Paved Paradise?

It seems to my foreign eyes and ears that South Korean President Lee Myung-bak would like to shift the paradigm that you can't be seen as both pro-business and pro-conservation. Like me, he says he loves Korea's beautiful mountains. I hope that he does. He inherits a country with some strong, important, and widely enforced environemntal laws. Everyone composts (and woe, woe to the foreigner who forgets to compost in front of the neighbors!) Yet he IS, after all, "The Bulldozer" known for his large construction projects.
This past week President Lee was in the news promoting two new projects he says will help the environment. He spoke Friday encouraging South Korea to help with forestation prohects in North Korea, as they can only benefit the entire peninsula, which could re-unify, in the long-run. The English language news services report that Lee encouraged "cooperation," in forestation efforts as it will "...help conserve our land," and "help make environmental protection a national value." Ignoring the thorny re-unification issue for the time being, it is hard to argue with a government official who wants to plant trees. Trees are good. Just ask the Lorax.
Then his environmental policies got a little lost in translation. The English papers report that Lee is also promoting a cross-country canal project to, in the words of one reporter, "clean contaminated river water." Hmm. Am I missing something? I am not an expert in either water purification or South Korean politics, but I don't reallly understand how moving water around in a canal makes it cleaner. Don't boats travel on canals? Don't they use fuel? Will the canal be a protected area? I need to research his proposal further, but it brings up a few questions right off the bat.

Coincidentially, the same weeek that President Lee was addressing Arbor Day and the canal project, I had an environmental adventure. My boyfriend and I set out this past Saturday to visit a small island off the coast of Ansan. We paged around in Lonely Planet, checked the Internet for some basic information, and figured we could find the island. After all, we've been here a while. My boyfriend used to be an Eagle Scout. If you need to find "true North" or decide which plants are eatable-he's your man. Perhaps we were arrogant. But we set out without directions nonetheless.
We got off the subway at the town's main stop, consulted a map of the town posted on the wall, and picked the direction that appeared to be closest to the ocean. On the map, it only looked like a mile or two away. Little did we know...
So, an hour later, there we were walking past factories and more factories.And then a few plants. A strange odor rose. A gas station loomed. And then look-another block of factories!We passed groups of Fillipino and Indian factory employees taking smoke breaks and waiting for the bus. Little beads of sweat started to break out on my boyfriend's brow. Damn, were we lost!
Forty minutes or so later, we found and followed a brownish trickle of water, a pathetic stream, towards the sea. I use the term "stream" loosely here. The water was murky, brown-grey and would have been at home in the Love Canal. Parking spaces and power lines stood adjacent to the stream,and a few feet later came the gates and parking structures connected to more factories. I started to get a headache from an intense chemical odor-it smelled like nail polish remover mixed with an undertaker's liquids. Brown smoke billowed out a nearby smokestack. Now, I KNOW I've never smelled a chemical odor that strong in the air before. "Whatever that smell is," my boyfriend said, "I know that's it's illeagal to emit that in the States."

Thinking about it after, I realized that whatever was leaching out of that smoke stack in Ansan is probably illeagal here, too. Environmental laws are only as strong as their enforcers. Not that my country is so great, either. There are also parts of the USA where companies flaunt their breaking of the Clean Air Act. Our oh-so short-sighted (oh, don't get me started!)President, George W., has taken all the teeth out of the E.P.A.!!
So, here is some unsolicited advice from an obnoxious "Way-gook:"
ROK, don't water down your Clean Air Laws. Don't "loosen environmental bans on building industrial complexes near water supply sources," as President Lee Myung-bak recently suggested. You have a beautiful country. Some decisions can't be un-made. See America as a cautionary tale. Protect what you have.

Chicken Little

As a feminist, I am generally more concerned with the problem of the "glass ceiling" than the actual ceilings. But as some of you have heard, last Tuesday night around 6:30pm a piece of my ceiling crashed down. I shut the door, then my upstairs neighbor moved something, and there was a "thud" sound upstairs. Then came a "boom!" sound as the kitchen light fixture, the faux wood bar it sat on, and a small piece of the ceiling all crashed down onto the kitchen floor. The plastic covering the light fixture, as well as the long light bulb inside broke, and shards of plastic and glass went everywhere.Instinctively, I called out "Oh my God!" to my empty apartment. Thank God I wasn't standing in the kitchen section of my officetel (a.k.a. studio)!!

I cleaned up the glass. Then I pondered the small hole in my ceiling with two wires dangling out. I hoped my upstairs neighbors didn't have bugs. And then, I wondered how I would explain the situation to my apartment building staff in Korean. So, I out on some dish washing gloves and grabbed the light fixture as a visual aid. I went down to the door man/superintendent and tried to mime out the situation, inserting my pathetic pigeon Korean where appropriate. After about ten minutes of my riveting re0-enactments, He finally understood, he got out the phone book, pointed to an add for a repair man, and told me it would be W30,000.
Hmm, my pieces of my relatively new ceiling are falling down and I HAVE TO PAY FOR IT?? I think not!
So, I took my visual aid and went two doors down to the apartment complex manager's office. He frowned at me and looked rather displeased to see me hauling around my light fixture. I again resorted to live theater he couldn't follow it all (or wasn't trying) but he seemed to understand the "boom!,crash! and fall" parts of the drama. He shrugged. He took out his cell phone and said "hackyo" or school. Now, here's the issue, by that time it was about 7pm so of course no one was left at the school. I also have a new co-teacher, so, technically, my new colleague is the person responsible for any problems at my apartment. She had just started the day of the ceiling debacle, so she and I hadn't yet exchanged cell phone numbers, I tried my old co-teacher once out of desperation, but she didn't answer (it wasn't her job, anyway). So we went through the motions one more time e, with me trying to act out "apartment" and "fix" like he had to fix it. He nodded no, and again said "hackyo" school. Now, my school is the formal renter of my apartment, and sometimes I need their "permission" to have minor repairs done. So, I thought that might be the issue, but gain I could not reach anyone.
I did not have the phone numbers of any of my hiking club friends on me, and didn't really feel comfortable calling a Korean acquaintance at dinner time and, so finally, at a loss, I called Steve and asked for his secretary's number. I felt bad but she translated perfectly and helped me understand the problem. The problem was not that the apartment building needed permission to fix the ceiling. The problem was that the apartment builing refused to fix the ceiling. The apartment manager said that "the foreigner could have broken the ceiling." ME? Break the ceiling? How, exactly? Even on a step stool, I can't REACH the ceiling to break it!! After several questions the apartment manager finally sighed and said that the lease on the apartment stipulates that the building will not be responsible for any repairs in the unit rented to a foreigner, as I could cause damage. I could not tell if this was stinginess or xenophobia or an attempt to scam the American who doesn't know the lease system. Or, all three.
So,I returned to my apartment and stared at the hole in the ceiling and the two wires dangling from it. I ran into the doorman in the hallway and I looked so sad that he came to my apartment with a hammer and some duck tape, but when he saw the extent of the damage he shook his head, knowing he could not fix it. I started again at the wires. They weren't touching, so my boyfriend assured me that it would be ok and there wouldn't be a fire. I cooked dinner in the relative dark (a trickle of light shone in from the "bedroom" side of the studio). I washed the dishes in the relative dark, missing a clump oat two of broccoli soup. I started to think about my former apartment building in Nowon, and my neighbor who left food in the hallway. And the fat roaches that then began to scurry across said hallway. These weren't pleasant memories to re-live!That night I dreamt of big beetles and cockroaches crawling out of the hole in an endless stream...
Anyway, the next day my poor co-teacher had to call and argue with the apartment building all over again. Even though it is a relatively new building, and things shouldn't just fall down(!) off the ceiling, the apartment building manager still refused to help. The next day was a holiday and my school asked if I could just ignore the hole in my ceiling for 48 hours. I felt bad, but a clean, safe apartment is part of my salary. A clean safe apartment has an entire ceiling. I was supposed to have 5 friends over that night for wine and a Scrabble match, so I held firm. One night of cockroach dreams was enough, thanks.
I spent three hours waiting for a repairman after school. My guests were due to arrive at 7, and he came at 6:20. Just in the nick of time, he installed a smaller, cheaper light fixture on a metal rod. He covered the hole and incorporated the dangling wires. My giuests arrived late, so I had an entire 20 minutes to clean the dirt and ceiling dust the repairman left behind!
In the end, my ceiling did get fixed in time, and I didn't have to pay for it. All because I argued my case.
Moral: Don't accept the first "no" as an answer.

You taught me, all night long?

Recently, the Seoul City Council floated a scary plan to allow private hagwon owners to keep offering English, math, and music classes basically all-night long. Hagwons in Seoul had asked for the freedom to offer later classes as a business freedom and a response to supposed "customer demand." The new presidemt is very pro-business...and so we teachers were all scared that it would pass. (There is intense competition for slots at the top Seoul universities. Thus Korean children's advocates also became concerned that parents, meaning well, might send high school students to study late at night, thereby robbing them of the sleep they need to maintain their health!)
Thankfully, this week, the Seoul City Council saw the insanity of letting children go to school past 10pm...See the article below for the full Story...
Seoul City Council Cancels All-Night Hagwon Plan

"The Seoul Metropolitan Council cancelled its plan to allow private cram schools or hagwons to stay open all night, Tuesday.
With the cancellation, cram schools' operating hours remain unchanged between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m..
``We reached an agreement that we need to maintain the regulations on the operating hours,'' a committee member said. ``We considered student's health as a key factor in the decision.''
The council originally sought to liberalize the operating hours of private tutoring institutes as many hagwon open until past midnight despite the rules. They pointed out that the lack of law enforcement officials also makes the rules virtually useless in practice.
But the council changed its position after strong protest from civic groups and parents. Even President Lee Myung-bak reacted negatively to the move.
Despite its succumbing to public protest, the city council still wants the issue to be discussed further at public hearings.
The council's educational committee last week passed a municipal ordinance to abolish limitations on business hours at private cram schools as part of deregulation to provide more freedom to private business sectors.
Parents raised concerns that the move would force students to study all night, resulting in health risks, as well as pose a threat to the public education system.
In the face of protests, the committee decided to put it to a vote. They voted for the amendment to the ordinance to restrict hagwon business hours to 10 p.m. Of 89 council members, 70 voted for the revised amendment and 19 against, according to the council.

Soupy Sales

Hungry?
Korean Cuisine offers many rich, healthy soups and stews. Of course, to a foreigner like myself, soups can be rife with danger. A lot of unknown ingredients can float around in a brown or orange-tinged broth! The scariest being the infamous dog meat soup of course. But don't believe the hype-it is only consumed in certain eateries at certain times of the year. Recently, my co-workers treated me to a duck stew containing herbs from Korean traditional medicine. I have enjoyed many yummy varieties of duck in Korea and China, so I was game for a new treat. Then my bowl came-with a branch inside it?! There's the medicine plant, a helpful co-worker explained when I looked perplexed. I didn't realize the chef would throw the ENTIRE shrub-bark, leaves,roots and all in the stew pot to add flavor and nutrients!

Still, the search for some cold day comfort food does present challenges. I speak woefully little Korean and dislike most seafood. A blustery, end of winter day makes me crave Mom's Irish beef stew. NOT so easy to find in Gunpo. What soup is available? Even in a smaller town, one can usually find a variety of nutritious soups and stews to choose from....Choosing is the trick! Some chicken and pork soups, despite the innocent photos on the restaurant menu, mysteriously contain fish scales. Fish soup can contain eyeballs. I have been served this lovely brew,I kid you not! :( Some soups, while containing no fish per se, are cooked with a hint of fish oil. So these stews still taste "fishy" to a picky eater like me.

So far, my favorite Korean soup is filling, nutritious, and predictable. The leaders of my hiking club introduced me to it last winter. Vegetarian (clam free) and milder (less kimchi) versions can also be ordered at many eateries. I mispronounce it "soon-dubu...," yet usually people understand. Here's how to make it...

Soon Tubu Jjigae
(Korean spicy tofu stew)
Yield: 4-6 servings
INGREDIENTS and PREP. AMOUNT:
Oil- 2 tablespoons
Garlic- minced 2 tablespoons
Korean pepper powder- 1 tablespoon
Beef stock- 4 cups
Cabbage kimchi- shredded 1 cup (use less if you are a spice wimp, like me)
Soy sauce- 1 tablespoon
Soft tofu- cut into 1" cubes 4 cups (2 pounds)
Clams- chopped, with juice 1 cup (variation-some places will just throw one small clam in the bottom of each bowl)
Scallions- chopped 3-4
Sesame oil- 1 tablespoon
METHOD:
Basic Steps: Sauté → Simmer → Garnish
Heat the oil over medium flame in a clay hotpot or large saucepan. Add the garlic and pepper powder and saute until garlic just starts to brown.
Add the beef stock, kimchee and soy sauce. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer 10-15 minutes until the kimchee softens.
Gently stir in the tofu and clams with their juice. Adjust seasoning with soy sauce and Korean pepper. Simmer another 5-10 minutes.
Sprinkle with scallions and drizzle with sesame oil. Serve piping hot in bowls with steamed rice.
Enjoy! :)
Still hungry?
Last week I also tried the popular "army soup" or (Former US President) "Johnson's Stew" that my boyfriend often has for lunch at the Nobu chain. After our hike last Saturday, some of us stopped into a restaurant where the "Private's soup" as they called it there, was the specialty. It contains several foods that would come in an American soldier's rations, such as Spam, Hot dogs, and salty ramen noodles, blended with ground meat, veggies, and traditional Korean spices. I was a little bit frightened by the pot full of processed foods when it came! However, as it simmered in front of me on the gas range on our table, it started to smell oddly tempting. (God only knows how much sodium is in that pot, though!) It even tasted yummy, in a unique way, as the Korean spices balanced out all the faux pork. My boyfriend, (the aspiring photo journalist?) snapped a photo of it and I will try to post that here later. So, while I enjoyed the army soup, and it has a storied history in the parts of South Korea borderng ROK and US army bases, I do not recommend it's consumption while bonding with a sweetie. That soup gives both parties a serious case of gas! :)