Korea Photos and Takeaways

My impressions from one week in Seoul, South Korea are probably only worth a few cents (or should I say won? ;), but here are some takeaways:

• Strong gender roles, pay inequality, despite most women now being college educated. Even fewer women in STEM than in the US.

• High job pressure, very competitive, the population is highly educated. Very long working hours, similar to Japan.

• Unification with North Korea is a big question; opinions differ as to whether this is desirable or even possible.

• There seems to be a big desire for international diversity among younger people (though perhaps being international myself creates selection bias?). Taiwan seems to be a place not so far away that is favored for this.

• Instagram/visual appearance big in Korea

• I've heard a surprising amount of US rap music in Korea!

Kimchi. Alex C-W's fave ;)

Korean BBQ! I had a hard time with Korean food in general, but Korean BBQ was always a winner!

Korean baseball game! Maybe even more spirited than in Tokyo! It was really interesting to me that a majority of the fans seemed to be young women!

Traditional Korean clothing. I arrived during Chuseok, Korea's mid-autumn harvest holiday. It's the biggest traditional holiday of the year and many people were wearing traditional Korean clothes.

Gyeongbokgung palace in Seoul, South Korea. Served as the royal seat of the Joseon dynasty, from roughly 1400-1600. Then abandoned for two centuries before being restored in the 19th century. Then under Japanese occupation (first half of the 20th century) it was destroyed again but has been undergoing restoration since the 1990s and is now a major tourist attraction in Seoul.

View over Seoul with the Han River that cuts through the middle of the city.

I don't remember the name of this famous Korean general (circa 1600 I think) who defeated many enemies, most notably the Japanese when his men were largely outnumbered.

Seoul has some beautiful temples.

Noryangjin seafood market. This place really felt foreign to me!

Noryangjin seafood market.

Noryangjin seafood market. Octopus :(((

Noryangjin seafood market. They keep the seafood alive and then kill it in front of you. Then you can take it upstairs to one of the restaurants where they cook it.

Jimjilbang!!!!!! Jimjilbangs are cheap spas where you can spend the night. They've got a 

Homeless people in Asian countries tend to express a lot of shame for their condition. I've seen many more bowed heads and silence from the homeless than in the US.

When taking pictures, making hearts with hands are a big thing! Also, I swear I heard them say "kimchi!" instead of "cheese!"

Advertisement for plastic surgery. Apparently plastic surgery is quite common in Korea.

Korean Francophilia on full display!

More Korean Francophilia!

K-Couples!

It doesn't take long in Korea before you start noticing them. They're everywhere. Whether it's chopstick-feeding each other kimchi at restaurants, going on cute "glamping" outings on the weekend, or nuzzling each other on the subway, couples are a thing in Korea. Considering that heterosexual couples are the status quo in most of the modern world, it's pretty impressive that Korean couples (or "K-couples", as I shall henceforth refer to them) are capable of making coupledome even more of a thing! Maybe it's that Koreans are so attractive (it's true) that they can't stay single, no matter how hard they try? Or perhaps it's that feminism hasn't really happened here, leading women to pretend they're weak to attract male attention? Whatever the cause may be, K-couples make other countrys' couples seem... single?

A Korean couple picknicking. Korea is very into couple-culture.

"A Twosome Place": To Koreans, a cafe. Especially with a partner. Like I said, Koreans are into couples. I didn't see any "Threesome Places"... That would go against Korean couple culture!

Koreans are pretty obsessed with pictures. This is one of many retail shops where you can get your pictures taken in a studio with stuffed animals and your... partner (cuz, y'know: couples).

Stuffed animals background right. Exemplary K-couple foreground left.

Another exemplary K-couple. Notice how the woman is leaning on the man for support even though she has two legs of her own.

K-couple man protecting K-couple woman in the wild.

Swingin' in Seoul!

Turns out Seoul, South Korea has become one of (if not THE) best places in the world for swing dance!!! Every night of the week in a different venue there is a PACKED dance room full of incredibly talented Korean Lindy Hoppers! I was BLOWN away by how many amazing swing dancers there were!! I had heard rumors about the Korean swing dance scene while in Japan, but I wasn't sure. I no longer have any doubt. Experiencing Seoul's swing scene firsthand was unquestionably one of the top highlights of my trip! The quantity was impressive--every swing place I went to was packed. But even more impressive was the quality of the dancers. I had to stop dancing so that I could focus on ogling at the rhythm, creativity and flair 

of the Korean dancers. It was deeply inspiring. I gotta get (a lot) better and then come back!!!

The DMZ and North Korea

I took a trip (popular with tourists) to the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ), which is an awfully ironic name for a place with so many military personnel. In fact, I saw a group of US and Canadian armed forces here in addition to the South Korean military. The DMZ was created after North Korea invaded South Korea shortly after their post WWII establishment in the mid-20th century to ensure separation between the countries. The US dropped a crap-ton of landmines in the DMZ (which is only 4 km/2.5 miles thick) so that people wouldn't try to cross. Sadly, a lot of animals have lost limbs/lives to this.

Probably the most important historical takeaway from my experience in the DMZ (and maybe I should have known this from high school history classes), is that the division between North and South Korea was originally artificial! It had absolutely nothing to do with Koreans or their culture! Rather, since Korea had been occupied by Japan prior to the war, the victorious Soviet Union and US decided to "split up" their winnings; the USSR occupied everything north of 38 degrees latitude and the US everything south... Why couldn't the countries have just let the Koreans be?! In the 70+ years since, North and South Korea have evolved to become completely different culturally, but people still have relatives on the other side and they all speak the same language! It's interesting to me that some of today's greatest threats to peace seem to stem from the "afterlife" of WWII.

North Korea in the background, me in the foreground :)

People peepin' at North Korea

I got to walk down into a tunnel that North Koreans dug trying to sneak attack South Korea in the 1970s.

A factory town in North Korea that was used by a South Korean company from ~2006-2016 before they stopped cooperating. Now no one lives there.

Abandoned factory town in the foreground left. Kaesong, the country's third largest city, is off in the distance to the right of the GPS-jamming tower seen in the distant middle-left of the picture.

Farewell Japan!

I am feeling quite sad to say goodbye to Japan tomorrow. The last 3.5 weeks have been so wonderful! Japanese people have been unbelievably kind and helpful. Case in point: everything is handed to you with two hands! So much care and attention to detail. It was not uncommon when I left places for people to walk me out, waving goodbye with a bow. I felt very cared for. The country is incredibly safe and clean. Apparently there are no janitors in schools--rather, the kids spend the first 40 minutes of every school day cleaning!!! I've often thought about how awful it is that my students make a mess and then don't fully clean up, leaving the work for an underpaid janitor. As a lover of communal living, I generally believe in cleaning up your own mess and love that Japan has this institutionalized in the educational system! The food has been a yummy novelty. In many restaurants, the chefs greet you and say goodbye! Machines/transportation work so well. There are so many fun cultural quirks and so much fascinating history (eg I can now explain the difference between the emperor, shogun, samurai and daimyo)!

People I met here summarized their favorite and least favorite things as follows:

+ Lots of festivals: I didn't get to experience this, but apparently there are!

+ Extremely convenient: eg convenience stores with good/decent, cheap food everywhere

+ Each region of the country has a distinctive identity that is fun to learn about/experience

+ Emphasis on the good of the community from childhood (this is a classic "East" vs "West" cultural difference)

+ Very large middle class (not a lot of inequality compared to the US)

-Hot summers: Apparently it's always very hot during the summer! It was hot and humid well into September this year.

-Overly bureaucratic: People still have to do things in person that you could do online in the US; there are many codes of conduct that prioritize old systems over what would actually be most convenient for people. The lack of encouragement for individual thought can stifle innovation and improvement.

? Homogeneous population: The sense I got is that Japan has come a long way in the past 20+ years with regard to its international tourism appeal and investment in teaching English in schools and interest in connecting with the non-Asian world, but I heard there exists racism towards non-Japanese people who live here. Personally, I found it fascinating to be in a place besides Lowell High School where nearly everyone looked Asian 😜

Other random notes: Biking is very popular here! Way more bikers than in the US (though definitely not at the level of the Netherlands!). It's sad to see how many young people are smoking/vaping. It's way more common than I expected.

I'll leave it there for now. It's off to Seoul, South Korea tomorrow. I'm sure I'll be back in Japan, but until then, Japan is much more a part of me than it was before, which I am forever grateful for.

Arigatōgozaimasu Nahon! ありがとう日本! Thank you Japan!

Miyajima (Itsukushima) shrine is in an intertidal zone--so cool!

Miyajima from the ferry

Japanese culture can be hilarious! You can buy weird sh$% like banana bird keychains...

...and cat hats

...and tempura families?! Gotta love it!

Japan has signs for everything. Including how to use the bathroom. In case you forget, "please sit down to use the toilet" ^_^

It really is an island nation! So much green, even at the end of summer!

Typical city street with lots of lights, unlocked bicycles, businessmen hanging out after work--not necessarily by choice--they often "have to" until 9 or 10pm :( The country is very safe with vibrant cities at night!

Umbrellas are ubiquitous here--rain or shine!

Fukuoka is lovely at night under a full moon!

The toilets are from a thousand years in the future and ALWAYS clean. It's insane.

Elegant Japanese dresses are very common.

Japan has a lot of castles! I didn't know that before!

Hiroshima

Oddly, or perhaps fittingly, Hiroshima is the most peaceful and pleasant city I've been to in Japan. There is a calmness to it that certainly is not part of Tokyo or Osaka but also not even smaller cities like Kyoto and Fukuoka. My entire time in Hiroshima I had a thought running through my mind: "Every American who can, needs to visit this place". The Peace Memorial Museum is extraordinarily powerful. Notably, the American blockbuster movie "Oppenheimer" that came out this past summer is not being shown in Japan...

The "Abomb Dome" lit up at night. Probably the most important monument in the city to the bombing. The bomb exploded ~1000 feet above the city, so the greatest force was in the downward direction, which is why the roof was blown off but some walls remain.

One of the other few buildings that remains standing from pre-Abomb was a bank. 

What Hiroshima looked like shortly after the bombing. The canals remain in the same place today; it was eerie to walk along them after seeing this picture and learning that people on fire threw themselves into the canals.

I was amazed to see that an elementary school building also survived the blast and is still used as a school today. There is a small museum connected to it, where I took this photo. Many families had evacuated to the countryside during the war, as they knew cities were prime targets for bombings (though they had no conception of a bomb that could destroy an entire city).

Peace Memorial Park, with the Abomb dome in the background. This place is powerful and I strongly encourage anyone who can to visit.

I couldn't help but notice the uncanny resemblance between the tattered clothes of Abomb victims (above) and concentration camp victims that are now on display in WWII/Holocaust museums.

Melted statue of Buddha on display in Peace Memorial Museum, Hiroshima

A Taiko drum from the school that survived but was blown out.

Model showing Abomb dome before and after Abomb on display in Peace Memorial Museum, Hiroshima.

This was probably the most impactful sign I read at the Peace Memorial Museum, Hiroshima. Why didn't the Potsdam Declaration include a guarantee of the continuance of the emperor system for post-war Japan? Perhaps a lack of cultural understanding contributed... The Peace Memorial Museum advocates to rid the world of all nuclear weapons. It is a powerful message that Hiroshima sends to the world.

This is a memorial to all of the children who were Abomb victims in Peace Memorial Park. Since most of the men were off at war, most of the Abomb victims were women and children. It was very moving to see Japanese children come on a field trip to the memorial, sing songs and place paper cranes ("orizuru") to honor the victims.