The Grand Narrative

(Photo by yeweni)

(Update: Sorry, it’s still worth it, but I forgot to mention that it’s quite a hike up a hill to get to, especially if you’re coming from the Ferry Terminal or the 중앙동/Joongang-dong direction. I don’t mean the hill in the photos, I mean to get to the hill in the photos! There is a bus up, but I don’t know the number sorry) 

I’m about to head off to my wife’s hometown of Jinju for the 3-day holiday. I’ll be spending 3 hours on the train there and back; much longer than the 1.5 hours it normally takes on the bus, but infinitely preferable to the 12 hours that the trip once took me for 설날 3 years ago. I’ll reply to your emails and comments and resume posting once I’m back on the weekend.

In the meantime, if you’re stuck in Busan for the holiday then I highly recommend visiting the Daecheong Park Monument, close to Nampo-dong (in the top left-hand corner of this map). The “Democracy Resistance Memorial Hall” (which might more accurately be called the “Korean Democratization Museum”) next door is also worth visiting but will probably be closed, but if you walk up the hill to the monument (see these photos) then you can great views of Busan, and more importantly if you go behind it then all of the noise of Busan suddenly disappears.

You don’t realise how stressful the noise is, but how used to it you are, until it suddenly stops like that; as I type this, I realise I’ve been wearing earplugs to go to sleep every night ever since I moved to Busan 4 years ago. If you go alone and when you’re unlikely to be disturbed by anyone else visiting, then it’s a very tranquil and serene place to spend some time, and there’s not many of those in a Korean city! Personally, I used to visit every other week or so in the afternoons when I worked in Nampo-dong in 2004, and managed whole hours there without seeing anyone else.

It’s easily my favorite part of Busan, but now that I don’t work in the area I haven’t visited in quite a while, so it would be unfair to keep it to myself. Note that I don’t mean inside the shrine in the photo at the base of the monument but behind it. Naturally the shrine is quite a spiritual and serene place itself…but there’s nowhere to sit, it’s cold, and there’s lots of tourists visiting. But very few think to go behind it, where you’ll be sheltered from the wind and have the sun and a scenic forest in front of you.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

(Amazing Bridge by rayhue)

I knew Busan would be cold after 4 weeks of sunny Australian and New Zealand beaches, but did it have to be quite so grey and miserable? It almost seems like a conspiracy.

So, rather than take a photo from my veranda window to mark my return to Korean soil, I’ve posted this amazing one from Flickr instead, which would have been taken about 30m away from me (stalkers, take note). I admit, “amazing” might be too strong a choice of words for many readers, but I love the photo because it presents something previously drab and unremarkable to me in a new, refreshing, and almost magical light…not unlike how I hope my 4 weeks away, after six years away from home, will make me view life in Korea.

For the few readers who aren’t science-fiction fans, the reason I used the title “Slant“ for this post was because it instantly reminded me of the 1998 novel by Greg Bear, one of my favourite authors since I was 14. Once you read this excerpt from the back cover, you’ll get the idea:

In the sixth decade of the twenty-first century, Earth has been transformed. Nanotechnology has been perfected, giving humans the ability to change their environment and themselves down to the cellular level. And the study of the mind has brought a revolution in human psychotherapy and artificial intelligence.

It’s a sane and perfect world. Almost.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Unlike what I said yesterday, it took a little while longer than the time spent on my morning cup of coffee, and a hell of a lot more than a “few clicks here and there” of the mouse, but my first post on ZR5 Asian News is finally up. Please go now and check it out and make it the most popular post on ZR5!

In the meantime, this post you’re reading isn’t the first new and improved ”better quality post” for this blog that I promised yesterday sorry, like I said I have to think before I write it and am too lazy to do it today genuinely have a little research to do for it first. I just thought that in addition to the above, today I’d let Seoul readers of the blog know that my family and I will be coming up from this Sunday the 25th to Wednesday the 28th. I’ve already been fortunate enough to make some new friends in Gimhae last weekend via the blog (thanks again for your hospitality by the way, and please come over to Daeyeon-dong anytime!), so it would be great to meet people in Seoul too. We’ll be staying at a Korean friend’s house while they’re there, and of course I’ll want to hang out with her and her baby, but I hear that Seoul is pretty cold right now, so I’m pretty certain that I won’t be able to drag my wife out of the warm house to bookstores in Jongno. I’ll have a lot of free time while I’m there then, so give me a buzz if you’d like to meet (if you scroll down the page, you can find my email address on the right).

Finally, let me give a big note of appreciation to “busanlulu” for letting Busanites know here about a soy-milk ice-cream store in Seomyeon in Busan, which my wife and I went to yesterday. Now, a lot of people have said that they read my blog because its not like normal whiny expat blogs where people complain about Korean customs and the difficulty of finding good Western foods, but I think I can be forgiven for this lapse. After all, I’m allergic to milk, and as regular readers will know, I haven’t been back to a Western country in a long time. So, regardless of what some of you think of soy-milk ice-cream, that does indeed mean that I haven’t had icecream of any kind in 6 years!!! Can you imagine? Hell, considering how much I enjoyed that icecream, you’re lucky that this paragraph is all that I’ll devote to it in the end: in fact, I wanted to make a song and dance about it and post a video of the results to youtube, but unfortunately getting our camera fixed was the reason we were in Seomyeon in the first place. This one will have to do in the meantime:

Yep, I know it’s kinda ironic that after 6 years without it I find a soy-milk icecream store in Korea a whole 3 weeks before I’ll be going to Australia and New Zealand which has loads of it, but what can you do? Ah yes, warn others, so the same thing doesn’t happen to them.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Yep, if you listen to that one you probably will. But if you hear that the Busan Metropolitan City Government thinks…ahem…music is the best method to raise the birthrate and stop the population movement away from the city, then surely James Brown is the first thing that comes to mind?

Not to the suits in Busan apparently. Back in early October, I wrote this post where I translated an article about the City Government’s desire to combat these population issues, and KoreaBeat commented that the article sounded a bit “Soviet-like.” At the time I thought that that was a bit of an exaggeration myself, and may have been more due to my imperfect translation skills more than anything else. But considering the first supposed solution that they came up with below, then surely a “Mother of the Republic” award is next in the pipeline?

출산장려 노래 CD 제작

2007년10월17일 수요일 제1290호, p.2.

출산과 가족친화적인 부산을 만들기 위해 부산광역시와 부산은행이 공동으로 추친한 ‘출산장려 캠페인 송’ 시민공모 당선작이 CD로 나왔다.

부산시는 최근 최우수작 ‘웃음으로(선용 작사, 한수성작곡)’ 와 우수작 ‘아름다운 가족(이상규 작사, 작곡)’ ‘우리처럼(권연순 작사, 작곡)’ 3개 작품에 대한 편곡작업을 거쳐 3천500개의 CD를 제작했다.

시는 듣기 좋고 부르기 쉽게 편곡한 출산장려 캠페인 송 CD를 온 시민이 즐겨 따라 부르도록 지난 8일부터 보육시설, 유치원, 초등학교 및 방송사 등 언론매체를 대상으로 배부 중이다.

출산장려 캠페인 송을 활용하고자 하는 기관이나 단체는 부산시 홈페이지 (www.busan.go.kr) 에서 직접 내려받을 수 있으며, CD가 필요한 경우 시 여성정책 담당관실을 방문하거나 수신자 부담 택배 신청을 하면 된다.

*문의: 여성정책담당관실(888-3091~4)

A CD has been produced to encourage Busan citizens to have more children

In partnership with Busan Bank, the Busan City Metropolitan Government has produced a CD to encourage Busan citizens to make a family-friendly city have more children. The three songs on the CD were chosen in a competition where the public selected the ones they liked the most.

The songs which were the most popular were ‘Through Laughter” (Lyrics: Seon-yong, Composer: Han Su-seong), ”Beautiful Family” (Lyrics and Composer: Lee Sang-Gyu), and “Like Us” (Lyrics and Composer: Gweon Yeon-sun), and 3500 CDs have been produced.

To make these CDs readily accessible to the public, from the 8th of October, these ”Having Children Encouragement Campaign Song” CDs have been distributed to childcare facilities, kindergartens, elementary schools and mentioned by several media outlets.

Agencies and groups that would like to receive the “Having Children Encouragement Campaign Song” CD can order it directly from the City Government homepage at www.busan.go.kr, or visit local Department of Women’s Affairs offices and request it from there. In both cases, upon receiving it you will have to pay a small delivery fee.

For enquiries: Call the Department of Women’s Affairs (888-3091~4)

I’m sorry, I don’t have a copy of the CD myself… even a complete Korea Studies geek like myself has his limits.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

(Warning: This post started off with serious intentions, but rapidly degenerated into lots of pictures of attractive Korean women with not many clothes on. I’m terribly sorry. Back to more serious topics tomorrow)

With one of my closest Korean friend getting married on Sunday, then perhaps Korean weddings would be a more natural subject for a post the next day on a self-proclaimed Korea Studies blog. I admit, the subject can be interesting, as while modern Korean weddings certainly have the appearance and trappings of Western weddings at first glance, more than 5 minutes spent at a wedding hall reveals that the whole ethos of them is quite different really, and working out the origins of the eclectic mix of traditions can take some time. And knowing me I even have a thick academic tome called Getting Married in Korea: Of Gender, Morality and Modernity on the subject, and what’s more one that I’ve actually read (albeit a long time ago) and don’t just have on my bookshelf for appearances.

But while all that can certainly make your first wedding at a Korean wedding hall definitely quite an experience, once you’ve been to one there’s not much new to see at the next (a bit like Korean temples). True, being armed with all that knowledge meant that I did personally refuse to get married at a wedding hall, and so 3 years ago had a dignified traditional Korean wedding at this little oasis of peace and serenity in the heart of urban Busan called Chungnyeolsa/충렬사 instead, which I heartily recommend (give me a buzz if you want more details). But I’m not personally interested in Korean weddings at all anymore, academically or otherwise.

So while I’m very glad my friend is happy, even though it means that she will be moving to Ulsan with her new husband and hence that now all of my Korean friends have gotten married and left Busan, as a jaded and cynical old-Korea-timer I found this soju advertisement I saw in the restaurant after the ceremony to be…ahem…much more interesting than the ceremony itself.

Recognise her? She’s 고아라/Go Ara from this drink advertisement below that we all loved to hate, but which we couldn’t help but sing and dance to when none of our students were looking (if the youtube video doesn’t load, try this more reliable link instead).

It turns out she’s quite a chameleon, yes? Even more importantly, while looking for more pictures of her I found some at this ’Girl Monday‘ post on the excellent Korean and Korea Studies-themed About Joel blog, which I actually found ages ago but completely forgot the name of, and so had given up on trying ever finding it again. See? God moves in mysterious ways, and I’ve repeatedly said that great things about Korea are to be found on the internet not by googling “blogs written by bald pretentious Korea Studies scholar wannabes called James,” or words to that effect, but by searching for pictures of scantily-clad Korean women instead. So, it’s a dirty job, but if one does indeed have to lower the high tone of the blog with numerous pictures of stunning Korean women to get your arguments about the objectification of Korean women in the media and the Korean patriarchy noticed at all, then let it not be said that I don’t try my very best:

You should know who the woman in the first picture is. The woman in the next three is 신민아/Shin Min-a, not to be confused with the former “Miss World Cup 2002″ singer with the same name.

Having gotten that out of the way, I did seriously start today’s post with the intention of talking about what the following Korean soju advertisements may or may not reveal about Korean society. That’s because when I found the original ad of Go Ara’s above on this page of Jinro Soju’s homepage (watch out for the noisy automatic video when you click on the second link), next to it I first noticed this ad below with 김아중/Kim Ah-joong. If you don’t know who she is either then you probably haven’t been in Korea for very long, so if you’re interested see Wikipedia’s entry on her here, lots more pics and articles on her here, and finally my own personal take on the movie that made her famous here if you want.

Almost every Korean soju manufacturer has an innocent, virginal looking Korean woman in its ads these days, and this one with Kim Ah-joong only stood out because I’ve seen the video of her most recent commercial for Jinro at Mongdori here, or here on Jinro’s website again (her behavior in the video is sickeningly childish, but unfortunately all too typical for many young Korean women). Even though by the time I go back to Australia and NZ next month for a month’s vacation it will have been a crazy 5 years and 9 months(!) since I’ve been to a Western country, even I still remember that Western ads for alcohol are just as full of women who wouldn’t last one year as a model if they actually drank the products they’re advertising, but in the case of soju I’ve always found the discrepancy between the sweet, innocent, youthful women and the actual appearance of the odious middle-aged ajosshis who would be 95% of the drinkers of the product just too great to be even remotely swayed by the ads.

Sure, everyone’s entitled to drink what they hell they like, and if drinking pure ethanol mixed with water and flavoring is your tipple of choice, then I won’t make out that I’m all superior by mostly drinking Black Russians and Jack and Cokes, and I promise I’ll only look down on you on my way home from my own favorite bar (see here and then here) when I pass you vomiting in the gutter. But I can’t help it, every time I see those ads the first thing that comes in to mind are these anti-smoking ones:

I may be overanalysing the ads, but you would too if you saw a 3 metre version of this one of 이채연/Lee Chae Yeon’s (click here too) at 연산/Yeonsan subway station to and from work everyday. Seriously, it’s difficult to get soju ads off your mind when you pass breasts that are bigger than your head everyday (no pun intended). And this is at the very same station with pictures of rather minimalist female figures on the pillars promoting awareness of breast cancer, that had to be colored pink within 2 weeks or so to make it look more like they were giving themselves breast examinations fully clothed…presumably, someone complained at the moral depravity of it. This ad, in contrast, has been up for at least a year, and considering she’s wearing a negligee(!), then the ad reveals a lot more than those virtual cartoon characters ever did.

In case you’re not entirely convinced that Korean soju ads have attractive Korean women in them (hey, it’s possible), here are two with 김태희/Kim Tae-hee, whom you can find more information about at an earlier post of mine on her here. I admit, while she doesn’t look quite so virginal in the first, they overdid the look a bit in the second.

Despite the post’s title, I didn’t plan to focus quite so much on the ones with attractive Korean women in them…no, really…for when I wrote “revealing” I meant revealing of certain features of Korean society, which actually these following three advertisements, also from the Jinro homepage, do much better. Exhibit number one:

That Korean families are a lot “closer” (for want of a better term) than their Western counterparts (except perhaps Southern Europeans) isn’t some newbie myth about Korea that I’m going to claim all the books about Korea in my bookshelf, which you don’t have, demonstrate really isn’t the case, but which only Korea Studies geeks like myself know. While I will argue in a post soon that Korean 20-somethings stay at home until they’re married not so much because of some supposedly timeless Korean cultural feature, and more because the structure of the housing market here means that they can’t leave home until they’re about 25, and by then they’re used to it, in the meantime the familial nature of people’s lives is very pervasive here…just watch a dating program sometime, like weddings again ostensibly Western at first, but then the person selecting who to date brings mom and dad with them, and they form a integral part of the show. So drinking soju with Dad here is no big deal. Hell, it’s not even particularly Korean, as it reminds me of this old New Zealand Speight’s Beer Ad:

Watch it once, then watch the younger man’s expression 12 seconds before the end…has always made me want to kill him. But I digress.

So drinking with Dad, or your sheep-shearing mentor, sells beer even in homophobic New Zealand, but jeez…did the Korean ad have to be so completely and utterly gay? Now, you all know my feelings about Men in pink, and like I said diversity in clothing styles is to be applauded, and pink doesn’t necessarily mean gay. But why, oh why, do the Korean guys in ads invariably have to be so damn effeminate? In this case Dad can be forgiven, at least he’s procreated, but jeez, that kid looks like he’s two shots away from breaking out the baby oil and S&M gear. 

Self-explanatory. If not, check out this post and my comments to it at Gusts of Popular Feeling, and if you too feel I’m reading too much into it like some other commenters there thought, I challenge you to find one ad with a Korean woman - non-Korean man couple in it, whereas off the top of my head I can remember 5 with the opposite here, and I don’t even watch Korean TV except for the Starcraft channels on 34 and 58. (Edit: According to my friend, the guy on the left is clearly Caucasian. Maybe so, in which case surely I’ve lost all credibility with my readers. My friend thought it was significant that he was set aside from the rest of the group though) 

A little overkill perhaps, for you probably got my message about effeminate Korean men. If not, also check this image of the “ideal” Korean male (with thanks to Seoul Man). The ad above claims he’s an athlete, but jeez, I looked more butch when I was a teenager playing nothing but chess all day. But yes, he sure is pretty, I’ll give him that.

And on that athletic note, I’d better put this marathon of a post to bed.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

I saw this article on page 2 of the Busan City Government’s weekly “newspaper” the Busan Shibo/부산시보 (warning: automatic lame music) available at the turnstiles at subway stations, but if you are beating yourself up about misplacing your copy then never fear, for a PDF of the article itself is available here. The final policy recommendations mentioned in the article may have been influenced by a local meeting on the issue last month that I discussed here, so, for the few Korean demographics students that are the only people still reading this post by this stage, I recommend you read that post first.

부산시보, 제1289호, 2007.10.10, p.2.

“인구유출 막고，출산 늘리고 …”

부산시，인구감소 분야별 대책 추진 온 힘

부산광역시가 각 분야별 인구감소 대책을 펴는데 온 힘을 쏟고 있다．지난 7월 인구대책위원회를 출범시킨 뒤, 지금까지 마련한 경제, 교육, 문화 등 분야별 대책을 추진하는 것이다．

중점대책은 크게 일자리 창출 및 지역경제 활성화，쾌적한 정주여건 마련， 교육경쟁력 강화，출산·양육에 친화적인 환경 마련，도시매력도 향상，시민의식 제고 등이다．

먼저 출산을 장려하기 위해 `저출산대책 및 출산장려를 위한 지원 조례’를 제정하고，출산축하금 인상，보육시설 확충 및 보육료 지원 등 다양한 지원을 펴고 있다．

일자리 창출을 위해 산업단지를 추가 확보하고 `부산 뉴 잡 플랜’을 시행하며, 각종 컨택센터도 지속적으로 유치하고 있다．

교육 측면에선 지역대학의 경쟁력을 강화하고, 부산 글로벌 빌리지(Busan Global Village)를 조성하며, 부산국제외국어학교를 설립하는 등 외국인을 포함한 교육 내실화 방안을 적극 추진한다．

이와 함께 쾌적한 주거여건을 마련하기 위해 강서·정관 신도시 개발에 박차를 가하고，충무·영도 뉴타운 및 혁신도시를 건설한다．출산을 장려하고 인구유출을 막기 위해서는 사회적 공감대를 서둘러 형성해야 한다고 보고，사회적 분위기를 확산시키는데도 힘을 쏟고 있다．

시는 최근 인구감소 추세가 다소 둔화되고 있고，정관신도시 아파트의 분양과 부산의 국제적 위상 강화 등 도시의 활력이 높아짐에 따라 인구감소 현상도 조금씩 줄어들 것으로 기대하고 있다.

Busan Shibo, No. 1289, Wednesday October 10th 2007, p. 2.

“Stop the flow of people from Busan, raise the birth rate…”

Busan City Council has launched a multi-faceted drive to counteract Busan’s population decrease.

This drive of Busan Metropolitan City’s will be particularly vigorous, and is the result of recommendations of a committee formed in July was formed to deal with this issue, which so far has come up with numerous proposals for the local economy, education system, cultural facilities and so forth.

The main points of these policies include producing more jobs, boosting the local economy, making the Busan living environment pleasanter, making the local education system more attractive, making the environment friendlier to parents to raise their children, increase the city’s charm, and to make people think of themselves as Busan citizens more, and so on.

First, to encourage an increase in the birthrate, the “Law to counter the low birthrate” has been enacted, which amongst other things will increase the congratulatory child support funds given to new parents, expand the number of childcare facilities, and subside kindergarten fees to make them more affordable for parents.

Next, to increase the number of local jobs, industrial areas will set up and the “Busan New Job Plan”will be implemented, which will involve the establishment of various kinds of  jobs centers.

In terms of education, local universities will strengthen their competitiveness, a “Busan Global Villlage”will be created, more Busan Foreign language schools will established, and the opinions and concerns of Busan’s increasing non-native population will be given much more consideration than in the past. This will be the most substantial portion of this new drive by the Busan City Council.

Finally, in oder to make Busan a pleasanter city to live in, “new towns” will be built in Gangseo-gu and Jeong-gwan, and these will spur development in neighbouring ChoongMu and Yeong-island. In order to encourage an increase in the birthrate and stem the population flow from Busan, the city thinks Busan citizens need to be aware of the seriousness of the issue and sympathise with the city’s concerns, and so it has to hurridly begin a new campaign of public awareness.

With these measures, Busan City hopes to stem the population flow from Busan a little, and with the sale or lease of Jeong-Gwan Newtown apartments Busan’s international image will hopefully strengthen, and as the city’s dynamic energy increases the rate of population decrease will surely slow.

Seeing as I always provide the link to the original articles that I translate when I can, then it was not unreasonable of a friend of mine to ask me recently why I always feel the need to make readers scroll down through the original Korean before getting to my translation; after all, he only reads through everything because I guilted him into doing so. But I just as reasonably replied that links sometimes die, and there may be mistakes with my translation which people with better ability than me can point out. We were both a bit drunk by that stage though, so I also let it slip that having lots of actual Korean on the blog hopefully gives me an aura of the Korean expert that other blogs lack, but as that would be too honest and patronising to my readers I shouldn’t really reveal it here. My lips are sealed.

Seriously though, in this particular case my wife and I had a horrendous time trying to translate the complete hot air that the article was, and while I think I’ve captured the gist of it, more competent than I Korean speakers may indeed want to confirm for themselves that that waffling crap is what local governments dish up for their citizens here. In fairness though, it sounds a bit better in Korean, but if a picture says a thousands words, then I think this one neatly sums up Busanites’ feelings about the local government’s plans:

Sure, I ‘m not entirely certain that the picture is even of Korea let alone Busan, but put up all the shiny new apartments you want, if laws about maternity leave are not actually enforced, and there’s not adequate and affordable childcare available that parents can actually trust, then 30-something Korean women are just going to give a big “메롱” to exhortations by middle-aged civil servants in their 50s to have more children for the sake of the economy….seriously, they wouldn’t be able to move into the shiny apartments in if they did. While it’s great that governments are appearing to take the Korean birthrate issue seriously, until I see some actual evidence of the ominous sounding “Law to counter the low birthrate” then its just going to sound like the same old lip-service to me, something which Korean officials are unfortunately notorious for.

(메롱 means sticking your tongue out like the woman in the picture here and saying “Mae-ae-ae-rong” by the way, a Korean version of “nyah-nyah”)

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Sorry for not translating this article today like I said I would, but my 15 month-old daughter has developed her first ever bad cold. Not knowing how to blow her nose yet, the poor little thing is having a hard time of it, and has taken up virtually all of my wife and I’s spare time.

Besides which, after managing to do a rough translation while she was having a nap, a whole 1 min of internet surfing while having a break produced this much better translation here. I would have provided my own regardless, but I confess I lost interest because I originally thought it was about Korea’s aging population, the corollary of Korea’s declining birth rate which I’m very interested in. But instead, it’s merely about the results of a survey that shows that Korea’s less developed regions have the highest proportion of centenarians, especially those areas with a lot of soybean and garlic crops…leading to the very profound conclusion that staying away from Korea’s crowded polluted cities, not smoking, and eating soybeans and garlic helps you live to be 100. Yawn. Sorry to get your hopes up, and I’m surprised that it made it to page 2 of a national newspaper, albeit a free daily; even the Chosun Ilbo put it in its “Something completely different” category in its English site. If that is the norm for Korean media though, then in hindsight it’s no wonder a grand total of four(!) foreigners faking their degrees made the first 5 mins of the national news a few months ago: now that is hot stuff.

(Just for the record, the English section of the Chosun Ilbo isn’t the normally the first place I check out to unwind…no, really…and actually I was originally looking at this article about a Korean I admire by the name of 백지영/Baek Ji-yeong when I saw the link to the centenarian article.)

I can still put up my intended second half of the original post though, especially as my wife is struggling to put my bawling daughter to bed as I type this. I’ve been meaning to blog it for a while actually. What’s it actually about? Well, the original idea for it came from a book I read about a decade ago, which briefly examined the links between poverty and unhealthiness and obesity in a one chapter (I can’t remember the title sorry). I’ve known that the two often go together for probably a good 16 years now, but until I read that book I never thought as to how and why exactly. Basically, the book demonstrated how a lack of cheap public transport in some areas of the United Kingdom meant that those too poor to have a car simply couldn’t make it to the bigger, generally cheaper supermarkets, and so were stuck with either the not bad for their health but damn expensive food from their local dairy, or cheap junk food from virtually all anywhere.

Again, not a profound point and so perhaps it’s hypocritical of me to criticise the article about centenarians, but it did make a lot of things click for me, and more importantly taught me that not all poor people that are fat are thus so because of their stupidity. Many were aware that fish and chips every night wasn’t packed full of Vitamin C, but they had few other options in walking distance that they could afford, and if that stops me from generalising about them 1 out of every 10 times, then kudos to me.

How is this tangent relevant? Well, because it’s very easy to say that Korea’s birth rate is very low, Korea is aging rapidly, this will have consequences on Korean society…yada yada yada…but how exactly? What consequences? So let me demonstrate some that are occurring already:  

I like roller-blading. In Auckland in New Zealand, there is a path that begins downtown and snakes alongside the waterfront and all the way to various beaches such as Mission Bay; in the end, there’s about maybe 30km of a decent path to jog on, and about 10-15km of it is a beautifully smooth track specially designed for roller-blading on. I have many wonderful memories of summer nights roller-blading for hours along there, occasionally stopping to admire the complete meatmarket that that section of it is, and doing a little posing myself, for, it’s got to be said, my body back then would have put Daniel Henney’s to shame…but I digress. Suffice to say that I miss it, and it’ll be one of the the first things I do on my vacation back there this Northern Hemisphere winter.

Where to roller-blade in my local area of Busan? Well, there is this maybe 400-500m walkway close to Gwanganli Beach (in the distance in the first photo), rubberised sometime in early 2005 as I recall:

I remember the green half being full of roller-bladers after that, and I would have joined them had my blades not been sitting in a storage shed back in New Zealand. But I did jog there, and feeling yourself on a hot day sinking a few inches into the rubber as you jogged was simply heavenly…but I jogged in the morning back then, and couldn’t help but notice that the strip was packed with retirees walking along it, even at 6am. Later, as I started feeling my age more and so wanted to jog at a warmer hour, I’d notice that it would still be packed with them at 9am, and even 11am; in fact, in the summer it can be pretty busy 24/7, as there’s nowhere else like it.

I stopped jogging there for a maybe a year and a half, preferring the path in the trees in the background to the de-energising “light at the end of the tunnel” effect that running on that strip induces, and didn’t go back until I bought a pushbike from an expat in Haeundae. I thought I’d check out my old stomping grounds, literally, and so rode along there. It was in winter, so relatively empty, but…Jeez, did I get a shock! Normally affable and friendly Korean retirees scowled and swore at me, and the odd one tried to block my path and even wrestle me off the bike. I wasn’t going fast at all, but not a single person politely asked me to stop and explain that this sign had gone up since the last time I’d been there:

If you can’t read the Korean, the first line says that inline-skates, pushbikes, and scooters are not allowed on the strip. I’m tempted to skateboard along it, as that’s not explicitly forbidden, but I doubt that the miserable gits people that came up with these rules would care for the distinction.

I can understand the safety concerns of me biking or roller-blading in the height of summer, knocking aside the 1000+ retirees there aside like bowling pins (it still sounds tempting), but surely these could be allayed by the installation of a very short concrete wall dividing the green and chequered sections? You could argue that I should stop moaning like most expats and suggest this myself to that local council, but I very much doubt that the almost they’d pay much attention to me; they’d probably mention this skating rink to me instead:

Look’s great, eh? Here’s a view of the whole complex, with soccer fields and tennis courts and things, from the summit of the hill on the left:

But that’s at least 30 minutes walk from that strip, through an area that reeks of polluted sediments in those areas of water you see…and the complex is only open 9-6! What’s the point?

All this may sound trivial, but having that strip so close is, or rather was, a real plus for living in the 대연/남천 Daeyeon/Namcheon area of Busan. And Korean cities have lots of rather samey mountains to hike up, also full of retirees at any time of the day, but very very few parks, and that new policy means that the nearest place for me to rollerblade now is either a concrete strip close to that school in the foreground, with the refreshing ocean breeze of industrial sludge sediment to breath on and a great view of a construction site next door to admire, or alternatively alongside a equally foul smelling “stream” that runs along the center of Busan under the breathtaking subway stations of Line 1, which would take me about 15 mins of walking and then 20-25 mins on the subway to get to.

I already had a very low opinion of old people in Korea before this, as I find not all, but all too many of them, extremely inconsiderate and impolite. Someone explained to me that this is a product of their postwar upbringing, being so poor and hungry all the time then that they hadto think of no-one but themselves, and this makes much more sense than apologist cultural explanations. But while I can handle all the que-jumping, just, as they probably really could do with the subway seat much more than me, stopping everyone else’s fun at Gwanganli brings the consequences of that inconsideration to a new level. I think Korea already has enough inconsiderate retirees thank you very much, but their size as a proportion of the population is growing, and so I expect many more annoyances like this to come up in the near future. Hopefully enough for young Koreans to call a spade a spade and start reacting, with less of the much venerated (especially by old people) Confucian deference.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Sorry about all the constant changes to the look of the blog: once I’d finally settled on the right WordPress theme, then I was changing the header photo every 5 mins. I can be forgiven for this I think: after all, at only 4 months old I’m maybe a toddler by blogging standards, literally still finding his feet, so some experimenting and finding out about the big scary blogging world is good and healthy for me, yes? But I like the present, grittier(?) look to it and think I’ll keep for quite a while.

After spending so much time on it, I’m very very tempted to explain all the deep and profound reasons for the choice of header photo, involving references to a good deal of cyberpunk literature, recent works of the Spanish sociologist Manual Castells, and what actually a “grand narrative” is and why I came up with that blog title, and of course all of these were much more important than the trifling fact that I couldn’t find anything else suitable on my C-drive, but I think it’d be wise if I saved that navel-gazing for some pages at a later date (not posts: a page is like the permanent “About” link above). In the meantime, if interesting stuff isn’t on the blog then people won’t read it no matter how deep and profound it looks, so I’ll get right back to business. Unfortunately, in hindsight today’s translated article only very barely qualifies…so first, I’ll go off on a bizarre, sleep-deprived tangent instead.

(Update November: All that was about the old look, not the present one with the headless gunman, but I didn’t have the heart to delete most of the post)

I have a good excuse for choosing the article. Because of all the Korean study I should have been doing for my test recently, I’ve been in a real dilemma choosing what reading material to bring on the subway everyday. I could bring my ipod nano of course, I have a huge backlog of podcasts to catch up on, but then I worry that I’ll miss the chance to surprise someone commentating on my shaved head or foreigners in general, thinking I don’t understand. After all, it’s what I live in Korea for. Also, if I listen to them (the podcasts, not the occasional rude Korean), or if I bring something in English to read, I feel hypocritical about complaining about how my job prevents me from immersing myself into Korean, but then not using the opportunities presented to me. On top of that…jeez, it’s such a dilemma being a long-timer learning Korean in Korea…if I do read English stuff, then I feel like I’m just fulfilling Korean commuters’ stereotypes of bloody foreigners who can’t speak a word of Korean and can’t be bothered learning…seriously, I so much as glance at a student’s English notes next to me, then I suddenly feel like I’m 40kg heavier and already ordering a Big Mac and fries.

On the other hand, I often don’t manage to study enough Korean in the mornings, especially as my daughter gets older, so I frequently think about studying it on the subway to make up for it. But it’s really quite difficult, for if I want to do more than reread an article I’ve already studied, or go over a riveting list of vocab I have to memorise, then it can be very impractical fiddling around with my pencils, erasers, highlighters, noticeboard, and electronic dictionary that I need to genuinely study. Korean podcasts are also out, for two reasons: first, not unlike Korean study materials in general, a search of itunes shows that there’s absolutely nothing available for levels between numerous bubblegum beginner stuff on the one hand and Korean language Radio Free Asia podcasts on the other; and secondly, studying Korean is a lot more fun if you can fantasise that the cute University student sitting next to you will not only notice that you are, but also that your abilities are clearly way better than 99% of all the other foreigners out there, and so would just love the opportunity to chat in Korean with a foreigner and get to know you much better.  Seriously, these fantasies are important, as in reality it’s not like people are dying to chat with me in Korean once they realise that I’m able to: in 4 years on the Busan subway, I’ve only ever met a whole 2 people who have, both 20 years older than me and the wrong gender. But after complaining about being hassled for so long by friendly well-wishers and/or people wanting free English practice whenever I went out in public, then I shouldn’t now complain about finally getting the relative anonymity that I craved.

So, I usually end up bringing nothing and just sitting there staring into space, thinking of what to say in Korean if someone hassles me for being an underqualified pedophilic alcoholic teacher, or discussing my oh-so-interesting shaved head in front of me. Unfortunately however, 99% of Koreans are perfectly normal, polite, reasonable people, and so no-one has ever ever done the former to me. Damn. As for the latter, I discovered that 100% of Koreans have a secret telepathic ability called Kordar™, which allows them to subconciously notice any foreigner with even limited Korean ability in their vicinity. In other words, for my first 3 to 4 years here, upon seeing me many people would blatantly start talking about me and/or foreigners and start laughing, even though by mere body language alone my 15 month-old daughter could figure out what they were doing, and get upset by it. But as soon as I finally knew enough Korean to not only clearly understand when this happens, but to retort wittily to it too…. everybody stopped doing it. Damn again.

Yes, I do know that I really really need my 4 week vacation in December! Let me enjoy myself for now, I’ve just about finished ranting anyway.

You may recall that I’ve recently decided to save the world by looking at the free daily newspapers available in Korea online rather than physically carrying them around with me from now on. In hindsight though, they were the perfect solution to my sleep-deprived rant above. Without them then, realising last week that all this crap that I come up with everyday meant I had nothing to bloody do for 2 hours of commuting on the subway again, at the turnstiles I picked up a free copy of the Busan City Council’s weekly newspaper the 부산시보 to read. Normally I’d avoid it like the plague, for if you haven’t guessed from the cheesy music that’s started playing if you clicked on the link, it always looked like it just contained local government propaganda: everytime I saw it, I’d instantly be reminded of the Moscow newsroom scene from the movie Airplane!, where the announcer leads with the story “Fire today in downtown Moscow clears space for glorious new tractor factory,” which at least got me smiling. But if I really wanted that, I’d grab a bottle of Jim Beam and soon be laughing silly at the much sleeker version available on the god-awful ArirangTv instead thank you very much. But I was desperate, and while it was about as thrilling as I expected, I did find this article below:

(oops, actually it was Airplane2: The Sequel)

부산 인구유출 줄이기 - 출산장려 시민톤론회

12일 오후 2시 부산싱공회의소서

부산 인구유출 줄이기와 출산장려를 위한 시민톤론회가 12일 오후 2시 부산상공회의소 상의홀에서 열린다.

부산경제살리기시민연대 (상임 의장 박인호)와 부산은행(은행장 이장호)이 공동으로 시민토론회를 주최하고, 부산광역시, 부산상공회의소, 한국증권선물거래소, 부산인구출줄이기 - 출산장려서민연대가 후원하다.

이날 토론회는 박인호 상임의장의 사회로 특별강연과 발표, 토론 순으로 진행될 예정.

박영숙 (사)유엔미래포럼 출산장려운동본부장이 ‘미래가 보여주는 저출산 해법’ 이라는 특별강연을 하고, 이원섭 부산국토 연구원 연구위원이 ‘부산의 인구 감소 어떻게 대응할 것인가’를, 이이숙 주산장신대 교수가 ‘부산 저출산의 요인과 정책방안은 무엇인가’를 주제로 각각 발표한다.

이어 이영 부산산공회의소 상근부희장, 오흥석 부산시 기획관리설장, 이상진 부산시교육청 부교육감, 안승철 부산은행 부행장등이 토론자로 나서 열띤 토론을 벌일 예정이다.

이날 토론에 앞서 행사장에서는 고등학생과 대학생 부산 사랑 선서 및 서약, 다산가족행복이야기 발표 및 표창 행사도 열린다.

People leaving Busan - A public debate on how to increase the birth rate

2pm, Wednesday the 12th, Busan Chamber of Commerce and Industry

A debate on how to deal with Busan’s population moving to other cities and how to increase the birth rate will be held at 2pm in the afternoon in the Sang-ui hall at the Busan Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The Citizen’s Group for the growth of the Busan economy (chairman: Park In-ho) and Busan Bank (chairman: Lee Jang-Ho) will be co-chairing this debate together with the suport of Busan Metropolitian City Council , the Busan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Korea Stock Exchange (KRX), and the Citizen’s group for reducing the population movement from Busan and increasing the birth rate. On that day, Chairman Park In-Ho will lead by introducing a special lecture, to be followed by the debate.

Park Yeong-Su, chairperson of the “UN Future Forum,” a movement to encourage higher birthrates,  will deliver this special lecture entited “Methods of raising birthrates in the future.” Then Lee Won-Sop, a researcher at the Busan District Research Center, will deliver a speech on how to cope with Busan’s population decline, which will then be followed by a speech by Lee In-Suk, a professor at Busan Jang-Sin University, on Busan’s low birth-rate and what methods and policies should be adopted to cope with it.

Next, Lee Yeong, Vice-President of the Busan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Oh Hong-Sok, the Manager of the Busan City Council Admin and Management Department, Lee Sang-jin, Vice President of the Busan Education Department, An Sung-Cheol Vice-president of Busan Bank will have a passionate debate about the issues raised in the previous speeches.

On the day, immediately before the speeches, there will be a opening ceremony where high-school and university students will swear their love for Busan city, and some of them, with family members, will give short speeches and receive prizes for volunteer work they have done to support Busan citizens.

Sure, it was just a notice about a meeting, but you were warned in the title, so no complaints. Before I translated it properly with my wife, I thought it was about Busan’s population declining due to the low birth rate, but it turns out that this decline is more because people are moving out of Busan than declining birth rates per se (at the moment, Busan’s population is 3.65 million by the way). In hindsight I’m not surprised, for Korean friends told me the same as far back as when I came to Korea in 2000 . I think it’s still interesting and relevant to Korea’s impending population decline as a whole though, and I definitely would have attended this meeting had I not been working at the time. I also have a book about geographical issues in Korea, including population movements, that I’ll check out again to see what it says about Busan. In the meantime, I may as well start picking up that paper and scanning it for similar events: if I find out about something that I can go to I will, and report back on it here.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

After mentioning at the end of last post that I’d finally found Korea’s free dailies online, I thought I’d get into the habit of checking them out over my morning coffee. After all, like many expats here, I’ve always lamented that preparing and teaching English all day makes it difficult to immerse myself in Korean, but really it’s not that difficult to do so if you make an effort, which of course I haven’t up until now. So, waking up to reading Korean newspapers is a good start, and who cares if some of the articles are a good 3 sentances long? Not all of us can start on the Korean equivalent of the Asian Wall Street Journal you know, but being able to read things like the Focus or 7am newspapers is still something I’m quite proud of, because I couldn’t really do it a few years ago. 

(To understand what exactly I’m referring to in that old post I link to, you’ll have to scroll down quite a bit. But as it’s difficult to find, I’ll reproduce here a photo from that post to help you find the correct location. Just to make it easier for you to study Korean of course)

Come to think of it I should turn on the radio too: now that my daughter no longer wakes up so much once she’s been put to bed, we don’t need it in her bedroom playing a “Water Sounds” CD on a continuous loop all night. Before I started using the subway all the time, I thought that my trusty, tiny 10,000 won radio was the best language learning investment I ever made, for although most of what I heard was completely over head, I thought I understood the gist of a good 1 in 6 news reports and interviews and so on, and so not only got a great deal of listening practice but also learnt a great deal about Korea in the process. If you’re in Busan, then I particularly recommend the traffic channel on 94.9FM, as it has a lot of talkback calls and interviews.

So, the first thing that struck my eye today was Snowcastle was back in the news again. If you don’t know what that is, see my last post. Speaking of which, I know that I said there that I’d give one line of the Korean article, then my translation, and so on and so on, but I’ve finally discovered how to indent quotes on WordPress, and I’m pretty chuffed with it I must say, so of course I simply have to use it asap. After I’ve finished this, to make the blog stop looking so amateurish I may go over old posts and use it there too. Which reminds me, do you all like the new layout? Thrilling stuff.

Focus 부산 2007년9월11일 p.4. 

실내스키장 ‘스노우캐슬’ 영업 재개

부산. 대체 진입도로 문제로 법원으로부터 영업정지 처분을 받은 부산 남구 황령산 실내스키장 ‘스노우캐슬’이 주민들과의 합의로 정상 영업을 하게 됐다.

스노우캐슬은 대체 진입도로를 먼저 개설하고 영업을 하라며 법원에 영업정지가처분신청 소송을 제기한 인근 주민들과 지난 8일 협상을 벌여 소송를 취하하기로 합의했다고 10일 밝혔다.

스노우캐슬은 올 연말까지 대체도로 개설공사를 마치고 금련산청소년수련원 방면 도로에 방음벽을 설치하며 인근 주택에 상수도를 공급하는 조건으로 주민들과 합의하고 영업을 다시 시작했다고 설명했다.

Focus Busan, 11th September 2007.

Indoor ski-slope ‘Snowcastle’ will continue to be open for business.

Busan. The indoor ski-slope ‘Snowcastle,’ the target of a lawsuit by local residents over concerns about problems with Snowcastle’s alternate tunnel entrance road, has reached an agreement with them that allows it to remain open.

On Monday the 10th of September, Snowcastle reported that it had reached an agreement with local residents that had filed a lawsuit against it on the previous Saturday, who argued that it should have finished construction of the tunnel entrance before opening (Jeez, is this padding or what?).

Snowcastle will finish construction of the tunnel entrance by the end of the year, and in the meantime will construct a soundproofing wall along its current access road.  Residents in the vicinity of the nearby Mount Gumryeon Teenage Training Camp, who launched the original lawsuit, will not renew it on the condition that Snowcastle will provide them with drinking water (??Don’t they have drinking water already? It really says “provide,” but I  presume it means “pay for”. The report also doesn’t say how long it will do this for)  

In hindsight, I think I might translate the original article before I write my posts, as that article was a complete heap of…well, sorry, and I’ve certainly put my foot in my mouth claiming that the quality was better than the exclusively internet-based articles I’ve used in the past. Oh well, I’ll give the dailies a chance, and I really should use longer articles in the future, yes? In the meantime, I’m still pretty keen on going to Snowcastle sooner or later (probably later), and by coincidence some flashy pamphlets about it were attached my front door knob when I came home: with a golf course, waterfall, outdoor stage and ampitheater (well, drawings of them anyway), then calling it a mere indoor ski-slope doesn’t do it justice really, so I won’t in future. I still can’t find an English website for it though, sorry, but in the meantime you can see pictures of it here and a flashy 3-d intro here.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Out drinking with friends yesterday, naturally this topic came up, which I briefly mentioned a couple of posts ago. Those couple of hours out on Saturday night aside, unfortunately my baby daughter, TOPIK Korean test next weekend, MA and married life (in that order!) don’t allow me the time to watch the videos themselves or get into the subject here, but as it’s all over the Korean blogosphere (see here for an update) then I don’t think there’s too much I can add, save this: by all means feel outraged by it, but I think it’s important to keep a sense of perspective.

I’ve heard the program that the video was aired on described as a tabolidish Korean clone of 60 Mins, but I don’t really see the need for the comparison, and think that it may be misleading: I confess that I’m so out of the loop that I haven’t watched any Western version of 60 Mins in about 10 years, so personally this give me the impression that smart Americans or New Zealanders think 60 Mins is trashy, but this doesn’t appear to be the case. So put all thoughts of Western current affairs programs that you know out of your mind, and how about asking Koreans themselves what they think of the show the video was on? According to my Korean friends, who are smart, anyone with more than 2 brain cells knows it’s trashy and populist. Sure, there will be some Koreans whose entire knowledge of foreigners comes from this show, so its complete lack of journalistic standards are still an issue, but Korea is hardly unique in that regard.

What I do not think will happen is widespread mania about stoned teachers, with institute owners asking for teachers to pee into a cup for them, as any new focus on foreigners as a result of this show will  be replaced by Japan, prostitutes, students cheating on their University entrance exam, FTAs or crappy Chinese imports some time soon. This fickleness of the Korean media, and of the Korean public in general, is definately real and something that Koreans need to address, and is not unrelated to Koreans not learning critical thinking at school or University, which I’ve blogged about at length earlier (here for instance). But although the video may already have appeared to have led to Koreans hassling expats on the subway, I’d suggest that the kind of people that do the hassling don’t need a pretext, as hepcat in that thread on daveeslcafe puts well:

“The middle-aged man or woman in Korea (and Canada, too) is often stressed out and so he or she will lash out at what they consider safe targets–it may be a clerk, a child, a dog, a foreigner, what have you. Couple this with the local, monoculture provincialism and well, there you go. ”

In other words, Korea is still the virtually crime-free, unbelievably safe place to walk the streets that it was before the videos appeared. Bear in mind that I’ve been here 7 years, and seen a lot of protests, but I’ve only ever been hassled for being an expat with a Korean girlfriend/wife a grand total of two times, and on both occasions by cleary mentally handicapped people. So, I don’t want to write off any expat’s genuinely more serious experience of racism in Korea, especially of the justice system’s apparent bias against foreigners, and I fully acknowlege that Korea may be a very different place for non-caucasians than for someone like myself, who has a job in Korea merely for being white. Having said all that though, if I do hear of anything in the next few weeks more serious than a heated exchange on a subway, I’d be damn suprised if it doesn’t happen to some drunk newbie in a bar at 3am.

(Update 12th September: As ZenKimchi points out, it turns out that the video wasn’t anywhere near as bad as expected, and actually raised some issues about institute owners and immigration’s duties that teachers themselves would like raised. In future, I should really watch things myself before commenting so much on them!)

_____

As always, I wasn’t originally intending to discuss the drug busts at all, but it came up with my friends in a bar because of a problem I’ve been having with many of the translated articles on the blog, which is that most the original articles appear to have been written in 5 minutes by a middle-school student: seriously, I’m having to guess some of the details as I go along, so I think I’ll be vary wary about using what was my main source from now on. Instead, although a couple of months ago I said I’d avoid using anything in print because having something virtual I can cut and paste onto the blog is obviously a bonus, having to type out articles is at least good Korean typing practice, but also even articles from free dailies like Metro, Focus and 7am are at least written by someone who may have gone to journalism school, so I’ll be using them from now on. Not only do they still tend to be short, but 7am is very very trashy, with it’s own version of a Page Three Girl, so there’ll still be plently of S-line material I can assure you.

(update 11 September: I’ve found the Korean Focus website which I can read all the papers and cut and paste from. Yay!)

What most interested me though, was this local news about a new ski-slope about 1km about from my house; intergrating yourself into Korea requires an interest in local affairs after all. I would give pictures - I see it every time I open the front door to my new apartment - but I’m near the 50Mb limit for free photos on WordPress, and although I definately will pay to upgrade my limit, I honestly can’t really be shagged on my only day off in the week. So see here though for pics of everything mentioned, taken when the ski slope was half-finished, and a map (in Korean). I heartily recommend climbing Mount Gumryeon and Hwangreong by the way, the hazy pictures don’t do them justice; this is partially why the story below interested me the other reason was its short length, as ever since construction began about a year ago I’ve been wondering how the steep, twisty, narrow two-lane road up to it would handle all the anticipated visitors.

(FOCUS 2007년9월7일 금요일, p.4.) 

4계절 스키장 한달만에 영업정지, “대체진입로 해결해야”

부산. 부산의 첫 4계절 스키장인 ‘스노우캐슬’이 대체진입로를 개설하지 않고 문을 열었다가 법원으로부터 영업정지 명령을 받았다.

부산지방법원 동부지원은 수영구 남천동 금련산청소년수련원 인근 주민들이 스노우캐슬을 상대로 제기한 영업정지가처분신청을 받아들였다고 6일 밝혔다.

법원은 실내스키장 시설에 대해 황령산터널 쪽 도로에서 시설에 이르는 신설도로 완공 시까지 일반고객을 상대로 영업해서는 안 된다는 결정문을 이날 오후 스노우캐슬 정문 앞에 고시했다.

주민들은 지난 6월15일 제기한 소송에서 “대체 진입도로가 마련되지 않은 상항에서 스노우캐슬이 영업을 시작하는 바람에 기존 경사길에 차량이 몰려 교통혼잡과 교통사고의 위험이 높아졌다”면서 “스노우캐슬측이 대체 진입도로를 개통하고 스키장을 개장하기로 한 약속을 어겼다”고 주장했다.

스노우캐슬은 4일 법원에 항고하는 한편 주민들과 협상을 진행하고 있다.

스노우캐슬 관계자는 “대체도로 공사를 최대한 앞당기고 주민들과 합의하도록 노력하되 만일 합의가 안될 경우 법원에 공탁을 하는 방법으로 영업정지만은 막겠다”고 말했다.

스노우캐슬은 메인슬로프와 보조슬로플를 갖추고 지난달 11일 정식개장했다.

(연합뉴스)

After only one month of business, indoor ski-slope is ordered to close by court: “The Mount Hwangryeong tunnel entrance needs to be completed.”

Busan. After being open for only a month, Busan’s first all-year indoor ski-slope ‘Snowcastle’ is ordered to close by Busan District Court, as it was opened before the Mount Hwangryoeong tunnel entrance was completed.

On the 6th of September, the Eastern Branch of the Busan District Court reported that Busan residents close to the Mount GumRyeon Teenager’s Training Camp, which is close to Snowcastle in Namcheon-Dong, Su-Yeong Gu, had lodged a lawsuit calling for the temporary closure of Snowcastle.

The Court has placed an announcement in front of the main gate of Snowcastle, which says that as the construction of the new entrance road from Mount HwangRyeong Tunnel to Snowcastle is not completed, then the facility should not have opened (James - the report doesn’t say how long Snowcastle has to comply with the order, nor the penalties for not doing so; it is still open for now)

On the 15th of June, residents lodged a lawsuit which claimed that “as the tunnel entrance has not been completed, then visitors to Snowcastle have been using the only access road available, the old two lane road which also goes to an army base and the summits of Mount Gumryeon and Mount Hwangreon. This has caused a lot of traffic congestion, and has increased the noise levels and dangers for us. Snowcastle broke the promises it made not to open before the alternative tunnel entrance was not completed.”

On the 4th of September, Snowcastle appealed against the court’s decision, and said that it hoped to come some alternative arrangement with local residents.

According to a Snowcastle spokesperson, “The construction work on the tunnel entrance will be our priority, and we will make efforts to come to an agreement with local residents. If we are unsuccessful however, we will lobby the court to withdraw it’s order.”

Snowcastle has a main slope and a beginner slope, and first opened on August the 11th.

(Yonhap News)

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Sorry for the GrandNarrativeLite™ of the past few days, but this 냉방병 has really wiped me out. For those of you that don’t speak Korean (yet), that literally means “Cold Room Disease,” but as I’ve been explaining to all my students to kill teaching time warm them up at the beginning of classes, in most parts of most English-speaking countries we’re not going from 35 degrees and 90% humidity outside to arctic conditions inside buildings and subways for the duration of the entire summer, so I don’t know of a well-used equivalant expression in English. But people probably do have similar problems in places like Florida, South Africa, Northern Australia, HK or Singapore, so I’d be interested to know if people have any local words for it there.

So in simple terms, I guess I just have a cold then. Which has meant that this weekend I’ve had little energy to do more than play around with the presentation of the blog rather than write anything, let alone have a life. But I was noticing that reading my herculean posts on the old template was requiring me to scroll down every 5 seconds, giving RSI to the few fans I have, so switching to a much wider template to deal with that was well overdue. I could go on to tell you about the thrilling Saturday night of centering all the photos and youtube videos in old posts that that required, and all the new things I learned about posting pictures in the process too, but then this is a very wild and exciting blog, yes? So I’ll try and restrain myself.

In the end, my cold confining me indoors had a silver lining, literally, because it gave me a great vantage spot to watch one of the best thunderstorms I’ve seen in years. I and many bloggers have been complaining about the rainy season this year earlier, not seeming to consist of actual rain per se, and this week the weather in Busan jumped seemed to jump overnight last Monday from “Feels like 30°C” to ”Feels like 40 °C”. Can you think of a worse possible time to catch a cold? All week the sun and rising heat and humidity has seemed to match the increasing throbbing in my head, rising to such a cresendo by Saturday it was difficult not to kill students. So..God, it was good to hear rumbles of thunder in the distance this afternoon; I was positively dancing on my verandah when the rain hit 30 minutes later, probably joined by the other 20% of Koreans also with 냉방병 at the moment too.

And what a storm it was too…my videos with the camera don’t do justice. In the first the neighbourhood appears to be in the storm cloud itself, a first for me. The second was taken just about 15 minutes later when it had passed but the lightening had started, and it was great listening to the thunder, amplified by the echos of all the apartment buildings. Finally in the third, the lightening is only a few hundred metres away. The camera doesn’t capture enough of it of course, but if you’re impatient check out the lightening strike in the final few seconds of it.

Before I forget: if you can’t make out what I’m saying in any of the videos with my thick cold and vestiges of a Northern English accent…it’s probably for the best. Especially at the beginning of the last one.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::