Progress Report 11.1
Amyongh hasseyo,
How's it going? Yeah? Wicked-bad.
Phewf, I'll tell you what - it's sweltering hot here. Summer's got under way in proper fashion in the past week, banishing the rains to vague recall and heating the air to the mid-thirties. Coupled with the high humidity, it's led to an outbreak of uncontrollable perspiration from your moist correspondent here. The weather makes your British (snigger) "heatwave" look like a brief break in the clouds. Tropical nights, dragonflies, sweaty balls - these are the things of the South Korean summer. It's a shame that the Koreans don't also share the peculiarly British inclination to stop working and decamp to the pub at the first sign of sun, but then the British don't respond to summer heat by butchering and barbecuing their dogs, so I'm perfectly happy to permit some give and take in this instance.
And as World War III begins in preface amongst the summer madness and Israel continue their attempt to cement their reputation as the world's least popular tourists, I may as well mention now that my chances of witnessing a nuclear explosion from a distance that will vaporize me are currently significantly raised by my location. It was not a point that was emphasised before I came here, but my adopted country of residence is still effectively at war with its bad neighbour to the north. North Korea is at present the most closed and secretive regime in the world, poor, totalitarian and effectively friendless, and they have of late upped a gear in their campaign to agitate the local area by test-firing a range of missiles and rockets - the geo-political equivalent of dragging their telly into the back garden and turning it up full blast. South Korea, ever aware that if there's a dust-up, it will be its windows that get put through, have responded with moderate condemnation through clenched teeth, whilst Japan indulgently talked up a storm, suggesting pre-emptive strikes and increased defence budgets, safe in the knowledge that they're far enough up the street to see the North Koreans coming. The Chinese, knowing that they're meant to be the North Korean's friends (even though they've been trying to get some healthy distance lately), tutted and clucked, and the Americans did the same, but with a rottweiler leashed to their fist.
The North Koreans remained unrepentant, refusing to attend meetings and not answering the door, and in the end, the affair looked set to fizzle out without confrontation or resolution. But then there was a brief skirmish on the border last week when the North fired a couple of bullets across the DMZ (the demilitarized zone, which marks where North meets South and presently the most policed border in the world), and the South, having got no response from a demand for an apology over a loudspeaker, fired a few back. No-one was hurt, but it served to further aggravate the South, who are desperately trying to be patient with their disfucntional neighbour, and with whom it seemed relations had previously been becoming more cordial. As the North Koreans run out of friends and defenders on the right side of the 'axis of evil' (the test-fired missiles were most likely supplied by Iran), there is an increasing fear that they will soon feel that they have nothing to lose and go on the rampage. If they do this, there's only one place they can get to - here.
The South are all too aware of this. Until it had been pointed out to me, I hadn't noticed the speakers secreted in public places to sound air-raid warnings, nor had I suspected anything in the spaciousness and depth underground of the pedestrian subways - almost air-raid shelter-sized, you might say. Personally, I don't think there's any particular risk of things kicking off, but that's because I'm an optimisitc Libran. Some people I've discussed it with are only too happy to prophesy doom though, pointing out that if the North decided 'f*ck it, let's rush the border', the most likely response from the US (in their role as defenders of the South) would be nuclear. In this eventuality, it's most likely that Seoul would be lost in the resulting exchange. I know it's not the loveliest of cities, but it would still be shame. Especially if I got irradiated before I've used up all that toilet roll I bought. (By the way, I finished the second roll on Saturday, fully ten weeks after their initial purchase.)
All of this makes South Korea feel a little insecure. In the past, it has been passed between Japan and China like an Albanian whore. The Japanese were running the show in brutal fashion right up until 1945, but then were rendered a little more kitten-like by the simulatenous deaths of 220,000 of their citizens in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and decided that the Koreans were welcome to rules themselves. There's still a good deal of enmity towards the Japs amongst the older generations here as a result of their cruelty as colonial masters, and a great deal of suspicion about the motives behind their sabre-rattling at North Korea. The way the Koreans see it, as soon as Japan is allowed anything more than a defensive military force, they'll be setting sail for their former stomping ground, eager to enslave the minguks once again.
This insecurity means that nationalism is pure and rife. On the whole, it's expressed in healthy and safe ways, like maniacal support for the national football team (even though they're rubbish), or an unscientific belief in the panaceaic powers of kimchi, but it can be a costly mistake to misjudge any Korean's attitude towards the deprecation of anything remotely Korean. I learned this about two weeks into my adventure when I was discussing conditions at the DMZ, where one of my students had completed his military service, posted as a guard. The North, he told me, would attempt to rile the border guards by broadcasting Commie propoganda over the loud-hailers. The South responded with Korean pop.
'Oof,' I remarked. 'That's a bit harsh.'
'Why?' he wanted to know, in a distictly hurt tone.
'Yeah, why?' chimed in another student, a tad aggressively.
'What do you mean by that?' demanded a third.
I almost had an open rebellion on my hands, until some frantic backpedalling and some unguent charm pulled me back from the brink. It illustrated to me starkly that you josh about anything the Koreans regard as being part of their identity at your peril. (Incidentally, all Korean men must serve two years in the military, and they bear this intrusion upon their liberty with staunch and hardy pride. They might not like it particuarly, but they see it as essential for the defence of their nation. Rather them than me...)
This national pride was also displayed to me in the form of an aggressive defence of the consumtion of dog meat by a passionate Korean barmaid in Itaewon on Friday night. I've no idea how we got onto the subject, but she somehow read me all wrong and assumed that I was being critical of the practice. I then had to sit through her ten minute counter-argument, as she told me that Westerners just don't understand and that the French eat horses and it's Korean tradition and so on. 'I know,' I told her, but still she gushed forth.
'I know,' I protested in vain. 'Yes, I friggin' KNOW. I'm going to eat dog next week!'
This stopped her dead in her rhetorical tracks. Her fight dissolved and she became weak-kneed and impressed. After hearing details of my other adventures through the Korean gustatorial pantheon, she could have been mine for the taking. Had I not been with the New Yorker I met last week, I would have gladly obliged the dog-eating freak.
Yes, all being well, this Wednesday shall be my Dog Day. It almost happened today, as one of my students was going having dog for lunch and invited me to join her. Unfortunately, I had to decline the offer owing to the catastrophic effects a barbecued squid had upon my intestines on Saturday night, which has left me pooing fluid at half-hour intervals. She's going to get me a card for the restaurant though, and on Wednesday evening, I shall go along and have the waiter fetch us up the full works. I was also told today that if I ask nicely at a dog restaurant, they will serve me a steamed dog's penis.
'It looks like a man's penis,' I was informed, 'but bigger. And a different colour.'
I wish I was joking about this but I'm not. Apparently, women like eating dog's penis to increase their sexual appetite. As far as I'm concerned, any woman who is willing to put a dog's penis in her mouth has sexual appetite enough.
Right, I'm sad to report that not one of you has been forthcoming in my appeal for information of that TV programme that I want to know the name of. Rather than judge you, I shall help you out a little more by giving you some further info. The main character, it now seems, might not be a small-town cop but a different stereotype in every episode. His face is orange and his cheekbones ludicrously protrusive. His partner from the cop episode may or may not be a regular fixture, but in case he is, he's quiet and has got a beard and looks like the sort of man who would use his superior upper body strength to make you do things you don't want to. There seems to be some sort of supernatural aspect to the show, as I think the protagonist has magical powers. In fact, I think the whole project is religiously informed. Is this ringing any bells with anyone? I suspect it's the sort of show that would be on on a wet Sunday afternoon when there's really nothing else on at all worth watching. If you can provide any information on this at all, please email me straight back in the strictest confidence.
Right, that's her for this week. I shall get some pictures of the dog feast and post them as soon as I can. If any of you have any last minute moral objections to my meal plan then please get them in a.s.a.p. I shall be happy to hear them.
That is all,
Amyonghi kasseyo,
S
How's it going? Yeah? Wicked-bad.
Phewf, I'll tell you what - it's sweltering hot here. Summer's got under way in proper fashion in the past week, banishing the rains to vague recall and heating the air to the mid-thirties. Coupled with the high humidity, it's led to an outbreak of uncontrollable perspiration from your moist correspondent here. The weather makes your British (snigger) "heatwave" look like a brief break in the clouds. Tropical nights, dragonflies, sweaty balls - these are the things of the South Korean summer. It's a shame that the Koreans don't also share the peculiarly British inclination to stop working and decamp to the pub at the first sign of sun, but then the British don't respond to summer heat by butchering and barbecuing their dogs, so I'm perfectly happy to permit some give and take in this instance.
And as World War III begins in preface amongst the summer madness and Israel continue their attempt to cement their reputation as the world's least popular tourists, I may as well mention now that my chances of witnessing a nuclear explosion from a distance that will vaporize me are currently significantly raised by my location. It was not a point that was emphasised before I came here, but my adopted country of residence is still effectively at war with its bad neighbour to the north. North Korea is at present the most closed and secretive regime in the world, poor, totalitarian and effectively friendless, and they have of late upped a gear in their campaign to agitate the local area by test-firing a range of missiles and rockets - the geo-political equivalent of dragging their telly into the back garden and turning it up full blast. South Korea, ever aware that if there's a dust-up, it will be its windows that get put through, have responded with moderate condemnation through clenched teeth, whilst Japan indulgently talked up a storm, suggesting pre-emptive strikes and increased defence budgets, safe in the knowledge that they're far enough up the street to see the North Koreans coming. The Chinese, knowing that they're meant to be the North Korean's friends (even though they've been trying to get some healthy distance lately), tutted and clucked, and the Americans did the same, but with a rottweiler leashed to their fist.
The North Koreans remained unrepentant, refusing to attend meetings and not answering the door, and in the end, the affair looked set to fizzle out without confrontation or resolution. But then there was a brief skirmish on the border last week when the North fired a couple of bullets across the DMZ (the demilitarized zone, which marks where North meets South and presently the most policed border in the world), and the South, having got no response from a demand for an apology over a loudspeaker, fired a few back. No-one was hurt, but it served to further aggravate the South, who are desperately trying to be patient with their disfucntional neighbour, and with whom it seemed relations had previously been becoming more cordial. As the North Koreans run out of friends and defenders on the right side of the 'axis of evil' (the test-fired missiles were most likely supplied by Iran), there is an increasing fear that they will soon feel that they have nothing to lose and go on the rampage. If they do this, there's only one place they can get to - here.
The South are all too aware of this. Until it had been pointed out to me, I hadn't noticed the speakers secreted in public places to sound air-raid warnings, nor had I suspected anything in the spaciousness and depth underground of the pedestrian subways - almost air-raid shelter-sized, you might say. Personally, I don't think there's any particular risk of things kicking off, but that's because I'm an optimisitc Libran. Some people I've discussed it with are only too happy to prophesy doom though, pointing out that if the North decided 'f*ck it, let's rush the border', the most likely response from the US (in their role as defenders of the South) would be nuclear. In this eventuality, it's most likely that Seoul would be lost in the resulting exchange. I know it's not the loveliest of cities, but it would still be shame. Especially if I got irradiated before I've used up all that toilet roll I bought. (By the way, I finished the second roll on Saturday, fully ten weeks after their initial purchase.)
All of this makes South Korea feel a little insecure. In the past, it has been passed between Japan and China like an Albanian whore. The Japanese were running the show in brutal fashion right up until 1945, but then were rendered a little more kitten-like by the simulatenous deaths of 220,000 of their citizens in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and decided that the Koreans were welcome to rules themselves. There's still a good deal of enmity towards the Japs amongst the older generations here as a result of their cruelty as colonial masters, and a great deal of suspicion about the motives behind their sabre-rattling at North Korea. The way the Koreans see it, as soon as Japan is allowed anything more than a defensive military force, they'll be setting sail for their former stomping ground, eager to enslave the minguks once again.
This insecurity means that nationalism is pure and rife. On the whole, it's expressed in healthy and safe ways, like maniacal support for the national football team (even though they're rubbish), or an unscientific belief in the panaceaic powers of kimchi, but it can be a costly mistake to misjudge any Korean's attitude towards the deprecation of anything remotely Korean. I learned this about two weeks into my adventure when I was discussing conditions at the DMZ, where one of my students had completed his military service, posted as a guard. The North, he told me, would attempt to rile the border guards by broadcasting Commie propoganda over the loud-hailers. The South responded with Korean pop.
'Oof,' I remarked. 'That's a bit harsh.'
'Why?' he wanted to know, in a distictly hurt tone.
'Yeah, why?' chimed in another student, a tad aggressively.
'What do you mean by that?' demanded a third.
I almost had an open rebellion on my hands, until some frantic backpedalling and some unguent charm pulled me back from the brink. It illustrated to me starkly that you josh about anything the Koreans regard as being part of their identity at your peril. (Incidentally, all Korean men must serve two years in the military, and they bear this intrusion upon their liberty with staunch and hardy pride. They might not like it particuarly, but they see it as essential for the defence of their nation. Rather them than me...)
This national pride was also displayed to me in the form of an aggressive defence of the consumtion of dog meat by a passionate Korean barmaid in Itaewon on Friday night. I've no idea how we got onto the subject, but she somehow read me all wrong and assumed that I was being critical of the practice. I then had to sit through her ten minute counter-argument, as she told me that Westerners just don't understand and that the French eat horses and it's Korean tradition and so on. 'I know,' I told her, but still she gushed forth.
'I know,' I protested in vain. 'Yes, I friggin' KNOW. I'm going to eat dog next week!'
This stopped her dead in her rhetorical tracks. Her fight dissolved and she became weak-kneed and impressed. After hearing details of my other adventures through the Korean gustatorial pantheon, she could have been mine for the taking. Had I not been with the New Yorker I met last week, I would have gladly obliged the dog-eating freak.
Yes, all being well, this Wednesday shall be my Dog Day. It almost happened today, as one of my students was going having dog for lunch and invited me to join her. Unfortunately, I had to decline the offer owing to the catastrophic effects a barbecued squid had upon my intestines on Saturday night, which has left me pooing fluid at half-hour intervals. She's going to get me a card for the restaurant though, and on Wednesday evening, I shall go along and have the waiter fetch us up the full works. I was also told today that if I ask nicely at a dog restaurant, they will serve me a steamed dog's penis.
'It looks like a man's penis,' I was informed, 'but bigger. And a different colour.'
I wish I was joking about this but I'm not. Apparently, women like eating dog's penis to increase their sexual appetite. As far as I'm concerned, any woman who is willing to put a dog's penis in her mouth has sexual appetite enough.
Right, I'm sad to report that not one of you has been forthcoming in my appeal for information of that TV programme that I want to know the name of. Rather than judge you, I shall help you out a little more by giving you some further info. The main character, it now seems, might not be a small-town cop but a different stereotype in every episode. His face is orange and his cheekbones ludicrously protrusive. His partner from the cop episode may or may not be a regular fixture, but in case he is, he's quiet and has got a beard and looks like the sort of man who would use his superior upper body strength to make you do things you don't want to. There seems to be some sort of supernatural aspect to the show, as I think the protagonist has magical powers. In fact, I think the whole project is religiously informed. Is this ringing any bells with anyone? I suspect it's the sort of show that would be on on a wet Sunday afternoon when there's really nothing else on at all worth watching. If you can provide any information on this at all, please email me straight back in the strictest confidence.
Right, that's her for this week. I shall get some pictures of the dog feast and post them as soon as I can. If any of you have any last minute moral objections to my meal plan then please get them in a.s.a.p. I shall be happy to hear them.
That is all,
Amyonghi kasseyo,
S
posted by Stephen Beckett at 5:43 PM
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