Well, not really: there are tons of great things about Chuseok:
The mountain I'm going to climb later today, the food, the finally-cooling-down weather, the food, the good times (especially if you've been invited to a Korean family's chuseok gathering), and the food... but one little joy that I haven't mentioned yet is...
I may never have told you the story of the most touching gesture I had from a friend on Chuseok: in my first year, a buddy spent the whole day of Chuseok with me, down at Gyeongbok Palace and Namsangol Folk Village, because he couldn't imagine someone being alone on Chuseok day. I was really touched by that.
This year, I'm with Wifeoseyo and her awesome family. We drank some seriously classy Ballantine's whisky: me, my pop and brother-in-law, and have had a great old time bopping around Daegu.
This evening, Wifeoseyo got online and saw news reports that basically, Seoul is currently completely under water.
So from a sensible person (say, wifeoseyo)'s perspective, looks like I got out of town just...in...time.
From a blogger's perspective, holy crap I'm missing out on the greatest blog photo essay this year!!! And that's why bloggers are different from ordinary people. Sensible people say "I'm not doing that. That's buttflapping crazy!" Bloggers say "I'm in. Just let me get my camera."
The mad blogger in me wishes I was there, so I could put on my bathing suit, strap on some water wings, put my camera in a dicapac (got one for the honeymoon with coral) and go out exploring Seoul underwater... hoping I didn't get washed out to the Han River, like my buddy Joe almost did.
If you have a floody Seoul story, share it in the comments.
In case you doubted my word about Spam for Chuseok before, here's an oldy but goldy blog post about it: yeah.
And in case you didn't have any Chuseok plans yet, and because you're hooped for getting out of town now, in case you're stuck in seoul, because tickets have been sold out for about seven weeks already, as another expat whose gotten stuck in Seoul before on Chuseok, when you can't be sure ANYTHING will be open, let me give you some tips about the best things to do on Chuseok:
1. Go to Namsangeol Folk Village. This is the Folk Village right near Korea House, right near Chungmuro Station, right near the bottom of Namsan (Nam Mountain) right near downtown Seoul. Every chuseok they have tons of stuff to see - performances on the stage, activities like making songpyeon or your own paper-mache hanbok doll, and the like. There's lots to do, and a lot of demonstrations of traditional Korean arts. The park isn't too big, and the stage area has a lot of seating, but it might help to reserve a seat: a few times I've gone and had standing room only.
2. Climb mountains. Particularly the busy ones.
One of the genius things about Seoul, that's never promoted in the Hi Seoul promotional materials (stupidly) is that there are about twenty great mountain hikes, ranging from "I could do this with my step-mother" to "better bring your climbing gear" in difficulty, all within reach by the Seoul Subway and Bus System. Public transportation still runs on Chuseok, as do the odd taxi, so you can definitely get there, and they're mountain trails: it's hard to close those, isn't it?
Head up to the north end of the #4 Subway line, choose a peak, and strike out for it, get up to Uijeongbu and do likewise; check out this list of mountains in Seoul, or this one, or this one. Or do Bukhansan, which holds the guinness world record for busiest mountain, meaning it's the one mountain in the world where climbing it will stress you out, or the one mountain you SHOULD climb if you like being around crowds. Yes. It's the COEX of Mountains. But on Chuseok, there will be fewer people up there than any other day, because most folks are with their families. So take the chance... and September to October are PERFECT climbing weather in Korea. And Koreans are seriously NEVER more pleasant than when they're on the mountain - it's one of the sweetest aspects to the culture you'll ever find.
There's an amazing conversation going on, that's stretched across three blogs so far, about the archetypal, unbelievably fraught white male/Korean female relationship:
is it the ultimate realization of internalized colonialism, or is it simply a choice between two human beings? This topic comes back again and again, probably with each new wave of people making these same choices, and it's classic troll-bait... so be aware I'll be monitoring the comments carefully on this one.
Anyway, go read James at The Grand Narrative, who, like me, is a white dude married to a Korean woman. James wrote a post titled "Real and Presumed Causes of Racism Against Interracial Couples in Korea," that's highly worth reading in its entirety. In it, James responds to a comment on "Noona's Blog" (Are Koreans a Homogenous People?) by a fella named Jake, from a website called "Asian Male Revolutions" which challenges the image of the asian male as it has been presented in the Western media (here's another article about that from "IamKoream," one of my favorite websites for and by Korean Americans). You see, in response to Noona's question whether Koreans are homogenous, Jake suggests that (most? all?) white male-Korea/Asian female dating boils down to unconscious lapsing into colonial power dynamics. James at The Grand Narrative has a message for Jake, from Mrs. Grand Narrative:
(in short: -image stolen from James' blog)
Then, I'm No Picasso, which is probably my favorite K-blog that I've found in the last year, weighs in with her own view on the thing, in a portrait of purest hypocrisy on the part of a certain fella she once talked with. Her post is titled "Hello, I'm a Woman" and is also worth reading in its entirety.
James' blog continues to get more interesting and more relevant as he tackles topics like this.
Now, I'm no trained sociologist, but I find this discussion interesting, if only because I happen to have married a Korean woman myself. And she's awesome.
I mostly side with James, that it's patronizing, sexist, and just insulting to imply that Korean women have no agency of their own in choosing whom they date and marry: Wifeoseyo didn't pick me because I looked like a superhero, and I didn't pick her because she lowered her eyelids and acted submissive. In fact, the 'submissive' act is as much a turn-off for me as that aegyo crap, which some people like, but I don't. (The Joshing Gnome's highly worthwhile piece on Aegyo-part 1)
This funny YouTube video looks at the issue of Asian women and white guys, which is pretty good: the doofus who plays the white dude is a real doofus... but after reading I'm No Picasso's post, I can't help but notice the video's almost entirely male.
However, I'll give I'm No Picasso the final word, with this setup:
While I agree with nearly all of the points in theory that Jake has made, and I see where it all is coming from, the point is, categorizing people's relationships with other people based on race is not okay. It's not okay from one end, and it's not okay from the other. And I find it disturbing that it seems this "revolution" in the Asian male's image of himself has to come at the cost of feminsim, in his view.
and then this absolute coup de grace:
Welcome to our world, Jake. Thanks for being part of the problem. So long as you promote the idea that you have the right to categorize the choices that women make in regards to the race of the person they choose to love, and why they are making those choices, you will only be enforcing what it is you are supposedly taking a stand against. This is not a male issue -- you don't get to have all the control.
I keep reading and hearing these pontifications on why the birthrate is so low in Korea.
The funny thing is, I've never seen those pontifications by government ministers and policy makers (mostly male) alongside results of surveys actually ASKING women why they don't want to have kids, or asking them, "If this happened, would you think about having more babies?" (this being things like, government funded daycares, legally binding work end-times, legal maternity leaves protected with teeth, etc.)
And the question is, is the government really that clueless about women's issues, and why on earth aren't they asking the people actually affected by their policy decisions (women, newlyweds, young families). Another case in point: this obscenely wrong-headed attempt to improve the birth-rate by cracking down on doctors who perform abortions (covered at length and with outrage by the Metropolitician, Korea, No Place for Young Women, but about Whom Policy Is Decided by Old Men)
Analogy:
Cracking down on abortion to solve the low birthrate problem is like raising the downtown speed limits to fix Kangnam's rush-hour traffic gridlock.
Readers: correct me if I'm wrong. Are there surveys of Korean women's views on childbirth that are simply being disregarded? Where can I find and read them? Links in the comments if you know of one.
