Adventures in Seoul

Probably to the delight of most y'all reading, I'm going to spend this post highlighting some great things about life in Seoul. The past few weeks have taken me on a few adventures, so I thought I might just share them and save y’all from my personal musings for a week. Although Seoul doesn’t have as many tourist attractions as other major cities, there are still a number of places to visit and things to try that cannot be found anywhere else. Here goes.

Climbing Bukhansan

Gearing up for the hike

Two weekends ago I went out hiking with some roommates and friends. And boy oh boy, was it nice to get out of the city for a minute. Seoul, at times, lives under a fog of pollution and overcast weather. The winter only exacerbates this problem, killing any semblance of greenery or liveliness.  I was in desperate need of a tree or a mountain.

We decided to hike Seoul’s tallest mountain, Bukhansan, which is still easily climbable in a day. It took us about an hour and a half to get to the mountain proper by subway and bus and then another 2 and half to get to the summit. The pictures will probably serve as better descriptors of the actual hike, so I’ll leave that to them. A few notes, though.

A man we met on the mountain

First, the people. Our fellow hikers consisted of a swarm of identically dressed ajummas and ajashis, each equipped with a brightly colored windbreaker, an unnecessarily large visor, and professional-grade walking sticks. However, these older Korean folks were much more pleasant than the average subway-goer you meet in Seoul. Keeping with the time-honored traditions of hiking, they were quick to say hello or mention the the beauty of the view. There’s something about being outdoors in great weather that brings out the best in people.

Second, the cats. Feral cats can be spotted everywhere on the mountain. Here’s a picture of one of the many felines at the peak. They were clearly comfortable with human interaction, purring near hikers eating lunch in the hopes of being throwna scrap of tuna. I assume they live there, but I have no idea how they survive the winter.

Third, the view. The last stretch of the hike had us on a steep incline with metal lines as our guides upward. The peak brought with it an unparalleled view of Seoul. Korea really is quite beautiful once you get above the literal and metaphorical haze of Seoul; the juxtaposition of the mountains and the city was something to behold.

View from Bukhansan

Fourth, the way down. Our descent was a little more perilous than the way up. We had decided to go down the other side of the mountain – the side where the sun don’t shine. It was again steep, and the ice had yet to melt, so a few of us (I won’t name any names) spent a good portion on their backsides sliding down. I, for one, was having a great time!

Yeoiudo

The next weekend brought us to Yeoiudo, the financial capital of Seoul and designated day trip spot for Seoulites. The main attraction of the island – it’s technically surrounded by water – is an esplanade along the Han River. Spring has yet to come in Seoul, so the normally green esplanade was marred by the hay-colored grass that plagues the city during winter. Still, it was a great place to spend a Sunday afternoon with the locals. In Yeoiudo, you’ll find a good mix of skateboarders, musicians, and other misguided youths as well as families and couples perched up in tents for the day. 

The tall boy himself

We spent the day moseying around, taking pictures and eating ice cream. As usual, the locals were fascinated with us. Whether it's groups of high-schoolers waving emphatically or grown men asking to take pictures with Andre (he's 6ft/185cm), Koreans are always amazed by groups of Westerners. If I'm honest, it's nice to feel like a celebrity every once in a while. 

San-nakji

Finally, I wanted to share a food experience from earlier this week. I went to the Noryangjin fish market with one of my roommates and her brother and cousin. The expressed purpose of the trip was San-nakji, a seafood dish where baby octopi are cut into small pieces and eaten raw. Being raw, the tentacles still move as you eat them. Going in, I was eager but slightly nervous to try the delicacy. It’s a well-known fact in Korea that many people die every year eating San-nakji because they neglect to chew it thoroughly. I was determined to avoid death by octopus.

The fish market at night

The market is comprised of an older open market and a new indoor market. The newer side also has restaurants on the second floor, where customers can choose to bring their own fish from downstairs or have them brought up by the restaurant staff. To avoid any catastrophic mistakes, we chose the latter. 

The restaurant we selected had the typical trappings of a traditional Korean eatery: wooden tables on the floor, empty bottles of soju lying around, and passive aggressive waitresses. We ordered one plate of san-nakji and two plates of fried mystery fish. Ordering in Korea can often be tricky because most plates are meant to be shared. Our octopus arrive at the table squirming ever so slightly. I dived right in, but was disappointed by the result. It was rather tough and flavorless for a dish so famous. They did provide us with a salted oil to dip the san-nakji to give it more flavor, but the oil also had a Frankenstein effect: bringing the octopus back to life. Certainly a unique meal.   

The million plates of Korean food (san-nakji in the middle)

My scores:

8/10 for squirms

3/10 for flavor

2/10 for texture
10/10 for an experience everyone should try

So there's a quick glance at some of the more interesting things I've been up to. To quote Andre, "Korea never ceases to amaze me." 

-JCP


P.S. Sorry if the formatting is a bit funky, Blogger is stubborn when it comes to pictures

I bought a camera

Hey, thanks for visiting! I've actually moved this blog post to my new site, so please go check it out there! 

↓

A Log of Things - I Bought a Camera

1095 Words About What I Am Doing

Judging by the inquisitive messages I have received since my last post, I've gathered it would be valuable to explain how and why I came to Seoul. Before I start, though, I just wanted to thank everyone for reading and giving me feedback. This is more for y’all than it is for me, so suggestions, complaints, inquiries, or requests are always welcome. Now, back to the show.

My journey to Seoul starts with my university. Northeastern operates an extensive job/internship program called Co-op. Co-ops are typically 6 month long stretches where university students work at professional companies and organizations ranging from Goldman Sachs to Boston Public Schools to the International Criminal Court. It’s a massive operation that serves as the focal point of the “Northeastern experience”. Although it is possible to graduate without completing a Co-op, most students participate in at least one and sometimes up to three of the placements. You can imagine how unique the university must be to accommodate the constant cycling of students between classes and Co-ops.

Last semester, I took the appropriate measures to Co-op (yeah, it's also used as a verb) for the first half of 2017. I hadn’t the slightest clue of what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go. Though, I was certain about one thing: I wanted to work outside the States. Living in Australia for 5 months the year before had sparked a desire in me to see as much of the world as I could. To stay in America would have left me with a sense of staleness. I mean, there’s so much fascinating food, language, and culture out there, it would surely be a shame to stay in the world I already knew. The Where of the situation did not matter so much as it was away from what I was comfortable with.

To help students arrange Co-ops, Northeastern has a massive database of vacancies that organizations have suggested might be suitable for Co-op students. No one is guaranteed a job anywhere; the process involves the same set of rigorous applications and interviews that comprise any normal professional job search. Confined by my demands of international experience, I found that few worthwhile positions met my criteria, especially those of the paid variety. My resoluteness in traveling meant considering a wide range of jobs that I would never have normally given a second glance. I applied for a job at a youth baseball league in India, an internship at a progressive (and I mean progressive…) advocacy organization in Serbia, an English teaching position in Ho Chi Minh City, and many more disparate opportunities. After a strenuous series of late-night interviews, I took the plunge and decided to take an internship in South Korea.

Here in Seoul, I work for a nongovernmental organization that seeks to assist North Korean defectors in Seoul and break down barriers prohibiting a Korean reunification; many South Koreans still hold onto the idea that the Korean peninsula could once again be a single, unified country. Our office is small with only two full time employees – a North Korean defector owner and a South Korean manager – and a splattering of international and Korean interns. Us interns spend most of our time reading, writing, and researching for a variety of projects relating to the organization’s goals. For example, my bosses are spending this week in Geneva at a U.N. conference, so we have spent the past few weeks focusing on preparing oral statements in English, finalizing schedules and meetings, and producing a ten-minute documentary intended for the convention.

The team is small enough that responsibilities are given to anyone willing to take them. Most of my own individual work has taken shape in the form of editing English material. Whenever my boss or another non-native English speaker needs to write something, it’s my job to make sure it’s up to snuff. Other tasks of mine have included editing and narrating videos, creating presentations, and writing speeches. I wouldn’t say I love the work. There are times when it feels like I am actually being effectual – I have the opportunity talk with defectors and help them with their English once a week – but a majority of the time the job feels like I’m spinning my wheels, like I’m doing more to help the organization than the people of North Korea.

Working internationally, and especially in Korea, can be frustrating. Communication is the backbone of any business, and lingual and cultural differences have an intensely adversarial effect on communication. The Western interns in the office often find it difficult to know what our boss wants or why it needs to be done in the first place. It is a daily struggle between clashing working norms. Korean culture is perhaps unique in how it approaches work life. Most Koreans work long, ten to twelve hour days, where the focus is on how much they work rather than how much work they actually complete. This is, of course, an over-generalization, but I find the work ethic to be simultaneously diligent beyond believe and lazy to no end. This echoes to a broader Korean cultural emphasis on presentation over content. However, I don’t want to dive too deep or make too large of oversimplifications about the culture. It is, without a doubt, a wholly different approach to getting work done.

I’ll conclude by stating that the job wasn’t my top consideration during my choice to come to Seoul. Any qualms I have with the position are secondary to what accompanies it, a chance to live in a foreign place. Certainly, it will be nice to say in the future that I worked for a humanitarian non-profit in an East Asian country, but the internship, in my eyes, was mostly an opportunity to experience a new environment. That being said, I am grateful to be able to do something beneficial while traveling to one of the world’s most unique societies, even if it’s not the most rewarding period of my professional career.

Thanks for reading everyone. It’s a decent time commitment to write these (and I’m sure for y’all to read them), but I enjoy putting my thoughts on the metaphorical page. If I can, I am going to post twice-weekly. I am going to guess that most future blog posts will be more story driven. This blog was explanatory in nature, so the clever jokes and descriptions were left by the wayside. Please comment or message me if you want to know any more. I’m sure I’ve neglected to write some important details.

-JCP

The First 48 (days)

As this blog is supposed to chronicle my experiences living and working in Seoul, it would probably be wise to start at the beginning. Beginnings are exciting, adventurous, and full of wild expectations. However, I’m a little behind the ball. I’ve been in Seoul for almost 2 months now. The goal of this post, then, is to get this blog up and running and to make up for my lack of communication with the outside world (sorry Nomie and Mrs. Trinity). So, without further ado, I’ll begin my stint as a travel blogger with a story I find most representative of Korean culture.

Dongryeong is my roommate and landlord. He is a character. A common outfit of his involves wearing his waist-length hair with a small Jedi braid, a full suit with a turquoise necktie, and large, square glasses that could either be from 1965 or 2025. He sits at his computer desk 20 hours a day, talking with international students and Korean business-owners on 4 different social media platforms trying to arrange a never-ending series of promotional events. I’m sure he will be mentioned numerous times over the course of this blog.

As a side note, Dongryeong is one of the few guys in Seoul that “run” the international exchange student business. While that is something I would love to write about, I’m afraid it’s a story for another time. Just know, a handful of private individuals control the market for where foreign students live, eat, and party. It’s a curious and lucrative business, full of its own politics and dealings.

To get back on track, Dongryeong was in the process of acquiring new properties during my first weak in Seoul. He asked me to tag along as he investigated a new apartment and closed a deal for another property. We went first to tour the apartment. In the West, it is my understanding that the current tenants of a house or apartment are typically asked to leave whenever potential buyers want to look at the property. This is not the case in South Korea.

Dongryeong and his real-estate friend brought me, some random white guy who didn’t speak a word of Korean, into the home of two elderly women on a normal Friday evening. They sat and watched the nightly Korean T.V. programming as Dongryeong rummaged around measuring wall lengths and testing acoustics. I stood by, smiling and nodding, questioning my reason for being part of this intrusion of personal space. The two ajummas (the Korean word for an older woman) didn’t seem to mind having strangers inspect their living space for imperfections. I was quickly learning that manners are defined by a different set of rules over here. I’m still not sure exactly what those rules are and am forced to live in a constant state of feeling uncivilized.

Next stop was the real-estate office. Korean drivers are terrifying and have little respect for the law; Dongryeong is no exception. Time was against us to close the deal, so we had to bulldoze our way through the crowds of Hongdae (the neighborhood where we live and also one of the busiest places in Seoul on a weekend night). After nearly killing half of Hongdae, we made it just in time to wait an hour for the realtors to finish printing the contract. During that time, Dongryeong and the owner of the property talked politely (from what I gathered, being unable to understand a word) and exchanged business information. With the contract complete and payment made, it should have been time to go home.

That’s when, however, the realtor brought out the seafood. He grabbed some Styrofoam boxes full of recent catches like they were average storage containers to have lying around in a realty office. Inside the first box were 30 or so dried squid about a foot in length (30cm for all you Europeans out there). The three men each took a squid, ripped off a hunk with their teeth, and sucked on the aquatic delicacy. I was gestured to do the same, so I tore off a small piece and spent the next half hour chewing madly, fearful that I would die unceremoniously choking on squid. The next box held Korean oysters. Apparently, those were not suitable for office consumption, so Dongryeong and I were given a large plastic bag full of the shellfish. I would later deeply regret eating those oysters…

It took me a minute to come to terms with the fact that I was in a Korean realtor’s office on a Friday night silently eating dried squid and holding a bag full of oysters. You can’t help but ask yourself, “What the hell am I doing here?” Looking back, that’s a question I have asked myself many times over the past 2 months. Being a Westerner in Korea pretty much guarantees that you’ll find yourself in situations you never expected to be in. Since coming to Seoul, I’ve stumbled my way into filming documentaries with North Korean defectors, fighting off raccoons that were trying to steal my wallet in a raccoon café, haggling with sketchy electronics dealers, and so many other, “How did I get here?” moments.

With the seafood celebration complete, Dongryeong and I packed up and headed home. I’m still not certain why he brought me along on this midnight real-estate jaunt. Maybe he just wanted to show me around because I was new. Maybe having an American accompanying you is good for business. Regardless, it was a good introduction to how nearly every aspect of society is different here than it is in the West. A few examples:

Are you going on the subway? Be ready to fight.

Are you vegetarian? Well you better ask the waiter at a restaurant if they consider seafood a meat, ‘cause they don’t.

Want to buy a rice cooker? Good, there are 10,000 of them at the local Homeplus.

Do you not like K-Pop?  Too bad. That’s all you are going to hear.

Throwing out trash? Good luck figuring out which of the 15 waste receptacles it goes in. 

I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea: Seoul is an alien planet. A planet that somehow happens to sit on the other side of the Earth. It only took some squid for me to realize…

Thanks for reading. These are a few random photos from the past month or two. Definitely more to follow. In the coming months, I will be writing more stories and sharing photos about what South Korea is like for an American. My time in Korea has been, and certainly will continue to be, full of surprises both good and bad. This blog is not going to be an advertisement for Seoul or the Co-op program or anything like that. I just want to share honest stories. I do hope you enjoy my writing, so feel free to comment or email me if you ever want to hear more. That’s all I’ve got for now.

-JCP