By Which I Meant More Often Than Not

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This is the jelly-filled-self-resurrecting-exploding golden pig. For more, see Kaila’s blog.

Constitution Day has finally given me some time to turn out my pockets into real entries.

(Just as I finished that sentence, Jane came running down the hall with the news that she’d won the SK Telecom “Introducing Korean Culture in the Era of Globalization” trip, which takes Korean and foreign students to some of Korea’s legendary cultural sites over a week in early August. Jane’s teacher from last summer arranged for us all to apply when she found out that Jane was returning — this kind of love makes me “as proud of Sogang as Sogang is of [me].” She suggested that I check my missed calls, and when the numbers matched, I called back to find out that I’ll be going as well. Thank you Sogang and SK Telecom.)

This is the week of June 25.

Monday cemented my attendance at Sogang’s afternoon enrichment courses. My entire class, along with the one next door, eats lunch together and attends 발음수업 on Mondays and Wednesdays and 문법수업 on Tuesdays. I remember Eun Hye telling me back in February that Sogang’s nickname is Sogang 고등학교 — a jab at how hard the students at Sogang study — and I began to feel like a part of that, even back at the language institute. After class, I headed over to Coffee Flannel in Sinchon for 복습 and 예습. Unlikely as it may seem, studying in the goshiwon is hard to do: my desk is not big enough to fit my elbows, so I have to sit on my bed with the keyboard tray balanced on my lap, and after lunch on a hot summer day, you can imagine how that ends. Coffee Flannel, on the other hand, is cool place with plenty of room for my books and a terrific name. Topped with a creme brulée, the delicious Caramel Macchiato I ordered got me through a few hours of studying. As the smoke started to get heavy, I headed out. I had also chosen that day as the one to start sticking to budget, which is a challenge, and the coffee and notebook I’d purchased left me less than 2000 won for dinner. I packed my coins into a small plastic envelope and headed to Grand Mart. But I also brought the DVD I’d purchased from a vendor at the Sinchon subway stop, which had turned out to be a Chinese movie with Korean subtitles rather than a Korean movie with English subtitles. It was my first time buying a DVD off the street, so it was also my first time asking for a refund. But I got one easily, and feeling newly rich with 4500 won (about $4.30) lining my pockets, I feasted on fresh bananas and milk.

On Tuesday, I worried that I would not have much to write about for the week, so I thought about some of the articles that Presca had sent me that weekend. Both profiled shocking and interesting individuals as canaries evincing some of South Korean society’s more painful features: Norimitsu Onishi’s June 23 New York Times Saturday Profile “From Lead Role in a Cage to Freedom and Anomie” about North Korean Lee Chan’s maladjustment to Seoul living as a question of South Korean social health, and Donald Macintyre’s June 5, 2000 TIMEAsia article “They Dressed Well” about a Nazi-chic bar in Sinchon, as a question of how broadly history is remembered here in my own neighborhood, a seat of South Korean academe. What had me going in circles wasn’t so much being shocked and blanketing the whole society with two articles, or even engaging the scraps of conversations with my class friends, who have made a life here teaching in hagwons or universities or businesses or even raising families, in the dialogue that, as always, produces plurality. It was the question that Kelly sent out a few weeks ago about suspending judgment. I’ve suspended judgment on everything. I’m not claiming not to judge or react, but by extending my deliberation silently indefinitely, my thoughts have only marginal value. While, as a student who has lived in Korea on fellowship money for a mere four weeks, I think that it’s really my only option, the growing net of questions and reactions that others’ judgment forms in me makes me wonder about when I’m going to have to stop suspending judgment and whether my speaking will be worthwhile. Presca said that photography is harder to pick a fight with than publication. These profiles, with their tangled photographic judgment, wrench the judgments out of me. That’s also a good way to do things. That night, Presca, Masato, Matt, and I chatted with alums John and Paul over gravy-cheese fries in an expat bar in Sinchon called Watts on Tap.

On Wednesday, I met up with Faith, my little sister’s high school friend and my high school friend’s little sister, here for the summer at Yonsei’s Korean Language Institute. I’d been unsuccessful in convincing any of my friends to ride a tandem bike with me from Yeouido to Olympic Park, but Faith was braver than the rest, so we set off for the island. Riding a tandem is much harder than it looks, but with some practice, we ran circles around Yeouido Park before discovering the entrance to the beautiful Hangang Citizen’s Park, which took us along the river past the National Assembly building. We had pho for dinner and Milky Road for dessert, where we watched Sinchon stroll past two by two.

On Thursday evening I met up with my friend Gil Sun, who I had met last October while walking back to Trumbull from Korean class. She was part of a group handing out fliers on High and Elm, and when I sounded out the flier’s Korean portion, we struck up a conversation. She was in the US for a year on the International Youth Fellowship, which sends students to Jamaica and New York for missionary service. Everyone in her group was kind, eager to look around a bit, and shivering, so I gave them a tour of Trumbull — the dining hall, the library, the common room, the basement, and my suite. I used the vocabulary I had learned for our quiz that morning to point at their notebooks and say 공책, or dining hall and say 학생식당. As I was showing them around our suite’s common room, Adam walked in from the shower. Twenty Korean college students in matching pink polo-shirts was not what he had been expecting that morning, and when I introduced him as 방 친구 my awful pronunciation drew some giggles from the crowd, and he looked at me bewildered. Which is how I came to be called bangchingu.

Gil Sun and I kept in touch, and after eight months we met up again in Sinchon for dinner. We had made arrangements via text message, so when we met, Gil Sun observed that my speaking did not quite match my writing. The first few minutes of our conversation were like a placement test before we finally figured out a level of speech at which to communicate with each other. While doing this, we wandered around a bit looking for a place to eat, finally stopping at a sollongtang restaurant. I’ve recently learned the phrase

둘이 먹다가 하나가 죽아도 모를 만콤 맛있어요.
(It was so delicious that if two people were eating it and one were to die, the other wouldn’t notice.)

which serves well to describe the delicious oxtail soup with the kimchi and radish you cut for yourself out of bins built into the table. So though I’d tried sollongtang for the first time at lunch that day, we were both too confused trying to understand one another, and too enamored with the idea of sollongtang, to let that stand in to way. Over bowls of the broth, we finally turned our speech into a language. After dinner, we headed to Insadong for a walk. The street was closing up, so we walked into a warm, spacious teahouse with books stacked to the glass ceiling and windows overlooking Insadong-gil. They brought out a candle in a heavy glass holder whose ring of hearts made me think we’d been taken as a couple until Gil Sun ordered a chamomile tea. The glass pot of water and flowers was placed on the hearts to boil while we shared the delicious 목과 차 I’d ordered. Our two thin, sweet 떡 just made us gladder to be there.

On the last Friday of the month, the clubs in Hongdae host Club Night, where a 15000 won bracelet gets one entrance to a ton of different clubs and one free drink. All of us, along with my friend John from the class next door, headed over to Hongdae for barbecue and to check out Club Night. Hongdae is similar to Sinchon, though as we were looking around for a restaurant, I was impressed by its wide shopping streets lined with cool boutiques, which is a bit more relaxed than the area next to E Dae. We ate a delicious mix of pre- and post- barbecue marinated beef and pork in a place that took its charcoal out to the street in front of the restaurant, left it out there in a can on fire, then brought it back in to the table. Until this happened however, I thought that someone had just set a small fire while I wasn’t looking. After dinner, we bounced around clubs, moving whenever one got too hot. Midway through the night, leaving a club so crowded that we couldn’t even see the threshold of the dance floor, my shirt was three different shades depending on how much contact it had had with my skin. At that point I thanked my bracelet for mobility. It was the first time I’ve been old enough to go to a club, and I had a great time hanging out and dancing with our group.

After calling my new home phone number on Saturday morning, I met up with Hye Jin, who had come into Seoul to see her university friends. I had agreed to meet my new conversation partner at 6 that evening, so Hye Jin and I had only enough time to grab a lemonade at Cafe Pascucci before walking over to E Dae where we were both meeting others. When I got to E Dae, it was not my conversation partner but her friend who emerged from Paris Croissant to meet me. After all of us got over our confusion, I said goodbye to Hye Jin and headed off to sight-see with my conversation partner’s friend. We went to Seongbukdong, a posh residential area in the Northern foothills, to see her favorite Catholic chapel and Kilsangsa, a Buddhist temple that, as she told me, until twenty years ago had been one of South Korea’s last remaining kisaeng houses. I was shocked to find out that that the Joseon tradition had been alive up that recently, and she explained that its clientele had been composed of powerful politicians and businessmen. Twenty years ago, the madam of the house donated the land to a famous 스님 named 법정, whose teachings she had always admired, and the place became a Buddhist temple. I’m still looking for more information. We strolled around the verdant grounds, and I practiced bowing. Afterwards, we headed to Samcheongdong. We walked down the shady, gallery-lined streets at the foot of Samgaksan, passing excellent boutiques and stopping to sniff the pat-juk bubbling in the kitchen of a cottage restaurant, to a pork barbecue restaurant called Maple Tree House. Inside the sleek concrete restaurant with warm wooden seating and wide views of the garden, we ate 되지고기 소금 구이, unmarinated pork that we dipped in a mixture of rock-salt and sesame oil, or wrapped with garlic in thin radish slices or sesame leaves, as it came off the grill. It was scrumptious.

Afterward, we headed to a simple coffee shop nearby where our coffee was ground and freshly brewed for each refill, and upon seeing a quartet entering the place, the waiters hurried to start beautiful classical music coursing through the stereo system. Had music been the only language in the place, it might have been perfect. But we got to talking, and I felt my language fail completely. She would wait for me to say something, but once I started, she would cut short my sentences to tell me that my diction was inadequate or incorrect.

This was uncomfortable but certainly not unwarranted. She is a cafe regular, so at one point, a waiter came over to chat with her, telling her it was his 방학. When I asked about where he went to school, both looked at me blankly before she changed my question to what his major was. It was Industrial Engineering, which is among those I haven’t yet learned in school, so I ended up with the blank look on my face. Volunteering that my major was history (역사) he asked back 여자 (women)?

After this finally ended, she told me that asking where someone goes to school is offensive. So in addition to being unintelligible, I was also being uncouth. I felt embarrassed and inept. Language learning can be tough.

On Sunday, Kaila and I headed into Yongsan for the electronic dictionary I hadn’t bought the last time and a cell phone for Kaila. Kaila bought a jelly-filled-self-resurrecting-exploding golden pig from a vendor on the bridge heading over to the electronics mart, so while we waited for her phone registration to finish, we splatted the pig all over the glass case we were sitting at, waiting gleefully for it to pull itself back together. For lunch, we had omurice.

Walking back to the train, the sound of Andean pan pipes drew us over to a spot where an Andean music group was playing. Surprised again upon returning to Sinchon, we found out that Choi’s Tacos had recently introduced horchata to its menu and discounted all of it. So for dinner, we had burritos and horchata.

Panpipes at Yongsan. Kaila took this photo.

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Tags: Bananas, Coffee Flannel, DVD, Hangang Citizen’s Park, Hongdae, Horchata, Kilsansa, Language Failure, Omurice, Pigs, Samcheongdong, Seongbukdong, SK Telecom, Sogang, Sollongtang, Yeouido, Yongsan