Seoul Searching ( or "How long do you think I can keep the corny 'seoul' puns up?")

Thankfully, our time in the classroom has been broken up with some great cultural experiences. Went with a group of teachers for Korean barbecue the other night.  Our restaurant specialized in lamb (yum!) and luckily, as the restaurant staff had limited English, a helpful Korean lady with an American husband and excellent English skills popped up from her table to come help us navigate the braziers, etc.  It was delicious and the spice of the meal (besides the kimchi) was the conversation with a truly inspiring group of professionals.  Afterwards we wandered the streets and alleys of Seoul and finished off the evening with a Korean snow cone - a huge bowl of shaved ice with nuts, candied fruits, and a bunch of other tidbits we couldn't identify topped by cream.  You stir it all up and it tastes pretty good!  Refreshing also as it was a rainy, humid day.

Fatima prepares some lamb skewers at the Korean barbecue

Another unique food experience was lunch at a Buddhist restaurant that specializes in "temple food".  We sat on the floor and shared little bowls of vegetarian fare in a beautiful restaurant adorned with Korean antiques and art.  Dinner was yet another Korean feast - sort of like a Singaporean "hot-pot" cooked in a communal steamer in the middle of the table.

After dinner we attended "MISO"  at the Chong Dong theater.  It was a beautiful production which included music, martial arts, dancing, and acrobatics. MISO is based on a traditional Korean tale, "Choon-Hyang-Jeon" about a girl who is torn away from her true love by a manipulative lord who subsequently tries to seduce her.  Needless to say the true love returns in the nick of time - just as the heroine is about to be put to death for rebuffing the lord - and they all live happily ever after.

A bonus to the theater performance was the pre-show drum lesson.  The jang-gu drum (see below) is an hourglass shaped instrument which is played on both ends which are covered in animal skin. Each end has its own pitch and timbre which when played together represent the harmony of man and woman. The jangu-gu drummer uses two different sticks, one sort of like a mallet and the other a flattened bamboo stick.  We actually got pretty good at it!

I'm in the second row on the left

Performers from the show

Korea University

One would have thought we were at Duke University  looking by looking  at our surroundings!  Korea University is built on a hillside with beautiful shade trees and massive granite halls of learning.  It was a wonderful setting for the series of lectures we will be attending this week. 

The morning was spent in a Korean language seminar.  We learned King Sejong's writing system, which was originally called "The Correct Sounds for the Instruction of the People" - turns out it does make a lot of sense and is fairly easy to figure out.  Evidently some of the world languages that do not have a writing system are adopting Hangul script as a way of putting their language to paper because of its clarity and logic.  Fun facts:

• Korean is the 11th most spoken language in the world! (80 million speakers)
• King Segong secretly used dissection (which was illegal in Korea at the time) to study the throat and tongue in order to understand how sounds are generated
• Largely because of their writing system, based on phonographs rather than ideographs, the literacy rate in Korea is about 98%

After a formal welcome luncheon at the university we had a lecture on Korean traditional arts.  Our erudite lecturer, Moonjung Choi, explained Korean art from ancient rock carvings to Joseon dynasty paintings of the 1700s.  It's interesting to note that Korea has served as a transmitter of culture from China to Japan.  She noted that whatever art trend appeared in China one century would appear in Korea the next and would finally appear in Japan the century after that.  We also learned how Buddhism affected Korean art, giving way to more simple, frugal, and noble ideals of Confucianism during the Joseon period.  I love it when I can connect what I'm seeing in art to what was happening in history at the time.  Because Koreans identified Buddhist art with the corruption and extravagance of older dynasties, Confucian pottery tended to be white (purity) and undecorated (frugality).  When decorations are found on ceramics from this period, they are of bamboo (which grows straight up without branching off - loyalty), pine trees (which are evergreen and never change - fidelity) or plum blossoms (which bloom in the early spring when it's still frosty - perseverance)... all Confucian values.

Our final lecture was an entertaining, witty, and interactive one by Professor Andrea Eungi Kim on the symbols, language, norms and values of Korean culture.  Interesting tidbits from this lecture include that Christianity is the most prevalent religion in Korea.  He explained by having ritual feasts on the death of ancestors, Koreans "become one" with the ancestors and he drew a comparison between this and the Eucharist, which also guarantees spiritual immortality.  Another topic was the Confucian ideal, including an overwhelming emphasis on education.  Teachers are held in high esteem and apparently Teachers Day is as or more important to Koreans as Mothers Day - teachers are showered with gifts from the students and parents!

Heart and Seoul

A couple dozen social studies teachers met for the first time at JFK airport and bonded over the fourteen hour flight to Seoul. Our mission:  to complete a certification course in Korean Studies at Korea University and create lesson plans and presentations to bring back to the United States to share with our students and other educators.  These fellowships were funded by the Korea Society, an organization to promote Korean culture and, in particular, wants American students to know the history of their country - which they feel has been somewhat overlooked.

Our first day in Seoul was spent orienting ourselves to the city:  learning to take the metro (about 1000 Korean won per ride - that's about a dollar), exploring old town, and eating our first Korean meal.  First we visited the ancient wall of the city.  The photo is of King Sejong, a 15th century ruler who was a visionary and benevolent neo-Confucian.  He also invented the Korean Hangul alphabet, which helped democratize the country as it allowed the lower classes to have access to literature and to communicate with government officials (previously Korea had used the over-complicated Chinese alphabet which only the very wealthy had the time and resources to learn).

Next we were tantalized by seeing the outside of Changdeokgung Palace, the 400 year old domicile of Korean royalty until the last king's death in 1926.  Today there was no time to explore the interior of the palace, so we made a mental note to ourselves to return on our free day.  Then our Korea Society leader took us to the Koran Folk Museum.  Again, time constraints kept us from seeing this very well curated museum as we would like, but it did give us the basic scope of Korean handicrafts, farming, and writing over the centuries, as well as a musical performance outside.

After walking through a neighborhood adjacent to the palace, which managed to be quaint and trendy all at the same time, we had lunch at a tiny traditional restaurant with one very harassed Korean lady doing the cooking, serving, and bussing of tables.  I finally ate kimchi after reading about it forever and it's good!  We also had bibimbap, which is a national dish of mixed rice, vegetables, and seaweed.  Excellent. 

We returned to our hotel in the afternoon and I explored the neighborhood a little on my own and changed some money into Korean won before napping.  Then attended a lovely welcome banquet hosted by the Korea Society and hand drinks in the lounge with a few of the fellows before heading to bed.