An Update (Also Known as I'm Not Dead Yet)

[This was originally an email to some friends, since a few people have expressed some concern over the growing amount of crazy going on in North Korea and my proximity to them, but I figured I might as well post it here. It has been a crazy week in Korea.]

1. North Korea is getting a bit uppity with its weaponry. On Monday, North Korea tested something nuclear underground. On Tuesday, they launched some short-range missiles. On Wednesday, it was reported that a previously closed factory had reopened and was making weapons-grade plutonium again. The international community was all, "Oh bugger! I think North Korea is up to something!" and threatened to actually enforce the Proliferation Security Initiative, which would allow the US and other members to search and seize North Korean ships and ships entering North Korea territory. After dragging its heels for six years, South Korea finally joined the Proliferation Security Initiative on Wednesday, prompting Kim Jong-Il to respond, "Please, I will cut you," announce that North Korea was no longer bound by the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War and threaten to invade South Korea if they so much as LOOKED at our cargo ships, Chiiiiiiiiiina, South Korea is touching me! Make it stop!
   
   The situation is obviously tense, especially since North Korea has that bomb and Seoul is really close to the DMZ, but ultimately, unless the Dear Leader has actually gone off his rocker, North Korea isn't going to attack. South Korea would crush the North like bug. South Korea has a large, modern standing army and international support, while North Korea is struggling to feed its people. My friend Tony visited North Korea last year and he said the juxtaposition at the DMZ was staggering. On one size you have the ripped, six-foot South Korean soldiers holding the latest in weapons and on the other side you have the North Koreans who, while definitely being a bit more crazy about the eyes, are a foot shorter and holding weapons that are a few decades old. Plus, the political climate has changed since the last time North Korea attacked and this time, Russia and China (probably) aren't going to back them. And this is what North Korea does. They make threats to garner international aid, and while these are definitely bigger threats, in all honesty, this is probably more of the same. So yeah, an attack is most likely not coming and unless there is an actual attack, I'm not leaving. I'll just plan on not taking the DMZ tour any time soon. In general, this latest posturing is barely making the South Korean news because...


2. Last Saturday, Roh Moo-Hyun, the former president of Korea, killed himself by jumping off a cliff. He was under investigation for corruption and bribery. If the North Koreans aren't making much of an impact on the South Koreans, it's because they're all too preoccupied with Roh's death. It's a big damn deal. There has been an huge outpouring of grief over this man's death. I have never wanted to be able to read the newspapers more than I do right now because I don't understand WHY his death is so important, but I can tell that it obviously is. One Korean blogger compared it to JFK's death. (ETA: Ask A Korean has a great retrospective of Roh's life and his importance here.)
   
   Roh's death has even affected my kiddos. I've had several groups of students try to explain what happened. Just for the record, watching a 5th grader try to explain suicide in broken English (with motions) is disturbing. (It went like this: “Roh Moo-Hyun mountain hiking. He fall. HE DIE!) On the other hand, listening to them explain corruption is hilarious. (A 5th grader told me that Roh was being investigated because he got a very expensive watch.)

Mourners for Roh Moo-hyun (노무현) near Gangnam Station in Seoul the night before his funeral. Each gu set up a memorial for people come and pay their respects to the former president. The line at Gangnam was five people deep and stretched at least a block.

Stitching and Bitching (and Some Studying)

Fishy says,"Om nom nom nom. Dead skin is delicious!"
I went to Gangnam on Thursday night for SnB. The Thursday night meetings are currently being held at Namu Keuneul, a coffee shop that has a Dr. Fish spa for 2,000 won ($1.60). The doctor fish (also called reddish log sucker and doctorfishen) is a type of tropical fish that eats dead skin. They were originally used to treat skin diseases, but in Korea and Japan, they're used in spas. Full body spas exist (and seriously creep me out), but the Dr. Fish at Namu Keuneul was just a foot spa.




First you wash your feet to prevent contaminating the pool. Then you soak your feet in the tubs for twenty minutes while the fish nibble on your toes. The dark clouds surround our feet are actually fish, which flocked to us as soon as we stuck our feet in.   It doesn't hurt at all, but it does tickle. A lot! Turns out, my feet are really ticklish. I believe the phrase "Pillsbury Doughboy" was used to describe my reaction. (Sarah, on my reaction: was not even remotely surprised.) I couldn't stop laughing! Marie, Siobhain and I took our knitting with us and knit while the fish nibbled.

Then on Sunday I went to Sinchon for the new Sunday meeting. It's very new - this is only the second meeting - and I was the only person for the first two hours. It's in a nice coffee shop, though, and I used the opportunity to make myself study Korean. Since I'm going to be staying in Korea for a second year, I figure it's time to get off my butt and start learning the language. 나는 한굴말를 공부해요. In Roman letters, that's Nanun Hangulmallul gongbuhaeyo, which means (I think) I study Korean. I can't form the past tense yet, but that's okay because this is more of an on-going (never ending?) project.

Swine Flu-rific!

A few weeks ago, when the Swine Flu hysteria was at its zenith in the US, I mentioned to my dad how relived I was that the first confirmed case of H1N1 virus in Korea was a Korean and not a foreigner. This was back when there only was one case of the Swine Flu in Korea, before the outbreak in Japan and before the H1N1 virus was any sort of threat to Asia. It was just a passing thought.

The reason I mention this is last week, a batch of 30+ native English speakers arrived in Korea and spent a week in training. One of them had Swine Flu. On Saturday, the Korean government started rounding up all the foreigners from the training and sent them to quarantine. Indefinitely. No one can get a straight answer, which could be a sign of something shady, but is most likely the result of the Korean medical system and the Korean government's way of dealing with foreigner (personal rights? telling people things? what's that?).

You'll note that I said that the government began to round up the foreigners. Not the Korean instructors who spent the week in the same close quarters with Patient Zero as the quarantined foreigners. Just the foreigners. Korea is a xenophobic society. Not on an individual level - I have personally faced very little discrimination - but as a society, Korea's not sure what they think about us, but it's not good. What I'm worried about is that this will escalate from quarantining people who have legitimately been exposed to an all-out witch hunt.

When I showed up to work this morning, before I'd seen the buzz on the Korean blogosphere (there's been no mention of the 50+ quarantined teachers in the news, but several of the quarantined teachers have blogs and it's all the English Korea blogs are talking about), my vice principal hurried up to me and asked how I felt. I told him I felt fine. He asked again, wanting to know if I was coughing and if I knew what the symptoms of the Pig Flu were. I told him no, but that I felt fine. He let it drop and I went about my business. (Keep in mind, I haven't been in the US for eight months and I haven't left Korea since before the Swine Flu outbreak. I have absolutely no greater chance of being infected that any other teacher at the school.)

This evening I read that the Ministry of Education is checking up on foreign teachers. Another source is saying that all public school teachers who arrived in May will be quarantined at home for a week. Another person said the Ministry of Education called his employer and asked if there were any Americans working there. There are several reports of hogwons (private academies that are super popular here), including some in my area, closing and their teachers being told not to leave their apartments. Quoting the Hub of Sparkle: So is this the latest xenophobic witch hunt? Last year, it was diseased American cows. This year it’s diseased American teachers?

I'm not really worried. I'm certainly not worried that I might catch the Swine Flu and from what I've read, the worst that could happen to me is that I get an enforced vacation and spend the week obsessively watching K-dramas and sleeping in. (When I put it that way, *cough, cough* I think I might have the piggy flu. Quarantine, yes please, make mine a double.) It's just annoying. It's annoying to be singled out for no valid reason. It's annoying that more fuel is being added to the already present xenophobic fire. And it's sure as hell is annoying for the teachers who are stuck in quarantine, all of whom where fresh off the plane and some of which weren't even at the training conference and where just tossed into quarantine because they were a foreigner and, don't you know, we all have the Pig Flu.

Signs that my anal retentiveness is reaching new and special heights:

This is my computer at work. I'm teaching the 5th graders how to tell time in English (Lesson 6: I Get Up at Seven Every Day) and I made a PowerPoint with a bunch of pictures of clocks and the time written out with various bits missing. The yellow bits of paper are the sticky part of a Post-It note, which I stuck to my screen so I could align the pictures in the EXACT same spot on each slide. Because the very slight difference was harshing my PowerPoint mellow.

Happy 스승의 날!

Happy 스승의 날! (There's all sorts of celebrations going on in these parts.) Today is Teacher's Day in Korea. I personally felt like that should result in me NOT having to be a teacher for the day, but that's not how it works in Korea. Instead, I was inundated with gifts (many many fake carnations, two heart-wrenchingly cute and grammatically suspect letters and several boxes of Vitamin C powder; either my kids think I'm looking a bit peaky or they just think that since I don't like kimchi, I must be on verge of death) and after class, all the teachers went on a hike and had dinner. A three hour long hike up a mountain in the rain. I've been cranky and NO NOT WANT about the hike all week. I don't like climbing mountains under the best of circumstances and hikes that don't end in the Great Wall of China are dead to me. Plus, school outings are always really awkward because no one will talk to me. (And yes I know that it's because I'm the foreigner and there's a language barrier and insert anthropological thoughts on insider/outsider culture here and I'm not really offended by it, but the end result is still the same and you never feel as lonely as when you're all by yourself in a big group of people.) Suffice to say, I wasn't exactly a happy camper when I showed up at the base of the mountain this afternoon. Shows you what I know; I ended up having a great time.

Instead of climbing the mountain, I "hiked" to a coffee shop with two of the kindergarten teachers. And by hiked, I mean we walked down the street to the taxi stand, caught a cab to Beomgye and spent the afternoon sitting in a cafe drinking mocha lattes, which is much more my scene. What happened was all the teachers were loitering in the parking lot at the base of the mountain, waiting for the stragglers to arrive. I was standing a bit apart when one of the kindergarten teachers sidled up to me and asked if I wanted to hike. (Her name is Hyun Ji, she's twenty seven, from Busan and until today, I didn't realize she spoke English.) I told her no, not so much, and we tried to avoid being seen. At one point we ducked behind a car. We were eventually caught and shooed down the trail, but Hyun Ji told me to walk very slowly and when the others teachers had industriously trekked out of sight, we abruptly about-faced and "hiked" to the main road, where we hailed a taxi and ten minutes later we were ordering our coffees. Hyun Ji and Joo Mi both teach kindergarten and speak some English and, combined with my Korean, the help of a cell phone dictionary and a LOT of hand motions, we were able to have a nice conversation while we waited for the others to finish their hike. We were even able to have a basic English/Korean lesson, and I know have two napkins of scribbled notes that I need to study. (We also weren't the only teachers to skip out on the hike. On our way to catch a taxi to the restaurant, we ran into one of the 6th grade teachers, who had gone shopping and was waiting for another teacher to come pick her up. And two of the 4th grade teachers were half an hour late to dinner. *g*)

Not only did I score enough Vitamin C to keep me healthy through the summer and manage to avoid getting soaked (I ended up merely damp), now I have some friends my age to talk to at school!