Cham Jinju

The Korean government recently flew some former Peace Corps volunteers that served in the country during the 1960s. I've come across a few stories in the last week regarding this, so I'll bite and give it time here on my blog (audience of two, including myself).

This particular story is by a columnist based in Everett, Washington, writing about a guy who served in Jinju, a city I visited for the first time only recently. You'll find all the latest news on Jinju linked at the bottom of this page. I'm sure the man, William McCloy, was blown away at the changes. He met a Korean woman while here and ended up marrying her and taking her back to the states.

The 64-year-old Edmonds area man served as an English teacher in South Korea. He met wonderful friends and students, but also saw great need. He remembers struggling to stay warm, and teaching Korean health workers about basic hygiene.

Jinju is another one of those scary cities I mentioned a few posts ago, and I did meet a guy at the bus station who was mentally ill and told me he was in town to pick up his meds. Probably a case of a small sample size. It's just a backwater town, very industrial, with several clusters of smokestacks that have got to be pouring something very evil into the air at a high rate. I know a guy who was born in Jinju, but was adopted by an American family shortly after birth. He moved to Jinju to teach English for a few months, I'm sure in part, to reconnect with his hometown if not find his parents outright. He lasted about two weeks before moving up to Seoul for the duration.

Like Cheonan, Jinju gets the "historical city" tag due to the fact that there's not much there there's a castle there. I took a quick look at the Jinju Wikipedia page. Sounds like someone who works for the city of Jinju has been doing a little work on it:

The Nongae Festival, held in May each year commemorates and celebrates the sacrifice of the beautiful and patriotic gisaeng (professional Korean entertainer) Nongae's suicide-assassination of a Japanese general together with the 70,000 Koreans who lost their lives in the battle of Jinju Castle during the Imjin War.

Actually, there's a link in the above quote that goes to this page, which is a very nice photo essay (possibly written by the same person that wrote the wiki) on a blog detailing the Nongae Festival. I'm even half tempted to go back and check it out.

Slight tangent here: while doing a search for the Peace Corps folks revisiting Korea I came up with this goofy story about a local-boy-makes-good from Rhode Island who teaches English in Korea and does photography as a hobby. Basically, the story is an interview with him about Korea. Nothing wrong with that. Everyone gets 15 minutes and all that. He's thinking of joining the Peace Corps by the way. Hopefully he'll have a blog. The world needs a few more. A-hem.

And in case you're wondering, Cham Jinju, or really Charm Jinju is the tourist slogan, which gets a few points, in the great contest of dorky Korean city slogans, because it works in both English and Korean -- 참 (pronounced "cham") means true or genuine. Close enough to charm.

Korea to Employ English Teaching Robots

You (as in myself, the only reader of this blog thus far) might have noticed at the bottom of the page here is a newsfinder contraption that will pull in different stories related to cities in the Busan area. I'm sure I'll get into further topics concerning Masan later, but the city is one of two (the other being Daejeon) that next year will introduce English teaching robots at local schools.

This story is from Xinhua, which is a Chinese source, so lets account for the fact that there might be some baiting going on here, but I'm intrigued by this idea. The story specifies that the robots will be introduced "in an attempt to better serve students in provincial cities." So that kind of follows along the lines of the Vietnamese women that are being introduced (probably into similar areas) to better serve men in provincial cities.

I might also suggest the introduction of robots as English students in Korea. That might solve a few problems as well.

Cheonan and Chunan

The title is the same word for 천안, a city about an hour south of Seoul. The first is the newer romanized spelling, and the second the olde, postwar way.

I've been to Cheonan a few times now. Ordinarily I'd put it into my list of "scary" Korean cities. Scary isn't necessarily a fair description, and I doubt it's all that scary, actually. But there are places in Korea where there aren't many foreigners, where the buildings are a little old and run down, and where I see what seems to be a disproportionate number of drunk men during the daytime.

Put the above three together and you have the makings for a "scary situation," which is essentially a drunk, old man chasing me down a rundown street. In reality, this has only happened to me a couple times, and only when I've had a Korean woman on my arm, but from time to time I still worry.

At any rate this trip to Cheonan was perfectly pleasant and it ended, as it has before, with me killing time in the Cheonan/Asan KTX station for more than 90 minutes. The station itself is somewhat isolated, on the edge of what was Cheonon. Was, because like a number of Korean cities it's being transformed into something else entirely, using the KTX station as the center. This Korean blog actually has a photo essay of the transformation process, with the "before" photos, in which the area is nothing but countryside, saved for the end.

I walked around the station several times. The Asan station is part of the Seoul Subway network. The KTX station was built onto that, so now the city/cities are connected to Seoul in two ways -- one which takes about 30 minutes and costs 19,000 won, and the other which takes about 90 minutes (I'm guessing) and probably costs 3-4,000 won. About a year ago the Cheonan/Asan station looked like spaceship landed in the countryside. Now, a number of apartment building projects are going up nearby. But the grand plans, which are showcased in drawings around the station, are a sight to behold.
In the states, we might label something an "up and coming" neighborhood if it's being rejuvenated. Ft. Greene in Brooklyn is one area that while I was living there, was being transformed from a dump, to a hipster hangout, and finally to an expensive neighborhood that attracted young moneyed couples looking to start families.

In Korea this works a little differently and it all has to do with modernization. Usually, in the middle of nowhere, a subway line with be built, and then 15-20 apartment buildings, each 20 stories tall, with pop up. This is happening in Cheonan, but on a larger scale. There are 10 apartment complexes going up, as well as a number of malls (the one at right here is the Y-mall, currently being built near the train station) and skyscrapers being planned. It's going to look something like the photo up top. Dig the Dubai hotel-style thing in the background. Also in the photo you can see the KTX line running though the center.

I know these architectural renderings look a little like someone's wet dream, but it's all still impressive. I believe the square looking building in the foreground is going to be some kind of city government center. If I was looking to move somewhere in Korea and start a family I'd probably give serious consideration to this area, and not only because of the spastic "golf resort," which looks less golf-y and more waterslide-like. I'm a fan of waterslides. I'd love to bring a special someone here one of these days...

Spastic is the right word, no?

Cheonan is known as a "historical city" in Korea, which means it has nothing else going for it but historical sites and temples, most of which you could find anywhere else in Korea. Famous food? Sundae soup, which is a kind of blood sausage made from cow or pig intestines. I'll pass, thanks.

But once all this other stuff is built Cheonan is going to be a nice livable city, and I'd even say it'll be one of South Korea's fastest growing cities. "World's Best City"?, as the city's English page so humbly proclaims? Hmm...maybe I'll wait a bit before designating it that. I'll stick with "livable," and no longer "scary."

Grown' Up

This kind of story always blows me away, partially because I've watched it happen before my very eyes. Koreans are taller than when I got here. I had a girlfriend once tell me that if we had kids she'd "know how to make our kids tall." I had no idea. I'd always thought hanging for hours on the swingset in the backyard was the way to go about that.

From the New York Times:

A growing conviction that tallness is crucial to success has prompted South Korean parents to try all manner of approaches to increase their children’s height, spawning hundreds of “growth clinics” that offer growth hormone shots, Eastern herbal medicine and special exercises to ensure that young clients will be the ones looking down, not the ones looked down upon.

“In our society, it’s all about looks,” said Ms. Seo, 35. “I’m afraid my daughter is shorter than her peers. I don’t want her to be ridiculed and lose self-confidence because of her height.”

I don't mean to oversell this. I don't think I saw many Koreans taller than 6'3 when I arrived here, and plenty of guys around 5'0. Now the site of a 6'3+ fella is commonplace, and while the little guys are still running around, bein' cute and everything, the number of tall young people in this country -- both men and women, as the story says -- is startling.