• Category Archives Korea

  • A Songtan Flaneur

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Seoah feeling better. My son with a sore throat. I’m ok for now. No longer immune compromised. The streets of Songtan. Grilled Fish place. So many restaurants. So many Koreans. Ha. Back still improving. Workout again today. My son’s very long days next week. The 1311 bus to the subway station in Songtan.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Korea

    One brief shining: Stood at an intersection yesterday and watched the light turn green, the digital timer with 20 seconds ticking down, thought for the first time if that was enough time to make it; it was.

     

    Obvious. Signs in Hangul. Street signs. Restaurant signs. Plant shops. Grocery stores. Clothing stores. Hair salons. The street signs all have transliterations in the English alphabet. Some of the shops and restaurants may have a word or two in English. Most not. Seoah says English literacy declines steadily from Seoul on south. Makes sense. Fewer encounters with English speakers the further south you to. Like Gwanjiu where Seoah’s mom’s seventieth birthday was held. And her home village of Okwga.

    Less obvious. Iron chopsticks. Long spoons for soups. The many, many restaurants with the shiny hanging powered vents over the  charcoal or gas cooking pit for every four chairs. The Orthopedic hospital on the second floor of a non-descript office building soon to have Screen Golf on the first floor. The efficient city bus and subway system. Good taxis if you speak Korean.

    Even less obvious. The large number of fit Koreans, flexible in old age, limber and athletic when younger. Their work ethic. Honed I imagine in centuries of stoop labor where survival meant the rice crop had to come in. The children in their uniforms walking home after school.

    The rolled up thin cuts of beef and pork in the butcher shops. For grilling. Or hot pot cooking. The restaurants with octopus signs. Where you can eat live octopus. The all crab restaurant with the aquariums out front, large crabs clawing and moving against the glass. The various sorts of kimchi. Cabbage. Cucumber. Pickled vegetables.  The multiple side dishes at every traditional meal.

    Bowing. Calculating status by age. By wealth and clan. Complicated calculus likely opaque to even a seasoned Korean expat.I think I mentioned here a few weeks back that Seoah’s dad’s first question to me was, “How old are you?” He’s my elder by five years.

    Something non-Korean speakers cannot parse is the difference between formal and casual language. If speaking to an elder, formal language is always used until the elder indicates casual language is all right. When meeting new people, formal language again is used and often doesn’t change if or until a friendship forms. I can’t parse this as non-Korean speaker so I don’t know much more about it.

    Clans. Bongwans. Those with a common village of origin and paternal ancestor. Bongwans appear to be less important today due to the churn of modern society, but it seems they can still influence business networks and perhaps job seekers.

    There’s more, but that’s the Songtan flaneur’s observations for today.

     


    Art and Culture Asia Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Korea Travel

  • Family First

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Seoah. My son. Their apartment and its twelfth floor view. Murdoch, asleep behind me. My Korean zodiac bracelet that Seoah bought me at the Bongeunsa gift shop. The Pig. Yesterday’s workout. Tiring but pain free. Bulgogi for dinner last night. The Korean National Museum. Songtan. Korea. Shadow Mountain. Kate, always Kate. Jon, may his memory be for a blessing.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Spine

    One brief shining: Thinking of Shadow Mountain the Lodgepoles and Aspens on Black Mountain the sudden change to a gold and green Mountainscape, cooler Air and blue Sky, Black Bears going into hyperphagia, Elks bugling for dominance and sex, Leaf peepers crowding the Mountain roads.

     

    No, not homesick. But. I do love the Rockies. And I do miss being there as this change to fall happens. It’s a wonderful and special time. Wild neighbors preparing for Winter, many Plants finishing up their season of growth and heading toward dormancy, the surging energy I always experience then. I’ll not miss all of it. Glad for that.

     

    Seoah’s got a cold. Hoarse, feeling fatigue. Overall crummy. My son has an especially long day today. Probably a quiet day. I may take myself out for lunch. Go for a walk. Exercise tomorrow.

     

    Two weeks to go. Will head up to the Korean National Museum on Sunday. Begin to consolidate the learning I had from the Korean histories I read. Visual learning added to book learning. Going to buy gifts there, too. Three big gift shops. Hope they can mail them to me. Another Seoul train ride.

     

    Murdoch sleeps at my feet right now. Where he stays for my son. Each morning as at home I get a cup of coffee, a glass of Water, a bowl of muselix, and sit down to write. This is a habit begun years and years ago. Writing first thing in the morning. Given over to Ancientrails now, but often including novels a few years ago. Will return to that longer version when I can.

     

    Family first. An Air Force motto. And my son’s. Also a defining characteristic of Korean culture. Family comes first. Always. Here’s an example. When Jon died last year, my son and Seoah came to help. A lot of emotion of course, sometimes frayed nerves, but everybody helped, got through the first shocking weeks together.

    After a while though Seoah began to ask questions. Why do you help them so much? To my son. In her definition neither Jon, nor Ruth and Gabe were family. Help, yes. Go all out? No. She wanted my son back home in Hawai’i. With his family.

    This culturally inculcated strong family orientation has begun to fray as kids leave the home village, marry foreigners, as Seoah did, take jobs in China, as her brother did; however, the brother moved back to Korea and built their parents a new house, Seoah convinced my son to forego a plum assignment in NATO to return to Korea for four years to be close to her parents.

    Culture has a conservative disposition, it changes slowly, sometimes not at all, and breaking from its received understandings can cause guilt and shame. Powerful, powerful motivators.

     


    Asia Family Feelings Fourth Phase Health Korea Memories Mountains Shadow Mountain Travel

  • Korea

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

    Monday gratefuls: The month of Elul. Cheshbon hanefesh. The month for an accounting of the soul. Rosh Hashanah. The New Year begins. Sept. 15, 5784. A day with Murdoch. Golf. My son and Seoah. Black bean noodles. Fried rice. Kimchi. Pickled radish. Fried pork. Back to exercise today.  The Ancient Brothers on what it means to be a good person.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The scales of Anubis

    One brief shining: The door creaks a bit on its hinges, a crooked tail comes briefly into view, Murdoch slumps down against the wall, ready to spend an hour or so with me while I write.

     

    Yesterday was a travel day, as Kate and I used to name them. After a vigorous Saturday, I stayed home with Murdoch while my son and Seoah went out for another 18 holes. Wrote. Read. Watched some TV. Took a walk. Not a long one.

    And yet I remained in Korea. Far away from Shadow Mountain, CBE. Across the wide Pacific, past the international date line, on a skinny part of the easternmost edge of Asia. A peninsula. Not far from Japan and connected by land to the People’s Republic of China. Even Russia is not far away. The Amur River, Vladivostok.

    Of course the People’s Republic of North Korea lies between the bottom half of the Korean peninsula and a land route to either China or Russia. So no hopping in the family car for a road trip to see the famous Amur Tigers or maybe a visit to Lake Baikal.

    Though. Seoah’s dad did go on a trip just a week ago to the northern edge of North Korea, getting there by flying first to China, then onto the People’s Republic. A Mountain trekker all his life, he wanted to see Mt. Paektu.*

    As you can tell by reading the squib from Wikipedia, Paektu or Paektusan in Korean has a key role in Korean early history and in the hearts of all Koreans to this day. It’s one of the lesser known but nonetheless painful results of the Korean War that people from the South can no longer access it easily for pilgrimage purposes.

     

    Korean recycling has a lot more nuance than Shirley Waste offers to me at home. Paper. Plastic. Metal. Trash. Food waste. All different categories and all requiring government sanctioned bags or direct distribution into the appropriate container. Recycling happens on Sunday here at Poco de Sharp which means all of the apartments in this building have to retrieve their waste and carry it down by elevator to the area set aside in the parking lot.

    When I helped my son carry out the trash last night, what looked like a large children’s fort of cardboard boxes had a door like opening near the street. Inside it people put their bags of paper recycling. I guess the boxes were also recycling. Don’t know who put the fort together.

    Huge recycling bags hung on large metal piping and my son distributed the rest of the recycling to its proper spot, emptying his bags into the plastic or the metal big bags. Which, now that I’m writing this, makes me wonder about the need for government sanctioned bags in the first place. A mystery for now.

     

    Culture has profound implications for every aspect of life. Why I loved anthropology. In a sense culture is a particular people’s answer to the most important questions of life: who can I love? what is justice? what’s for supper? who does what kind of work? how do I get from here to there? how do I communicate with others? Who’s most important, who’s not? how can I tell the difference? And so many other issues big and small.

    It’s a privilege and an honor to be here for a month plus taking in the Korean answers to these questions. Or, at least, trying to discern their answers.

    Later on I hope to write some of my observations about Korean culture. A culture under a lot of pressure from technology, Western soft culture, geopolitics, and their own recent history.

     

     

    “The mountain has been considered sacred by Koreans throughout history.[33] According to Korean mythology, it was the birthplace of Dangun, the founder of Gojoseon (2333–108 BC), whose parents were said to be Hwanung, the Son of Heaven, and Ungnyeo, a bear who had been transformed into a woman.[34] The Goryeo and Joseon dynasties also worshiped the mountain.”


    Asia Judaism Korea Myth and Story Travel

  • Seoul. Day 2.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Seoul. Bongeunsa Temple. Coex Mall. The KiaF art show 2023. Shogun. Hotpot and barbecue. The subway. The bus. Songtan. Murdoch. My boy. Seoah and her brand new bag. Walking pain free. Healthy walk. Gangnam. A pleasant, Goldilocks day. The Silla Dynasty. The Joseon Dynasty. Deep history in the center of ultra modern Seoul.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Healing

    One brief shining: Overhead hundreds of white lanterns each with a different prayer the noonday sun creating deep shadows beneath in regular lines as we walked up the path to Bongeunsa Temple.

     

    Second day in Seoul. Caught the Seoul Train around 9:30 am yesterday. Snagged a seniors and pregnant women’s seat while my son and Seoah had to stand. Even in Songtan two hours or so from Seoul the light rail had already filled up.

    Right here is the moment for my shout out to Korean medicine. On Tuesday of last week I saw the sharp toothed orthopod (as Kate would have called him). Got a diagnosis, some muscle relaxants, and an initial deep massage, shock wave therapy, electrotherapy, lumbar traction.

    Still tender when I returned on Thursday for another round of massage and procedures. Saw the doc again. We agreed that Mr. Lee was really good and that he had hurt both of us in the interest of healing. Laughing. Doc said I could do some light jogging on Saturday.

    I walked about six blocks on Friday, heel first, head up, stomach in. Did the hip rotation exercises and the spine stretching. Went out again that evening with my son and Murdoch. Tired by the time I got back, but not in pain.

    These folks took what looked like a trip shrinking back and hip spasm and turned it around in a week. They gave me the  tools necessary to not only recover, but in fact walk better than I have in years. As long as I walk healthy as Mr. Lee wanted and get back to my core exercises, I will not return to the me before the hip pain, but will become a better me protecting my back and keeping it strong. Not bad for two sessions.

    On Saturday my son, Seoah and I went to Gangnam. You might remember this neighborhood from the Gangnam dance moves made popular a few years ago. If you don’t, here’s a wiki with a how to do them lesson.

    Gangnam harbors the Seoul fashionistas among whom I count my daughter-in-law Seoah. She lived and worked in Gangnam. She dresses and lives Gangnam style. An upmarket, brand conscious I can be more beautiful than you lifeway. Seoah walked out of the house this morning to go play golf with my son at an Army golf course on Camp Humphreys. She had on a short green skirt, like a tennis skirt, a white top with Malbon written on it. She carried her new Malbon leather golf bag. A golf diva.

    She’s also a caring and thoughtful daughter-in-law, protective of my son, her father-in-law, and Murdoch. A delightful and happy person.

     

    The three of us came up from the underground into the bright light of a Gangnam Saturday. We walked a block and were on the grounds of Bongeunsa Temple, founded in 794 during Korea’s three kingdoms period. Seoul and Bongeunsa were then in the Silla Kingdom.

    Surrounded by glass and metal high rise apartment complexes and just across the cross walk from the fabled COEX mall Bongeunsa has not given up its peaceful and medieval feel. A large complex of temples, statuary, and monastic housing. Walking on its grounds transported me to a time before even Sejong the Great.

    A monk walked into a small side temple and began chanting. His sonorous tones called out the Buddha spirit from tiled roofs, elaborate painted and decorated eves, the courtyards. Filled them with an ancient religiosity. In spite of the healing I mentioned above going uphill and stairs still proves difficult so I sat on the steps of this little temple as my son and Seoah explored. Listening to the monk my former brother-in-law Bob Merritt came back to me. Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo. Something like that. Nichiren Soshu Buddhism.

    What came next? COEX mall right across the street. And my first chance to do something art related. KiaF Seoul is underway in the mall’s large exhibition space. KiaF’s second year. This enormous show brings together galleries from Seoul, other cities in Korea, L.A., Paris and around the world focusing on Korean artists.

    The purpose? Expose KiaF attendees to the broad range of Korean contemporary art and. Sell art. Galleries had bigger and smaller sized exhibition spaces, some as small as a cubicle, some as spacious as a gallery itself.

    When visiting a gallery, the owners and their staff would brighten, ask questions. What do you like about that piece? Um. It’s religious iconography. And it’s fun. Breaking away before the pitch got more traction.


    Art and Culture Asia Commentary on Religion Family Feelings Fourth Phase Health Korea Painting Travel

  • The traveler

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

    Saturday gratefuls: Seoul. My boy. Murdoch. Seoah and  her golf bag. Walking without pain. Slow. Flaneuring. The home street for my son and Seoah’s apartments. A grocery store. Drug stores, banks. Coffee shops and restaurants. Paris Baguette. Appreciating the 20 seconds to cross a street. Possible Snow today back home. Back to sightseeing. A wiser and slower man.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Healing

    One brief shining: Heel first, then second toe in a straight line from the body, head up, stomach in I headed out yesterday morning to test my healing back and found go slow, walk healthy as Mr. Lee said enough to get me through six blocks there and back with no pain.

     

    Walter Benjamin, an art critic, essayist, and wide ranging thinker of the early 20th century commented on the flaneur in his essay The Return of the Flaneur. The flaneur he said is a resident of the city in which he strolls. As such he does not observe as a tourist does looking for history, art, famous landmarks; rather, the flaneur notices the chipped curbstone in front of a shop he knows is now onto yet another business. He recognizes the dog who sleeps under the back stairs of an apartment building and recalls the children who play with the dog. The flaneur embraces the city as a living, changing organism, not an open air museum.

    I want to add a middle ground between flaneur and tourist, the traveler. The traveler comes to a place as an outsider like the tourist and has an interest in art, in history, in landmark, that famous restaurant or park or cemetery. Yet in distinction from the tourist the traveler happily sits at a local cafe, watching the traffic, mothers with their children, school children in their uniforms, eating food different from her usual diet.

    Unlike the flaneur the traveler has no background of memory with which to understand the more domestic and homey aspects of the scene, yet she delights in the bits of life that are ordinary here, yet so unlike home. Ah, the old man sits in the store front fanning himself. Not a customer there, just tired. The woman passing by with a plastic bag holding an unfamiliar vegetable and scrubbing pads for the sink.

    While in places foreign to me, I want to be a traveler first, a tourist second. An amateur-though trained-ethnologist watching for cues to the culture dominant where I find myself.

    The ease with which Koreans access and use their medical system. The Orthopedic Hospital I visited on the second floor of a non-descript office building, an empty store front on the first floor. Hardly the pretentious campus of the American hospital. A grimy elevator moves patients from street level to the waiting room.

    Street vendors selling bags of cereal. Small bottles of energy drinks. Socks and t-shirts. Women with the visor that seems ubiquitous in Asia. A woman smiling and bowing as she gets her taxi before Seoah and I get ours. The public building up the street with what looks like electronic circuitry designs on its facade.

    The Dunkin Donut franchise that now offers butter donuts because, according to their sign, that’s what Koreans want. Those small transparent paper packets that hold doses from the pharmacy below the hospital. Of course signs in Hangul. Some English.

    Or, to retreat back in time to 2004 Singapore the then government’s smile campaign, trying to convince glum looking Singaporeans many of them Hokkien Chinese to turn that frown upside down.

    The tendency in Korean to end a sentence or a word on an ascending note, not a descending one as we Americans do. The Noryangjin fish market. The delivery man with two heavy packages balanced on his back stooped over and pressing the elevator button.

    These are the things in which a traveler delights. Their mystery, yes, but also their ultimate cohesion, their oneness with Korean culture. In this instance.

     


    Asia Fourth Phase Korea Memories Travel

  • Learning how to walk. Yet again.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

    Friday gratefuls: That massage therapist and the orthopedist. A flare, can return to exercise. Going to Gangnam tomorrow. See the fabled (in Korea) COEX mall and the Bongeunsa Temple, a 794 A.D. Buddhist Temple from the Silla period. Chef Jang’s fabulous meal last night. Korean Apples. My son’s mission today. Murdoch the happy.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Back to exercise Sunday

    One brief shining: Chef Jang called my son and me to dinner last night, she stood behind the marble island with the single induction burner our two seats were across from her and platters of Cucumber kimchi, cooked Prawns on a bed of Bean Sprouts, Enoki Mushrooms, Bok Choi Leaves as she placed a bright red pan with a four inch high side on the burner while we began eating  fresh sliced Onions in mirin sauce.

     

    A Michelin three star moment at home. The bright red pan held a boiling soup into which we put the Bok Choi, thinly sliced Beef rolls, Chives, and the Enoki Mushrooms. A hotpot style meal. I filled up on Prawns, Bok Choi, Onions, and Bean Sprouts. A few cooked Beef slices, too. After we had another round of the Kaesong little donuts. Delightful.

    Seoah learned to cook from her mother, but she’s added her own flair over time. The prep work, as in Chinese cooking too, makes up the bulk of the labor involved. Wish I’d taken a picture of the whole tableau before we dug into it. A beautiful table.

     

    Another round of massage yesterday. Boy can that guy bear down. Tight, tight thigh muscles.

    Here’s some irony. At age 1 plus some months I had mastered the human transition from all fours to two feet. Walking. Then. Polio. Paralyzed on my left side for over six months. Oops. Needed to learn how to walk again. Painful. Dragging my head on the floor as mom and Aunt Virginia held me up. Rug burns on my forehead. But, I did it. Learned to walk upright in the world a second time.

    Flash forward to today. 76 years old, walking for a long time now. Except. Mr. Lee, the massage therapist, said, “I will teach you how to walk healthy.” Oh. OK.

    Heel first, then toes. Second toe in a straight line from the body. Move the hips as the feet move. Stomach in, eyes ahead. Something you probably do without thinking about it. My long time with a bad back has given me a bad habit. I drop my left foot and don’t turn my pelvis as I walk. Right, OK. Left, weak. Mr. Lee.

    Tuck in the stomach. Shoulders back. Now try to work in that position. All right. I tried. Mr. Lee typed into google translate a long line of Hangul: “You look like a robot. Walk naturally.” Right.

    Again. Better. Trying to unlearn a habit of many years and return to the skill I retrieved on the couch in Aunt Virginia and Uncle Riley’s living room over 74  years ago. Important learning for me. Should help me for a long time to come. Including, btw, in Israel.


    Asia Cooking Family Fourth Phase Health Korea Memories Travel

  • Adventures in Medicine

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: That orthopedist in his chair surrounded by computer screens. The kind massage therapist. The weird procedures. A day of Korean medicine. Taxis. Recalibrating. Spines. Traveling like I was 60. When I’m really 76. Seoah. My son. Getting my base pass today. Seeing immigration about my visa. Being in Korea as a resident alien, not a tourist.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: X-rays

    One brief shining: Do you speak Korean the doctor asked I said no so he asked do you have any spinal stenosis I don’t think so I said he ordered an x-ray and yes I do massage, muscle relaxants, slow walk, no  exercise time in Korea changed.

     

    My buddy Ode sent me off to Korea with a message, have great adventures! He’s a master at finding adventure when he travels. His openness to people and experiences insures it. Oh, the stories he can tell. About almost dying in that capsized boat in the Caribbean. About picking grapes in Provence. About visiting the uber-wealthy Chinese woman in Shanghai with Elizabeth. And many more and those only the ones he’s told me.

    Me. Not so much. I find warming up to new people difficult even when I share their language and culture. There’s also a level of good Midwestern caution in my soul that feels protective but is also a bubble against anything too strange or unfamiliar. Not complaining. Describing. I still enjoy travel a lot though. I do have my moments.

    Yesterday was one of those moments. My sore hip pushed me past my normal reserve and into a medical system where only a few speak my language and at that not too well.

    Taxi over to a main drag here in Songtan. Up to the second floor of a nondescript office building with Seoah. A waiting room with long rows of chairs, a few scattered patients waiting. An orthopedist’s office. A reception desk to the right, the waiting area, then to the left a back room filled with curtained areas, blue and white striped curtains hanging from metal loops around metal piping. I would find out what they held later.

    First I checked in. Sort of. Seoah asked me questions for a brief form. Drug allergies. No. Cancer? Yes. She put down bladder cancer because that’s what her dad has. We corrected that later. All the while I’m calculating how much I really need to know about what’s going on. Not much, I concluded right then.

    The orthopedist sat at a modest desk with three computer screens around him and a keyboard on the desk. He had, as I’ve noticed in a few other Koreans, pointed teeth that made him look slightly menacing. He asked me a question or two then ordered an x-ray. That happened quickly and soon I was back in his office, looking at my lower spine on the computer screen to his left.

    I didn’t need him to tell me where the problem was. Normal disc. Normal disc. Normal disc. Nice gaps between them. Then two with little space and one moved out and to the right of the others on his screen. Oh. That’s not good.

    You have spinal stenosis. The medical term for those discs with little space between them. Probably arthritis. They can pinch nerves creating pain in the hip and lower back. Oh. Yeah.

    That was all with the orthopedist. Onto the massage therapist. Who was a kind young man who hurt me, over and over again. Most of the time not too badly, but I did say ouch once in a while and he would back off. All in the interest of releasing muscle tension. He communicated with me through Google  translate.

    When we finished I thought, we’re done. But no. Now we do shock wave therapy, electrotherapy, and lumbar traction therapy. Not too sure about the first two. They both involved machines I could have imagined in a medical museum. The lumbar traction therapy I recognized. It gently pulled on my body at the lower spine.

    The shock wave therapy I couldn’t tell was happening except for the cold sonagram gel my therapist squirted on my back. The electrotherapy consisted of four small cup like devices placed on my back. They crawled around over my lower back while gently heating me. Sort of like a massage chair. However. There were also heating pads underneath my chest. They were hot.

    When I left, Seoah and I went to the pharmacy and picked up some muscle relaxants. All the directions in Korean of course. The pills themselves were in small clear paper pouches enough for two daily doses for three days. Five pills per pouch.

    Total bill: approximately $200. The doctor and the x-ray were only $35 of that. The rest was massage, procedures, and the meds. Not bad, really. And I’ll get most of it back from insurance

     


    Asia Family Health Korea Travel

  • Military Good-byes

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: My son’s 88 on the Osan golf course. Seoah. Their golf. Murdoch. Rodeo. The money funnel of Korean businesses right across the street from Osan Air Base. The Plaque Shop. That Philly cheese-steak spot. The Blue Opera. The sim card guy. Lifting the bollards. The Galbi place where my son, Seoah, Kate, and I ate in 2016. A general air of sleaziness. One spot with a sign: No Koreans.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: lunch with my son

    One brief shining: Songtan streets (ro) filled with small businesses, no chain stores that I’ve seen, a  mechanics place with car lifts and old tires out front next to a grilled fish joint, the occasional shiny store selling phones, a coffee shop, a plant store, taxis and delivery guys, folks coming home from work on the streets, us slower folks walking the sidewalks where they exist, otherwise dodging in and out of traffic along with the vehicles.

     

    The military takes good-byes seriously. There are going away dinners. Plaques get made. Even an entire photograph and position title sign taken down and framed. My son also had a banner made with his senior enlisted, Master Sergeant Rocket’s seven call signs. It fits on a stanchion. A challenge coin, too.

    The Plaque store in the Rodeo has a plaque for every occasion. And specializes in personalization. There are window boxes with swords, models of various planes, maps of Korea, clocks, animals like tigers and cobras. A whole counter full of patches made into metal. A thriving business. The proprietoress found my son’s order, gave him a well used receipt book to sign, flipping through pages and pages of orders, finding his.

    We stopped into the sim card store where my son paid his monthly bill for South Korea telecom. He went on to another store while I took photographs. One door read Welcome Thirsty People. Another place, the Blue Opera had gargoyles and other strange animals as part of an elaborate sign. Seemed to be an open air coffee shop. Couldn’t make out why the name or the sign made sense.

    When my son came back, we went down a narrow street to a hole in the wall joint with booths and walls made of plywood varnished and polyurethaned, very basic. A short Korean man with a white paper fry cook’s hat took our orders, One with jalapenos no onions, one with onions no jalapenos? Yes. A bit later a hot Philly cheese steak and some fries. It was so nice to have lunch with my boy.

    He and Seoah later went to the golf course on base to play 18 holes. I stayed home this time, fed Murdoch, read. Watched some TV. Resting my sore hip. Gonna see a doc today if Seoah can get me an appointment. The hip has begun to get in the way of sight seeing. Some temporary solution, I hope. See Kristin when I get home if it’s still a problem.

    Want to find some way to deal with it since I go to Israel less than a month after I get back from Korea.

     


    Asia Family Feelings Fourth Phase Korea Travel

  • Seoul Time

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Being in Monday, not Sunday. The Fish Market. Daniel. Diane. Seoah. My son. Sejong the Great. Inventor of Hangul. The Korean George Washington. His palace. The cultural and arts district around it. Yongsan, the heart of Seoul. Seoul. My son’s friends. Heat and humidity. Snow in the forecast for Conifer. Jon, may his memory be for a blessing. Kate, whose memory is a blessing.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Seoul, Korean megalopolis

    One brief shining: The fish monger gaffed the sea bream and handed the gaff’s wooden handle to me so I could hold the fish as if I’d caught it instead of bought it, then he gaffed the other, whose name I’ve forgotten and gave it to my son and me to hold together, later in the restaurant above the market these two fish appeared as Korean cut sashimi and a soup made from their heads and the bones.

     

    Yesterday we boarded the number 1 blue line at Songtan station and took the hour and forty-five minute ride into Seoul. Called a subway it was light rail on this route. We rode past clusters of apartment buildings, a few single houses, and the now routine rice paddies and thick plastic sheeting covered half moon long garden tents filled with vegetables.

    All the way from Songtan the density of the housing remains high, the countryside far away in this populous urban corridor that extends to the south as well toward Daejong. Korea has a population of 51 million plus in an area the size of the state of Indiana. Over one-fifth of those live in Seoul.

    Almost done with the novel Soil by Yi Kwang-Su written in 1932. Compared to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle it focuses on the plight of Korean farmers who made up 80% of the population but lived lives poor, miserable, and short essentially as serfs or tenant farmers for the wealthy who lived in Seoul. The ratio of Seoul’s population to the rest of Korea remains about the same.

    Seoul is the cultural and political and economic heart of the country as it has been since the time of Sejong the Great in 1395. On a main thoroughfare which runs past Seoul city hall a bronze seated Sejong looks on modern traffic headed towards his palace grounds. The city hall  has two buildings, one built by the Japanese during their long occupation in the 20th century and the other an uber modern building by Korean architect Yoo Kerl.

    The fish market. The Noryagin Fish Market has its own subway stop which was our destination. We came up from the tracks and onto a bright day, young Koreans in blue uniforms playing baseball just outside the subway’s door.

    On the inside hawkers of various levels of intensity try to interest you in the various sea creatures on offer. Sea squirts. Sea urchins. Whelks. Mollusks of various kinds. Shrimp. Prawns. Eels. Many, many varieties of Fish. Large aquariums held Squid and Crabs, some trying to wander off.  Though its floor had water on it and the air high humidity the market did not smell fishy to me.

    When we sat down to eat in the restaurant on the fifth floor of the market, I looked up and saw: Trump World. A big two tower building across the freeway from where we sat. Diane told me that the area we could see out the window was Korea’s Wall Street, so I suppose Trump Tower fit in as a monument  to financial malfeasance.

    Daniel and Diane then took us in their KIA SUV across the Han River into Yongsan, the central downtown of Seoul. Past it we found Sejong the Great’s palace and folklore museum. Unfortunately it was hot, humid, and my hip had begun to get sore so we didn’t stay as long as I might have wanted though I think we stayed longer than anybody else wanted.

    Built in 1395 and destroyed in the 19th century (I don’t recall  how), it was rebuilt in 1885 I think. Massive. The architecture of power and status.


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  • Water

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Osan Air Base. A hike in the Mountains with my son, Seoah, and Murdoch. Meeting several ajuma (old women) who found Murdoch fascinating. A new TV. The dense population of Songtan and most of Korea. Buses. Taxis. Maglev trains. Subways. Cars. Motorcycles. Some bicycles. Many roads built for foot traffic or Horse/Ox powered carts. Jon’s yahrzeit. Kate, always Kate.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Seoul today

    One brief shining: Murdoch lying down on a brick walkway, passersby eyeing him, smiling, some pulling further away, one ajuma with a visor and a bamboo fan stopping, saying how noble he was, aristocratic, better than a human being since he would never betray.

     

    Happening again. Jimmy Buffet dead at 76. Bill Richardson at 75. Not people I followed in any way other than seeing their names often but familiar nonetheless. A singer and a diplomat/fixer. Dead at my age. Reminders that each generation fades away, one former celebrity at a time, one notorious person at a time (yes, even Trump will die), one friend and family member at a time.

    This thing we call life has its turn with us, with our Dogs and Whales and Paramecium, even the Bristle Cone Pines and the Joshua Trees, Mosquitoes and Mayflies. Even Mountains and Streams. Then leaves.

    But, not Water. No. Water moves from liquid to ice to steam, rises and condenses and falls. Returns to the World Ocean and leaves again on Jet Stream driven Winds to Rain on the just and the unjust. There is a measure of immortality in Water.

    Korea and Japan, Peninsula and Islands, are Land forms defined by Water. Risen above the depths of the World Ocean yet surrounded by it, influenced by its moods and its weather. So different from the Landlocked Rocky Mountains in which I live or the interior Midwest in which I lived for most of life.

    There the Great Lakes, for example, were Water forms defined by the Land that surrounds them. Those Lakes first filled with Water from the receding Glaciers of the last Ice Age. Rivers like the Minnesota and the Mississippi. Smaller Lakes dotting the northern part of the State and even within the city limits of the Twin Cities.

    One of Water’s other mysteries keeping the Lakes liquid. Water floats in its Ice form. If it didn’t, Ice would sink to the bottom of the Lakes and form cold basins with occasional melted Ice at the very top. No wonder Taoism finds in Water a metaphor for how chi, the energy of life, flows through the whole World.

    In the mussar class I take at CBE we’re exploring metaphors for what has been identified with the word God. Learning how the metaphors we choose define what we imagine that word to mean, or better, what it could mean.

    What if the call of the natural world, as Art Green, author of Radical Judaism defines the sacred (my interpretation of his work), could be heard and felt in the flow of a Mountain Stream or the evaporation of Water from the World Ocean or in the pelting of Rain on a roof, onto a newly sown Field? Or in the glass of Water I just finished, replenishing my body’s supply?

    What if then we could say that we share in Water’s immortality? In its ability to wear away the hard, move around obstacles, change into different forms, give life to the thirsty? I can follow that understanding of the sacred.

     


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