Photoseyo: Children's Day Weekend

Soundtrack time: hit play and start reading. Possibly the best version, of possibly my favourite song ever.

One, by U2, live, with orchestra, in Sarajevo (I think -- these online versions can be inaccurate).


A collection of pictures of Korea from 1966, on Flickr: hat tip to the Marmot's hole (see sidebar for link)

May 3rd to 5th was Children's Day Weekend: Children's Day is a holiday for kids, like Grandparents' day, Father's day or Mother's day in Canada, except without as much of the "It's just a hallmark holiday" cynicism (which is reserved more for Valentine's Day (Feb 14th: girls give chocolate to guys), White Day (March 14th: guys give chocolate to girls), Jajangmyeon Day, or Black Day (April 14th: single people eat black sauce noodles, wear black, and feel sorry for themselves for being single), and, goofiest and most cynical of all: 11/11's Pepero Day. Girlfriendoseyo will be very busy over the next month, but she and I took the chance to enjoy the hell out of this weekend.

We went to a restaurant called "Mad For Garlic" near Gwanghwamun. (There are others, but that's where we went). They have an interesting touch for decorating their place: they took iron frames and hung wine glasses from them, so that the glasses catch the light,

And cast really interesting shadows on the walls.
Then, we went to Kyunghee Palace, for the opening of the Spring Hi Seoul Festival. Jung Myeonghoon, Korea's most famous maestro, held a free, outdoor concert. I went with Girlfriendoseyo, we lucked into spots in the seating section, and had a prime view of the show. It was great.

A lot of people came.

Then, on Sunday, we met up again kind of early, for the ancestral rites in Jongmyo, shrine for the ancient kings of Korea, and UNESCO world heritage site: There was a ritual for the minor kings and major princes in the secondary shrine at 9:30am, and then the same ritual for the major kings in the primary shrine at 1:00. We caught the last half of the early one, and the first half of the later one, and figured that'd do the trick: there's only so much solemn "old man in black suit marches up stairs and sets a dish on a table while another old man in a black suit and a cool hat chants" one can handle, when sitting on a big, flat rock with legs folded.


And as you can see, there were a lot of men dressed in black to get through.
While the Korean orchestra (in red) played, and the dancers (in purple, below) moved from one pose to another in unison.


However, it was a once-a-year event, at one of Korea's most important heritage sites, so a lot of people came out anyway:
Here are those purple dancers:

We stumbled across their practice after the 9:30am show finished, as they prepared for the 1:00 performance.They cycled through about six poses, in various combinations. A lot.




They were all young: Girlfriendoseyo guessed that they were first year-history majors from some university.

Me doing yoga stretches after an hour of sitting on rocks, watching the whole ritual.
Me sitting on rocks for an hour.
The one with the book was the one chanting.
Those "Ishii-ii" (Girlfriendoseyo told me that's what they're called) in black just came out of the woodworks at the end of the ancestral ritual. I have no idea how they all got in there. I think there was a duplication machine in the back.


All lined up, waiting for their turn to march solemnly and slowly up steps and into a chamber, take off the lid of one pot, and then stand inside the chamber until the end of the ancestral ceremony.
Accidentally took the picture of the bum of the guy in front of me. Not quite as impressive as the dudes in black Hanbok.
I don't have a picture, but during the afternoon ceremony, there was a welcome speech by the chair of some heritage society, and then an old man came up and said a few words. He was introduced as the dynastic heir to the Choseon throne -- that is, if Korea were still a monarchy, he'd have been the king. I bet he's choked about that.

After we'd seen enough chanting and ceremonial table-setting (and the kids near us were getting noisy), we went over the bridge from Jongmyo into Chang-gyeong-gung, a smaller palace, but maybe the prettiest one in downtown Seoul (for my dollar).

They were staging, I believe, the King's birthday ceremonial rites, which involved brighter colours and cooler dancing than the rites for dead kings.



Guess, by picture quality, which picture was on my cameraphone, and which was on Girlfriendoseyo's camera. . .

Then we strolled the grounds of Chang-gyeong palace, which were ablaze with flowers, and drifting with cottonwood fuzzy-floaties that caught the sun as they sailed down toward the lake.
Layers of flowers.
It was a good day for couples. If the guy's shirt were a little more purple, he could have blended into the bushes behind him.
We were there with Danielle and her friend Myung-shin, and wandered past a "do not enter" sign behind the greenhouse,
where Dani showed us her unexpected, nigh-encyclopedic knowledge of plant life.

She pointed out a lot of cool flowers and stuff, and taught me many things I've forgotten now. She kept pointing out different plants and going, "You can eat that one. Don't eat that one. This one's safe, but it tastes bad, because it's part of the mustard family." Sometimes she'd take a bite of a leaf or something, just to prove it.


Girlfriendoseyo liked the mushrooms. There were a bunch scattered about, but not in a circle shape,
so we didn't quite get a full-fledged fairy-ring like this one:
However, girlfriendoseyo DID manage to snap this photo:
(just kidding.)
That's A Fairy Ring, painting by Walter Jenks Morgan, from victorianweb.org -- more about Fairy Rings (circles of mushrooms where fairies dance, and from where mortals can be trapped, made invisible, cursed, or whisked into Fairyland,) here.

Here's a picture of me, from GFoseyo's cameral. Rocking the Korean style hanbok pants. (Far and away the most comfortable pants I own. Almost more comfortable than wearing none.)More of Changgyeong-palace grounds. Girlfriendoseyo thinks I have a good photographer's eye, but I think she acquits herself well here: (I believe that's an acacia below: they smell really good right now).
We met Dani and Myung-shin at the top of the stairs you can see beside the big-ol' tree.
Dani fed ducks. She could have thrown that into the water and seen a swarm of carp and giant goldfish, but she didn't.
I wish you could see the cottonwood drifting in this picture, but my camera just doesn't have the juice to catch them.
Everybody had their cameras out.
More of Girlfriendoseyo's photography:Then, after stomping around there for a while, we went to Daehangno and saw a movie and rested, just enough to have energy again to meet Matt and Heyjin on Sunday night for dinner. We met in jongno, and caught some of the Jogyesa Lantern Festival Parade going through the downtown. You may remember my long, gushing, joyous post on last year's lantern festival, as one of the happiest posts I've ever written.

One picture of the parade:

Last year's post mentioned Tapgol Park strung with lanterns, floating in the dark, but none of those pictures turned out, so here's a second try:
Tapgol during the day:
With the light sensitivity a little higher, you can see the layout of the park a bit. This is how it looked:But this is closer to how it felt.Otherworldly. So beautiful in there.
Out of focus, it looks like some kind of a visitation. . . So that was Saturday and Sunday. On Monday, the Viking, the Vikette, Girlfriendoseyo and I went up to Surak mountain, in my old neighbourhood:

When Matt and I worked together, it was startling how often we wore, purely by coincidence, the same colour shirt. (We both had sage green, burgundy, and light blue button-downs, and not much else, so after the "collared shirts" rule came into effect at POLY, it was just a matter of percentages, really.)

It happened again: green shorts, black shirts, beige adventure hats, totally coincidental.
good if you get separated, though: "Excuse me? Have you seen another foreigner who looks JUST LIKE ME?"

The Viking has mellowed over time, and took more frequent breaks than the day he almost killed me on Jirisan.

The sun was catching these flowering trees so beautifully. . . wish the pics turned out better. You'll just have to come to Korea next May and climb a mountain with me if you want to see what it's really like.



Under that very tree, were some of the pink blossoms scattered over the brown leaves from last fall.The easier pace helped Girlfriendoseyo immeasurably: this was the first time she made it to a mountain's peak since we met, and maybe much longer than that -- we'd gotten as far as a few ridgelines before, together, but never quite reached a mountaintop.Vikette and Girlfriendoseyo get along wonderfully. My two favourite women in Korea, and definitely in the top. . . twenty. . . worldwide. (hee hee hee)

At the peak. We had a picnic that has joined the ranks of my favourite mountain moments ever.
The list also includes:
Feeding the bird at chiak mountain.
Skinny-dipping in a cold pool on Jiri Mountain (whilst drenched in sweat) [sorry. no pictures of that one. Suckas!]

Matt praising a five-year-old girl who'd made it to the peak of Buramsan, in Korean, and having her grin, wiggle, glow, and answer, "I love you" in Korean, to him.

Hiking down Suraksan in the twilight with Viking and Vikette, seeing the lights of Nowon-gu as we tried to avoid roots on the darkening trail.

Heyjin trying to feed squirrels near the peak of Sapyesan last Chusok.

The climbers on Jiri Mountain who hiked with us for a while on the way down, and then shared their lunch with us (we were woefully underprepared for the trip back down, and they had a gas cooker and ramen).

The best Bibibmbap I've eaten in my life, at the bottom of Chiak Mountain.

Pulling out the overpriced bottle of Makkgeolli at the top of Geumgangsan in North Korea, and sharing it with a few friends and strangers, just so I could say I drank Makkgeolli on a mountaintop in North Korea.

Geumgangsan: from visitkorea.org


Good times, dear readers, good times. You are reading the words of a seriously, joy-wacky dude.

Korea Herald is trash. Don't even bring the weiguk teachers into something like this.

Sorry to fire this one off so hastily, but I'm right pissed.

2 reasons you should cancel your Korea Herald subscription and sign up to the International Herald Tribune instead:

1. Installment 34 in the "Korean Wave, Even Where it Doesn't Exist" series: "No Wave, just a Korean breeze in Poland". . . didn't show up on the KH Online until a few days after it was published, it seems, placing it behind the "special members only access" filter, so that I can't bring its text onto my blog and mock it (which I've decided will be an ongoing series here, until the hallyu self-congratulation-in-the-dark stops Today's self-aggrandizement: Mongolia!).


2. Taking any damn opportunity to toss in a swipe at Foreign English Teachers in Korea. The last paragraph of this article brings English Teachers into a story that has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with foreign English teachers. Adding wanton swipes at scapegoats and easy targets does not qualify as journalism. Propaganda, maybe. Offensive, definitely. Garbage, dear readers. Just garbage.

Go ahead and read it: reprinted here, because the KHOnline doesn't allow me to link to its articles. It's pretty short.

Quite a story, too -- the way the news is presented it sounds like all 21 were banned in one day: were they on a tour together, trolling the underage sex shops of Asia? Were they all wearing "Pedophile Sex Tour" nametags handed out by their tour company when they got caught by immigration? Were there obscene pictures painted on the side of their tour-bus?

Korea Herald's write-up (author not given) on American pervs getting blocked from entering Korea:

Korea bans entry of 21 American pedophiles


Korea Thursday banned the entry of over 20 Americans convicted of sex crimes against minors as part of global efforts to crack down on pedophiles, the Ministry of Justice was quoted as saying by Yonhap News Agency.

The unprecedented entry ban on foreign pedophiles came after the ministry received profiles of the 21 Americans from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, it said.

"The information from the United States referred to those who have been convicted of assaulting or having sex with minors under 14 in the U.S. and have since traveled to Asia, particularly Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and Korea," said Park Young-joon, a prosecutor in charge of immigration regulations at the ministry.

Under its immigration law, the Korean government can ban the entry of foreigners when they are deemed to be prone to violating social order and disrupting customs in the country.

The move comes as the Korean government has been relaxing visa rules for foreign English teachers to meet the growing demand for native English speakers. But the loosening of rules has prompted concerns that some foreign teachers may be unqualified or involved in illegal activities.



2008.05.08

(my emphasis added)

I'm glad they were blocked and banned from entry. What a sordid lot.

But, were they applying to be English teachers? Because if not, by hauling English teachers into this article in the last paragraph, the Herald is taking a chance to stoke flames and race-bait, plying on anti-foreign sentiment and slinging some mud on English teachers, just because there's a lot of mud nearby to be slung.

Korea Times is guilty of this too. It seems like they're unable to write an article about Foreign English teachers in Korea without including the words "drug" "pedophile" "sex" "marijuana" or "unqualified".

When Cho SeungHui went on his killing spree at Virginia Tech, the last line of the article in the New York Times was not "Cho Seung-hui is from Korea; some Americans have noticed that Koreatowns are growing in nearly every American city." Just to foment suspicion of all Koreans, because of the actions of a few. There were no articles anywhere in the mainstream American media like this, after Korean Park Hanse got caught molesting American kids.

I'm getting really f***ing tired of this kind of piss-poor, racist, yellow journalism.

(PS: I'm typing this as my coworker is waiting on hold, phoning California to find out more information about the apostille he needs to have his criminal background check verified by Korean Immigration, due to TIGHTENING visa requirements for English teachers.)

Update: The Joongang Daily has made the link between these pedophiles and English teachers, too, but at least tried to connect it with the topic at hand. They did name-drop accused pedophile/former English teacher Christopher Paul Neil's name, but omitted the fact he was Canadian -- because that's inconvenient to their apparent purpose of stirring up fear and suspicion of American illegal teachers. They also made factual errors about the length of stay for Americans on a tourist visa (they say 90 days, it says 30 here).

Notable quotes from Joongang:

“U.S. citizens are eligible to stay in Korea for up to 90 days without a visa, and some work illegally as English teachers once they arrive as tourists,” Jin said.

“There was a case of a pedophile wanted by Interpol who had worked as an English teacher in Korea before being arrested in Thailand. Since parents are very concerned about such situations, we decided to ban the 21 Americans,” Jin said.
Jin was referring to last year’s arrest of Christopher Paul Neil by Thai authorities after an intensive manhunt. Last October, the 32-year-old suspect, named as Interpol’s most-wanted pedophile, was apprehended shortly after he fled Korea.

Neil was accused of sexually abusing more than a dozen boys in three countries, not including Korea, and putting pictures of the assaults on the Internet with his face blurred.

Although five of the blacklisted 21 had visited Korea as tourists, they had not worked as English teachers, according to Jin.


By Ser Myo-ja Staff Reporter [myoja@joongang.co.kr]

Repeat: they had not worked as English teachers -- so why the connection, other than good, old-fashioned, xenophobic muckraking?

From the Korea Times, which did better than its rivals, brushing on the connection in a way that has some credibility, without bringing up names (Chris Neil) or situations (relaxing immigration laws, which is a half-truth at best) that qualify as scare-mongering:

"We have frequently detected the arrival of native English speakers on tourist visas who illegally teach at language institutes. Some of them have even molested Korean children,'' Park [Young-joon, a prosecutor] said. "It was not possible to sort out foreigners likely to commit sex crimes against children in Korea due to a lack of information. Thanks to the list, however, American sex offenders will be denied access to Korean kids,'' Park said.

1. "Some of them have molested Korean children"? Care to provide a reference for that? To my knowledge, no foreign English teacher has ever been convicted of that charge (and given the way the media here blows up over any transgression by a foreign English teacher, and the fact I have ears, and can read, I would have heard of it. 2. "Lack of information"? Isn't that what the criminal background check system is for?

(Update: for the sake of full disclosure: Matt, from popular gusts, provided a link to one incidence of foreign teacher sex-crimes on the comment board. However, given the behaviour of Korea's own teachers, and the sheer number of foreign teachers in Korea, it remains one-sided and unfair to slur all English teachers by drawing connections where there are none. See bottom for more.
Update again: Also, LiveWithPassion has given us a wealth of links on my comment board, but all the articles are in Korean, so I can't vouch for them, but they're there.)

Fact is, Korea, no matter how many safeguards you set up, a Christopher Neil is eventually going to sneak through them, just like a Cho Seunghui or a Park Hanse is going to sneak through America's safeguards. Yeah, screen the incoming people. Do your best. Set up the criminal background check: I don't even have a problem with that. I'll jump through the hoops because I want to be here. I like it here (except when I read tripe like this).

But don't make people afraid of things they don't need to fear, by making specious connections, by painting an entire population by the acts of a deviant few whose acts are just as disgusting (probably more) to all the honest, hard-working, moral English teachers in Korea, as they are to the concerned mothers and the old men who give me dirty looks on the subway, because to them, my white-skin means I must be an uncertified, illegally working, pot-smoking pedophile, too, like that guy s/he read about in the paper.


(Update 2: thanks, Brian, for the link)
(Update 3: thanks, also, ROK Drop, for the link.)
(See bottom for more link: this guy mentions, also in the context of foreign teachers being slurred, all the sexual abuse by Korean teachers on students: skip to the paragraph that begins "Stop the bullshit argument that the root of the problem is cultural and foreigners have no sexual mores.")
(Also: Gusts of Popular Opinion's "History of Scapegoating English Teachers")
(Also: Brian from Jeollanam-do "Boycott Korea?" Gathers other such similar information.)

Buttershug. Shutterbug. Shubbertug. Gubbershut.

Soundtrack: hit play and start reading. Mark Ronson

Just -- one of the best covers ever, of one of Radiohead's best songs.

This paintbrush monument at the top of Insadong (near Anguk Station)
reminded me of a similar Korean ink-brush in another prominent Korean monument:(Pyongyang.)


Got a haircut. Go widow's peaks!

Creepy Batman. Gives me strange thoughts.

To spur on a little more of the old "Are they or aren't they?" speculation. . . And in anticipation of the upcoming Dark Knight movie, which is gonna flippin RAWK!

A goofy T-shirt caption from "I Got Two Shoes," a blogger who collects pictures of such things.

One last poster I liked from the Beijing Olympic Torch Fiasco in Seoul, courtesy of DanB.
You never know when a building you used to use to keep your bearings might get gutted out. Ditto for restaurants you enjoyed. (From Sunday morning.) Six weeks (remodeling), or six months (new building) from now, you'll never be able to guess it hadn't been there all along.
The Bikkis randomly harassing cute girls in downtown Jongno. If they're going to treat women that way in public, I'm going to take pictures of them, I've decided. And post them. Because women deserve to be treated better than being physically grabbed and hauled into a night club. And maybe somebody (who has more influence than some weenie blogger) will see this and get upset and start complaining with me.
She's trying to get him to let go of her hand (above) and he follows her, still clutching, as she tries to walk away. (below) I really wish one of them did this to a NYC girl travelling in Seoul, and got a faceful of mace, or a knee to the groin. Or got their, and their boss's ass sued to high high heaven.

American Apparel is a popular brand among emo kids in North America. Now, at the American Apparel store in Myeongdong, you can get American Apparel pet accessories, too: in case you have an emo dog.

You can dress him in this emo dog sweater:And walk him around, dressed like this:
For those who love to resemble their pets.
I walk by this restaurant sign every morning and evening, and dear readers, I don't think I've ever seen an uglier person choose to blow up their photo as a way of making their restaurant seem more enticing. I wonder what the thinking was behind that.
I ate there once, and the very same lady served us. It was adorable: the first thing she did when we came in was make the classic "Oh shit! I don't speak English" face that I see so often when I enter a bank, convenience store, restaurant or shop, and then she scrambled around with her stumpy walk, from table to table, asking her patrons if any of them spoke enough English to help her out in taking our order.

Then I ordered in Korean (not fluently, but she got it), and everybody smiled.

Pretty good seafood stew, too.

It says gallery; I think they also sell frames here. Don't ask how I know: just call it a hunch.

Some spring pictures from Kelly Namechangedforprivacy (I blogged about her before).

These flowers are fake. Not quite as nice.
Coming to Korea: Japan's Morning Musume. . . I think this is another of those band/collectives with WAY too many members.

Korea's answer to Morning Musume is Girls Generation.
I'm telling you, for a manufactured pop band, five is the perfect number: enough to appeal to everyone, not so many that people start losing track of who's who. Oh, for the good old days when it didn't take memory exercises to learn the names of all the members of one's favourite MTV-style manufactured pop sensation.

Last weekend was one of the greatest in the history of Roboseyo. . . took about a jillion pictures, of which I'll try to only put the best half-jillion or so on the blog. . . possibly in stages, to keep stalling, while I write the first of my sidebar poll essays. I've dug into "5 Things I'd Change" but it might be a while before I'm satisfied that it's up to my usual standards (sloppy and half-assed, full of typos and sometimes even structural errors that I correct as I reread after publishing) and ready to publish.

hehehe


Have a great day, dear readers!

The final showdown, and some slightly, but not really naughty pictures:

First question: what is Hilary proving by staying in the race any longer? I mean, other than screwing her rival and fracturing the party to vindicate her ego?

So in my Kimcheerleaders post, I mentioned the Stephen Colbert - Rain psuedo-feud, where ballot box stuffers stymied Stephen Colbert's coronation as the most influential person of 2007 (or was it 06?) He created a video that basically mocked Rain's style, to which Rain responded, "I saw your video. . . don't quit your day job" (Can't find the video. Sorry.) Colbert responded the best way he knows how: by challenging Rain to a dance-off.

Hilarity, of course, ensued.



Other stuff that made me laugh recently:

(soundtrack: Nat King Cole - hit play and start reading)

L-O-V-E

Girlfriendoseyo made these out of Vietnamese Noodle sweet and sour sauce.
A case of poor planning: Placing a motion-sensor-activated hand-dryer close enough to the urinal that it activates while a fella's trying to drain his main vein is a bad idea.

One ends up trying to find creative postures which allow for both accuracy and dry footwear.

Must have been cold in the mannequin factory that day.
Back to sexy soju ads. . . the post-coitality of this smile actually shocked me the first time I saw it. Her name, according to the lady in the restaurant, is Gu Ye-Seon (구 예선), but I can't confirm that.

Nerd humour:Wow.

For those who knew him: I don't know where I stumbled across this picture, but doesn't he look just like my old university buddy Jon?
The middle school girls in this window saw Girlfriendoseyo and me walking down an alley beside their building and did the usual middle-school-girls-with-their-friends thing: started shouting and caterwauling all the English they knew, "Hello! Nice to meet you! How are you! I love you! You handsome guy! Where are you from!" (hollering those phrases at any white person they see, quite frankly, reminds me of when I lived in Canada and I'd shout "MOO!" out the car window as we drove by a herd of cows on the highway). Then, when they noticed Girlfriendoseyo and I were holding hands, one of them started singing "L-O-V-E" (the song you're listening to right now) which must have been on a movie soundtrack here or something -- it's a well known song and even a popular ring-tone. Anyway, the ballyhoos kind of annoyed me, but the song made me laugh, so I took their picture while Girlfriendoseyo wanted to disappear around a corner as quickly as possible.

There they are:
Probably still shouting "Hello" "I love you" or "Where are you from" even as I take the picture.

Nice thought, but that wheelchair ramp needs work. (itaewon)
from Feetmanseoul, a fashion style you can ONLY find in Korea:

from XKCD, my favourite online comic:

Warning: if you don't like bad words, don't read past this point on the post. Sorry, Opa and Oma. Hoped you liked that comic. (bad word warning--my grandparents think putting swears on my blog is not like me, so I'll at least give them a heads' up. This time.)

A friend pointed out these trees
and told me that when she was in middle school, she called them "Fuck You Trees", because the way they grow makes it look like a raised middle finger. I was going to post a picture to help illustrate the similarity, but decided against it.


There's a restaurant behind City Hall called BMF, for Beer Meets Food.



The only problem is, anybody who enjoyed the movie "Pulp Fiction" knows that B.M.F. stands for the words embroidered into Jules' wallet in that movie: Every time I see the sign for the restaurant, which I pass on the way to Quiznos, one of my favourite lunch places, I giggle inside.

Still working on those serious posts.

take it easy, o blogosphere!