Tag Archives: Korea

My favorite part of Gyeongbukgung, the main palace of the Joseon dynasty of Korea, is a lovely pavilion named Hyangwonjeong and its surrounding pond.

Hyangwonjeong pavilion. Isn’t she lovely?

It is usually more known for the ghastly assassination of Queen Myeongseong by the Japanese government. But in Choi Joon-sik’s book, Soul in Seoul (2005), I came across another interesting (and less gruesome) fact: This pond is the place where an electric light was turned on for the first time in Korea in March 1887. Mr. Choi writes:

“The Joseon government sent off an official letter to the American bulb inventor Thomas Edison in 1883, asking him to set up the lighting system within the palace. Four years later in 1887, the first light bulb was switched on at this pond, which was two years before the Forbidden City in China was brightened with electricity. One of the reasons why light bulbs were installed here so early is because King Gojong, with his kingdom on the verge of collapse, was very afraid of potential threats from his rivals. He was particularly scared of nights, so he seemed to have wanted his residence to be brightened up with lights at night. The reason why the power generator was set up around the pond was because it needed water to produce electricity. There are many other interesting stories involving the nation’s first power generation: for example, it is said that people couldn’t sleep because of loud noise coming from the generator or that the fish living in the pond went belly up due to hot water flowing from the generator.”

There is a Snow Bear in Front of a King

February 12, 2013

Exploring, Field Trips, Korea, Play, Sight

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(Seoul)—In Gwanghwamun Square today, I came across a snow bear in front of the statue of King Sejong, under whose reign science and technology flourished in Korea. In his rule, Hangul was also introduced to the country.

A snow bear in front of Sejong the Great

Up close, the bear is decorated with flowers for ears, cookies for eyes, a glove for his neck and a traffic cone for a hat.

Yes, the hat is a traffic cone

Flowers for its nose and ears, cookies for its eyes, and a glove for its neck

Behind King Sejong is Gwanghwamun, one of the gates that leads to Gyeongbokgung, the main palace of the Jeoson dynasty. The mountain behind it is Bukhansan.

Gwanghwamun by night

It’s such a pretty sight in the evening, isn’t it?

The Movable Feast: A Street Food Project

February 4, 2013

Art, Drawing, Korea, Memory, Taste

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hotteok, South Korea

Annyeong, everyone! I’m starting another project.

During my first three weeks in Seoul, beyond the palaces, the museums, and other beautiful attractions the city has to offer, I learned to fall in love with their street food. I have started some drawing projects over the years, and so I came up with The Movable Feast: A Street Food Project, an interpretative illustration project that celebrates the joys and oddities of street food around the world.

Inclusive cuisine

Street food is arguably the most socially inclusive, yet sometimes unnoticed or taken for granted, of all cuisines. There is neither dress code nor reservation required. Everyone has to wait their turn. Street food is among the best things to eat when one is rushing to work, taking a break in between classes, or being too lazy to cook. It is cheap, easily available, and delicious.

The menu of street food can be simple (such as coconut juice and watermelon slices) or more complex and hard-to-find (such as escargot on the go, lobster sandwiches, and grilled tamales) This system includes a range of members—from the ambling taho vendor (Philippines), the seasonal bocadillo stall (Spain), to scheduled and franchised food trucks (United States). It is a mobile and complex system that consists of the producers of raw materials, the makers of the actual dishes, the transportation and infrastructure that bring them to the venues in which they are served, the governing bodies that allow their selling, and the vendors and consumers themselves.

Globalization and diaspora

In many ways, I have discovered that street food is a symbol of globalization and diaspora. Many of them hail from other countries, but with local flavor. Consider goroke, the Korean version of the French croquette. Or hotdogs in Iceland. Or shawarma in Canada. It is also a symbol of urbanization—as the population who move from rural to urban areas increase, so does the need for alternative sources and ways of distributing food.

Street food as identity

I believe that street food is a vital part of the culture and identity of a city. It is indicative of the sustenance immediately afforded by its geography. But more than that, it is a symbol of a people’s resourcefulness, creativity, and survival. They tell us stories about ourselves.

Eating and perception

Eating street food fires up all the senses, which are the center of my larger body of work. Street food conjures up memories of childhood and gives strangers a shared experience of a meal. These drawings themselves are interpretative; more than documenting what they are, I also draw how they’ve made me feel, and write the memory I have about them.

Follow the project’s Tumblr here.

P.S. Drawings up every Monday!

P.P.S. As I am based in Seoul, many of these posts will be about Korean street food, though I will draw all the other street foods I’ve eaten in other countries, past and future. But if you wish, you can submit photos of street food from your country and I can try it out and draw it. Or submit your own drawings, following the format I’ve started. The link to submit is here.

The Movable Feast, where eating means research. Thank you for checking it out.

A Royal Banquet Hall on Ice, A Queen’s Murder, and the Neverending Palace

January 27, 2013

Exploring, Field Trips, Korea

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Gyeongokbokgung (Palace Greatly Blessed by Heaven) was built in 1395 and served as the main palace for more than 500 years. It was burned by the Japanese in 1592. Since 1990, efforts have been taken to restore it to its former glory.

Outside one of Gyeongbokung’s gates

It’s such a beautiful palace. A bout of déjà vu came upon me, taking me back when I visited the Forbidden City in Beijing almost 11 years ago. They felt similar mainly because of scale—it seemed to take forever to cover all of it.

One of my favorite parts is the Gyeonghoeru Pavilion, where the king gave formal banquets for foreign envoys—it’s like the royal party club. In the winter, the water around it freezes and gives the impression that it’s floating on ice.

A pavilion on ice!

Another lovely spot is Hyangwonjeong, a small pavilion that stands out because of its smallness in contrast to its neighboring Goliath structures. Behind it is another palace, Geoncheonggung, where Queen Myeongseong was killed in an assassination plot by the Japanese.

Hyangwonjeong pavilion. Isn’t she lovely?

During my exploration, I came across a total of four magpies. The magpie is South Korea’s official bird. I am so in love with this city. May good fortune befall all of us!

The Kukkiwon Pilgrimage

January 23, 2013

Field Trips, Korea

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Yesterday, I took what may well be the start of a monthly pilgrimage to Kukkiwon, World Taekwondo Headquarters. Located in Gangnam, popularized by Psy, it was my first trip south of the Han River, not for horse-dancing but to visit the mecca of my favorite martial art in the world.

The Kukkiwon arch

It definitely felt like a pilgrimage, since it was an uphill trek on a side street from one of the main roads, which was lined with South Korean flags. Nearing the end, I find a traditional looking arch, with the name Kukkiwon in Korean. World Taekwondo Headquarters itself is, well, just a gym, but, oh what a gym! It’s quite symbolic to have a public site specifically for a sport that welcomes practitioners around the world. I suppose it was apparent that it was my first time, at least to the security guards who were mildly amused and puzzled at a (deceptively) Korean-looking woman skipping on the mat and taking photos.

I had to. Please don’t judge me.

It didn’t look that much different from any gym, except with the flags on the ceiling, the important-looking seats on top, and the rubber mat which seemed firmer and harder than that of most dojangs. But think of all the athletes from all over the world who walked this mat! (On that note, I’m glad I was wearing socks.)

I know it just looks like a gym, but to me it’s also a mecca.

Outside the gym, the hallway was decorated with photographs of taekwondo history. One showed a photo of taekwondo jins from North and South Korea. Another showed people practicing taekwondo on the streets of Cambodia, barefoot. Surprisingly, there were two old posters from taekwondo championships held in Manila. I even recognized some of the people in the pictures.

A bit of history

It was a chilly foggy day in the perpetually busy city of Seoul, but as pilgrimages go, the journey was long but destination was worth it.

Welcome to the K-Studio

January 22, 2013

Art, Journal, Korea

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Scroll below for an informal giveaway!

My desk, January 2013

Annyeong! I’m posting from my studio in Seoul, where I’m based for a while. This is my current desk. See if you can spot the following:

1. My lucky caganer
2. A bubble maker
3. A biography of Robert Irwin
4. Thaumatropes (which have been mistaken for eye masks—yes I am in Korea!)
5. My English and Chinese names translated in Korean
6. Receipts, mostly from Etude House
7. A Post-It pad shaped like a heart
8. Chinese astrology for 2013 (I found it on the back of my bus ticket, which I found interesting.)
9. Something from SVA IxD
10. A Korean bank book

The first three people who can email me a photo with the above items encircled and guesses at least 6 correctly gets a postcard, stickers, and a poem specially written for them. Not kidding.

Learning Cultures and Languages in the Year 2012 (Almost 2013): A User’s Experience

December 17, 2012

Creative Learning, Journal, Memory

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For reasons I will write about later, I have decided to learn the Korean language and culture. More specifically, I have decided to pack as much useful Korean phrases as possible into my head (and know how to say them in context) in the next few weeks.

I didn’t think that open source courseware from universities was the way to go. I love using online resources such as Khan Academy, Udemy, and Coursera, but they don’t really specialize in languages and cultures. In addition, with the timeframe I was giving myself, I didn’t want to feel like I was taking a class.

To my surprise, it wasn’t easy to find good online courses that teach Korean, perhaps because a lot of Korean people already speak English. Still, I believe that learning a people’s language is one of the best ways to understand them. When I lived in Barcelona, it was only when I started learning Spanish and Catalan that the locals started opening up to me. (Not that they weren’t nice to me before, but you get the idea.)

Learning a new language and culture always gives me what I refer to as a “brain massage”—I can feel my cerebral cortex almost groaning under all that cognitive load. Incorporating language classes into a busy schedule isn’t easy, and it was important to find learning material that were easily packaged into digestible pieces that are easy to recall.

Looking at the relatively small landscape of Korean culture and language videos, here are the two that are keeping me up at night (both from Youtube):

1. Professor Oh and Friends (SweetAndTasty on Youtube)

I’ve never come across better styled and more entertaining language and culture videos than those of Professor Oh’s. Her first video caught my eye, and I remembered her because her mnemonic for Korean consonants was to sing them to the melody of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. This was something that we used to do in high school, but to remember all the Chinese dynasties. (It’s quite a versatile song, yes?) It’s also really helpful that she points out common mistakes in pronunciation. She’s come quite a long way from that endearingly shy first video, and now she’s morphed into several characters. As someone with many alter egos as well, I totally relate to her. Keep going!

(Also check our her other alter ago as Ramona Champion.)

Professor Oh and Friends: Making the Korean language unforgettable. No kidding. (Photo from their Facebook page)

Because desperate times call for desperate measures, my Korean language notebook has frantically wriitten notes in the five languages I know, to highlight similarities and make me learn faster. Some Korean consonants were very similar to Mandarin, for example. It’s also funny that some words were the same in lots of languages. Banana is, well, pretty much banana in several countries.

2. Eat Your Kimchi with Simon and Martina

It’s impossible not to talk about Korean culture blogging without writing about Eat Your Kimchi. Canadians Simon and Martina Stawski came to South Korea in 2008 to teach English and started doing video blogs about their experiences as expats. They blog about the K-pop industry, but it’s their videos on culture that’s helping me. Now hugely popular, they have more than 260,000 subscribers on their Youtube channel. They even surpassed their Indiegogo goal to register EYK as an actual business.

Simon and Martina of Eat Your Kimchi. Prepping expats for Korean living (and K-pop) since 2008. Whatup, nasties! (Photo from the Eat Your Kimchi Facebook page)

From what I’ve learned from both Professor Oh and Eat Your Kimchi is this—having that human connection where the speaker is looking at you is a plus. Having well-defined characters or personalities allow for more contextualization, and when I remember the words and phrases, I hear the characters speaking them in my head together with their idiosyncracies. It also helps that they seem to be genuinely nice people with normal lives. Thoughtfully written scripts also work well in helping me remember. I switch back and forth from these channels because it’s great to have both Korean and non-Korean perspectives.

These people all feel familiar to me, and I might instinctively give them high fives if I ever see them. Seriously, thank you, for making this process wonderfully entertaining and useful.

—Catherine Sarah Young

Artist for the Planet

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