Episode 36: In Which DFM Locks Himself In A Coffin And Buys Stale Rice Cakes

I have a busy weekend ahead, so I wanted to slowly whittle away at my sightseeing list a bit more today.  Up next on the list was the Seodaemun Prison.  

When the Japanese occupied Korea in 1910 they were met with a lot of resistance from the Korean people.  In an attempt to crush the fighting spirit of the anti-Japanese independence movement, Japan built what is now called Seodaemun Prison.

The first part of my self-guided tour (I didn't have time to stick around for the English tour later in the day) involved exploring the museum.  Unfortunately I was not allowed to take many pictures, but most of what I saw and felt could not be adequately captured in a picture.  

One of the few pictures I was allowed to take, it's a torture device called The Standing Coffin.  The prisoner goes inside where my backpack is, and the door is closed shut.  I stood inside and closed the door on myself.  My shoulders just squeezed in between the walls and when I closed the door there was barely enough room to breathe.  Prisoners would be locked inside for three days at a time and the lack of movement would cause paralysis.

My first "experience" at the museum involved peering over through the bars into a replica of a small cell.  The cell was about the size of my old gosiwon room, perhaps a little narrower, and was completely barren.

Because I'm so short I had to get right up near the "window" to be able to peer into the cell.  I had planned to see an empty cell, but instead I was greeted with a man sitting cross-legged on the bare floor by himself in his small cell.  My heart almost stopped beating I was so scared.  I jumped back, thinking it was a real person, but then I took a second peek and saw that it was just a life-sized model.  This first experience set the tone for the rest of the tour.

I next walked through the Torture Room.  Every so often I would trigger the motion-sensing device and ear-piercing screams would go off and a light in the formerly pitch dark cell beside me would snap on and a scene of unthinkable torture would be depicted by the mechanical models inside.  There was electrocution, ripping out fingernails, sticking a sharp knife under the fingernails, lashings, floggings, beatings, violent rapes of female prisoners, and of course having your finger prints forced onto a false testimony of guilt.  Before the end of it all my stomach felt sick and I started to dread taking another step and seeing what would happen next.  Eventually I got through the Torture Room though,  and was rewarded with a trip to the Execution Room.

The Execution Room looked like an interactive display.  I approached the box sitting on the trap door and above me hung a noose.  I wasn't sure what would happen, but there was a sign on the glass that said "not for children or pregnant women."  I started to get really apprehensive.  I thought that the trap door would fall and I would get a nasty drop, but sadly nothing happened at all and I was able to wobble away on my still shaking knees.

To be honest, the rest of the visit was less exciting than this first part.  I got to wander through the actual prison cell building and even walk into a real cell that was used to house a prisoner or twelve back during the Occupation.  Many of the buildings are now considered National Historic Treasures and while I was here some restorative work was being done on parts of them so I could not explore everything fully.

This photo was taking outside of the entrance to the actual Execution Grounds.  I wasn't able to take a picture inside (a sign said no pictures) but I was allowed to take a picture of this tree.  It's called the Wailing Willow and every Korean who was brought past it would grab on and wail before passing through the doors to the sit on the real version of the box I sat on before (the real box drops though).

I generally try not to  be a bleeding heart about things, but between the War Memorial Museum and this one, and also talking to many Koreans like Young San and Joseph (from the KTX ride to Busan), I've come to realize that war is nasty business.  Living in Western Canada it has always been convenient for me to view war as something that happens in other countries.  But here in Korea, war is something that has happened here, and is still technically happening.

After leaving the prison I wandered across the street to see if I could find some lunch.  I had tried to fill up on kimbab before I left home, but the rice steamer was empty (it's a much smaller steamer than at my other place and it runs out quite often).

I found a small mart (a mini-grocery store) and bought some orange juice for my cold and some strawberries and what I thought was tteok.  I took the strawberries and tteok to climbing with me and decided to share them with everyone since people are always sharing their food with me.  (It seems customary to bring food for others and then have them bring food for you).  

At first I was worried that I had bought really old tteok that had become stale and hard, but Choi assured me that it was not tteok, but rather a Korean traditional cookie called yakgwa.  Whatever they were, they were delicious and I ate so many my stomach felt sick.  The strawberries were delicious as well and I got a few compliments on them.  

My gesture also seemed to gain me some cultural points, as Choi started to teach me the words reserved for friends so that I could become one of the gang.

At one point I saw Ji-Hyeun staring at something with the owner of the Suwon climbing gym, who was a guest of Choi's that day.  It turned out to be a large trophy that the gym had won by competing as a team in the annual Suwon climbing tournament.  The owner of the Suwon gym invited me to climb at his competition as part of the Ace Climbing Team, but unfortunately the competition was to be held sometime in late May after I would have already left for home.

After climbing I went to buy some new shirts for work because I didn't like the last ones I had  bought.  This time I went to another large Korean department store called E-Mart.  I found some nice looking shirts, and even a pair of pants, but unfortunately the sleeves aren't really meant for rock climbing arms, and they feel really tight when I move my arms above my head.  I guess this means no more "nopi!"(high! or "lift me up!") for the children.

It took me quite a while to find a pair of jeans that weren't pre-faded and/or had decorative holes in them (WWHHD: "I hate those pants more than life itself...").  In fact, it took me two hours of searching over the same few clothes for men and eventually I became late for my meeting with Hyeun A to learn more Korean.  I took a taxi from the store, but it was rush hour now and the car barely moved.  It cost 10 times as much as a subway ticket to take the taxi, but I did make it home a bit quicker, so it was worth it.

After dropping off my bags, I ran all the way to Hyeun A's office about ten minutes away.  I wasn't really thinking clearly by this time and managed to make a wrong turn again (where there was no turn).  I knew I was close but couldn't recognize exactly where I was or where I had gone wrong.  I phoned Hyeun A and over the course of the next half hour, Hyeun A, Lee and I played a frustrating game of hide and seek, except everyone was seeking, and turned out to be just tracing each other's footsteps in a circle.  Eventually I found Hyeun A, though, and we had our lesson.

I've been in Korea for long enough now that I'm starting to become more accustomed to hearing all the different suffixes that are used and why they're used.  I've also surprisingly picked up enough odd words from the children I teach that Hyeun A no longer needs to translate my lessons from Hangul to English.  I can now use the few key words I know to remember what each new sentence (written entirely in Korean) means.  It was quite a big moment for me, and I celebrated by running home and watching the newest Sasuke tournament (long time readers of the blog should recognize this as one of my favourite shows).

This latest tournament was historic in that it is the first time since the course was redisigned, five tournaments ago, that someone has reached the final stage.  Even though I was supposed to wake up early the next morning I was so excited I watched the whole 3 hour show until 2:30 AM.  It was so exciting I'll probably watch it again as soon as I get a free moment.

Episode 24: In Which DFM Comes Face To Face With A Man Eating Beast And Fish Learn How To Drive Cars

Wow, it's been a few days since I've posted.  My Internet went down again and so I was unable to update you on my adventures.  Time to make up for it, because today was the day I've been planning for all month - the day of the big shark dive!

I got up at 6:00 AM to catch an early morning KTX train to Busan.  The KTX train travels at speeds up to 305 km/h.  When it was first built it cut the time of the trip to Busan from Seoul down to 1 hour 50 minutes (from about 5 hours).  But, since its creation more and more stops have been added and the the trip now takes roughly 3 hours.

The train is a lot like flying in an airplane, but a bit less comfortable and only half as fast.  However, it sure beats taking a bus and it costs about the same price as a taxi to an International airport from the center of a big city.

My neighbour for the trip to Busan was Joseph.  Joseph is a bit of an anomaly in that he managed to pick up a perfect North American accent for his pefectly fluent English, without ever having lived outside of Korea.  Joseph was on a business trip this morning for his company which franchises English schools.  Joseph was nice enough to give me a strip of his pastry, since I did not think to bring anything for the trip, and he also spent most of the trip explaining to me the history of Korea from the invasion of the Mongols to the beginning of the Korean War.  Don't think he was boring me though, I was fascinated and kept begging him for more information.

I severely underestimated how long it took to get from Busan Station to Haeundae beach by subway.  Quite soon I realized there were far more stops than I anticipated, and that I was not going to make it in time, so I jumped off and tried to catch a cab.  I got in the first cab that stopped for me and tried to do up my seat belt  There was only a strap with a hook, but no catch though, so I just imagined a seat belt.  

The cab driver did not speak English, but he was so happy with my infinitesimally small amount of Korean and that I was Canadian that he phoned up (and woke up) his daughter, who had studied in Canada, to talk to me in English.  This has happened to me quite often since I've come to Korea and it is always awkward for both parties.  

The taxi driver then realized that I was speaking Seoulese (people in Busan speak a different dialect of Korean than do those people in Seoul) and decided to "correct" my Korean with some impromptu lessons, but I couldn't understand a word he was saying.  He got me to Busan Aquarium though, and that's all that mattered.

The Aquarium is located right on Haeundae beach, which is a beautiful beach in a beautiful area of Busan, which is itself quite a beautiful city.

When I was dropped off I was five minutes late.  I couldn't see any signs for the diving, and when I went to the front desk to ask where the shark diving was I was told that there was no shark diving.  Undaunted, I went over to the Information Office and was told that I should go under ground.  I went underground and someone pointed me up a set of stairs, but these stairs just led back out onto the beach.  Eventually, after twenty minutes of searching, I finally found someone  who could direct me to the course, which was in fact at Busan Aquarium.

After filling out the requisite paper work and watching some training videos the other four divers and myself got on our wetsuits and goggles and went over to the training pool.

On the way over we saw a separate pool of about eight Lemon Sharks swimming around.  Lemon Sharks are about 9 feet long and are aggressive hunters and they had been separated because they were eating the other animals in the aquarium.  These animals cost tens of thousands of dollars each, and the Lemon Sharks had caused an entire species of stingray to "disappear" from the aquarium as well as having torn the fins of and scarred the bodies of a number of the Sand Tiger Sharks.  The aquarium had put a number of giant tuna fish in to attract the teeth of the Lemon Sharks instead, but Lemon Sharks are smarter than that and did not touch the tuna.  We were actually one of the last two groups to ever see the Lemon Sharks, since they were being shipped to Thailand on Monday (this happened on Saturday).

This is my diving team.  Michael, the instructor, is on the left, and then there are Takayla and Jake from North and South Dakota (not sure whom is from where), Justin from Baltimore, and Maggie from Pittsburgh.  All four of the Americans are English teachers near/in Busan and probably had a much easier time getting to the aquarium than I did.

Justin teaches at a school for the children of rich parents.  Many of his students are the children of doctors or lawyers and are rather spoiled.  One of his students is the daughter of a Korean professional baseball player.  His classroom is wired by CCTV and the housewife mothers spend all day scrutinizing his teaching in the viewing room.  As stressful as that sounds he seems to have adjusted admirably and was very excited about the dive.  I was happy to hear from him later that two of his students were visitors to the aquarium that day and had waved to him through the glass.

We took pictures of the dive with Michael's underwater camera, but since they aren't up on the website yet I'll just show some of the best pictures of past dives with a few extras I found on the Internet of some of the other animals we saw.

The Sand Tiger Shark, which I shot afterwards through the glass from the outside looking in.  The Aussies, whom regular readers of this blog know are XXXX rated, only refer to this as a Grey Nurse Shark.

Lest you thought I was lying about being in the aquarium with sharks.

This is a picture of a Green Turtle, over some coral reef in Hawaii.  The Green Turtle was my favourite animal in the aquarium.  Apparently it is rather aggressive and thinks that every diver in the pool is going to bring him food.  Michael put him in a holding pen behind us while we were training, and when I was not being instructed I would turn around every chance I could get to look at the turtle who was always staring me right in the eyes and/or snapping its mouth at my face.  Being close enough to have my fingers (or nose) bitten by such a majestic creature was really exciting; it made my hair stand on end and my heart race.

This is a diver from another group, but I had a very similar experience myself.  After lowering down into the giant tank (a round tank of roughly 30 yards diameter and 8 meters depth) I knelt down to wait for the other divers.  While I was waiting I was welcomed by a curious Grouper fish.  This species of fish has been caught in the wild and found to have an entire human inside of its stomach.  Today it thought it would swim over and come within about two feet of my face.  I was so excited I forgot to breathe and thought something was wrong with my respirator.  How can a fish be big enough to eat a human, you ask?

This is how.

Obviously I didn't take this picture myself, but this is an exact reenactment of my first minutes diving in the aquarium, except I was on the other side of the glass.

After diving I was starving, so Maggie and I went over to an American pizza restaurant to indulge in some "Western food."  Back in Canada I used to love pizza, but after eating so much fantastic Korean food with its exceptional spices and exotic flavours I found pizza quite bland.  Maggie said that she used to love bacon but found it disgusting when she went home after her first year of teaching in Korea.  I'm going to go back home in a month and not be able to eat anything but rice.

After pizza we went back to the aquarium and our shark diving experience counted as admission to the aquarium as well, so it was "free."

These piranhas look like they've already finished their last meal.

Catfish are called "maggie" in Korean, so Maggie insisted on taking some pictures.

This Jackass Penguin (that's its real name) spent all day diving down into the water to look at the guests.  It was quite a hit with the children.

One of  the highlights was when I got to hold this real live sea urchin in my hands at the petting tank.  Maggie said that it was rare to find an urchin that still had all of its quills.  I guess they tend to get broken off by all the people handling them.

"Do you know what that sound is, Highness?  Those are the Shrieking Eels!  If you don't believe me, just wait.  They always grow louder when they're about to feed on human flesh!"

What do you get for the fish who has everything?  How about a car.  Hyundai shows what the inside of James Bond's Lotus should have looked like after he drove out of the lake in The Spy Who Loved Me.

Best day of the trip so far by a long shot.  If you're in Korea make sure you head to Busan for the shark diving experience.  You can find more information here.

Episode 16: In Which DFM Gets Taken Away In The Back Of A White Panel Van

Today was supposed to be the day that Lee Young San (the guy I met at the bath house/sauna the other night) and I were going to meet with some of his coworkers from his office so that I could help them with their English.  Lee phoned me to confirm that I could make it and I made my final preparations.  Then, with only a few minutes before I was ready to set out Lee phoned me again to tell me he was swamped with work (at 7:30 on a Friday night?) and that he would not be able to make it, but I was to go meet his coworkers anyways who would come meet me.  He said that he had "sms"d me her name and phone number (what a text message is called everywhere else in the world), but he did not know that I had not yet figured out how to check my sms messages on my Korean phone yet.

I set out for the prearranged meeting place to meet my blind date.  In a country where "everyone looks the same" and I didn't even know what my date looked like, I was basically waiting for her to find me.

Along the way there was a massive argument as some young Korean man was having some sort of problem with the white owner of the pub attached to my gosiwon.  It was quite a yelling match and all the middle-aged white, pot-bellied bar owners from the street (quite a funny sight in Korea) had gathered to show consolidarity.

After about fifteen minutes of waiting I started to get worried that one of the many women waiting behind me was my date.  I met a Korean woman who was also waiting for her date and we had a pleasant chat.  Her name was Amy and she spoke in impeccable English.  Apparently she had lived for six years in America when she was younger and now possessed a fluent version of both languages.  I told her my predicament and wondered if I was just missing something, or if I was just trapped in Korean Time.  She asked how long I had been waiting, and when I said my date was fifteen minutes late Amy said that there was still lots of time left in Korean Time for her to arrive.  Eventually my date found me after a half-hour of waiting.  I was not bored in the mean time though, for even after Amy left I still had a young Korean man I met the other day try to set find Korean women to talk to me (unsuccessfully), and a 65-year-old prostitute tried to get me to take her home.

My date's name was Song Hyeon A (the first time I've seen a Korean name only one letter long).  She spoke very little English and was understandably quite nervous at first.  She tried to express in broken English that she would like to eat, but did not know anywhere to eat in Itaewon.  Being the true gentleman and ladies man that I am I of course took her to KFC, where I was more than happy to let her pay for both of our meals.  (Note:  Lee Young San later told me that he made her pay for the meals because "his friend was doing her a great favour by helping her with her English...")

After dinner and a surprisingly good conversation we set up another date when we would both prepare some material (me in English and her in Korean) to teach the other participant.  I suggested a BBQ place across the street that had been recommended to me, but later regretted it as I figured I might have to actually pay for my meal and maybe hers this time.  

Special note on the KFCs in Korea:  My classic chicken combo came with only two small pieces of chicken, small fries (the kiddie sized ones in the bag) and a small soda.  I tried to tell Hyeun A that in Canada we get about two to three times that amount in our combos, but she could not grasp how a person could eat that much and not get fat....

We went back to the street to wait for Lee (Young San likes to be called Lee).  Lee came up dressed to party with his English teacher Canadian friend, Thom, from Vancouver.  I started to think the whole "busy at work" line was just a ploy.  Hyeun A had to go home so Thom and Lee decided to take me along to the B1 club very near to my gosiwon.  I decided to come along for a bit thinking I'd stay for an hour and then go home (I didn't want to seem rude).  Little did I know what I was in for.

Lee is of course a very friendly guy and so is Thom.  Thom had the same bottom of the line phone that I did and he told me stories about how his eleven year old students laughed at him the first time he took it out in class and then showed him their state of the art touch-screen phones.  (I have since been informed that it is next to impossible for foreigners to get a good phone with an actual contract in Korea.)  Thom was able to teach me how to send and check my text messages and also how to save numbers in my memory.  He said that it was the veteran ex-pat's job to teach the newbie how things worked in Korea.

The B1 club was a really nice club.  Like many thing in Korea it was rather small, but a lot of money had been put into the decor.  There was even an area that was like a couch and a bed combined, with cushions.  I observed that to get these seats, you could reserve the table with the cushions, or just be a woman trying desparately to attract the attention of a man.

Actually, all the tables at the club seemed to be reserved, and we didn't have a reservation, but Lee knew one of the bartenders/waiters and so we got to rotate around the tables and sit there until their rightful owners came along.

Eventually Heedo (in the black) and David came along and we took Heedo's turbo-charged Hyundai panel van to Sinchon (wherever that is).  Thom, Dave and I had to ride in the back of the van.  There were no seats in the back since it was basically a transport van.  The ride was bumpy and we slid around a lot.  It felt like we were Albanians being smuggled out of the country to freedom.  (You can see from the picture that David had this wallet that shot out a giant flame, and he was quite eager and happy to show it off any time you asked... or if there was a girl around.)

Sinchon is a big University district and the clubs there are much more American style.  The rooms are still small, but the music is loud and everyone packs in to the center of the room and "dances" (or whatever the young people do these days).  The first club we went to was called "Mike's... Something, Oh I Forgot (not the name of the club)."  They played a lot of popular Western dance music and at least 35% of the club goers here were white.  A good chunk of them were probably English teachers, but there were two or three middle-aged white guys standing at the back who seemed really out of place.

Dave and Heedo were having a great time on the dance floor (Dave has his hands by his face, "raving" I assume, and you can see Heedo trying to get his face in the picture down in the bottom left-hand corner).  Lee and I do not dance so we stood on the side and/or played Foosball.  Thom had gotten sick from the van ride over and decided to take a taxi back to Itaewon.

 

Lee and I met Ed, an English teacher from Norway, who wrote the message regarding the Swedish.  Ed explained that the Norwegians and Swedish were always taking friendly pot shots at each other, because "they were basically the same... except that Norway had oil."  Ed was very generous and was always trying to give me things.  Unfortunately those things rarely belonged to Ed, like the beer he tried to give me that belonged to Heedo.

Heedo liked the Mike's place so much that he decided to stay, and Dave, Lee and I decided to move on.  The taxi cab drivers are shifty characters in Seoul and so they only pick up fairs who will be traveling a long distance late at night (more money for the drivers that way), so we had to walk.  We even saw two cabbies get in a fight because one had parked in the other's spot.

Lee bought Dave and I some real kimbap (apparently what I've been eating is just kim) and some tteokbokki (pronounced something like "dock bo-key") and then it was on to the next club.  Up until this point I actually thought we were walking to find a cab home, but apparently we were just on our way to another University district for more clubs.

We came to a place called The Club, and there was a Led Zeppelin cover band on the stage.  I'd love to make fun of them here, but they were actually really good.  There were a lot of white people here though.  I'd estimate roughly 65% of the crowd was white, or more.  Lee confessed to me that this was not his scene, and we sat on the side and watched Dave try to pick up white girls (apparently Dave only goes for white girls, which means he should probably move to a different country).

Eventually 4 AM rolled around and Lee and I left to find a cab (the cab fares drop back down to normal price at 4 AM).  Dave had moved on to some other club, but I was amazed that when Lee and I left at 4 the streets were still packed with people, and the clubs were still as full as at 12.  I was even more amazed to see people walking around trying to sell kebabs or operating street food vending stands.  I don't think the clubs close down until 5 AM, and you can bet that they will still have to kick people out even then.

Outside we saw a couple of really drunk people stumbling around in the streets.  I'm not sure if this is for show or what the deal is, but drunk people in Korea all act the same way.  One person will assume the role of absolutely hammered person, while his friend plays the only partially drunk person.  The partially drunk friend will hold the arm of the hammered friend while the two stumble down the street in a large weaving pattern.  Every few steps the hammered friend will pull a great escape move and attempt to stumble back into the street in between the taxi cabs.  The semi-drunk friend will then lead him slowly and in a three steps forward, two steps back fashion until they get back to the sidewalk where the whole routine happens again.  I've seen the exact same performance with men in business suits as well, so I think it's just the accepted way of being drunk.  Regardless, it's quite humerous to watch.  The taxi cabs for their part seem to expect it and always go slow by the clubs.

Eventually I got back to Itaewon at around 4:30 AM, and went to sleep.  Before I knew I would be staying out all night I had agreed to meet Conor in Dongdaemun the next morning, so that meant I will only be getting about 5 hours of sleep this night.  Sounds like fun.

Gloating:  Despite the "promises" of those around me I was able to make it all night while only drinking one beer.  I only drank that one because it was a Korean beer that Thom had bought for me before I could say no (I'm not a drinker).  Korean beer, or maekju, is rather light and is carbonated.  It actually tastes like someone added club soda to a Coors Light.