Really?

So the right-wing president of South Korea thought he could declare martial law and rally some support to a sinking presidency?

I emailed my former boss, a political moderate, and he told me Yoon "lost his mind."

South Korea?

What the hell is going on in South Korea?

Eyes on the Prize

Han Kang has won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I've only read The Vegetarian, but I enjoyed it.  Be advised that it's incredibly dark.

Itaewon

154 dead in Itaewon Halloween "crush."

Horrible, sad news.

Itaewon is the former redlight district for US soldiers in Seoul.  Over the years is has somewhat gentrified into a more general "foreigner neighborhood" with cheap rents and various foreign food restaurants and very poorly made buildings that should have been torn down years ago.

My only thought right now is along the lines of, gentrify the fucking place and be done with it.

Staying in Touch in Korea

Following up here, I agonized a little over what to do for phone communication while visiting South Korea recently.  My current plan didn't (AFAICT) offer an international pay-as-you-go plan, which would have been perfect.  So then I thought I'd rent a SIM in Korea (very easy to do) then had nightmares imagining I'd lose either the new or current one.  So, it's also easy to rent an entire phone, and very cheap to do so.

In the end, I did nothing more than download Kakaotalk.  And I hardly used it.

I managed to get by just fine using email and Facebook messenger.  And believe me, I hate Facebook!  But my Korean friends use it, and it worked out fine.

When it comes to travel I always find that less is more.  Another stop at the airport to rent a SIM or phone is just that -- another 15 minutes I'm not enjoying myself.

So at least for me, everything worked out fine with the caveat that it's very easy to find free wifi in Korea, or to buy a data card at a convenience store and roll with that.  Then again, I got along just fine with coffee shops.

Also, be prepared to use an app to get a taxi at night in Seoul, and probably smaller cities as well.  There's a shortage of cabbies right now.  If you ask nicely, I'm sure any good restaurant or hotel will order one for you but be prepared to ask.  They will go right past you if you try flagging them yourself, because they already have a fare booked in advance.

Visiting South Korea Soon? Here's What You'll Need (As An American, At Least)

First, schedule a COVID test for yourself (antigen is fine) within 24 hours of your departure.  I'd bring a hardcopy.

Second, you'll need to register with K-ETA first.  It costs about eight bucks, and it's a mild pain.  Be prepared to upload a passport-style picture (that you can take yourself).  The registration itself is good for two years.

Third, while you can skip the Q-Code I wouldn't.  You'll get through pre-immigration much faster.  Have the code on your phone or print out a copy.  I won't lie -- it took me a good 45 minutes to get their crappy website to acknowledge that my hotel and street address did, indeed, exist.

Within three days of your arrival in South Korea you'll need another COVID test.  You could do this at the airport if the scheduling works, but I went on to Daegu and got mine at the Daegu central public health office.  (The hotel provided directions.)  It was free, which was nice.

Finally, and it appears this is being phased out, you'll need another test for a return to the U.S.  It costs about 70 dollars and you can do it at Incheon Airport, but it's another thing you'll have to budget time for.

That's it!  Have fun!

A final note: I was told, and kind of noticed, that getting a cab in Seoul after nine is now harder than ever if you aren't using one of many apps.  In a pinch I imagine you could ask the restaurant owner to call you one if you find yourself in this situation.  Hotels will be less of a problem.

A Nice Little Trip

I made it home in one piece.  Daegu was hot, but not quite full furnace-blast as of yet.  I saw friends, my former boss, and former students.  In Seoul I met up with some foreigner friends.  I got tested for COVID a total of three times, and only had to pay for the service twice.

I miss Korea and always will.  At the same time, I think the time was right to transition back to home.

I caught a Samsung Lions game too -- they were crushed by NCsoft, 9-1.

Vacay

I'm off to Daegu and Seoul tomorrow for a real vacation.  I'll be back in a week.  Planning on eating anything in front of me, that's pretty much it.

One Week In South Korea Soon

I'm visiting South Korea next week for my first vacation in a long while.  I hope early June isn't too hot, but it will be Daegu so who am I kidding?  I'll sweat buckets.

Just A Number?

South Korea is (probably) going to scrap it's archaic age system (one that even China doesn't cling to):

"Thus, depending on the individual's birthday, one can have three different ages. For example, an individual born in May 2020 will be considered three in Korean age, one under the standard international age and two under the year scheme.

People Power Party (PPP) Rep. Lee Yong-ho, head of the judicial subcommittee, said the transition team is pushing to merge the three age systems and recognize only the international age."

Losing unique cultural aspects is a downer, but I'm happy to hear that apparently even most Koreans got fed up with their age system, and how is clashes with globally accepted "international age."

Still a big deal though. 

Gimbap Blues

I think part of the issue is that I live in the middle of nowhere, but my strong craving for Korean convenience stores is real.  One-dollar gimbap.  A single three-dollar can of Japanese beer.  A decent two-dollar sandwich.

Maybe it's just knowing that they're there, 24 hours a day without fail.

Snacking just isn't the same in America.

"something of a taboo"

South Korean president Moon Jae-In is asking people, maybe, to give up dog meat:

"The meat has long been a part of South Korean cuisine with about 1 million dogs believed to be eaten annually, but consumption has declined as more people embrace the animals as companions rather than livestock.

The practice is something of a taboo among younger generations and pressure from animal rights activists has been mounting.

'Hasn’t the time come to prudently consider prohibiting dog meat consumption?' Moon asked the prime minister, Kim Boo-kyum, during a weekly meeting on Monday, according to the presidential spokesperson.

South Korea’s pet industry is on the rise, with a growing number of people living with dogs at home – the president among them. Moon is a known dog lover and has several canines at the presidential compound, including one he rescued after taking office.

Adopting Tory was one of Moon’s pledges during his presidential campaign and the pooch became the first rescue dog to make its way into the Blue House."

I've done a ton of posts like these over the years, but never has a prominent South Korean official come out and suggested a straight-up ban.  I'm very happy to see he's adopted a rescue animal as well.

Life After Korea

I'm applying for some part time jobs.  I haven't updated (haven't had to update) my resume and materials for over a decade, so I give myself a little credit for taking some serious time to work on these things over the past few weeks.

In lieu of a longer post on how tough it is to find a job after coming back from South Korea, something that so many people droned on about when I lived in Daegu, I just have to say that, well, you get back what you put in.  For starters, yes, not having a network sucks but then again, I'm living in a place where I literally know nobody except my Dad and his immediate neighbors.  A good network probably wouldn't be that much help to me right now due to simple geography.  Next, and this was my feeling back in Korea, you're going to develop as much or as little as a professional as you want to no matter where you live.  Believe me, I'm not a diligent self-starter by any means, but during my 12 years abroad I managed to learn some of the language, co-publish a scholarly article, edited an ESL text by a professor at my college, and let my boss know that I'd be happy to help him edit (or write) things for the school as needed.  I also developed, or created from nothing, a decent set of teaching materials that I might end up using again.

The point being, I'm not sure why teaching English abroad is seen as a professional black hole by so many folks.  It certainly doesn't qualify me for doing brain surgery, but over the years I feel like I did a reasonable job at self-improvement and, more bluntly, getting worthwhile stuff onto my resume.  And it seems like my secondary cultural experiences don't hurt -- if anything, maybe I stand out a bit.

It's a process of course, and we'll see how it goes.  I've applied for both classroom teaching jobs and more education-adjacent positions.  Putting my cover letter together I never felt weakened or at a loss for explaining why a decade in Korea makes me a stronger candidate than I was before I left.

I should have worked harder on my Korean, definitely.  But it was nice to hear from some of my former bosses that they'd be more than happy to give me positive recommendations.  My resume has a larger "narrative" that I can handle teaching ESL or English composition, and that I had a fairly productive last decade.  I'm not sure what more ESL folks are expecting from work history, either in Korea or in some mythical "perfect" job back here in America.

Work is work.

Yikes

I miss a lot of things about my life in Daegu, but the summer weather isn't one of them.  Those violent storms early in the week are relatively short, and just make everything even more humid and swamp-like.

"a battleground for bigger powers"

"Wang's analogy of us as human fertilizer revived thoughts I had been thinking for a long time.  True enough, as Chinese, we genuinely felt that our lives were misused here, but as I have observed earlier, no matter how abysmal our situation was there were always others who had it worse.  By now I understood why occasionally some Korean civilians were hostile to us.  To them we had come here only to protect China's interests -- by so doing, we couldn't help but ruin their homes, fields, and livelihoods.  From their standpoint, if the Chinse army hadn't crossed the Yalu, millions of lives, both civilian and military, would have been saved.  Of course, the United States would then have occupied all of Korea, forcing China to build defenses in Manchuria, which would have been much more costly than sending troops to fight in our neighboring country.  As it was, the Koreans had taken the brunt of the destruction of this war, whereas we Chinese were here mainly to keep its flames away from our border.  Or, as most of the POW's believed, perhaps rightly, we had served as cannon fodder for the Russians.  It was true that the Koreans had started the war themselves, but a small country like theirs could only end up being a battleground for bigger powers.  Whoever won this war, Korean would be a loser."

-- Ha Jin, War Trash

How It's Done

My former home of Daegu, South Korea, was the first city outside of China to be hit by the coronavirus.  It all went down February of last year, 2020.

On the one hand, that sucks.

On the other hand, South Korea is arguably the one country you'd want to be in during a public health emergency:

"South Korean officials made a plan. They needed to test as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, to figure out how bad the outbreak was. Then they had to find out who might have come into contact with the infected people. And they needed all of those people — both the infected and the potentially exposed — to isolate themselves to prevent the virus from spreading any further.

It was a three-step protocol: test, trace, and isolate. And it worked. Within a week of Patient 31’s diagnosis, the country was performing the most Covid-19 tests in the world; it implemented perhaps the most elaborate contact tracing program anywhere; and it set up isolation centers so thousands of patients could quarantine.

As other countries saw their outbreaks spiral out of control, measures like these helped South Korea keep Covid-19 in check. On March 1, South Korea had about 3,700 confirmed cases; Italy, the first hot spot in Europe, had 1,700 and the US had just 32 cases, though its dismal testing meant the virus was likely spreading unsurveilled. By the end of April, Italy had topped 200,000 cases; confirmed cases in the US were already above 1 million. South Korea still had fewer than 11,000. Adjusted for population, South Korea’s first wave of coronavirus cases was about one-tenth as big as that in the United States."

This is what happens when you have an excellent public health system, leadership that is interested in keeping the infection rate low, not personal ego, and a public that is usually willing to go along with mask and distance protocols if it means the greater good of ending the outbreak is served.

South Korea had all of this, plus a very technology-friendly culture.  Within days everyone, including dumb foreigners like me, were getting multiple text messages a day telling us the specific locations of stores, restaurants, or subway stations where an infected person had been present.

The only Americans who think our health system is the best in the world are the ones who have never left the country.

People, Places, and Food

I knew the thing I'd miss most after leaving South Korea was the food.  But interestingly, my food cravings for han-shik didn't kick in straightaway.  And when they did, they were more based on the restaurants and the people I used to eat with than just the food itself.  Even my weekly Monday lunch meetings, where my boss would tell me and my foreigner co-worker everything we were doing wrong lately, is something I'm a bit nostalgic about.

I guess the fact that now I'm eating (and cooking!) pretty healthy meals for two (including my Old Man, of course) eases the pain a bit.  If I'm being honest, I'm probably eating a bit healthier now anyhow -- I did OK with eating plenty of raw fruit for breakfast in Daegu, but my veggie intake was hurting.  (South Korea is a carnivore's paradise, to say the least.)  These days I'm enjoying the access to incredibly cheap fresh produce, and in some cases just bags of frozen broccoli in a pinch.

The point being, I could name a few Korean foods I miss -- kimchi stew, soy-braised chicken and noodles, even Korean-style fish-and-rice rolls.  But each one goes along with a memory of a certain restaurant, or co-worker, or friend, or even my two regular convenience stores in northern Daegu.

It's not surprising at all, really.  Food memory imprints are directly connected to social ones.

I'd kill for a fried chicken joint within delivery distance, however.  If it isn't clear by now, I really am living in the middle of nowhere.  According my Google Maps there's a Subway about three miles from us, but that would just be sad and wrong, no?

Also, I miss the price.  Here in America five bucks will get you a fast-food value meal at best.  In my favorite joints in Daegu you could eat like a king or a queen.

Self Improvement

plan was to study Korean a few hours a week once I got back to US.

hours of Korean actually studied so far since 2.1.2021:

0

— James (@wetcasements) March 17, 2021

Making The Rounds

Between multiple farewell dinners out and then two consecutive in-class pizza-and-chicken parties with adult students, it's safe to say I've been in a more sentimental mood than usual.

That said, saying goodbye to my two local convenience store owners (one 7-11, one E-mart) -- my morning coffee and my evening water-and-beer guys -- honesty got me a little choked up.

To balance things out, my office building cleaning lady couldn't have given less of a fuck.

So Long For Now

Dynamic Duo, "Chul-Chek"

I never did take to K-pop.  Korean hip-hop, however, is the balls.  The good stuff, at least.

I'm in my office at lovely Daegu Health College for the last time today, taking care of some stuff.  It's actually freezing outside, but it's supposed to warm up a bit this weekend.  I'm going home to do some more cleaning and packing (haven't started the latter, to be honest), and tomorrow morning I'll get a COVID test (i.e., the "brain Q-tip").  I'll head up to Incheon Airport on Monday.

This is easily the best job I've ever had, and I realize I was very lucky in finding a boss in Korea who was for the most part both supportive and flexible, and willing to let me do my thing as long as the students (both college and adult) were happy.  For the most part, they were.

I'll get to Bellingham Monday and enter a new world of caring full-time for my dad.  I wouldn't say I'm either optimistic or pessimistic about it -- just ready to make sure his needs (at almost 92) are being met.  He's stubborn and fiercely independent though, so what will be tough is walking the line between taking care of him as needed, but not babying him or taking away his sense of power or volition.  His house, his rules, as they say.

I'm looking forward to the mild weather, the beautiful mountain and forest views, and air that is as fresh as fresh gets.  As I close out my to-do list here, I've got a new one for Bellingham as well, but it's not nearly as extensive.  The goal is to adjust and continue from there.  I'll be taking a long walk every morning after coffee with my dad, and probably one in the afternoon as well when he takes a nap.

My dad is scheduled for a vaccine, but not until late March (this is where I mention he's a die-hard Trump supporter).  I'm guessing at best I'll get mine in summer at earliest.  Hell, that could be optimistic.

And from there?  Nobody knows what happens next, other than I'll be living in a nice house in the quietest of neighborhoods five minutes from the border of Canada.

I'm pretty sure I'll read a lot of books.

As for Daegu, I hope this wretched virus gets handled as soon as it's possible.  I want people wandering around eating and drinking and laughing downtown again.  I want the undergraduates back, in person of course, studying hard and goofing off all at the same time.  I want my local movie theater to stay in business if it can.  I want the local restaurants and coffee shops of Chilgok / Northern Daegu to make as much money as possible.  I want to see Samsung Lions Park filled with people cheering and drinking beer and eating fried chicken at yet another spring or summer ballgame.

Samsung usually loses.  I don't care.  True fans know winning is only ever a part of it all.