All the kids might be listening to K-Pop, but there’s a more traditional form of Korean music that we often catch a glimpse of. It’s called ‘Trot’ and is basically folk music – and is listened to by everyone over 40 in Korea.
There are whole TV channels devoted to it and concerts filled with ajumas waving their arms around nearly everu weekend. Luckily, it all sounds exactly the same. So this song will give you an excellent insight into it:
Despite the modern influences in Korea, society remains strictly partriarchal. The men earn the money, spend all night drinking with business partners and come home to check the kids’ school grades. Women are expected to be beautiful, cute – and agreeable.
Women have little real power – even though things are changing a lot in the younger generations – until they are older. As Korean society also has a very strict respect for elders, when women reach the age of around 50 and have a family under their belt, they are given the name ‘ajuma’ out of said respect for age and kids.
But the ajumas are far more than just older, married woman… they’re a very powerful character in Korea! It seems to mean that they can do whatever they like and be as rude as they want to younger people – and certainly to foreigners. It’s also a point in a woman’s life when it becomes okay for them to drink excessively and smoke! Thanks to their empowered status and Korean social hierarchy, its actually more accurate that no-one younger has the right to challenge their behaviour, but a lot of them take advantage of this…
Some of my run-ins have included being shouted at for not speaking Korean when we’re minding our own business (and replying in Korean sure makes them surprised), slapped on the thigh for wearing shorts (and the the shoulder for wearing a tank top), shoved out the way on the subway or shushed for chatting in the sauna, even though they’re doing the same thing.
Be advised, though, that this powerful creature is very easy to spot in a crowd. Just look for:
– the short permed hair
– the oversized sun visor
– the padded jacket and velveteen patterned trousers all year round
– giant, heavy bags or carts seemingly lifted by superhuman powers
– a tendancy to dart for subway seats and hoard things they find on the street (leaves to use as ‘salad’, old cardboard…)
– high speed movement despite short legs
Since the galbie and soju diet was starting to take its toll on my hips, I decided to join a gym here. Mostly it’s pretty standard – although they like to sweat when they exercise so its as hot inside as out – apart from the workout outfits! The older ladies love their 80s revival…. I mean full-on leopard print leotards, bright leg warmers, the works..! Brilliant style choices.
Korea is also full of jimjilbangs or public bath houses. They’re most akin to saunas from the rest of the world, with the nudity (and separate male – female areas, of course!!) which seems to be obligatory outside the UK or US! It felt a little weird at first, thanks to the old Brit prudishness, but everyone else is so unbothered by it all that you get used to bowling about naked pretty quickly. The main novelty (and highlight) is the price – its only a few pounds so there’s no excuse not to go as often as you like. Best time is after a long hiking spell – another of Korea’s favorite pastimes!
In the larger saunas, there’s a dazzling array of hottubs and steam rooms – so far, we’ve experienced lavendar baths, hot rock (like lying in a giant bowl of coco pops) and sea salt saunas and an ice room that looked strangely like the inside of a fridge.
Even though the male – female bath bits are separate, the big ones also have a sleeping section where you can bed down for a few quid (if you can stand the snoring chorus) and enjoy even more different kinds of saunas with your other half. This bit obviously isn’t done clothes-less: they give you a ‘uniform’ to wear. Pink for girls, green or blue for boys… think something out of a bad prison movie and you’re not far off!
There’s one more odd little spa treat we’ve done too – it’s called ‘Dr Fish’. Basically you pop your feet into a little bath and special fishes nibble on the ‘imperfections’ around your toes! Tickles a little…
I realized that I haven’t elaborated on Korea’s favorite evening past time, the noraebang! It’s kind of hard to explain because it is so much more than karoake, and hours fly by in a flash… so I thought I would just post up this video for everyone to enjoy of us murdering Mr. Brightside by The Killers….
Many ex-pats have criticised Korean for being a hard language to learn, but it’s actually the simplest Asian tounge – for which we are very grateful! First off, it has a simple alphabet structure like English, rather than thousands of charatcers.
But it’s also the most logical language – similar sounds have symmetry in their writing, too. It’s a relatively new construction called Hangul and was made by the Korean King of the time gathering together his scholars and mathematicians. The alphabet was even recently ‘given’ to a community in Philippines which had no written version because it’s so easy to grasp.
Basic Korean is nothing without this alphabet as the phonetic words written in the phrasebooks have no relation to the actual sounds! So that was our first task, and with the help of ‘guess the TV show’ (it’s written in the top corner of the screen) we managed to grab it pretty quickly.
And yet another handy construction for pronunciation – characters are grouped in syllables, as well as words.
Here’s some favorite phrases so far:
Anyong Hase-yo = Hello, or literally ‘are you at peace?’
Nae = yes (often replied to hello because of above meaning)
Anyong-i ka-se-yo = goodbye to someone leaving, or ‘go with peace’
Anyong-i kye-se-yo = goodbye to someone staying, or ‘stay with peace’
Soju hange che-se-yo = I would like one bottle of soju!
Maekju duge che-se-yo = two beers please…
Chewiyo = I’m cold!
babo = you’re silly
So far we’ve mastered getting a taxi driver to drop us home and ordering in a restaurant or bar, plus exchanging a few words with shopkeepers and Korean co-workers but the next stage is getting a bit trickier.
There are lots of words with similar sounds that have very different meanings so keeping track of the new ones is getting harder, but the worst one is the numbers – there are two different sets that are used for a variety of different things…. One is for ordering and hours, another for money and minutes and months….. complex to say the least. But we perservere!
As fascinating as South Korea is, sometimes it can be downright bizzare… One teacher we met in Gyeong-ju described it as “the land that Common Sense forgot”. Pretty catchy eh? Here’s some of the crazy things we’ve come across so far… I’m sure more will be added!
1. TV commercials tend to use random English words for no reason. My favorite is the credit company that wants you to call ‘119 – Money’. In Korean, this is “il-il-gal Money”…. Fills you with confidence eh?
2. Jaywalking is punishable by fine and heavily enforced on big roads, but there’s no pavements on small roads…
3. Even though Jaywalking is illegal, riding a motorbike without a helmet is not.
4. Blowing your nose is considered disgusting, especially in a restaurant…
5. …but spitting on the street (and into an ashtray inside) is not.
6. It’s not the done thing to pour your own drink; cup two hands on the bottle or glass to be extra polite.
7. Even though we’ve only seen one helicopter the whole time we’ve been here (and that was over a mountain), all the new apartment blocks have been built with heli-pads on top. Just in case eh?
8. ‘PC Rooms’ (internet cafes) aren’t for checking emails, they’re filled with kids playing internet games beyond the prying eyes of their parents.
9. Even the littlest kids start school at 8am and often don’t finish at academies (like our English private schools) until 10pm. And they often work Saturdays too.
10. The cheapest way to eat is delivered or take-out food; in the store things (especially meat) are pretty pricey, and it even works out about the same for dinner in a restaurant.
11. Taking off your shoes when you enter the house isn’t because it’s considered dirty, it’s so that the shoe Buddha can come and see if this is a nice family and their shoes are all in a neat line.
12. Taxis will only take you somewhere from the ‘right’ side of the road – no chance they will turn around…
13. You should be dressed in the proper style at all times, e.g. head to toe hiking gear for a walk, full golf outfit for a swing a ‘screen golf’ at the gym etc… and for work and formal events, the shinier the suit, the better.
14. Cab drivers have high-tech Sat Navs which let’s them watch TV at the same time as driving.
15. It’s rude to wear your seatbelt… cab drivers get very offended.
16. To attract attention in a restaurant, you can shout ‘yogiyo’ (over here) loudly or push a bell. (This one’s not so crazy, but it offends my British-ness.)
17. Many bars and restaurants only have one communal bathroom for men and women…
18. A green man doesn’t mean ‘walk across the road’, it means ‘check, wait and decide if you want to risk it.’
19. They’re obsessed with hand santitizer, hygiene, face masks, cleaning their teeth five times a day but are happy to drink from the same soup bowl. Plus kids will try and put food in your mouth that’s been half chewed by them already.
20. 50,000 Won notes have only just been introduced and are pretty rare. The biggest denomination is usually 10,000, which is about a fiver. (When I got paid in cash for my airfare, it was like having a stack of Monopoly money – was fairly tempted to have a money fight…)
21. Everyone thinks drinking mackelie (milky rice wine) and soju on the top of a mountain is a great idea…
22. It’s cheaper to buy a ‘table’ of seats (that’s four) on the KTX train then to buy 3 (or 4) single seats…
23. In Seoul, tube tickets are dispensed on a little orange card that you have to pay a deposit for – which you then claim back at the end of your journey. But they’re not reloadable, they’re single use…
24. There’s a strict ‘beach season’ and no matter what the weather is like, you won’t catch a Korean sunbathing a single day after it ends.
Hiking is a favorite pasttime here on the weekends, but (like everything Korean…) is must be done properly to be truly Korean! Here’s how to turn your weekend stroll into a Korean hike….
1. Dress decorously. Even if you don’t plan to go up much more than a gentle slope, your outfit should include head to toe waterproofing, a hat, heavy duty walking boots, gloves and two walking sticks.
2. A good hiker drinks soju at the summit (and then rolls back down).
3. Take a friend with you. That way, you can philosophise non-stop on the walk.
4. If you’re on your own, why not take a radio and some loud speakers to keep you (and the rest of the mountain) entertained?
5. If you see some waegooks dressed in flip flops and jeans attempting the same path, don’t forget to giggle at them and point at their footwear.
6. For extra calorie burning, swing your arms and clap repeatedly.
7. Need to check the angle of your hiking hat? There may well be a mirror thoughtfully tacked to a tree (yes, really – see Children’s Hall Park).
8. Don’t forget to say a respectful hello to the nuns out on a Saturday jaunt…
9. But if you (and your mini dog) can’t quite face the exercise, never fear. Keep your high heels or shiny suit on, pop your dog in your hand bag and take the cable car to the top. You can still have plenty of fun stumbling about on the ridge in stillettos.
Ah soju… The national drink of Korea!
Soju is a spirit made from rice – tastes a bit like really well distilled vodka (that sharp, clear taste) mixed with the sweetness of sake. It’s meant to be drunk as a shot, but luckily it’s only 19% so not the same as doing vodka shots… or I would never survive past 12pm on a night out!
The world isn’t just a more hospitable place after soju, though – it’s a big fluffly cloud of marshmallow. And it has the same effect as too much sugar, so we’re bouncing off the walls ’til 5am.
Only downside is the soju hangover – feels like your brain is melting!
The interesting thing, though, is that most of the people doing the heavy drinking are older people – we have seen more drunken over 50s than teens here which is a major contrast to the UK. I read that Korea has an alcohol problem before we arrived and I assumed that it was a similar binge culture to England because of that, but things are quite the opposite. It’s quite sweet watching them hammer back the soju and enjoy themselves. Definite improvement on the atmosphere, too. Maybe that’s why Korea is so safe? It’s all older men saying ‘ah, good night’ in their best English than kids on street corners…
One of the first truly ‘cultural’ things we’ve done so far is visitng Haeinsa two weekends ago. It’s a very dramatic Buddhist temple ( ‘sa’ means temple in Korean) up in the mountains about an hour or so from Daegu.
The bus leaves from Seobu terminal (Seongdangmot metro) and costs a measely 6,000 Won so it’s a nice easy afternoon or day trip out of the city.
It was great to feel the fresh air of the mountains and see the changing leaves – the light here (that sounds a bit weird, I know) is just amazing, too.
There’s a museum of Buddhist art at the bottom of the slope which has a small collection and enough English translated signs to help us out. Did you know that Confusious was Korean? Nope, me neither – he might have settled in China, but he was born in Korea and his values can still be seen today. It was quite inspiring, actually – made me want to read more about Buddhism as I really don’t know anything much at alll.
Haeinsa is a typical Korean temple – green and red paintings – but it’s prominent because it’s also one of the largest Buddhist libraries in the world.
The atmosphere of the temple was unfortunately ruined a bit for us as we happened to be there on an important religious day (no idea what, though) and there were hundreds of people also visiting, plus banners and streamers up around the buildings themselves. I can imagine that without that, it’s very peaceful…
It’s a very different feeling from visiting a church, although hard to explain. The biggest thing is obviously Buddha – instead of looking as maudlin as Christian images, he looks like he’s winking (or at least smiling woozily) which is oddly comforting.
Another specialty in Korea is whole live octopus. You take the (still alive) little octopus, wrap it’s legs around chopsticks and dip in soy sauce, and swallow! Yes, that’s right.
I guess you could call it ‘extreme sushi’ but I’m not too convinced… people have died from eating it because the octopus wriggles and tries to climb back up your throat when you are swallowing.
Needless to say, I don’t think I will be trying it…
Here’s a vid from National Geographic… (and no, the American narrator doesn’t manage it either)
Ali in Wonderland (aka South Korea) 