachers are losers and not really necessary and blacks... (Don't even ask). He is also of the opinion that foreigners looking for work in Korea are desperate. When two interviewees cancelled today, having so easily and quickly found other jobs elsewhere, his reply to me was, "I guess they really needed the money." Now as annoying as this all is, I don't feel threatened. My job has existed here longer than anybody's and I am too firmly entrenched to be displaced at the moment. In contrast, the harder he makes it for our school to find a new teacher, the more and more valuable I become (hence the unexpected raise in salary). I'm sure he knows that. I'm sure it bugs the Hell out of him, too. But I'm willing to bet he's justifying it from the "foreign devil you know" side of the coin. posted by Ian at 1:08 AM - link ... 0 comments ... Saturday, September 13, 2003 Selling fish at TaeJungDae Typhoon Maemi I didn't even notice it raining here in Seoul so for anyone who was wondering, we're all fine here. The south of Korea took the brunt of the storm, especially in my old province of Kyungsangnam-do, and CNN is reporting that the death toll from last night's hurricane could reach 100. A score of ships were sunk, roads were swept away, and in Masan, a shopping mall collapsed, trapping people underneath. All of this occurred toward the end of the Chuseok holiday, when people were getting set to return to their homes after visiting relatives. Power outages affected 1.4 million houses in the Busan area. Also in Busan, a dozen or more loading cranes toppled at the dock. This is going to have huge ramifications for the economy as this port is one of the main entry points for resources to enter Korea-- and each crane takes about 10 months to construct/replace, according to MBC. Chuseok This year, the autumn festival, Chuseok, fell perfectly on a Wednesday-Thursday-Friday which gave us all a much needed 5-day weekend. Yeji took the opportunity to travel to Japan for a few days of shopping and sightseeing. I stayed home and got caught up on some work here. I did a cartoon for Friday but so far have put off starting my column. I think I know what I want to write about but I've been a bit more intrigued about the fictional potential of a certain period in Miramichi history. To that end, I've been reading up all the available information on the time and people present on the river. The Charlotte Taylor website has single-handedly blown my mind with its wealth of information. It even has lots of information on John Murdoch, my first blood ancestor to live on the river. My Chuseok gifts from school have been steadily improving too, I might add. The Chosun Ilbo ran a story saying that the poor economy has limited gift giving this season but this year's gift was the best yet-- almost $150 CAD worth of raw beef! I fried a bunch up on Wednesday and was eating it for three meals a day until I ran out of what I cooked. I guess it's time to go back to the freezer, thaw and cook some more. My first year here, I got a box of seaweed (kim). My second, if I remember correctly, I received a box of fish (Goolbi). The fish was delicious. I never ate the seaweed back then, but the more that I have become adjusted to a Korean diet, I am starting to wish I had a bit to snack on now. Mmmmmmm. Meat. It was rather coincidental but I was really craving some red meat on the weekend. Yeji and I had met a friend of hers for dinner, Sunday and I had hoped to check out the new Sizzler restaurant in Hyehwa but we ended up going for sabu sabu. It struck me as tasting a bit more like the South American food that I had eaten before in Halifax as it came with a strongly flavoured peanut sauce and included lots of seafood. There was beef with it, but it was sliced very thin so it could be boiled almost instantly in the central pot on the table. That's nice from a gourmet point of view but I was more in the mood for quantity over quality. Tuesday's gift of beef was like someone reading my mind. Luckily, I've even stored away a bottle of HP Sauce for occasions such as this (as recommended by the Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver, who has been on TV about a hundred times in the last week for some reason.) Note: This webpage doesn't support any criminal activities related to HP Sauce in any way whatsoever. Finally, as Chuseok winds to a close. I am a bit startled to realize that I made it through the holiday without any songpyeon. I think I'll see about hitting the department store later in case they have some leftovers. In the news... Since I last posted, lots of things have happened from suicide protests by South Korean farmers at the W.T.O. (trying to protect Korea's status as a 'developing nation), to North Korea's 55th birthday, to brawls between politicians at government meetings leading to the imminent breakup of the governing party. Roh Moo Hyun's government has been pretty ineffectual at solving any of Korea's problems to date, so I suspect that last one won't make much of a noticeable difference. I will link to a couple of Canada specific articles however. Most curious to Canadian interests are the recent spate of "Immigration Packages to Canada" on Korean home-shopping networks. The story I linked to was the original event but it's success has caused it to be repeated. Basically, it seems the companies involved, starting with Hyundai Home Shopping Network, are selling emmigration to Canadian. Thousands of Koreans have scooped up these exhorbantly priced packages with the hope of becoming citizens of Manitoba, of all places. Now it's obvious that the Canadian government has absolutely nothing to do with this. The figures quoted by the company as immigration statistics are out of date by several years, according to a friend of mine researching this on her end, from Manitoba. What they are actually selling is immigration counseling (more clear in the second story), but seemingly under the guise of virtually guaranteed immigration (a promise they certainly can't make). The price tag for this counseling service runs into the tens of thousands of dollars which many average citizens are happily forking over to these snakes. What bugs me is that when the truth comes out, I can assure you that no one will be blaming Hyundai. Koreans will lose millions of dollars out of this and many of these people are doing this because they have been hit hard by the downturn in the economy already, and are putting the last of their savings into a perceived overseas parachute. One more story is the arrival of the MosaiCanada art exhibit to Seoul. It features the work of 18 contemporary Canadian artists and will be shown in Korea until next month. I gotta confess. I know nothing about Canadian art and can't even name all the members of the Group of Seven. The only accomplished painters I can probably name are Emily Carr, Maud Lewis and my old college friend, Jonathon Labillois. Maybe I should take in the exhibit. posted by Ian at 7:20 PM - link ... 0 comments ... Saturday, September 06, 2003 Movies playing in Busan Okay. Lots of stuff happened this week but I've been too preoccupied to blog about any of it. Jump ahead to next week for a recap. I will include a photo for the week. This one is from Nampodong in Busan. It was taken on last month's trip. You might recognize some of the movies that are playing. posted by Ian at 8:47 PM - link ... 0 comments ...	Cafe Harpo Dave's ESL Cafe Escape Artist Galbijim Wiki KoreanPhotos.net Seoul Survivors (Podcst) Skyscraper City Wikipedia YouTube Big Hominid Cosmic Budha DPRK Studies Gentleman Gypsy Gusts of Popular Feeling Judge Holden Was Here Lost Nomad The Marmot's Hole My Canada Includes Smoked Meat North Korea Zone Occidentalism One Free Korea ROK Drop ShinJaeJun TV in Japan Winds of Change The Yangpa BBC World Service [UK] CBC [Can] Chosun Ilbo [ROK] CNN [US] Dong-A Ilbo [ROK] Google News [US] The Japan Times [Jap] KCNA [DPRK] The Korea Herald [ROK] The Korea Times [ROK] Mainichi Daily News [Jap] Oh My News (Int.) [ROK] Yonhap News (Eng) [ROK] Happy Chuseok, 2009 Another year's gone by and ... Dongjakgu to Incheon and Home, Day 6. We had a ... Garden of Morning Calm Part I, Day 5. The road ... Garden of Morning Calm Part II, Day 5. What wit... Overnight to Cheongpyeong, Day 4 and 5. After t... The Happy Day, Day 4. Friday was the big day an... The Trainride to Seoul, Day 3. We had one duty ... Sunset on the Coast, Day 2, evening. We rushed ... Yongkungsa Part I, Day 2, mid afternoon. [...Co... Yongkungsa Part I, Day 2, mid afternoon. After ... April 2001 May 2001 June 2001 July 2001 August 2001 September 2001 October 2001 November 2001 December 2001 January 2002 February 2002 March 2002 April 2002 May 2002 June 2002 July 2002 August 2002 September 2002 October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 May 2004 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 September 2008 October 2008 October 2009 also see LATENIGHT MIRAMICHI and LATENIGHT HALIFAX