Korea’s been great so far. A whirlwind 12-day tour followed be a workman-like 2 week stay with my grandparents. Visited a lot of famous korean landmarks (pictures will follow after i get back to the states), and went through some tough stuff too.
The tour was pretty okay for 700 bucks, and although it bordered on the cheap, I never felt physically unsafe. One part of the trip was a 2 day military training camp, where they taught us why the South Korean military is infamous. Almost all the girls on the trip broke down at differing points, and all the kids cried, and a lot of people threw up. Mostly it was the intense heat, the overwhelming PT (physical training). No real harsh punishment or anything like that. We had to carry a heavy boat on our heards to the beach though, and that was pretty damn tough. One of the friends I made in the trip, Josh, who really IS in the US military, thought it was pretty difficult (”Pretty barbaric, yo.”, he said, shaking his head).
Korea reminds of me socially of 1950’s boom America. Or at least old people’s memories of it. Everyone is tall and slim. Fat people are kind of rare. Street vending is common. A lot of salesman hawk their wares on the street. Many families own a nationally produced automobile, except the ultra rich, who drive a european car. People are polite. The songs people play on the radio is cheesy as hell, or it’s classic or opera. And if it’s not supposed to be cheesy like rock, it still is, because it’s rock and roll and they dress like aerosmith and do syncronized dancing.
Technologically and industrially, Korea is a mishmash. Internet is something that everyone just has. Even hair salons have public internet access, even in rural areas. There is a PC Cafe every few feet it seems. Food is cheap for certain things but really expensive for others. There is what seems a greater capitalist ethic than the US. What I mean is that people really seem to work hard, and the salesman are super pushy. Restaurants don’t charge tax or gratuity. Actually, there aren’t many places that charge tax, even though tax exists. My grandfather rolled his eyes when I asked him why, and whispered, “Heehee, the stores handle reporting it to government.”. Take that IRS. While you drive on the street, salesman implore you to open up a shop in the adjacent building being built across the street.
Mom and pop stores abound, I guess something like Walmart hasn’t hit korea yet. It’s too bad if it does, it’ll destroy a lot of things and maybe they’ll talk about it like how they talk about Walmart here.
Social services don’t exist as much in Korea, since they depend on peoples’ kids and stuff to take care of em. So I guess it leaves a lot of money free for things. Like PC bangs.
Movie theaters are still run like Opera Houses, i guess unlike america, where movie theaters had a decidedly mainstream fare to them from the days of 1940’s war propaganda, movie theaters still have a high-brow element to them. Maybe because everything is in english so it’s like watching an artsy high-brow french flick in america. anyhow, you get to reserve the exact seat you want, and if you want to pay more, you can get “Gold Class” special movie theater with plush leather couches.
I finished reading the entire Hitch-hikers guide anthology in Korea. I tried to conserve the pages so it would last longer, but I’m sad to report that I have fininshed all novels and novelletes and even a 10 page short story exclusively on zaphod. I also fininshed the Nebula winners compilation and have read PC Magazine frontwards and backwards, and even in random sentence order (with a probability index of 302,390,298,439 to 1).
My grandparents have been buying me stuff, I guess making up for lost time or something. Things I have purchashed: A black suit (of the medium grade quality, kind of one you wear to work or something), a knee length black coat, like the one in Bourne Supremecy. I will also be given money for a laptop. Today, I purchased an mp3 player . Very slick. Has this very nice bright LCD screen on it. I thought it would be nice if it played videos but alas, it doesn’t. I may try ebay it out if i lose interest in it for an archos or something.
I took pictures of funny stuff, a few stuff I have to mention before the pictures come out. There was a candybar I purchased called “Mr. Big”. Which was kind of sexually inuendistic at first, especially with the bright yellow packaging and caramel and rice crunchiness. But the clencher was the slogan: “When you are This big, they call you Mister!”.
Another funny picture was an example of korean graffit on a wall. That was weird because there is no graffiti in korea. But it was artistically done and localized to one place. And it said “Turbo!”
We looked for some clubs here and there but I took a picture of some funny ones including, “Hip-Hop Club” (In English), and in Korean ? ? ? (Gang-se-tuh “Gangsta”).
Anyhow, getting tired. more later.
