More Korean Signs

One of the first things we noticed when we arrived in Korea was the many funny signs in English. Knowing more about Korea now than we did when we first arrived, it's very surprising that some of these signs get put up. English is taught in schools as a mandatory subject from a very early age. One can only suppose that either the instruction is not very thorough or that they just don't care too much! The non funny and very confusing translations that are everywhere are a constant source of frustration for expats as they may as well just stick to Korean for all the help they give. Here is some of the funny and non-frustrating 'Konglish': 

 "It's where you go the morning after." (Credit to Mark for making the sign even funnier.)

The brunch place that creates the need for the cafe above...

You really don't want to go this way, apparently! The statement above in Korean is not as intense, the problem here is just a misuse of punctuation along with a mistranslation.

SO close to being inappropriate, although it is just a transliteration of the Korean letters underneath.

Although 'No Brand' is a popular discount chain for a lot of things (think Walmart or Target), the burger place needs a new marketing director...

An Irish pub in Busan, and one that's actually just clever, not accidentally embarrassing.

You can't miss this one, it's the only English language business name on the building. It's a coffee shop, by the way, nothing more (as far as we know)!

I think they meant to indicate that it's fast fashion?

And just to balance things out, this was next door.

This is one the just has to be intentional. There's a lot of these little 'motels' scattered around, many with suggestive names. They're not necessarily for illegal activities, it's just that in a multi-generational household (very common here) there's not a lot of privacy!

Air Conditioning Woes

    We have an air conditioning system in our house that is very odd. There are two outside units connected to all of the inside units, one for downstairs and one for upstairs. Each room that has an AC unit in it can be controlled separately, but all the units on one floor depend on their corresponding outside unit to work. This complicated system was put in place by a single company and no one except the lone technician working for that company can fix any problems we have. It usually takes several days to get this guy to come work on our system and for one miserable week last July he was on vacation while the upstairs (bedroom) AC unit stopped working. There was, apparently, no one else in the whole country who could understand the system. (That seemed very fishy, but it's not our country or our language so there wasn't much we could do.) An added layer to this complication is that the power to the outside units is controlled by the management company for the neighborhood. They turn the power off for every AC unit in the neighborhood at some arbitrary date in the fall and won't turn it on until May at the earliest. The same is also true of the heating. Last fall our upstairs AC stopped working again, but since it was close to the turn off date the management company refused to call the technician. 

    Knowing that it was already broken, last week we contacted our realtor, who is the intermediary between us and the management company. We asked to have the repairs completed before the weather got too warm. Doing this (we found out) would require briefly turning on the power to the system to confirm our AC was still not working. However, this was apparently too much to ask. The management company again refused to even touch the power button until 'sometime in May', no date given. When this arbitrary date comes around we won't even know, and when it does happen we will have a broken AC unit that still needs to be fixed. 

     It is very hard to understand the reasoning behind this system. It may have something to do with the very hierarchical structure of Korean society. Those at the top control everything they can and those at the bottom just have to deal with whatever the managers decide. It probably also has to do with the Korean tendency to never spend any more than they absolutely have to. This means that things like ACs and heaters are never used until everyone is actually suffering from the outside temperatures. Our lease dictates that the single lump sum we pay each year will cover our rent plus any and all utilities and repair bills. Nothing comes out of our pockets at all related to house expenses. While it sounds nice in a way, what it means is that any money that doesn't absolutely have to be spent is not spent and the only leverage we have is to not renew the lease for the following year until certain conditions are met. This system is only true for civilians, however. The Army people in our neighborhood (who are the vast majority of the neighbors) do have to pay their own utility bills each month. Why they have to fall under the same system I cannot fathom. It must be due more to the cultural hierarchical thinking and not as much to the money-saving disposition. 

    It can be very interesting and enlightening to live in a foreign country and learn how other people live and view the world. In this case, however, I can't find much to admire and find the whole thing ridiculously aggravating!

Traffic Tickets: One Year Later

New traffic cameras are going up all the time, and it turns out that the signs alerting you to the traffic cameras are put up significantly later than the camera itself. The result being, I got another ticket. The same problem we had last year is still a problem. By the time we actually get the ticket (which goes to the U.S. and then back to here) it is a day or two before or after the due date. 

This time, having learned from past experience that it's really nothing to worry about, I put off paying the ticket for a while. Well, to be honest, I actually forgot about it altogether. Until I got a notice in the mail that my car was going to be impounded in four days!! This seemed rather extreme and out of the blue, to say the least. It turns out that Koreans have greatly increased their follow-through for traffic violations. I asked a Korean friend to confirm the translation of the ticket and she did. She also said that this kind of ticket is "a little serious" and has to be paid at the police station, not the bank as we normally would. Yikes!

On the advice of my brother who previously lived here, I first went to the U.S. Army police station. They took a look and said the reason I got that notice was that for some reason Korea doesn't recognize my car as a foreign car. It turns out there had been some mix-up in the registration of my very American car. It's a Toyota and no self-respecting Korean would be caught dead driving a Japanese car. I shouldn't have gotten such a notice, and even if the Korean police had attempted to impound my car, first of all they wouldn't be able to find it because the address associated with the car is a U.S. address and secondly, they would have just contacted the American Army police anyway since I am American. So that was no problem. However, I did still need to pay the ticket. Some very nice Korean-American policemen gave me directions to the nearest local police station and off I went.

Crime is extremely low here in Korea and as a result the police stations are quite small. I circled the block a bit, but finally found the station tucked away behind some other government building. One of the younger officers spoke very good English and first explained that I could pay the ticket there but it would involve a lot of paperwork so it would be better to go to the bank. So I asked about the impound notice. That involved a good bit of discussion and a few phone calls (maybe to the Army police?) but I was finally given an account number and told to show that to the bank in order to pay the ticket. So off to the bank I went.

At the bank the receptionist took a look at my papers and new account number and told me that everything looked fine. I got in line and eventually paid my ticket. As I was leaving the bank the receptionist told me, "actually you could have just come here, I don't know why you went to the police station." (!!) So a whole lot of hassle for a problem that really wasn't a problem and for a ticket that was only about $35. I should probably figure out the registration issue at some point, but that will involve the Army bureaucracy and will take forever. I'm not feeling super motivated to spend a whole day in that black hole. Better to just try to avoid getting another ticket. However, seeing as it's a foreign country with traffic rules no foreigner ever seems to quite grasp, the chances of that seem rather slim!

Food Waste Bags

One of the best things about Korea is how well they deal with waste. Recycling is mandatory and they also require that you put most kinds of food waste in a separate bag, which you can purchase from any grocery store. The waste is collected and then converted into animal feed. 

This is a food waste bag that can hold about one liter of food. They also come in two liter sizes, and restaurants have their own kind too. I keep a bag in the freezer and add food until it's full. Then you take it down to the trash drop-off spot and put it in a specially labeled trashcan. 

My Filipino housekeeper told me a really funny story about these bags recently. There was a newly-arrived Filipino lady to our area who had been told about these bags, but only that they were 'food bags'. So this lady packed her lunch into one of them. This wouldn't normally be a problem, but on this particular day she ate her lunch while on the public bus (a faux pas in Korea, but she didn't know). She pulled out her bag and started to eat. The Koreans on the bus were horrified! They immediately started handing her money and any food they had with them. The Filipino lady was so confused, she already had a nice lunch. With the language barrier no one could explain themselves, but everyone involved had a good story to tell when they got home!

Local Excitement: We Have a 7-11!

We live in a neighborhood that was built on two lots in a small farming village. We're not quite in the middle of nowhere, but compared to where most people live in South Korea we're pretty isolated. My family medicine doctor was flabbergasted when she discovered that the closest physical therapy place to us was a 20 minute drive, and the closest pharmacy was a 10 minute drive. When we moved in, there were hardly any shops nearby and the ones that were closest were not very useful. So when we saw that an empty building at the end of our street was being converted into a 7-11 it was very exciting! 

Convenience stores are a significant part of Korean culture. You can get what you would expect: drinks, snacks, some prepared foods, but also things you might not expect: socks, underwear, makeup, some basic medicines, alcohol, hot water for your cup noodles (similar, but way better than, packaged ramen), baked sweet potatoes and tables to eat and drink at. Convenience stores are actually popular hang-out spots in the evening, and a decent lunch option during the day. 

Here is our new 7-11 on its opening day. You can see many flower pots and a big flower arrangement out front. These are gifts given to new businesses to wish them good luck and prosperity. There is a picnic table out front to the right, and on the far left of the building is an enclosed porch with four more tables to eat at. Later in the day when the weather got warmer the porch doors were opened and people were already hanging out!

Jeju

We also visited Jeju, an island off the southern coast of the Korean peninsula, during our brief freedom to travel. Jeju is a volcanic island (all volcanoes are dormant now) and because it's rather far south it has a bit of a tropical feel. It's very accessible by plane or ferry. This time we flew and it was a super easy trip. We drove an hour south to the closest airport, flew for 45 minutes, and we were there!

Although the people on Jeju are Koreans and speak Korean, they are somewhat separate from the rest of Korea so they have their own dialect of Korean (not very understandable to most Koreans) and many different customs. These statues are everywhere. They are stone guardians.

Our guide told us that Koreans like to stack stones for good luck. Simon enjoys stacking anything, so he joined in!

Volcanic rock coastline.

Jeju's aquarium is much bigger than Busan's. Here is the kids's touching pool. It was big enough for a whole school of some kind of fish! You could also purchase a packet of fish food for 500 Won (about 25 cents). 

The sandy beaches on Jeju are mostly created for the tourists. This is a rocky beach with some very interesting tide pools. We didn't swim, but Simon and I both slipped in and got wet feet.

Another beautiful view of the rocky coast and volcanic formations.

These are squid drying in the sun. These were hanging on a fence along a main road. I'm not sure how people know whose squid are whose, but stealing in Korean is very unusual, so they're pretty safe to just hang there.

This was a life-size maze. Simon had a lot of fun finding his way through (we think he cheated some.) The maze place was also a cat sanctuary and you could definitely smell them!

One of the three waterfalls on Jeju. This was the only one that was accessible to a four year old.

There's a type of hybrid fruit grown on Jeju called an apple mango. They were just out of season but we managed to find one in a grocery store. Our guide said she'd never had one because they were too expensive. I paid about 14,000 Won for this one, which comes to about $12. It was very tasty, but probably not worth the price for a single piece of fruit.

 

Busan

In June the health threat level was lowered and we were allowed to travel within South Korea. Our first trip was to Busan, a port city in the far south of the peninsula. Although there is a super-fast train that could get us there in two hours, we decided to drive because we really haven't seen much of Korea at all yet. The drive was about four hours, mostly through the mountains. It was very nice!

As you can see, the city of Busan is built right up to the water's edge. They do have some problems with flooding during monsoon and typhoon seasons, but land is such a scarce resource in Korea that I suppose they feel they don't really have any other choice. 

This is Haeundae Beach, the biggest beach in Busan. We were here early in the season, so for that reason and because of COVID, the beach was fairly empty. Normally during the summer people are packed in quite closely.

Haeundae and Busan from an overlook on the other side of the inlet.

Most Buddhist temples in Korea are built high up on mountain tops, but the temple in Busan is built at the bottom of a cliff. This temple is to honor a sea deity (from what I understand, although that doesn't seem quite right as Buddhism doesn't have gods as such). To get to the temple you have to go down more than 100 steps.

These are representations of various gods from the Chinese zodiac. The boxes in front are for collecting money people give to the gods in exchange for answers to their petitions.

Inside the main temple building. I'm a bit unclear what exactly happens here, but you can see food donations laid out. If you look closely, you can see a box of Choco Pies towards the right. Choco Pies are and extremely popular snack here. So much so, that they have been used as black market currency in North Korea.

This village in Busan, Gamcheon, started as a refugee village during the Korean War. The invasion by the North Koreans never reached Busan, so many people ended up here. The houses are built so close together that the roofs of some houses are the parking spots for the houses just above. In more recent times, the people living here have aged or moved on. But because it is such an important historical site, the government is hiring artists to paint and use the old houses for other purposes. This is also a very popular site for filmmakers.

The decorations on one of the houses in Gamcheon.

We took a sky car over one of the other main beaches, which had a fun park at the other end. Lots of dinosaurs! But also some nice walking paths and snack shops. 

 Busan has a small, but very nice aquarium. Here is the touching pool for kids.