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.
