Busan Journal, Day 20

A Royal Wedding:  God Bless You, Joo-yub and Go Eun

On Saturday, a week before the royal fuss in London, we attended our first wedding in Korea.

Our young friend and benefactor, Joo-yub, married Go Eun, a young woman we had thought to be "imaginary" until we met her in person a week before the wedding.

Following advice, we showed up at the church early to attend the reception, which begins 90 minutes before the ceremony itself. 

As one who has spent many long long hours waiting for American receptions to start while the bridal party gets properly photographed back at the church, I want to vote for this idea.  Eat first!

About 2:15 we went upstairs.  We found Joo-yub, looking scrubbed and shiny for the occasion, greeting guests near a table set up outside the sanctuary. An attendant was taking envelopes with wedding contributions and recording the contributions in a ledger.  A contribution, we had been told, is customary, the size signifying the nature of your relationship to the bride or groom.

Hmm.

How well do we really know this guy?

Just kidding. We had our contribution ready, and we were happy about it.  But we found the process amusing. I can not imagine guests at an American wedding taking well to wedding contributions.  Just the possibility would guarantee an empty church!

After the young man wrote our names in the ledger, we shook Joo-yub's hand (looks sharp, doesn't he!) and went into the sanctuary to find seats.

The outside of the church resembles an office building, but the sanctuary, sure enough, looks like many church sanctuaries in the States.

To our surprise we did know some people attending besides Joo-yub. Rosa Oh, a student of mine, asked to sit with us, so we had another English speaking contact should we need explanations.  I do not have a picture of Rosa's face, but I did take a picture of her high heeled sneakers a few weeks ago as a bit of fashion trivia for a blog yet to be written.

Suddenly, it seemed to us, Joo-yub began walking up the center aisle. Everyone applauded.

Eun Jeong, another multi-talented friend and benefactor from the University, was playing the piano. 

When he reached the altar, Eun Jeon played "Here Comes the Bride" and our eyes turned toward Go Eun and her father.  Again we applauded.

The ceremony itself, being in Korean, was mostly a mystery to us -- although I note that the words "home sweet home" rang out loud and clear during the pastor's homily.

Two older women in front of us dressed in hanbok, the traditional Korean dress, held a vigorous conversation for the first few minutes of the ceremony, much to the annoyance of two younger women sitting with them.

From my notebook, I pass along these observations:

The bride and groom exchanged vows by raising their right hands as if they were in a court of law.

We sang several familiar hymns (e.g., All the Way My Savior Leads Me), someone prayed, the pastor gave a substantial sermon, and the vows were exchanged but not rings.

Then a group of five teenagers came onto a little side stage with big head bows to dance to to a pop song.

We think these were kids from the Sunday School class Joo-yub teaches.  I have seen many weddings over the decades, but I must say this routine was a first for me in a Christian ceremony.  Lively and well-received, I might add, but clearly not part of the western tradition.

After the dance, Joo-yub took the microphone to sing a lovely, passionate love song to his bride. As I could not see him very well, I pass along this photograph of the big screen image.

We were surprised at how well he sings (since does not usually sing in the office).  This is a young man of many talents.  Outstanding.

In what is clearly the most traditional part of the whole ceremony, Joo-yub and his bride approached her parents to the right of the platform and then his mother to the left of the platform.  To both his new in-laws and his mother, GoEun bowed and Joo-yub knelt and pressed his forehead to the floor.

Like the wedding contribution, this tradition, noble and touching, is hard to imagine in America.

As the bride and groom walked back down the aisle as husband and wife, still looking formal and somber, Joo-yub flashed me a clandestine V as he passed our aisle.  My man!

We hung around for the wedding pictures and even wormed our way into one.  Not bad.

Then it was over. Since we had eaten already we found a taxi to take us home.

The bride's parents during photo ops.

Joo-yub's mother just outside the sanctuary.

We did not see a lot of non-western traditions apart from the women and one older gentleman who wore hanboks. At every point we asked about "tradition" regarding the wedding, we are told, "this would not be tradtional, but . . . ."  We are left thinking the idea of tradition is too broad and too frequently modified by new ideas to make a simple answer meaningful.  In a general way, it would be like asking whether William and Kate had a traditional English wedding. It depends on what you imagine to be "tradition."

Nonetheless, we are glad to have celebrated with Joo-yub and Go Eun. We have been honored to be your guests.

Busan Journal, Day 19

Mr Conspicuous


I have been an object of curiosity since we arrived in Busan.

It's not always bad.  I had thought I would find it difficult being a tall white haired white guy in a homogeneous society of shorter, dark haired Koreans, but on the whole it hasn't bothered me.

Sometimes it is flattering.  When we first arrived, I was told many times by students that I looked like Dr. House from the TV show.  I am not sure I see the resemblance beyond the tall white guy thing, but I could get used to being flattered this way.  When we get back to the States, I will have to watch a few episodes to find out what this comparison might mean.

We have also twice had young men with developmental impairment greet us.  On the street.  With considerable enthusiasm.  The first time it happened, we were walking back toward the subway station from the UN Cemetery when a young man with Downs suddenly jumped into our path, shouted "Americans!" at us, and enthusiastically shook our hands.  The second time, a young man greeted us from a street corner twenty feet away.  He kept saying"American!" and laughing as he danced about in front of us for several hundred feet.

Today on the SuYeong subway platform as we waited for our train back from the AIM church, an older man spotted us with enthusiasm similar to the two mentioned above. 

"Americans?" he asked.  It is a common first question.

"Yes," we answered.

"Ah, Americans!" he said loudly, giving us a vigorous thumbs up.

Then he began a list of places to find out where we came from -- California? Philadelphia? Chicago?  Boston?  New York?

"New York state."

"Ah, New York!" he shouted, giving us the vigorous thumbs up again.  He began singing, "Start spreading the news . . ." as the train pulled up.

Our usual tactic is for Donna to step on ahead of me and take the first seat available.  She did and I decided to stand rather than wedge my way into one of the few spots.  But the man, who by now I realized was clearly drunk, grabbed my elbow and steered me, pulled me, propelled me toward a seat.  He waved the young people aside who had been parked there and  then plunked himself down beside me.

"Ah, American!"  he would repeat, "U.S.A.!"  Then he would go through a series of gestures designed to indicate Americans.  "Marines!"  he would laugh and aim an imaginary rifle across the aisle.  "Okinawa!" he would say, followed by a machine gun mime.

By now the other passengers in our car, who would normally have kept to themselves, either looking down or away, were giving me sympathetic looks. I even got a smile or two. When he began singing snippets of American pop tunes one after another, "love me tender, love me true," I could feel the entire car with me in spirit.  A real sense of brotherhood was building.

For a moment as we neared our departure point, the monologue shifted.  "Drink!??" he said, his face blossoming into a huge smile.  "We drink!"

I knew what to do since the same thing had happened to me two weeks ago when we were riding with Chloe.  That time the drunk was mute as well, so he was intent on writing his questions on his hands for Chloe to decipher and pass on to us.

"We drink!" the man said again, patting my hand.  I crossed my hands to indicate No as he pulled a green bottle out of his coat.  No, I indicated again.

"Soju!" he said, indicating the Korean liquor, and took a long drink himself.  The mute drunk had not had a bottle with him, so he tried to press a ten thousand won note on us.  Fortunately, the train stopped at that moment, the doors opened, and we rushed out.

Today as we neared Yeonsan, I stood.  "I'm getting off here," I said.

As we moved into the crowd gathering for the doors to open, he waved and said "Bye-bye!"

"Bye-bye!" I returned and whole car laughed.

It was an interesting experience. It was worth having once I suppose, although I have been through it twice now.  Celebrity sometimes carries an unexpected price tag.

Busan Journal, Day 18

Busan's Lotte Giants

If Busan is to Seoul what Boston is New York, then a notion of Red Sox fandom will help you understand Major League Baseball in Busan.

We rode the subway down to Sakik Station.  As soon as we climbed to street level we knew we were in the right area.  Fans were heading toward the corner with a familiar determined stride, and the sidewalk vendors were setting up shop.  To the right at the first intersection, we could see the stadium looming above the other building about three blocks away.

I had written down the Hangul characters for stadium and tickets, words I thought I might need; the Hangul characters would help me recognize when they appeared.

Turns out I did not see any of the characters I had written down.  We followed the flow of fans until we found lines where we figured tickets were being sold.

Inside the park we were handed small orange blankets with GIANTS written on them. From the crush at the ticket window we had thought we were lucky to get in, but inside the stadium we were virtually alone.

As we had come when the box office opened thinking tickets might be hard to get, we had a lot of spare time before the game began.  We also had lots of room.  It looked like the stadium would remain nearly empty, but it began to fill rapidly just before the first pitch.

Side note here, almost exactly with the playing of the Korean national anthem, the sun disappeared behind the edge of the stadium and the wind picked up.  We cooled off rapidly.  Turns out the little orange blankets were handed out to be useful, not to wave.  We were quite surprised also that a good number of fan ignored the playing of the anthem; they neither stood with the rest or us nor stopped whatever they had been doing.

I will not reprise the game itself except to say that it was very good baseball.  If I may offer a fairly commonplace comment here, the interesting part of attending the game was the atmosphere.  Lotte Giant Nation, perhaps. As with all serious sports enterprises there are traditions and routines at Sajik Stadium that real fans learn and participate in.

The man who sat behind me handed me a section of his newspaper before the game started.  The paper was for making a pom-pom.  After watching others fold, tear and roll pom-poms from their newspapers, I began to make one too.  But apparently I was working too slowly and carefully because the girl across the aisle took the paper from me and finished it, quickly and efficiently.

I dutifully shook the pom-pom at appropriate times to the songs everyone sang together.  It was fun to be part of the group even if I didn't know the words or, too often, what brought on the singing.

Did I mention that one of the goup activities was drinking?  The guys next to us had brought in a backpack full of beer and soju, a colorless liquor like vodka.  Like many others they methodically worked their way through the bottles from the backpack.

More interesting to us were the snack items.  I took a lot of pictures of these snacks but nearly all of them are blurred because the vendors, mostly older women, moved too fast!

You may recognize those wavy things poking out of the bag.  Yes, tentacles.  Dry, salty squid.  A big seller.  Now you don't find that at Fenway.

There were other interesting features to the atmosphere of baseball in Busan.  There was the fifth inning kissing couples televised on the jumbotron.  I was ready to spring into action, but the TV cameras focused exclusively on the other side of the field.

There were two pudgy mascots who popped off their oversized heads at one point to do some serious break dancing on top of the home team dugout.

Then there were the cheerleaders in tiny uniforms led by a cheerleading gymnast who strutted and pranced and orchestrated like a Korean Mick Jagger.

During the 7th inning, instead of singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" orange plastic Lotte Mart bags began to make the rounds.  Lotte is the retail giant that owns the team, so naturally their bags appear.  The objective here is to make a balloon of the bag by capturing air in it, then tying it to your head by hooking the handles over your ears.

It should look something like this bag on the head of our neighbor who was mentioned earlier as having the booze laden backpack. 

I, too, grabbed some orange bags and tied one on.  Sadly, I do not have any clear pictures of my head balloom to share. But I can attest that the handles do put serious strain on the ears.

By this time, we were just about frozen, having come illprepared for the drop in temperature and the wind chill.  So at the end of the eighth inning, our team behind by a run, we left for the subway.

For the record, we are planning to return for another game, although it may be true that we are just fair weather fans.

Busan Journal, Day 17

A Day on Geumgang Mountain

On Saturday morning we headed south of campus toward Geumgang Park, within walking distance of our campus.

Getting to the Park was rather more complicated than I anticipated as it looped through old neighborhoods, up steep and irregular slopes, down narrow alleys, and so forth. Where we found road signs we couldn't read them. Eventually, we reached a big intersection with a sign in English indicating we were close.

As we approached the corner of the park, a tall young man pushing his three year old daughter in a stroller offered to take us to the cable car office. We followed him.  How often in Busan we have experienced help from strangers who recognize our foreign appearance as an opportunity to extend kindness.

I had anticipated an expanding view of the city as we rode to the top of the mountain, but when we squeezed into the cable car, followed by a man with a bush in his arms and another on his back, we had no seats and no view.

At the top of the mountain, we found hikers and trails everywhere. As usual the most avid hikers are the older folks. And the issue with trails is their abundance? Surely one of these is an official trail, but each one looked like all the others.  Tentatively, we ventured a bit further uphill in what we thought was the direction of the old stone fort, but we found eating stalls instead. The ladies with aprons started chatting us up as soon as we got within earshot.

What to do? We found a flat rock away from the little booths to eat the lunch we had packed and to discuss our choices. Geumjeongsanseong Fortress lay somewhere further uphill beyond the eating places. Downhill were Buddhist temples. Downhill seemed appealing, especially since we had no idea how much further uphill the Fortress walls began.

The trail to the temples follows a crease down the hillside, a ravine where a stream trickles. The path is both well worn and marked with paper lanterns.

The lanterns may have been the deciding factor. They led somewhere specific, although I found them both spooky and a bit disillusioning -- spooky because the swastikas immediately conjure up Hitler in my western mind, and disillusioning because the "paper" shell of the lanterns turned out to be plastic strung with an electric light.

So much for authenticity.

The journey down was steep, narrow, and often treacherous. I had bought Donna a telescoping hiking stick like all the seasoned hikers use and a backpack for myself.  No one mistook us for local Koreans with our new equipment, but both items turned out to be very useful.

On our descent toward the first temple, many hikers passed us heading the other way.  Clearly hiking up hill is more truly Korean than hiking down.  Moreover, with every new climber we wondered whether there was any way out other than coming back up.

The first temple was closed and, to be quite honest, quite messy. The tourist in me was disappointed. But the view of the city through the trees was the best we were to have all day.

At the second temple, we were greeted  with laughter and good English by the monk who lived there. He encouraged me to take pictures, told us he had recently been in the U.S., and invited us to come back when we had longer to stay. He disappeared for a while in search of his business card, and I gave him mine.  His American name is Johnson. I should have taken his picture.

As a student of culture, I am quite interested in the Buddhist presence. And Johnson is an engaging man, so if circumstances permit I would be interested in going back to talk.

One of the things I would ask Johnson about is this disturbing little statue that stands at the foot of the wall below his temple. These banner signs, by the way, which are typical of Korea, are new advertisements for Buddha's birthday celebration on May 10.

We descended rapidly. Apart from the physical exertion and the four Buddhist temples we passed on our way downhill, the outstanding feature of the mountain was the spectacular beauty of the landscape and flowers.

The lonely pilgrim sitting in this clearing is none other than my climbing buddy. As we are in blossom season, these purple flowers, which look like red bud, are everywhere.

Or these magnolia flowers.

I am also intrigued by stone formations that give the ravine its characteristic look.

Eventually we reached our starting point at the bottom of Geumgang Mountain, where, naturally, we heard the voice of John Denver singing Rocky Mountain High over a loud speaker. And we saw one more Buddist temple.

Suffice to say, from here, with sore knees, we wandered back through the poor neighborhoods in the direction of our dorm. In a long string of very good days this long day on the mountain had been great.

A few days later, after hearing the story of our hike, two of Donna's new friends told her we had gone about it wrong.  We should have climbed the mountain and then taken the cable car down.  In true Korean fashion.

Busan Journal, Day 16

UNMCK

Before we left for Korea, I read David Halberstam's book The Coldest Winter, which describes American participation in the Korean War. Like any book that deals honestly with the brutality and horror of war, it made for sobering reading.

Nevertheless, I felt it was necessary reading if I hoped to understand anything about the country I would be living in from February through June.

Among the sites I felt we needed to visit during these months in Korea are those related to the Korean War. So on a day in March at the end of a long visit to the Busan Museum, we walked over to the United Nations Memorial Cemetery, which lies adjacent to the Museum and the Busan Culture Center.

We arrived ten minutes before the cemetery was set to close. The guard, a Korean United Nations soldier, was not happy to see us, but he let us in and even reopened the memorabilia room so we could have a quick look. We could tell two things from our short visit: that the cemetery was well worth a longer visit and that we needed to see it when the cherry blossoms were in bloom.

So, a week ago, in the midst of cherry blossom season, we returned to the cemetery. We walked along the long rows of graves, read the various memorials and stones, mourned the dead, and pondered the evil that draws us into armed conflict over and over and over.

I am not given to expressions of patriotism and I do not imagine war solves any problems permanently, but I must say that I was moved by our visit.

We spent considerable time walking around the grounds, noting the contributions of various countries, and reading names. It is solemn business. The names of more than forty thousand UN soldiers, thirty-six thousand of them Americans, carved on black stone panels will make you think you knew these people. You begin to see yourself behind the names.

After our tour was finished we discovered there was to be a flag raising ceremony that afternoon, so we decided to hang around. We went back to the cafeteria at the Museum and ordered waffles, the closest thing we could find to sandwiches. After ordering I saw a bottle of what looked like hand sanitizer, so I pumped a healthy glob onto my hand. "Ah," the man at the counter said, "sugar!"

After that little misunderstanding, we ate our waffles and went back to the cemetery.

When the UN soldiers had marched in and the military band began to play, I noticed how young all these soldiers looked. Tall, strong, and well trained, but all boys. All about the ages of the dead soldiers in the plots around us.

That afternoon's representative country was Canada, so we stood with the others and listened to the band play O Canada while the color guard raised the Canadian colors. We may have been the only people among the viewers who recognized O Canada, even if our knowledge comes primarily from hockey games.

At ceremony's end, the band stood in their red uniforms while various groups, some very old and others very young, stood with them for pictures. While we sat and pondered what we had seen, one little girl began sliding down the granite slab bordering the stairs where we sat.

We watched and laughed, and her father seemed pleased that I was taking her picture.

I am not entirely sure what it is we learn from cemeteries like this one. In closing his account of the Korean War, Halberstam notes that even wars we needed to fight, like this one, are filled with misjudgments, self-serving political decisions, and incomplete conclusions. Sixty years on, Korea remains divided and America has a permanent military presence here.

I am no closer than I had been in thinking of war as a solution to human problems.

Still, as we walked back to our life in Busan, I could not help considering how bleak life would have been for these welcoming people had we refused to help.

Busan Journal, Day 15

A Ramble & the Asian Flu

A week ago Friday, we decided to see a bit of the city we had not visited before.

By request I brought my camera to photograph "ordinary" scenes along the route of our afternoon walk so that I could let everyone see what I see along the way.

We decided to take our first walk along the Oncheoncheon, a stream that flows out of the mountains to the north and joins the Suyeonggang, a river that empties into the sea. We have seen the paths many times from the elevated train and from street level.

To get to the paths we headed first for the subway station, which near us is actually an elevated train. The Pusan National University Station is built over the stream bed. In fact, a good bit of the elevated tracks runs on pillars and follows the course of the stream. In this telescoped photo, the subway station is the long horizontal building in the center.

The long view from our balcony shows the distance we have to walk to get to the subway station. It takes 20 minutes down and 30 minutes to walk back.

This sunrise view from our balcony shows the station in the lower middle. The view straight down, the entry area to our hi-rise, looks like a movie still.

From our apartment we walk down through campus to the gate. These scenes show the campus at various points on our usual route. The building with the round solar panels at the top of this next picture is where we live.

From the gate it is a straight walk of six blocks to the subway. A look back at the front gates to the university shows campus buildings and the hillside behind it. Our rooms are at the top of the campus.

At one time, I am told, there were actual gates across the road, but no longer.

Unlike London and New York, where pedestrians dart across the street during gaps in the traffic, nearly everyone in Busan waits respectfully at crosswalks until the green man shows up. I lingered in several intersections to get action shots, much to the irritation of my companion pedestrian.

Yes, here I am on one of the stone bridges. The stream is about a foot deep.

The story of the river walk is that it is actually a very creative use of space. In addition to the walking and bicycle lanes, which are always busy, the river area has a host of exercise opportunities such as basketball hoops, badminton courts, and skating ovals. Here, urbanites, frequently seniors, make vigorous use of sturdy exercise and flexibility apparatus. It is brilliant use of otherwise difficult space, especially in areas of the city where parks are not available.

Friday evening, after maybe four hours on the river walk and dozens of pictures, I tried to put together my blog, only to find I was unhappy with the quality of the color in the photographs. OK, I know -- that is hard to figure given my photography skill. But, yes, I thought the pictures were fairly colorless, disappointing.

At that point I was also feeling what I thought were the effects of the sun, so I decided to return to the project in the morning. But on Saturday I felt worse and clearly it was not exposure to the sun I was suffering from.

By Sunday I was sleeping around the clock.

I tell you all this as a way of saying that the week slipped by quickly, first in sleeping and then in recovering. That, I hope, is the last of bad the news.

The good news is that I did not take any pictures.