National War Museum

There is something to say about a country and its militarism when the National War Museum/Memorial is about fifty times larger than its National Art Museum. Yesterday I spent the morning and early afternoon walking around this huge museum, which traces the history of Korea and its various wars/invasions starting from the BC's. It felt like any conflict Korea has ever been involved in was represented in the museum which spanned two massive wings and three floors. A huge majority of the exhibit space was devoted to the Japanese occupation and the Korean War. I felt the information was fairly accurately presented, at least the English translations, and the exhibits were all well created. There were the video installations, artifacts, and this strange Star Wars-esque presentation of battles, where holographic characters come on a screen and bad voice acting accompanies them. They also had a replica of admiral Yi's famous turtle ships.

Perhaps the most powerful room was the memorial hall, a circular room with a fountain in the middle producing the calming sound of running water. As you look up the ceiling slowly comes to a point and is entirely black. Mid-way up the ceiling is a painting on the walls, a redish color with jagged points. I couldn't tell what the purpose was but standing at the bottom and looking up it felt like purgatory. I get the feeling that was probably not the intended effect but that is now I felt.

Outside and to the West of the museum was a giant garden where everything from military airplanes to tanks to what amounted to big guns stood. It was a little unnerving to see little children running around and climbing on all of them knowing that in fifteen years they had a good chance of operating them. There also stood a massive statue devoted towards reunification, I liked the small slit that symbolized the separation but overall it looked a little too phallic for my taste. My favorite however was one called "Brothers in Arms" sadly my finger got caught in the camera frame.

Class Registration!!

I just finished class registration!! A process that always feels like it should be more painful than it actually is. So, these are the classes I am currently taking:

1) Understanding Contemporary Korean Popular Culture and Korean Culture Wave
2) Modern Korean Society and Culture
3) Modern Korean History
4) Introduction to Korean Philosophy

However I just added Korean Language to see what it would look like in my schedule and realized they count that class at six credits, the rest are all are three. Meaning I might be taking 18 credits unless I drop one of the classes. 18 just seems like a lot considering I'm use to my usual 4.5.

I also interestingly enough ran into some people who are also studying abroad at Yonsei, (yah for using computers in the common room where you can awkwardly watch what other people are doing on their computer screens). They both seem very nice and it is good to know that there are some other people living here from the same program, hopefully we'll get a chance to hang out more in the next week. That's about all, just a quick update.

The Hostel Days

Upon arrive back to Seoul I spent the first night at a friend's apartment and the next day moved into the International Youth Hostel. Again I was expecting a sketchy broken down facility but was pleasently surpirsed at the facility. They had clean towels ever day, a nice shower, and air conditioned rooms. The other roommates were also all friendly and nice. Amazingly even though we all came from different countries (France, Canada, Indonesia, Switzerland and Japan) the common language between all of us was English. I guess this is just another example of American globalization, but it did make things easier to communicate between roommates.

The days at the hostel felt like they flew by. The first night I said good-bye to Chikae and Kana as they left for China and Japan. It was a little sad, especially because I knew I would probably not see Kana again, but I knew that Chikae and I would meet back up at Wes.

The next day, and subsequent five, it rained :(. I still went to Olympic Park and between showers got a chance to walk around. The park was originally constructed during the 1987 (yeah the year I was born) for the Olympics. It has about five huge stadiums for everything from cycling to tennis. I thought it was funny that the Koreans still use the cycling stadium but now bet on who will win the races, I guess there form of horse racing. The park itself was beautiful and well landscaped. Besides the stadiums the park has two museums both of which I visited. The first I went to was the Olympic Museum which highlights the Seoul Olympics. I am a bit of a sucker for anything based on the Olympics and when they go on find myself watching it twenty-four seven. Still the museum was a little lackluster. They had various donated sporting equipment and statues of Olympic champions. Still, it was fairly small and I guess you really can't make the Olympics too interesting after the fact, beyond reporting on how each country and did and showing some small highlights. The visit ended in a virtual reality ride that felt more random than relevant. You sat in a chair that moved and watched a massive screen in front of you, very Disney. However the show transported you to scenes of ancient Greece and this virtual museum (that actually had nothing on display but did have plenty of fancy lights and special effects).

The second museum was a contemporary art gallery. The exhibit at the time was called X-Neuvou Pop and, as the name suggests was all new pop art. The exhibit was fairly brief but interesting. Still the pieces lacked something that really struck an emotion. My favorite piece was a room where about twelve plastic child-size pink penguins and green bears who stood staring into the distance. It was extremely cute. However the most interesting park of the museum was the building itself. It was very modern in architecture and had huge windows that opened into the green of the park. These windows then flooded the gallery with natural light that helped to highlight some of the work.

Olympic Park is also famous for its 200 some sculptures. My guidebook said that almost none of them made much sense but they looked interesting none the less. My favorite was this one:

When I visited the Park there also was a video game festival/competition. I got a program and decided to check out a music festival. The concert opened with a video game fashion show. The fashions can best be described as very videogame-ish? A lot of swords and bows and arrows and leather costumes. However, one model did have the most amazing abs I have ever seen. Again, much like the Busan concert there were the pop acts but this time there was also a hip-hop act. I knew something was wrong when I first saw the "preppy" appearance and when they started "rapping" (if you can call it that) I couldn't help but laugh. The English lyrics were horrible, (yo you are so beautiful, so just do me do...blah) and the whole sound was just off. I left after that performance as another hip-hop group was stepping out on stage. I went to the next venue where there was a dancing video game competition. The people on stage were amazing and didn't seem to miss any of the trillion of steps. They also managed to throw in some fancy footwork dance moves and I was blown away.

I also got a chance to go to the National Art Museum during this time. The building was oddly stuck in the middle of government buildings but still stood out because of its modern look. I was shocked that the tickets for the main gallery/exhibit were ten thousand won (the most expensive museum ticket I've seen yet). That exhibit was of Monet and since I've seen a lot of Monet already I decided to pass and purchase tickets for the cheaper but smaller gallery. The exhibit title was Text in Bodyscape and had a general theme surrounding the human body and the ideas of memory, movement, and feeling. It is a bit of difficult concept to explain but the pieces did all relate nicely to what the theme was. I found one piece especially powerful, a grid of pictures of Iraqi children but sporadically inter-placed were those of the dead. An interesting way to represent the war and its impact on the human bodily experience.

The last major point of interest during this time was a dance that I went to with Jinny, who is now in Korea!! The dance was about the Korean Comfort Women and was extremely powerful. The dance was very modern in both concept story and dance style. Some of the most memorable scenes were the opening where the primary dance slowly moved in a way where you could tell it was an act of remembrance while a group of four other women very slowly advance towards the audience with expressions of hurt and anger. Also the dance represented the stages of grief and remembrance quite well, with scenes of the act of rape and the act of todays protest especially well. Jinny and I are seriously thinking about try to transplant the dance to Wesleyan and I think it would be a good activity for AREA to get involved in.

These were the major sights that I saw during this time. During the rest of time I hung out with a few friends who were still here from Yonsei. I also had another meeting with the Come Together glbt group.

I cannot believe that I only have another week before classes at Yonsei start back up again. It is crazy to think that I have been in Korea for almost two months now. The time has simply flown by.

Picture Time!!

National park: (sorry for the little formatting)

The Adventure Around Korea

Now, for the ‘slightly’ more elaborate version of everything:

The Summer Program at Yonsei ended with no great blow out blast. It was a very quick closing graduation with no grand pomp. It felt a little strange afterward as everyone was leaving, crying and saying there good-byes but Chikae, Kana and I knew we would stay together for another week or so. We ate our last meal with Maki and Joey at our regular restaurant and said good-byes. Afterwards we went back to the dorms and all rushed to pack everything up because the next day was the start of our big adventure.

The next day I put some of my stuff in a friend’s apartment on what could have been the hottest day in Korea. I then met up with Chikae at the bus station and we headed to our first destination, starting our nine day adventure around Korea, Gangneung. We arrived late at night so it was good thing we made reservations at a resort about twenty miles away from the town. The resort operates mainly as a ski resort so the prices were reduced yet it was still amazingly nice and the service great. It definitely was the nicest place that we stayed during our trip. Kana unfortunately could not come with us initially because she was feeling ill and wanted to stay in Seoul to get better.

After a pleasant nights rest Chikae and I boarded a bus and headed to a national park in a city about three hours away. However we quickly found out that buses never follow schedule and always take a good hour longer than they should. So we finally (after about two bus transfers) we arrived at the park. Our first major sight seeing adventure was a hike into the mountains to see some waterfalls. The hike was not strenuous and when we reached the top we were greeted with the sight of a 30 ft waterfall and a cool pool of water perfect for weary feet. We wanted to spend more time but needed to meet Kana and start the long bus journey so we headed back to the resort in the early evening.

Kana came in the late evening and our trio was complete. We headed out the next day towards the middle of Korea to the town where our next hostel/boarding was located. But before we got there we stopped in a town famous for its saunas, and the sauna experience is one that I will not easily forget. This being my first time in the saunas I was not exactly sure what I was getting myself into. It pretty much was a massive pool where about fifty some older naked Korean men sat sweating. Okay, in all fairness it was not bad as it sounds but it definitely was a shock to see the casualness of the naked bodies moving around (I thought Korea was suppose to be a conservative country). The water was certainly hot and nice for a while and thankfully they had a cool bath once it became too much. I was also amazed at the number of other things they had in sauna which included, a wood sauna, a haircut/shaving palor, a sleeping room, a wash/shower room, and a service bar. It felt like a hotel lobby at sometimes, just one where no one wears any clothes.

After the sauna we headed towards the youth hostel which was located in what felt like the middle of nowhere. Surprisingly it was quite nice with a large room, a computer with internet in the room, and a nice woman who opened her closed restaurant to give us a free dinner. We were very impressed and thought the place didn’t really seem like a youth hostel except for the “out in the middle of no where” location.

We all were feeling a bit lazy after the constant traveling so we got a late start to the day, finally boarding another bus to a town called Dangyang. Right outside of the town there are some famous limestone caves that we explored. It felt a little creepy knowing you were stuck in a mountain and the cave path was definitely made by Koreans for Koreas as fat Americans would never make it through the narrow passage ways. The caves were quite beautiful and inside the temperature dropped a good 20 degrees so it was a relief from the Korean heat and humidity. After the caves we went around the town and saw two of the eight wonders of Dangyang. One was a pagoda on an island in a river and the other was a natural stone bridge. Even though we wanted to see the other six we had to rush back to catch the next bus back to our hostel.

We left our cosy hostel and also left Kana as she was beginning to feel bad again. She took a bus back to Seoul while Chikae and I traveled down to Busan and where we had made reservations at a hotel borderline motel. However, before we went to the hotel we checked out a much sketchier motel. The owner was very insistent that we stay and I had to take my bags away from him before he started carrying them up to the room. After seeing the rooms with the dangling light we knew it was best just to stay at the better hotel.

Busan is an interesting city with a definite different feel from Seoul. The subways are efficient yet often give off this ominous feeling as they are frequently are empty. The city also can be a mismosh of brandnames and Korean family stores. Still the people were quite amiable and when we said we were Americans would instantly fall in love with us helping us find whatever we needed. Case in point we were trying to find a restaurant that the guidebook said was owned by a former North Korean, yet when we arrived at the supposed location it was no where in sight. We asked a convenience store clerk and before we knew it all the other customers (a total of three) had come over and were trying to help out. Eventually some one said that the place had closed but they could take us to a different restaurant and we were led to a very nice place where we ate kalbi.

In Busan we visited an amazing temple up in the mountains. The views from the temple of the sky, mountains and nature were beautiful, as the temple buildings conveniently covered the Busan skyline. The temple was also full of monks walking and doing their daily business. I guess from the pamphlet the temple allowed you to do a temple stay for two or three days and live like the monks do (which requires a 3 am wake up call). The temples were also beautiful but no pictures were permitted inside. After the temple Chikae and I split up. I ended up going to this outdoor concert, part of the Busan International Sea Festival. The music and stage performance was, for lack of a better word very Korean. They had the female vocalist who sang her sad melancholic love song and then an upbeat Korean pop song; the male vocalist sang the happy go lucky pop song and the American song; and the fireworks going off over the stage. The banal show was enhanced however by the sea which provided a very nice backdrop for the concert.

On our last day in Busan I went to the beach and swam in the Pacific Ocean, or more specifically the East Sea (or the Sea of Japan). The water was freezing but still the Koreans were out in mass. After a short time I was shivering and wondering how in the world the Koreans can swim in their intertube floats for hours on end. It wasn’t the best day for the beach either because there was a constant light drizzle. Afterwards I headed back to the hotel and Chikae and I went out to check out the Busan nightlife, but ended up just chatting at a bar til the early morning. It was nice way to end the adventure around Korea. The next day we took a bus back to Seoul, which amazingly only took four some hours when the bus to Busan (which left from a location closer to Busan) took the same amount of time. Um…it is getting late so here I think I am going to end the post and continue updating about my adventures in Seoul at a later date.

Ahhh Seoul Again!

So, I definitely need to write quite possibly the longest blog post ever in order to update everyone on what has occurred these past weeks. The extremely short synopsis goes as follows: End of the Yonsei Summer Special Program, traveled around Korea (East coast, Central, South), arrived back in Seoul and moved into a hostel, went sight seeing in Seoul, and now am in the Beewon boardinghouse!! Yeah!! And for those worried yes I am still alive ;).