Posts filed under 'Culture'
When I imagined life in Korea, I never imagined a Saint Patrick’s Day Parade with 6,000 people, green rice cakes, Irish bands, step dancing, and Guinness on tap. I missed out on attending the parade this past weekend, but just knowing it happened gave me a very different sense of Korea!
Foreigners make up 2% of Korea’s population, doubling in number since last year. Chinese, Southeast Asians and South Asians made up the largest groups, with majorities in unskilled and agricultural labor. The next biggest group is Americans, with about 30,000 U.S. soldiers and 30,000 U.S. citizens in non-military roles. While English speaking “expats” (expatriates, or people living outside their country) make up far less than 1% of the population in Korea, they dominate my weekends three or four days a month. This is due to my travel through the Royal Asiatic Society - Korea Branch (RAS-KB) which organizes English-language trips all over Korea. The pictures in this blog are from my latest trip to the Inner and South Sorak Mountain areas. You can see two dozen more by clicking on any of the images and checking out the ”set” they belong to on Flickr. (The slide show is worth it!).
Here is a brief list of the types of people I have met on recent trips:
A woman from Germany who works in an agricultural NGO in North Korea; a protocol officer at the German embassy; the Ambassador from Colombia and his wife; a tour guide from Yemen; a reporter from Japan learning Korean; an insurance claims adjuster from Australia on his fourth one year tour in Korea; a couple from England teaching elementary school English; a U.S. army captain; a New Zealander dealing with divorce by teaching English in rural Korea; an adjunct professor of English literature teaching seven year olds English; a Thai woman currently living in Korea after two decades in Singapore, and her mom; an American twenty something giving private English lessons until George Bush leaves office. There are many, many more - each person has a story. But there are three things about white, western “expats” (the people here most like me) that I find particularly fascinating.
First, the vast majority of them are “migrant labor” (although here in Korea that term always implies a non-white person). Whether from the U.K., New Zealand, Australia, Canada or the U.S.A., people come to Korea to make money that they can take back home. Huge numbers come to teach English, since until this year Korea did not require any credentials other than native-speaking ability. The adjunct professor of English mentioned above had taught in America for three years and could not make enough money to cover her rent. Here she teaches 6 hours a day to elementary and middle school students, makes 3 times her previous salary, and has sent her first novel off to a publisher. Many young people are paying off their student loans; a few couples are paying down their mortgages. There is a whole economic world here I never imagined when I finished college!
Second, the Korean language level of most expats is pretty terrible. I was amazed to discover my seriously limited Korean is better than 80% of the people I have traveled with, despite their sometimes far longer residence. I had not realized how much of a gift living outside Seoul can be. In Seoul, a foreigner can find just about everything in English and can live within a foreign enclave that requires little interaction with Koreans. When you spend all day teaching English and all night with English teachers, when would you speak Korean?
Third, every expat knows a different Korea. One U.S. army soldier is an unwilling expert on the drug and prostitution culture of northern South Korea due to his required policing of his platoon’s weekend activities. English teachers who have seriously dated Koreans have learned family hierarchies, dating customs, and the perils of cross-cultural communication. I’ve met a few scholars of ancient Korea and many students of modern Korean bar culture. Once again living outside Seoul makes a huge difference - those within Seoul often seem completely unaware of basic customs I have come to take for granted, while those from rural areas tell me customs I thought outdated are still alive near them.
I did not expect to travel the world while living in Korea. But long bus rides have turned into explorations of Colombian cities, tours of South Africa’s coasts, descriptions of Pyeongyang now and 10 years ago, comparisons of Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, and introductions to Japanese culture. I’ve heard about little gardens in Berlin, and seen pictures of sand-scrubbed cities in Yemen.
Globalization has taken on new meaning for me here. We ignore the world to our political peril in the United States. But we also ignore it to our cultural peril. What a different person I might have been if I’d known that one could bounce from country to country, teaching English, learning about the best of each culture and bringing back such richness to inform my life. What a different country we would be if many of our citizens did that, or if we openly welcomed other citizens to bring what they have to us.
March 22, 2008
In America March is Women’s History Month, but in much of the rest of the world, March means International Women’s Day. On March 8, 1908 15,000 women marched through New York City to demand shorter working hours and better working conditions. In 1911, a German woman launched the first International Women’s Day in Copenhagen, Denmark to demand equal rights for women. Since then this has been an international celebration not of women’s past, but of their present status, needs and hopes.
This year marked South Korea’s 24th International Women’s Day celebration and my first. I joined 5000 other people and 167 women’s groups for an information fair, concert, ceremony, and parade. Foreigners were invited to wear purple and white (the colors worn by US suffragists). I ended up marching next to another Fulbrighter, an English teaching assistant. We were warmly welcomed, handed pinwheels and balloons and coached through the Korean cheers. In a crowd wearing purple hats, carrying blue umbrellas, waving bright red “No human trafficking signs”, or trailing green and yellow streamers, for once no one had eyes for the white face in the crowd!
The guests of honor this year were the women and volunteers of Sharing House. This organization was created to house, care for and honor the Korean women who were kidnapped during World War II and forced to work as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers. For decades they were abandoned by their families and shunned by society, but in the past ten years there has been an outpouring of support for them. Some of these women and their supporters have protested in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul for 800 straight weeks, demanding an apology and reparations. Recently the US passed House Resolution 121 calling on Japan to apologize, which was not welcomed by Japan. You can learn more at http://comfortwomen.wordpress.com/ or http://war_forgiveness.soundprint.org/ .
Women’s status in Korea is remarkably similar to that of US women in the 1980s. Laws for women’s equality are on the books, but popular attitudes have not caught up. Rapists often escape punishment on the argument that a woman wore revealing clothing and thus incited the man to rape. Victims of domestic violence are assumed to have acted in a way that provoked violence. There is an increasingly sharp split among women as well, best shown by the contrast between “golden misses” (single, highly educated, highly paid urban women who disdain marriage) and “golden egg mothers” (rural, uneducated, farm wives who have third, fourth and fifth children to reap the benefits provided by a government desperate to fend off a future worker shortage by increasing the lowest birthrate in the world).
In some ways, Korea is way ahead of other countries. A 2004 law criminalized the prostitution of women, providing punishments for “johns”, “pimps”, and “procurers” rather than women forced into prostitution. It also provides mental and medical health care, empowerment and vocational training, and guaranteed jobs for women who choose to leave prostitution. Advocates say simply changing the language from “prostitute” to “prostituted woman” and from “morally degrading behavior for women” to “morally degrading behavior for men” makes a huge difference. This is especially true in a nation where red light districts are still highlighted as tourist destinations and both government and business officials continue to see providing a sexual partner for clients as part of the deal-closing culture. Then again we have Eliot Spitzer.
Listening to Koreans talk about women is fascinating. Most women complain about the “double shift” of working full time and having sole responsibility for home and family care. The Korean tradition of building bonds at work through 5 hour long drinking rounds after work tends to automatically exclude married women. Women only make 63% of a male salary for the same job. (The number in the US is 78% and in Europe it is 90%). Korean Men however talk about how there are more women in college than men, women are excused/excluded from military duty, and they are perceived as better at learning English and thus getting better jobs. Women think they have made only small progress toward equality. Even with legal requirements that women fill half the spots on party ballots, there are few prominent female political leaders in Korea. Yet men feel strongly that they are losing power and that women are running the country.
These differences actually show up in the two major political divisions in Korea. The former “liberal party” President created a Ministry (Cabinet level post) of Gender Equality and the Family. The name implied attention to both male and female issues. This was a crucial realization, since there had previously been little discussion about the problems of men in Korean society. Why do some seek out prostitutes? Who will rural Korean men marry when more and more Korean women reject marriage? Already rural counties are more multicultural than the cities as male farmers import wives from the Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam - into a nation that has long valued its racial homogeneity! However, the current President tried to eliminate the ministry altogether, and settled for downsizing it and changing its name to the Ministry of Women. This implies that women are getting special treatment, and it will likely doom the ministry’s effectiveness here. President Lee’s 24-7 “pragmatic, responsive” government is also causing women (and men) to resign from government service. Being constantly on call for government needs leaves little time for family needs.
For all these reasons, women and men paraded through central Seoul, carrying signs, shouting slogans, and singing songs. They celebrated what has been accomplished and they demanded attention to continuing problems. I did not always understand the language, but I understood the point. And I was glad to be there.
March 17, 2008
Last month I turned 40, this month I turned 39, and I celebrated with 3000 people I had never met before.
Maybe that needs some explaining….
In Korea, age is counted differently than in the United States. When babies are born they are considered to be one year old. Everyone ages one year on New Year’s Day. Therefore a person born in February would be one on the day they are born, 2 the next January 1st and 3 the following January 1st (rather than 22 months or 2 years old as we would say in the United States).
Therefore since I was born in 1969 and was thus 1, I became 40 in Korean years on New Year’s Day 2008.
In U.S. years, I turned 39 on my birthday this month. Having already turned 40, I feel like I’m getting younger all the time!
My birthday also happened to be graduation day at Pyeongtaek University. There were food vendors all over campus, balloons, eight different stands selling bouquets of flowers, roving photographers, and thousands of very happy people. No one knew it was my birthday, but it was a fine celebration all the same.
Graduations here are different than in the U.S., although I do not know if Pyeongtaek’s is standard for Korea. The main ceremony looked much more like Saint Anselm’s Honors Convocation the night before graduation. The top student in each major was given an award, a Presbyterian minister gave a homily, and M.A. and Ph.D. students received their diplomas from the President of the College and their advisors. I was particularly struck by the nun who received her degree in full habit and full Ph.D. gown, and the band, which played Beautiful Dreamer and It’s a Small World After All, among other more traditional pieces. The huge screen enabled everyone to see, even from the very back.
After the main ceremony, the ceremonies for the undergraduates took place by major in classrooms and meeting rooms around the University. Almost every American Studies class is taught in the same classroom, Main Building room 207. So today we met there for a celebration designed and executed by the students. A student led us in prayer, we watched a video montage of the students’ four years, and we listened to the class President and each faculty member make a congratulatory speech. Then the chair of the department handed each graduate a diploma and a gift. The students walked the “receiving line” of faculty for words of congratulations and encouragement, and the occasional tissue for those whose tears got the better of them. Sophomores and juniors attended, as did some parents and well-wishers; people signed cards for one another and took lots of pictures. It was small (22 graduates, 65 people), almost familial (well, if you have a big family). Even I got a bit choked up - I have really come to like some of the students, and they clearly returned the enthusiasm.
Afterward, I bought myself flowers (three kinds of orchids) and cake. I ate a fine meal and opened paper and electronic cards (kudos to Aunt Anna who got a paper card to arrive here exactly today!). Earlier my husband and parents had sung me happy birthday in separate phone calls.
All in all, you couldn’t ask for a better day, surrounded by happy people, good food, and the warm wishes of friends and family. And it was the first day in two weeks when I could be outside without gloves and a hat without risking frostbite. It doesn’t get any better than that!
February 19, 2008
Han-ok are traditional Korean homes for the wealthy. In the Joseon dynasty (14-19th centuries), the aristocracy lived in these house-compounds. A hanok often consisted of one building for the man of the house, with a study, school room and guest facilities, and another building for the rest of the family, storage, food preparation and recreation. The spaces between and around the buildings would be enclosed by a wall to provide privacy and safety.
The city of Jeonju, about 2 hours south of Pyeongtaek, is well-known for having preserved over 700 of these hanok ranging from 600 to 70 years in age. Some of these homes have been turned into tourist facilities. A friend and I stayed in one called “Jeonju Korean Traditional Life Experience Park”.
Our room was similar to others I have seen. Inside the external wooden doors, there are sliding wooden doors covered in rice paper. There are usually a few long, low pieces of furniture and lots of “yo” (thick padded Korean bedding) and small rectangular bean- filled pillows. Sometimes there is a tiny bathroom, which doubles as the shower; otherwise you use common facilities elsewhere in the building. Heat comes from the ondol heat (originally provided by a fire under the floor, but now provided by a modern heating unit under the floor).
Like many traditional things, hanok are beautiful to look at, but they must have been a bit tough to actually live in. The walls are thin, so every sound carries. The ondol floor heating combined with drafty wooden windows means that all night your backside roasts and your chest is shivering. External bathrooms are tough in the rain, though still an improvement over the original chamber pots. The pillows are also an improvement over the original wood, but still more orthopedic than comfortable.
But once you are awake, the hanok village provides the opportunity to live in two time periods at once. Walking along the pathways created between hanok walls, one can find buildings where artisans still hand-produce paper, a calligrapher doing brush painting, a mom with a car seat trying to herd kids to the car, or a tea house with a zen garden and Justin Timberlake on the stereo.
Some hanok have gotten quite run down. Many backyards looked far more like “rural poor” than “aristocratic garden”. This reflects the changes in Korea’s economy since the landed gentry ruled the country. But renovated or not, hanok are a living tie to the past. Trying to preserve them in ways that respect their history, while also providing their owners with a living, has created a fascinating tourist experience.
February 16, 2008
Here are a few things that have caught me by surprise or made me think twice in the past few weeks. All except one are specific to Korea.
1) The bathroom “medicine cabinet”. Recently I got a new package of drugs and read, in English, “Store in cool, dry location….”. You know the drill, do not let it freeze, do not let it boil – I would bet most people do not even read these bland directions. But something did not sound right this time. I read it again: cool, DRY location. Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while, will remember that my bathroom here in Korea doubles as my shower stall. The one thing it is not is DRY. So six months into my ten month stay, my “medicine cabinet” is now a drawer in the living room. The UPPER drawer – see #2.
2) Chocolate’s melting point. It seemed like a good idea – buy a few kinds of Korean chocolate and ship them to my husband as a gift. So I shopped on the walk home from the library, put the bag down on the floor, and cooked dinner. Suddenly, I realized – my floor is HEATED! Korean ondol heating means the hot water pipes under the floor heat the apartment or house. So my chocolate had been sitting ON A HOT WATER PIPE! Rescuing it just in time, I put it in a box, sealed and addressed the box, and put it…well, where does one put stuff when you can’t put it on the floor? Guess that’s why my apartment has two beds – one for sleeping and one to store chocolate.
3) “American” chocolate. While we are on the subject, I do not eat much chocolate – I do not like the taste and am sensitive to caffeine. But once in a while here I want a piece of home and Snickers and Twix bars have enough caramel, I overlook the chocolate. The “sense of home” may be in the taste, but the wrapper says otherwise. Twix bars here are made just outside Moscow. Snickers are made in “Yan Qi industrial development zone Huairou
County, Beijing P.R.China”. I wonder if anybody there eats them?
4) “Exotic” food. Today I had some of the most exotic food I’ve ever eaten in Korea – a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It was exotic for me because I made it on black bean bread, which has soft black beans embedded in the bright purple bread. Other bread choices include sesame black rice (black) and sweet pumpkin (bright orange). But it was also exotic because sandwiches are a foreign food in Korea; people know what they are, but they are not a standard lunch choice. So eating PB&J, instead of soup, kimchee, rice, and sides, makes me seem exotic. And it is easier than kohl eyeliner!
5) Solving the family problems with a Catch-22. Some of my family members are infamous for two things – afternoon naps and overeating. I enjoy both at times. But in regaining my health here in Korea, I have lost the chance to do either. To keep my stomach acid under control, I am not allowed to lie down until 3 hours after I have last eaten. Can you imagine how hard it becomes for a snacker (that’s snacker, not slacker) to take an afternoon nap? It is NEVER three hours after I have eaten! So I either have to stop snacking or stop napping. Given that I also cannot go to bed for the night until 3 hours after I have last eaten, when 10 pm rolls around I’m both hungry (too few snacks) and exhausted (too few naps). This wasn’t what I expected when I signed up for the “living abroad challenge”!
Further reports as events warrant.
February 15, 2008
New Hampshirities and South Koreans woke up with something new in common this morning - the destruction of a national icon. Those who remember waking up to the news that the Old Man of the Mountain had finally slid into infinity will understand how Seoulites feel this morning. They awoke to news that a 610 year old gate called Sungnyemun or Namdaemun was gone. This gate was originally part of a wall that defended Seoul from invasion. It was designated as National Treasure Number 1 in 1962.
It will take some time to determine the cause of the fire, but early guesses are arson. This makes the news all the more awful; this disaster was not natural, not the result of time and impersonal forces. In addition, Korea lost thousands of their national treasures during various invasions by China and Japan and have invested billions of dollars in restoring those that remain. The vast majority are wooden structures, and so most are vulnerable to arson.
Early estimates suggest it will take 20 million dollars and 3 years to restore this symbol of Seoul and Korea. I am sure Koreans will spend the time and money. They have spent millennia rebuilding. But this morning, people are more focused on what they have lost.
February 11, 2008
Koreans have traditionally followed two calendars, the solar one we use in the West and a lunar calendar. About half of Korea’s holidays are set by one calendar, half by the other; therefore my cell phone provides me the date in both calendars! This year Ipchun or first day of spring fell on February 4th. Usu or first rainfall of the year should fall on February 19th (I hope “first rain” also means “last snow”!). Seollal is lunar new year and it fell on February 7th. It is one of the two biggest holidays in Korea. The other is Chuseok or Korean Thanksgiving (see blog entry at http://blogs.saintanselmcollege.net/bethsalerno/2007/09/25/thanksgiving-chuseok/.
On both Seollal and Chuseok, families travel across the country to their parents’ homes or the home of the eldest son in the male line (women usually travel to the husband’s family’s home). A colleague from Pyeongtaek and his wife kindly invited me to join their family celebration.
When I arrived in the morning, the women of the family had already been shopping for over a week and cooking for two days. The only male cooking responsibility is to peel the chestnuts. The men also set up the calligraphy screen (in this case a wedding gift from the wife’s father), as well as the “altar” table. Westerners have usually translated this celebration as “ancestor worship” making it sound incompatible with Christianity, but this family is devoutly Christian. They have adapted the original tradition of “placating” the ancestors with wine, incense, fine food and sweet desserts in exchange for good luck in the New Year. Like many Korean Christians, they continue the tradition as “ancestor veneration” or formally remembering their grandparents and great grandparents at family events. (I can only imagine my deceased grandparents were a tad jealous - my grandmothers would have been eager to try ”just a taste” of everything!)
After the food was set up on the table, the ceremony began which primarily consists of pouring a cup of rice wine, moving it in a circle three times around a stick of incense, and then formally bowing three times to show respect and remembrance. The family did this for both of the wife’s parents and for the husband’s father. Traditions are changing so fast in Korea that each family does the ceremony differently - some are very serious, some allow laughing and joking, some families wear traditional clothing or hanbok, others wear western business clothing. In this case only the grandmother in the family and myself wore traditional hanbok. Hers is the beautiful dress style. Mine is called “practical” hanbok and is of much simpler material.
After the ancestors had a brief chance to “eat” the food, it was our turn. Although there were only seven of us, there was enough food for dozens of people. It will be eaten by visiting relatives for 2 or 3 days. Traditional food includes two kinds of fish, beef, many kinds of egg pancake or jeon (dried fish, mushroom, pork, and vegetable), plus rice cake soup (ddoek guk), tofu, vegetables, and rice. Dessert includes peeled raw chestnuts, dried pomegranates, fresh pears and apples, and a sweet rice drink called shikye. This family added cheesecake this year! (If you click on the picture of the table, you will find a larger version of the picture and a detailed list of all the foods; you can also find it http://www.flickr.com/photos/10642665@N04/2257697200/ .
Children love Lunar New Year because in exchange for deep bows of respect and a willingness to listen to to a few minutes of good advice, they receive envelopes of cash. This provides an incentive to sit semi-quietly in traffic for endless hours to visit less frequently seen relatives or other elders. My colleague’s holiday tradition includes visiting his dissertation advisor, the founder of American Studies in Korea. I like this unassuming and quiet “grand old man” very much, so I went along. Sitting in a car for two hours traveling to Seoul reminded me of many U.S. holiday trips. When the Korean radio station played Van Halen, Donna Summers, the Bee Gees and the infamous “Da Doo Run Run Run, Da Doo Run Run” I was glad I had worn hanbok. Otherwise I might have wondered if I had entered a time warp!
Americans and Koreans may have different forms for their most special holidays, but the basics are the same - food and family. Here perhaps there is also more emphasis on remembering the past and preserving family connections in a period of rapid and unsettling cultural change. As Korea becomes a more global, multiracial and multicultural society, more and more families travel abroad during Seollal, taking advantage of the five day weekend to vacation. But many still practice the older traditions, trying to adapt them to modern needs. By inviting a foreigner to join them for the first time, both my colleague’s family and his advisor’s brought together past and future. I am very grateful.
February 11, 2008
A few months ago, I was a guest lecturer in another Pyeongtaek University professor’s class. A student asked me “What does it mean to be an American?” A month later, I gave a lecture to an international conference on the topic of the impact of the American Revolution on modern American society. Again, I was asked, “How do you define ‘being American’?” In both cases, I was a bit at a loss for words. “Well that is partly what I came to Korea to find out!” I joked. But it was a good question, and one which some people in America hotly debate.
In both cases, I gave the best answer I had. First, despite the massive rise in the use of Spanish, we still define Americans as people who speak English. Perhaps this is particularly true for me because as soon as I open my mouth here in Korea, people ask me if I am American (I speak English and it does not have a British or Australian accent). People would not ask that immediately if I spoke Spanish.
Second, we are people who believe in equality, even if we do not always practice it. We have good ideals in the Declaration of Independence and good practices based on the Constitution. When we adhere to our ideals and practices, we treat each other respectfully and fairly. We generally have respect for the law, and generally the law is fair (even if its application is not).
Third, we are a people who believe in opportunity. It is not equally available, and not everyone can grow up to be President, but Americans still believe in a nation where you can “make something of yourself.” We still believe, if only barely, that our children will be better off financially than we are.
Having now had months to think it over, I have come up with a number of other answers, though all are the small kinds of things that do not make good answers in class. Being in a foreign country puts “the small things” in sharp relief.
We are the only nation that sets aside an entire national holiday to eat and watch professional sports together (Thanksgiving). When we watch sports, it is almost never soccer, the sport of choice everywhere else. We are one of the few nations that encourage small children to dress up as scary things and extort candy from neighbors. We are one of very few nations where in some parts of the country you can carry a concealed weapon in church just in case you have to defend yourself. South Koreans think the right for civilians to carry a gun exists “only in America”.
Americans allow everyone from the corner shop keeper to the President of the company to use our first names - and we often use theirs. We call our sporting events “World Championships” even if no other country is allowed to participate. We never, ever fly our flag lower than anyone else’s. We have very few citizenship responsibilities, and count on underpaid volunteers to defend us.
Perhaps most centrally, I wish I had told both audiences, “Being American means we are allowed to be deeply angry with our government, to protest freely, and to make changes in law or even the Constitution. But we can also not care at all; apathy is American too.” Both the right to agitate and the right not to care are traditions from the American Revolution; we tend to forget that one third of the citizens did not care who won that war as long as they were left alone.
If you are inclined, write to me or leave a comment and tell me what you think makes Americans American. I think each of us would likely have a different answer and somehow that seems markedly American as well. What binds our nation together? How do we explain that to others? That is my job, and it is fascinating.
February 1, 2008
It started back in early December. At a friend’s house, suddenly dinner just did not seem to agree with me. I excused myself and left everything I had eaten in their nicely-decorated bathroom. Just food poisoning, I figured. I was planning for Tod’s arrival, and it didn’t seem worth following up one problematic meal - the first I had had since the week after my arrival. Two weeks later Tod was here and we went out to dinner and stayed up late talking and finally fell asleep on the same continent for the first time in four months.
I woke up the next morning viciously nauseous and I’ve been dealing with it ever since.
Nothing makes you miss home like being sick. Culture shock, language difficulties, unfamiliar food, suicidal bus drivers - I have learned to like or live with just about everything in Korea. But when a wave of nausea can come out of nowhere at any time, any place, I of course feel like staying home, in bed, for the duration. Or even better, just going home.
Instead I braved the Korean Medical System. Other than a flu shot, I had managed to stay completely clear of all things medical here in Korea and I have to admit “exploring national health insurance” had not been on my list of things to do. Not wanting to commute into Seoul, I checked the extremely well-organized internet pages for foreigners needing health care in Korea. They suggested Ajou University Hospital International Health Care Clinic in the nearby town of Suwon. This is the medical center where U.S. airmen from Osan Air Force Base and soldiers from Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek go when they need care beyond what can be provided on base. That seemed a pretty good recommendation.
I have no idea what health care is like for the ordinary Korean. From my perspective, I have never had such personal health care. An English-speaking staff member handled my paperwork and walked me from the clinic (a one-room waiting area) to the specialized division I needed (in my case Gastroenterology). She checked me in, pointed me out to the nurse, and left. A bit panicked, I pulled out my Korean-English dictionary and rapidly looked up words I might need - nauseous, pain, last week. The doctor however spoke pretty good English and understood me quite clearly. We arranged for a medical procedure the next week, and my English-speaking guide appeared, filled out my insurance paperwork, and took me downstairs to pay my bill. I was in and out in less than 45 minutes. When I returned for my medical procedure, it was the same - my guide walked me through the building, took my weight and blood pressure, and checked me through all the procedures. I panicked a bit when left with a Korean-speaking nurse, but an English-speaking nurse appeared and all went smoothly. My guide reappeared in the recovery room with Tod. After Tod and I ate lunch and I spoke with the doctor, the guide walked me through paying the bill.
Having never had this procedure done before, I do not know what it would cost in the United States. But I do know a colonoscopy, a similar procedure, is $6000-$10,000. The total bill for my initial consultation, procedure and follow up discussion? $335. I was put on a premier US drug for two weeks - total cost $35 for 14 pills. $35 would barely cover my prescription copay in the United States. Waiting time for the procedure - 1 week, and only because I could not come in sooner.
Yet there were other startling differences from U.S. health care that I felt less comfortable with. No one took my blood pressure until they needed it to calculate how much sedative they could give me. Same with taking my weight. No one ever took my temperature. No one ever asked me about drug allergies and no one took a health history; if I had anything wrong with me that was not in my stomach, I was going to have to volunteer that information, not wait to be asked. Privacy was more limited. My name was posted on a board outside the doctor’s office so people would know how many people were in front of them in line. We all waited directly outside the doctor’s office and if you sat in the right seat, you could hear most of the doctor-patient discussion.
I do not know whether Korea’s national health insurance limits the kind of care Koreans can get, or forces unreasonable waiting times, or limits their choice of doctors, as opponents of national health insurance claim happen with that type of system. But their medical system seemed quite up to date, and is internationally known for being more likely to perform too many than too few tests - they have all this amazing medical equipment and they are inclined to use it. I am curious how my reimbursement will happen in the American medical system. My Saint Anselm policy does cover faculty while abroad; you “simply send in the receipts”. We will see if it will be quite that easy.
I am now on a second set of drugs and things continue to get better; it is a process of trial and error, less satisfying than a simple “take this and all will be well”. My symptoms seem to be a side effect of my acid reflux disease, aggravated by the daily stresses of living abroad - not serious, just really annoying. On good days I travel to Seoul; I found the most amazing spa there with shiatsu massage and jade-lined heat rooms and salt-rock saunas to warm winter-cold bones. On bad days, I stay home and write blog entries, syllabi, a peer review on an article, a book review. Since I do not teach again until March 6, I have plenty to time to get this illness under control; this is a “good time” to be sick.
Living abroad means being open to new experiences every day. Some are expected, most are not. I am grateful most of my experiences have gone amazingly smoothly, including my interactions with the Korean medical system. Stay tuned to see what adventure happens next - I’ll be as surprised as you are.
January 28, 2008
Japanese food in Korea seems to come in two types: everyday sushi from the corner store and special occasion food. I decided Tod had to experience Japanese special occasion food, Korean style.
We went to a place I had been for lunch with a colleague and his family. We ordered the least expensive dinner item on the menu “Special Side Dishes, $40 per person”. The waitress spoke some English and assured us that the meal would include “sushi, sashimi, and Korean food.” Japanese food seems quite expensive, compared to the huge plate of raw fish one can get at a Korean sea-side restaurant (see my blog entry called “The Western Coast” at http://blogs.saintanselmcollege.net/bethsalerno/2007/12/12/the-western-coast/). However, Japanese meals have amazing variety. Here is what appeared for our $40 per person. I have interspersed cultural commentary with the menu.
Starters:
*A small bowl of juk (rice porridge) *Cabbage salad with sweet, nutty dressing
*Cucumbers, carrots, garlic scapes (stems) and hot peppers with dipping sauce
*Sliced ginger, pickled radish, and pickled pearl onions
*Wasabi, soy sauce, and red hot sauce for fish.
Course 1:
*Mioku (thick, salty sea vegetable), shrimp and raw oysters in light cold broth
*Sliced octopus with cucumber in hot sauce
*Sashimi salad with cabbage, kim (dried, crunchy seaweed) and hot sauce
Course 2:
*Red snapper sushi *Sashimi plate of white and silver fish
*Sealife plate of oysters, scallops, conch or whelk, and two unidentified crunchy things
Both the sashimi and sealife plates were decorated with orchids, a plastic dolphin, small pine trees, marigold blossoms, and shells, and all the food was placed atop large mounds of glistening white noodles which you do not eat. At moments, there was barely enough room on the table for the silverware.
Course 3:
*Doenjang Soup (kind of like Miso soup - a soybean based broth with mushrooms and scallions)
*Cooked white fish steak - buttery and plain.
*Cooked fish filet with slow-roasted carrot, onion, and garlic.
At this point, I recognized the general outlines of the meal from previous outings and warned Tod that there were likely to be at least two more courses. He stared at me. From then on, every time he heard the cart rolling down the hall he looked a bit like a deer in the headlights. But we plunged bravely on.
In Korea, it is tradition that guests should be served more food than it is humanly possible to eat. That way everyone is sure to have enough to eat of whatever they like best, while the host is seen as extremely generous and caring. One simply cannot think about the wasted food if one wants to be properly polite and honored. Eating everything on the table would be both rude and suicidal.
Course 4:
*Haemul nurungi soup (a thick, gelled soup made from seafood and the scorched rice at the bottom of the rice cooking pot)
*Mussels, baby octopi, and other unidentified sea life with noodles in red sauce
*A whole fish covered with tuna slices so thin they looked like slightly burned paper and tasted wonderfully dry and smoky. The fish also had hot sauce and scallions.
Course 5:
*Prawns (still in their shell with heads attached) deep fried in tempura batter with a Chinese sweet and sour sauce with hot peppers
*Tempura Vegetables and shrimp (absolutely no hot sauce in sight!)
Course 6:
*Rice with sesame seeds, two kinds of fish roe, and dried, crispy seeweed in a hot stone pot, so the rice crisped on the bottom and made the dish quite crunchy
*Maemultang - equal parts water, leftover fish parts, and red pepper powder with a few greens thrown in. Unbelieveably hot. Tod had two bowls and said the inside of his ears were sweating.
*Kimchi
Dessert:
Plum Juice
We ordered green tea early on and got a bottle of ice water with a tea bag. It was good and kept us through half the meal when we again ordered green tea and specified “hot please”. Koreans do not drink water with their meals usually, preferring to get their fluids from the foods and soups, perhaps drinking a glass of water at the end of the meal.
At the end of our meal, we could not drink water. We could barely move. We immediately agreed to skip the cab and walk six blocks to catch the bus. Too many special occasion meals like this and we would definitely explode!
I am not wholly sure what is “Japanese” about the meal, other than the sushi and sashimi. Many of the dishes were quite Korean and others may have been Korean-ized. Perhaps it is like Japanese food in the United States, which also likely bears only a passing resemblance to what is eaten in Japan but is immediately recognized by Americans as “Japanese” - sushi, tempura, grilled shrimp filleted by a knife-wielding chef and tossed to you. Koreans recognize the combination of dishes above as part of a “Japanese” menu. We recognized it as good food worth eating, though next time, we’ll skip lunch and possibly breakfast too, in order to prepare enough space.
January 17, 2008
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