An update, and some observations

 Having been a bit more than a month, and only days from leaving, I figured I should give some account as to how I've been spending my time.

The larger part of most days is spent in the room, there being nothing nearby to see, and, for a few weeks there, the air quality was disastrously bad, owing to a great swirling miasma that blew here from China (Korea adds its own contribution to the soup they breathe, but the larger part of the blame can be laid at the feet of the Chinese).  Nevertheless, some of the time I sally forth during the day to get a coffee or a bite of lunch or some shopping, and gone for no more than an hour at most.  The time spent in the room is poking at the internet or reading.  (I have been reading a great deal of clinical literature in preparation for the impending return to school, but after finishing another book on Jungian theory, I opted to take a break from non-fiction to enjoy the "light" stylings of Umberto Eco, in his Island of the Day Before.  Being a semiotician, he has much to say, but sometimes too much at a go, which is why I am taking a break from my break, so to speak, to write this post.)  For a while there I was watching movies I had always wanted to see, but I fell out of the habit as I increasingly spent my television time watching the adventures of the comedian Marc Maron's new kitten.  As with reading books, time spent on cats is no waste of time.

Cherry blossom season came early this year, by several weeks.  I don't know if it was a record in Korea, but it was Japan's earliest cherry blossom blooming in 1,200 years.  They do not smell much, but they look like I wish snow was, and with the occasional hint of pink.  We visited Seoul two weekends in a row, by rail and metro, while the blooms were showing, to see an art museum and gather a few presents to thank people who have helped manage our affairs at home in our absence.  Because I spend all my time in the old part of Cheonan, where there are no cherry trees, I wasn't even aware they were in bloom, much less had seen any.  They are a gorgeous riot and I am pleased they came in time for me to see them.

Meanwhile, other flowering plants have started to succeed the cherries in blooming.  We went to Hyeonchungsa Shrine in Asan, dedicated to the great admiral and savior of the nation Yi Sun-shin (1545-98), which I had seen on the previous trip, but Laura had not.  I had been holding off bringing her there until I knew spring was underway, because the brown sterility of winter does not do justice to Hyeonchungsa's beauty in the other seasons.  The wait paid off, apparently, for there were still cherries, and now magnolias and forsythia and lilacs and azaleas and all sorts of blooming trees and shrub that we didn't recognize.  It was such a spectacle that if it had been a landscape painting, you would have thought the painter was a liar.  Luckily Laura took photographs.  She was less interested in the historical architecture, but it's hard to blame her for being distracted by such a display.  We had intended to go from Hyeonchungsa to the actual grave of Admiral Yi on nearby Mount Eorasan, but could not find a way there on our taxi app.

Spring has even come to this part of Cheonan, as the dormant streetside gingko trees I had hardly noticed before, have started to bud, and now there is greenery even in this mass of neon and concrete.  For this sight, too, I am grateful.  Tomorrow, the 13th, I go to get a test, which you now, finally need to fly to the U.S., so I can leave the 16th and get back to Corning to take charge of our affairs, get the fur babies back, and discharge some obligations.  When Laura can leave is somewhat more open-ended, but tentatively we think she can leave at the end of May (perhaps even in time for our wedding anniversary, but I don't want to disappoint myself by hoping).  The separation will be the longest we have ever been apart, and it's certain we will spend every day wishing it to be done and over with.  Still being here for perhaps six weeks, Laura may yet choose to write a post or two for the blog.

I have been keeping a list of a few random observations as they occur to me, which I present here in no particular order.  I have condensed several related thoughts under one heading, so please excuse any wandering in oversized paragraphs.

Restaurants.  There are some curiosities of dining in Korea.  When you enter, you immediately sign the contact tracing sheet and have your temperature taken.  You then sit yourself wherever you want, though out of habit we hesitate a bit to see if the waitress has some place she'd rather we sit.  Some places will seat foreigners near a window, to show how hip and worldly the establishment is, while others will hide foreigners in the back, so as to signal something else.  Dining alone is not always possible, but most restaurants have a list of noodle soups (jiggae) that can be ordered alone or as an accompaniment, the latter if you're with a group.  Koreans prefer to eat socially, so they are suspicious of solo diners being antisocial or perhaps not worth socializing with.  When you're done, go to the register and present your credit card.  There's no tax and no tipping.  Things may be changing as takeout culture takes hold in the pandemic era, but boxing leftovers is thought of as something the poor do, and no Korean, however mean his circumstances, ever wants to be perceived as poor.  There is no such thing as Burns' "honest poverty" here.  This might not be universal, but it's widespread enough of a custom that restaurants might not have even stocked suitable containers, even if they wanted to accomodate a diner.

Lastly, much has been made about Korean food being spicy.  Northeasterners will have a tougher time of it, but generally I don't find it terribly hot.  It is, however, senselessly so, as the chiles that Koreans use have very little flavor apart from the heat sensation, and I accept heat as the tradeoff for flavor.  That said, you become accustomed to it very quickly, and nothing has been so hot as to make me stop eating it on that account.

Street crime.  There is none that I have noticed.  People will leave bicycles in public without locks.  I've seen people toss their wallets into shopping carts, with no fear that anyone will grab it when the shopper's head is turned.  This is probably some combination of Confucian terror of shaming their family, respect for property, and a rather harsh penal system.  As for threats to one's person, there is the occasional bar fight, or some drunkard may splash your shoe with vomit (the Koreans are famous binge drinkers), but in general I have felt very safe here, as elsewhere in East Asia.  There is some groping of women on the Seoul metro, however, though increasingly it has been taken more seriously by the police and women, I understand, have begun to make a scene for the other passengers when it happens and shame, as I said before, is a powerful deterrent in Asia.  This is not a uniquely Korean problem, and I have seen photos of the Tokyo metro where women have grabbed the hand of a groper and thrust it straight in the air for other passengers to see, the offender holding his head in shame while everyone stares disapprovingly at the perpetrator.

(Now all that said, white collar crime is a matter entirely apart.  Corruption and embezzlement are rampant, and frequently make the international papers.  If you don't believe me, a quick Google search will convince you.)

Appearances.  Koreans are a noticeably vain people.  Some of this is true vanity, though just as much is owed to the intense social pressure to conform to impossible ideals that is everywhere the soul-destroying bane of Koreans.  These pressures fall hardest on women, of course, and some 25 percent of Korean women admit to having had cosmetic surgery.  This has, in turn made South Korea the plastic surgery capital of the world and a destination for medical tourism.  I have joked elsewhere that for $15,000 and the cost of a plane ticket, you can leave looking like the eighth member of BTS.  I do not have figures on how many men have had procedures, but I cannot imaging it less than 15 percent among younger men.  Oddly, these procedures are undertaken for the same reason women do, to look slim and gracile.  You may have noticed that a lot of male K-pop stars look feminine, though I couldn't say why they feel the need.  There is universal male conscription in Korea, and the young men all cut dashing figures in their uniforms.  Why they would want to tone down that virility, rather than add to it as we would, is perplexing.  Brands and labels are so important here, both for reasons of vanity and wanting to telegraph your prosperity, keeping in mind what I said above about looking poor.  The thrift shop hipster aesthetic never made it to Korea.  Westerners who buck branded culture and wear off-label clothes are thought of as eccentrics, which promotes the perception that we're all harmless, or clueless, or even endearing in our own way.  To which I say vive la différence, and I hope my Hawaiian shirts have helped reinforce this image, or even, I may hope, point Koreans to a better, individualistic, multi-colored future for themselves.

Architectural beautification.  This is amazing to me, because in the U.S., we long ago stopped making statues and designing buildings with fluted columns or making anything of cut stone.  Rebar, cinderblock, bricks, concrete and cement is all we can do anymore.  The Koreans though build all sorts of things in stone, with traditional, high artistic craftsmanship, particularly in restoring ancient sites, but even rail stations are made with cut, polished granite.  Lampposts and manhole covers, too, are works of art.  I think this impulse towards beautiful artistic infrastructure is largely due in part to the widespread destruction of the Korean peninsula during the 1950-3 war, where few structures were left standing.  South Korea is aggressively rebuilding its ancient cultural edifices using the traditional ways, and some of that restrained aesthetic, and a sense of needing public works worthy of Korea greatness, shows itself in how they design and build contemporary, secular public architecture.  I think this is also due to there being less of a suspicion towards artists as we have in the U.S. as a result of the culture wars.  Here art is still traditional and less threatening, whereas at home it has sometimes gone off the deep end, whether ideologically or in form, and made itself a target of conservative wrath.  So it's easiest that we don't fund art anymore.  And our stinginess toward public infrastructure (and any whiff of a tax increase, no matter how rich a tax bracket one may inhabit) just isn't shared by Koreans.  They build, and they build beautifully. 

A museum for the politicians

It's Independence Day in Korea, or, more accurately, Failed Revolt Followed By 25 Years of Further Occupation Day.  It's raining, and has the effect of curtailing the citywide holiday weekend-long drunken bacchanal.  It's a good, cold, cleansing rain.  It's the only appreciable rain, in fact, since we got here.

Fittingly, the weekend before we went to Korea's Independence Hall.  Not like our Independence Hall, where stuff was signed, but more of a museum.  Let me say "museum," because (and I'm speaking as an historian here) it was more propaganda than factual, balanced history.

Just outside Cheonan, it's a sprawling site.  At first you see a pair of monumental spires, reminiscent of some late Soviet public art.  Off to the side and up the hill is something similarly modernist in a totalitarian way, housing a bell dedicated to the reunification of the peninsula.  As you approach, there is a massive pavilion, an ominous pile of concrete that is stylistically a cross between classic Asian architecture and brutalism.  Under the roof is a heroic sculptural tableau in the style of Socialist Realism that feels a lot like Laborer and Kolkhoz Woman, and does nothing to dispel the totalitarian vibe.

Moving beyond the pavilion is a collection of exhibition halls.  The first one is quite nice, and displays the origins of the Korean people and their history up to the end of feudalism in the 19th century, including stuff about how they repelled Yuan-dynasty invaders from China and Shogunate-period Japan, including the feats of Yi Sun-shin and the mighty turtle ships.  The remaining halls, however, are fairly disappointing; a tedious repetition of historical half-truths offered up not for visitors' edification but to cement an official government narrative.

The history, elevator-style, is this: Korea, in its first thousand years, traded extensively and took in a tremendous amount of Chinese culture, either directly or as mediated by Japan, including architecture, writing, Confucianism and Buddhism, and so forth.  (These contributions go unacknowledged.)  In its second millennium, Korea turned inward and became a "hermit kingdom" with no interest in its neighbors, China and Japan, who, to be fair, occasionally lusted after their land.  In the 19th century, after the Americans forced Japan to open itself up to the world, they went on to demand the same of the Koreans.  The Japanese decided to meet the domineering West by aggressively westernizing, while the Koreans were much less enthusiastic.  After a few years, Japan started throwing its new weight around the region and forced Korea into a series of unfair treaties that culminated in outright annexation in 1910.

On March 1st, 1920, some activists and intellectuals had had enough, and made a declaration of independence.  The Japanese did not find it very reasonable or humorous, and they brutally cracked down on the Koreans.  There was some insurrectionist guerilla armies hiding out in China and Russia, but the Japanese remained firmly in control until 1945, at the end of World War II.  I don't want to sugar-coat what the Japanese occupation was like: they forced Koreans to adopt Japanese language and Japanese names, and made terrible reprisals for insurrectionary acts.  As pig-headed as Koreans can be (and no, that's not a crack at the kosa ceremony), the Japanese rose to the occasion and met obstinance with iron-hearted repression.  (The presentation of the history of the occupation doesn't mention those Koreans who prospered under Japanese rule, except to obliquely accuse them of collaboration, or the millions of ordinary people who went about their daily lives with no great preference for one repressive regime over another.  Quite a few of them, if Europe's history in WWII is any model, probably wanted to be on the winning team.)

This is more or less where the museum's narrative ends.  In it, little attempt is made to distinguish between imperial era Japanese and contemporary Japanese (what do the Japanese translations on the placards say, I wonder?), and the same terrible stories are told over and over.  Not just in general, but the same individual incidents, the exact same burnt churches and razed villages.  Meanwhile, as they beat the drum of Japanese awfulness, they inflate the insurrectionaries into demi-gods and glorify the pure, untainted, unflinching, heroic Korean race, who are eternal victims of their rapacious neighbors.  Americans don't get let off the hook either, for their role in opening up Korea or their abandoning Korea to Japanese rule after World War I.  It's a level of national self-indulgence and wallowing and indignation that wouldn't be tolerated by museum-goers in the West.

Conspicuously absent is the story of Americans defeating the Japanese, or the continued role of 30,000 American troops spread over 15 bases, still here after 70 years as guarantors of South Korean liberty.  (I do wonder what sort of "independence" it is when you're garrisoned by a foreign power, incapable of confidently defending your own territory from an aggressive neighboring country.)  The entire Korean War is glossed over, almost ignored (except a vague, usual, half-hearted pining for unification), and no mention is made of 37,000 Americans dead from that conflict (though, to be sure, they do blame us for allowing the partition of the peninsula between the Soviet and Western spheres, regardless of whether we were in a position to resist Soviet demands).  The fact that the Chinese overwhelmingly fought the war on the side of North Korea (with 920,000 war dead), as well as their continued support for the DPRK, is nowhere mentioned.  (I suspect because the Japanese will take the abuse quietly and the Chinese won't, and will meet outrage with outrage.  Meanwhile, the Japanese inscrutable placidity over Korean indignation, and their failure to engage on Korean terms, just serves to enrage Koreans.  One of the Korean Google reviewers actually said that he thought the new displays excused the Japanese and weren't explicit or strident enough, and he preferred the old ones.  I wonder what they said, but not really.)  

Another simply galling narrative is the idea that things were quite hunky-dory under the grinding feudalism of the Joseon dynasty (and probably all the dynasties preceding it).  If left to its own, we are asked to assume, Korea would still be undivided, full of happy peasants and sagely mandarins.  (No one imagines they would find themselves in the former class in this alternate history.)  This scenario ignores the probable fact that, had the Americans and Japanese never showed up, their Communist neighbors would probably have invaded this peaceable kingdom anyway and the whole peninsula would now be the DPRK, grinding along under a new form of feudalism.  Eventually, every country is invaded, and Korea is no exception—just consider that a third of English words are French.

I don't want to be offensive or dismissive, and I don't want to be an apologist for imperialism, whether Japanese or Communist or American.  If I'm wrong, challenge me in the comments below and we'll talk.  But it seems to this casual observer that Koreans being forever the aggrieved targets of foreign aggression, while protesting their divine singularity among the nations of the earth and the indomitability of their heroic national spirit, makes them look insecure and petty, when there isn't any reason for them to feel that way.  They're a major economy, prosperous, and well-regarded in the world.  They've got COVID on the ropes!  They don't need to prove themselves.  However, this narrative is a tool of the government here to hold together a society that might otherwise be fractious, and so in itself is a kind of repression, a flattening of the discourse.  It's the same impulse to a curated, selective history in the service of ideology that I find intolerable among Americans, particularly the "America First" crowd.  Koreans, please: the red hat doesn't look good on you, either.

Another tut-tuttable curiosity on the museum grounds is the partial remains of the former seat of the Japanese imperial government.  When they built it in Seoul, it was sited to loom over the former imperial palace, by which Koreans were predictably offended (even without any impulse to restore the monarchy).  (It's hard to understand the Japanese motivation.  If they thought to cow Koreans in awe and despair, they don't understand Korean backbone.)  After the war, it was the site of the first independent Korean parliaments and presidential inaugurations.  This alone should have saved it from demolition.  It served as government offices into the 1990s, when it was unilaterally decided by the administration in power to be razed to end the historic insult and free up land for development—despite the ongoing national conversation on what to do with it.  The occasion was the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, and the government wanted a nationalistic statement of, again, the indomitability/victimhood of the Korean people.  It was historical vandalism as pure domestic propaganda.  They could have relocated the building, or left it standing where it was as a reminder, and maybe turned it into the museum that now stands in Cheonan.  Instead, it was pulled down and some of the more recognizable architectural remains were relocated to the Cheonan museum, arranged (not very artfully) into pseudo-ruins, to get a little more mileage out of the propaganda stunt.  The world recently clutched their collective pearls when the Kim sister had the joint North-South liaison building in Kaesong, but it wasn't the first time Koreans have destroyed a building to make a point.

Look, I feel bad for having outspoken opinions on a history and society not my own, and I can almost hear the chorus of "How dare you?!" in Korean.  But with familiarity comes a degree of contempt, and I have been here long enough, and read enough, to turn a jaundiced eye to the politics and political theatre of it.  Don't give me a sanitized, dressed-up, Disney-fied story of absolute good against absolute evil, and expect me to swallow it uncritically.  I'm an academic, objections are my thing.  But I'm not the target audience for this national myth-making, am I?  The audience is a domestic one, for domestic political purposes, and I think Koreans in this century should want and demand better from their leaders than to have their brains scrubbed clean of independent or contrary thought.

Coda: This weekend, we went to see the Gakwonsa Buddhist monastery, also just outside Cheonan, which is beautiful if not terribly historic (it was government-built in 1977 on the wearisome theme of Unification).  It was surprisingly crawling with Westerners, who unsurprisingly did not acquit themselves of the reputation Americans (accurately) have for being obnoxiously loud and boisterous.  (See, I don't even spare my own people.)  Ignoring them, I looked around, and saw the wonderful Buddhist architecture I've seen also seen in Japan, Taiwan, and even as far away as Sikkim, in Himalayan east India.  The same architecture.  The same (excepting Sikkim) Chinese calligraphy.  All these nations share a common cultural heritage that makes them at least as alike as they are different.  If only they could get past their smoldering grudges and jealousies to realize a constructive oneness between them.  If France and Germany could do it, and all of quarrelsome Europe (excepting Britain) can do it, then I have hope for East Asia, too.

A guide for the perplexed

A coworker of Laura's is coming to Korea in April and is bringing his family.  His wife is anxious to know what it's like and what there is to do here.  I figured my readers here would appreciate a peek at my e-mail to her.

I understand you're planning a sojourn in the "Land of the Morning Calm," and wanting to know what to expect.  This is my second long stay in Korea, so I have some experience to share, which may be of help in anticipating and navigating life here.  I apologize for the length.

First thing to mention is quarantine.  Hopefully the length of stay will be reduced by the time you get here, but at the moment it is 14 days.  You will be tested once on arrival (I was tested twice), dual nasal and throat swab, and once more before leaving quarantine.  Spouses are not allowed to be quarantined together, only a parent and child.  You will be sent to one of a dozen hotels (no choice), asked to pay up-front (my stay was $1,680), and then instructed to go to your assigned room and stay there for the duration with no forays beyond opening the door to take in your food or interact with medical staff, for testing or temperature checks.  The rooms are smaller 20 m²/215 sqft (note Korea is fully metricated), which is smaller than you might think.  The food is invariably cold, and ranges in quality from school cafeteria to prison chow, and is generally underseasoned (apart from the ubiquitous red pepper paste).  I suggest bringing at least salt and pepper, though we brought those multi-spice camp cooking canisters, which served us well.  You may have a choice of Korean, Western, halal, or vegetarian meals—the default is Korean.  If you opt for Korean, you may want to bring soy sauce, which is never offered in Korea as a table condiment.  Laura found the vegetarian option acceptable.  Korean interpretations of Western food can be baffling, so keep that in mind if you have and select that option.  I also suggest bringing a coffee mug, as I only got Dixie cups, and those don't really work for coffee and tea (I ended up recycling plastic rice cups for that purpose).  Generally, amenities are few (you can ask for more water, more coffee/tea packets, and sugar), and whatever they give you in the way of towels and linens is all you get for the 14 days.  Typically Koreans only used a fitted sheet and a duvet, with no flat sheet.  The mattresses here are firm, and the pillows can be flat, firm, or both, and you will only get the one.  There will be internet, though you cannot access your streaming platforms (Hulu, Netflix) without a VPN installed on your laptop due to international licensing.  Television tends to be mostly Korean, though you will probably get a handful of English-language channels (CNN, Discover, NHK World).  In general, quarantine is difficult psychologically, and you will probably have one crying fit around the midway point, but it is survivable.

Now, once you get out, the first thing you need to know is COVID hygiene.  Cases here are very low, but that's because they are very strict.  Any time you are in public, you must wear a mask, preferably medical grade, as it is not legal to be unmasked except to eat, drink, or smoke.  Sometimes you can get away with not wearing a mask when walking in the woods, but anyone you happen across will instantly put theirs back on the moment they see you, and you are expected to do the same.  If you are in an area with cameras (CCTV), I do not advise taking this liberty.  (In general, this is a surveillance state and there is no expectation of privacy; you should assume you are always being watched, even on the internet.)  Unless you are skilled with changing your phone settings, you will get several Amber Alert-type messages a day telling you of suspected or confirmed cases nearby.  If you are potentially exposed, you must be tested and isolate.  You can eat out, but you will have to fill out a contact tracing form.  To enter larger businesses, you will need to have your temperature taken before they will let you in.  Gatherings of any kind are limited to four people.  Compliance is police enforced, and infractions could result in arrest, a fine, and/or deportation.  In practice, however, I expect the police will simply warn you, as Korean generally regard Westerners as clueless and weird, but mostly harmless.

Due to their isolated history, Koreans are monocultural and largely monolingual.  Service people will be unfailingly polite if not obsequious, but people you see on the street will be indifferent in the extreme, with no smiles, greetings, door-holding, letting others pass first, etc.  You may find people staring (more in the countryside than the city), particularly if you're blonde or of African descent.  Learning simple phrases like hello/goodbye (anyeong haseyo) and thank you (kamsamnida) will buy you some goodwill.  Like the Japanese (and not unlike we Americans), Koreans are stubbornly monolingual, despite being taught English from grade school up.  If you are familiar with CEFR levels, they are mostly A1/A2.  Understanding of English will be limited to simple sentences, and even if they are better at English than average, they may be reticent to use the language for fear of embarrassing themselves.  Luckily, translation apps like Google Translate have sprung up in recent years, which are of immense utility, particularly when your request is more complex than "please call a taxi" or "please send up more water (toilet tissue, towels, etc.)."  Koreans' facility in English ability correlates strongly with youth and education level.  Learning Korean is probably not an option for you, as the CIA ranks it as one of the five most difficult languages of the developed world.  Learning Hangul, the writing system, is fairly pointless without understanding Korean.  There is some bilingual signage, particularly public amenities, but often you will encounter "Konglish," which is sometimes useful after a bit of deciphering, but often (such as brands or store names) is just meaningless, added to give the business a worldly caché.  French is similarly used/abused, but unlike English, it is invariably of no utility.

Most Corning people prefer to stay at the Shilla Stay, where I gather the rooms are nice but compact.  The T.Point Hotel where we are, just around the block, is probably not as nice, but the rooms are twice as big, with high vaulted ceilings, and may be better sized for three people.  I cannot speak as to getting an apartment, only that apartments here are typically unfurnished, so you will need to factor the cost of basic furnishings into whether that is an option you wish to pursue.  I do not recommend staying in Asan, which is nearer the plant, but it is more provincial, has fewer shopping opportunities, and has less to see.  Westerners are also more of a novelty there, and you can expect more stares.

[I should have mentioned here that Koreans adore children and love to dote on them, possibly, at least in part, owing to the low birthrate.  Having a child with you will earn you smiles you would not expect to get on your own. I will mention it if she replies.]

The neighborhood around the Shilla Stay and T.Point Hotel is older and more compact and vertical.  There is not a lot to do within a kilometre, and walking more than a kilometre is very time consuming as waits to cross the street are usually long and not timed based on traffic levels.  You must never assume a driver sees you or is overly concerned with rules or right of way.  When crossing, look and double-look, and preferably allow the Koreans to start walking before you do.  Even in the crosswalk, motorists turning right will creep through the crosswalk, coming as close to you as they dare.  This is very unsettling.  Sidewalks can be frustrating as people park on them and delivery boys on scooters drive on them.  There are a lot of short-stay "love hotels" (rabu hoteru in Japanese) and sex shops in the neighborhood, which may give it a seedy look, but theft and assault are very rare in Korea, so it is quite safe, despite appearances.

For anywhere beyond a kilometre, taxis are easily called from an app called Kakao T, where you can look up some locations, or drop a pin near where you want to go.  Google Maps is good at finding places or telling you where you are, but useless giving directions.  Naver Maps, the local alternative, is better, but English input is somewhat limited.  However, between the two, you can usually find where it is you want to go and where to drop a pin in the Kakao T app.  Taxi drivers are generally polite, and they all take credit cards (I have used almost no cash on this trip whatsoever, but do remember to inform your banks of your travel plans so that your cards will work).  They are, however, maniacs on the road, so if you're prone to motion sickness, you may wish to bring dramamine.  You will want to carry a few hotel business cards with you, in case you pick up a cab at a taxi stand or there's some communication problem.  Buses are difficult for non-Korean speakers, as signs and schedules tend not to be bilingual.  But if you want to get outside the city, the rail system is fantastic, inexpensive, and very easy to navigate.  The high-speed railway (KTX) can have you in Seoul in 45 minutes.  The older system, Korail, is slower but services more of the country.  Keep in mind that COVID has closed many attractions, so you may want the hotel desk to verify your attraction is open before you travel any great distance.

Cheonan is a city of 660,000, and has a fair number of things to see, including museums and cultural sites.  For shopping, it has most everything you could need, except perhaps clothing if you are taller or heavier than Koreans tend to be.  (Note the exchange rate is 1,100 won to the dollar; to convert in your head, a 75,000-won coat is easily thought of as $75, minus a 10 percent discount.  There is no sales tax.)  Ordering from the U.S. often requires you to have an excise registration number, which you have to have a non-resident alien registration number, which you cannot get without a visa, and then you must consider that mail takes 21 days to get here from the States.  There is a local Amazon equivalent, Gmart.co.kr, but I have not had success in ordering anything.  Most anything you need can be gotten at a Lotte Mart or a Daiso (both are in close walking distance of the two hotels, but also fairly common elsewhere in the city).  Convenience stores here are ubiquitous, and generally better than those back home.  They carry healthy options for food, such as bento boxes, and you can even buy wine and scotch there.  The nicest are probably the Emart chain, and there is one directly behind the Shilla Stay.  If you or your husband are military veterans, on-base exchanges are an option (there are 15 U.S. military installations in Korea, with 30,000 personnel), though I have not tried.

As hotel rooms only come with an electric kettle and a small refrigerator, you will probably need to eat out.  The restaurants here are open, with the four-person restriction I mentioned, and with contact tracing info.  You may also be required to have your temperature taken with an IR thermometer, which will be recorded on the contact tracing sheet.  The good news is that Korean food is generally tasty (except the seafood, perhaps) and healthy.  I find the spiciness of Korean food to be much overstated, but I also grew up on the Mexican border, so my tolerance for heat is probably higher than most.  You will however acclimate.  Traditional Korean food may be harder to locate and identify than Western food, as the signs are usually in Korean, but worth the effort.  Many places have bilingual or picture menus, but you can also use Google Translate's camera functions.  Shrugging is also an option if you are not particular about what you receive.  Western food is easier to locate because the signage is usually in English/Latin script, but be aware that Koreans have their own takes on our food, and whatever you get will be laced with sugar.  I'm sensitive to carbohydrates, so I have to limit how much Western-style food I eat if I don't want to feel ill.  Vegetarian dining is possible, but it is hard to find and will be heavy on rice and noodles, and Koreans generally don't count seafood as meat.

Korea's coffee culture has improved, but there is still a preference for thin coffee and instant coffee, though espresso drinks are now quite common, and there's a coffee bar on most blocks.  (Note that many of these drinks will automatically be sweetened unless you specify no sugar.)  The tea here tends to be green, or brown rice tea.  Matcha is not generally a thing, though some things are matcha-flavored.  Koreans are big drinkers, and wine culture is definitely improved since my last visit, though Australian table wines are still heavily represented.  All grocery stores and convenience stores sell it, and there are specialty alcohol retailers.  Spirits can be gotten in the same places, and are generally brand names you'd recognize from home.  Craft beer is readily found now.  Koreans beers, like most Asian beer, is thin and flavorless, and I cannot recommend it.  Korean soju, the local distilled spirit, is likewise unremarkable, tasting like gin without the juniper berries, and slightly sweetened.  Despite the name, it is entirely unlike Japanese shochu.  Worth a try is makgeolli, a kind of beer made from rice, but it may take trying a few brands before you find one that is unsweetened.  (Soju and makgeolli are also sometimes sweetened with aspartame, which I find off-putting in my alcohol.)  Fortunately the virus has meant no "business dinners," for which Korea is famous, and are just raucous drinking parties with the boss.  In normal times, as a woman with a small child, you would probably be exempted, but your husband may be press-ganged into one if restrictions are eased.  Doubtless he has heard stories.  Everyone will want to drink with him, so I advise tiny sips, and to beg off with a medical excuse if it gets to be too much.  Empty cups will automatically be refilled, so a signal that you're done drinking is to leave your cup mostly or half-full.

On the spiritual side, churches here are open but the services are all in Korean, and they tend to be of a very fervent evangelical flavor.  There are a few Catholic parishes in town, but no Anglican/Episcopalian ones.  I don't suspect there are any synagogues or mosques, apart from one or two in Seoul and Busan.  If you happen to be Buddhist, there are any number of temples or monasteries just outside the city.  (There are often vegetarian restaurants nearby.) These double as lovely parks, as green space in the city is quite limited, and something you have to consciously seek out.  Inside Cheonan, there are two "mountains" (more like hills, at 140 and 160 metres, albeit steep) that have hiking trails, and the trees should have leaves by mid-April.  I was surprised how little greenery there is in the city, particularly in the older part of the city, and how much of a psychological necessity it is, particularly coming from a rural area as we do.

By mid-April, daily highs will be in the 70s Fahrenheit/mid-20s centigrade, and will be transitioning from the dry season to the humid season.  From there on out, temperatures and humidity steadily rise, and Korean summers can be unrelentingly hot and humid.  Hotel thermostats are placebo buttons, as temperatures are controlled from the desk for the whole hotel.  During the day, they will raise the thermostat to save energy.  You can talk to them, but they probably won't lower the temperature more than one degree centigrade.  You can however ask for a fan.  When checking in, ask for a room on the north side of the building, which will give you a little relief (for similar reasons, asking for a room on the south side is advisable in winter), and you will probably be able to open your window, at least on the lower floors.  (Korea has a high suicide rate, so windows on upper floors frequently don't open as a preventative.)  The good news about the rising humidity is that it tends to improve air quality, at least temporarily until the yellow Gobi sand starts to fall in summer.  You will want to check air quality levels daily before deciding whether or for how long to go outside.  Some days may be good for particulate matter but bad for noxious gasses, or vice-versa.  Going to the store or a mall is a good way to both beat the heat and breathe filtered air.

A final note: Koreans are an intensely nationalistic people, in ways that shock even Americans.  This is due to their history, as well as deliberate political processes.  Given that history, particularly around the Japanese occupation from 1910-45, it is wise to avoid expressing anything like praise for the Japanese or the Chinese.  Similarly, avoid discussion of politics, particularly domestic politics.  South Korea was a dictatorship until 1988, and still remains somewhat authoritarian.  The continued cold war with North Korea doesn't help.  North Korea and the Kims are a subject best left untouched, except to express mild sympathy in support of reunification.  Be mindful that civil liberties, including free speech and privacy, are weak here (and probably weaker still for foreign nationals) and you are best to assume you're being observed.  I myself will gab on in great detail about anything, so I personally have found it hard to keep my head down, but I have not been arrested yet, so that may be good news if you're not as loose-tongued as I am.

[The Korean state is often subtly authoritarian, rather than overt.  Case in point: the Korea/Japan dispute over the Liancourt Rocks, which the Koreans call Dokdo and the Japanese call Takeshima.  Search for "takeshima" on Google in South Korea and a Google-generated map labeled Dokdo is your first result. Search "google search substitutes dokdo for takeshima in south korea" and the first result you get is a notice that some results have been removed for being inappropriate for minors.  Hard to imagine that search string bringing up anything lewd or criminal to warrant the censorship. "Don't be evil," indeed.]

That's all that comes to mind immediately, but I will write again if I remember anything helpful.  I intend to leave the second week in April, so we may not overlap, but please write if you have any questions before or after then.  Laura will probably still be here for another month or two, so she will be someone of whom you and your husband can look to for questions or just company while dining out.  Please don't be frightened of anything I've written above.  Korea can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding and full of insights and experiences.  I hope only to have leveled the learning curve for you a bit.

Korea from street level

Today it was 10°C, so I decided to go for a walk.  We're in the northernmost part of the city, only about three major intersections (with quite a few smaller intersections and side streets in between) from the reservoir that forms the northern boundary, somewhat less than a mile.  Up to the reservoir, over a long block, then back down again.  I had read, discouragingly, that one needn't bother walking more than a dozen blocks in any direction in an average Korean city, because of the ubiquity of franchises and a Korean preference for homogeneity means soon enough, the further you walked, all the features, the shops, would repeat themselves.  I wanted to walk around intentionally to see whether this was really true.

The weather here has been cold, but usually warmer than Corning by about 5°C.  Unlike the snow that everyone back home is getting dumped on them (sorry), winters here are dry on account of the monsoon patterns of East Asian weather.  Very dry: the sort of dry where standing in a sustained wind is liable to make human jerky of you.  I have never worn so much moisturizer in my entirely life.  Anyway, the dry and slightly warmer weather means I can walk about relatively easy, if I can figure out where to go and what to do.  (I give temperatures here in centigrade or Celsius because our phones automatically switch over to the metric system when we leave the country, since that's what the rest of the world uses.  It's a pretty quick conversion, though.  Zero is freezing, 5 is about 40 Fahrenheit, 10 is 50, and 20 is a comfortable 68°F.  Really, metric isn't hard.)

One of the first things you notice is there are very, very few single or double-storey buildings.  The city is very vertical, and most buildings have a minimum of five floors, the average being probably eight or nine.  These buildings are very close together, made of concrete, and entirely covered with text in neon and on other lighted signs, all screaming for your attention.  This visual cacophony even prompts some establishments to project their animated logos on the sidewalks at night.  To make it all the worse, there is little in the way of greenery.  One can go many blocks in any direction without seeing even a shrub.  This is very much unlike Taiwan, where you could see efforts everywhere to green the urban landscape.  Here, the psychological need for natural forms is somehow entirely repressed or sublimated or just disregarded.  What greenery you encounter is the fancy of the business it's in front of, and few seem to want to sacrifice storefront that could otherwise be used for signage.  Sometimes you'll catch a sight of a tree growing on a rooftop, which is pleasant and amusing, but also a little sad because of what it implies about Korean life.

This doesn't mean there are no parks.  There's a small park only a few blocks from here.  However, these parks are only found where the topography is difficult to build on, as if to say, "We don't know how to monetize this, so we guess we'll turn it into a park to stop all the bitching about a lack of greenery."  We recently went to a "mountain" here in town, though I would guess it was no taller than Pine Hill in Alfred, though longer.  This mountain was hemmed on all sides by dense development.  It was also quite busy, being a Sunday afternoon, with people coming up for a gulp of air before plunging back into the urban abyss below.  The steepness of the terrain happily coincides with the Koreans' fondness for hiking, the more nearly vertical, the better.  Winters in New York strip you of your physical conditioning after only a few months of indoors indolence, so it left us a little breathless, though I have been making an effort to regain some of my summer fitness.

Now, I understand that Korea has many fine mountains and lakes, and a sparsely populated countryside full of all sorts of scenery, etc.  These places, however, are something you have to travel to.  Here in Cheonan, we are in the midst of concrete sprawl that begins in downtown Seoul and continues down the west coast of the country to some unknown point south of here.  Nothing breaks up the sea of concrete and neon except for the odd bit of land that was too hilly to build on.  It actually reminds me of the endless sprawl of Soutern California, which is more or less solid development from almost Santa Barbara (Oxnard, really) down to San Diego, bounded only by the San Bernardino Mountains.  However, Californians concern themselves with the "buena vista" and lovely ornamental landscaping; here there is no corresponding impulse.

I should mention something about the traffic.  Though the rule is that people in crosswalks have the right of way, it's not what actually prevails.  You must, must, must look both ways, even at a green crosswalk signal, because people run red lights or come tearing around a corner with a certain recklessness.  I typically allow the Koreans to begin crossing before I join them, just to make sure it's safe.  Cars looking to turn will creep as far forward as they can, short of touching you with their bumper.  I have mentioned before the Korean motorist, who is a road anarchist, if also wary of other anarchists.  This lawlessness is particularly shown in parking.  Cars routinely park on the sidewalk, even if it means pedestrians have to squeeze past, and it's not unusual to see cars randomly parked in the median at night.  Trucks will compeletely block a lane of traffic while they attend an errand, and motorists just have to deal with it, which they seem accustomed to doing.  Delivery drivers on scooters zip up and down the sidewalks, weaving around people.

This sort of lack of regard for others comes out of the social dynamic here.  It is not controversial to say that Koreans are clannish: they owe everything to their family and friends and clients, but nothing to strangers.  You, a stranger, are competition in a dog-eat-dog environment.  Confucianism gets blamed, but that's a lazy excuse.  Japan is Confucian, Taiwan is Confucian, and yet they are polite and courteous cultures.  What happens in Korea, I think, is the scrabble for resources in a very densely populated country, combined with zero-sum thinking—I can only win if you lose, and your winning necessarily means my losing.  Zero-sum thinking is actually one of the things I find most depressing about Americans, but here it's taken to a new intensity.  That sort of unyielding social pressure cooker of hierarchy, conformity, and the need to achieve and win at any cost, is why South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the world.

Usually when I go for a walk, I wear sunglasses to obscure my eyes, as Korea is a very racially and ethnically homogenous society, and Westerners often find themselves stared at, particularly if fair-haired or of African ancestry.  Personally, I just prefer to blend in, and my dark hair and light complexion allows that.  The mask only helps to obscure my features.  However, I have two dead giveaways: hair loss is uncommon here, and everyone wears a long, puffy black coat.  My coat is brown and decidedly unsegmented like a caterpillar.  Wearing a coat of another color or cut, among Koreans, would be a declaration of nonconformity and rebelliousness.  Foreigners (a bit of an ugly word, I think, but the one used here for foreign nationals or international travelers, as we'd say) get a pass on such things because we are clueless and would never fit in anyway.  I've read that this is something expats exploit, the clueless foreigner feint, that angers other expats for feeding into stereotypes about Westerners in Korea.  Regardless, my brown coat highlights me as an alien.  (This would be a natural segue about Korean beauty standards, but perhaps I'll save that for another post.)

At one point in my perambulation, I attempted to waive a motorist through while crossing a small side street.  Between my sunglasses and his tinted windows, I don't know what sort of face he was wearing, but he came to a stop.  I imagine it was confusion.  Bearing in mind what I said above about strangers as being competition, letting people by or holding doors is just not done here.  When I do it, as I instinctually do, I'm often met with a stare of bewilderment, the person just standing there, unable to compute just what is happening.  One time I was looked at like I was an escaped maniac.  The few times I was greeted with a kamsamnida (thank you) were older ladies, who themselves were raised to revere their elders, but who now, as in the West, are viewed as inconvenient obsolences.  The reminder of a time when the elderly were respected is doubtless an occasion for gratitude, which is why I don't try hard to suppress my urge to hold doors.

I couldn't quite figure out whether, in fact, everything is a chain or franchise, though there seems to be some truth in it.  Go in any direction, and you will encounter a Starbucks, a Holly's, a Pascucci, a Tous Les Jours or a Paris Baguette.  And almost every block has one or more 7-Eleven, GS25, or Emart.  Around our hotel, there is one directly across the street, one at the intersection to the left, one right behind the hotel, and across the intersection from that one, too.  And those are only the 7-Elevens!  That said, there is a lot of stuff in hangul, the Korean script, that I cannot read.  Hangul letters are actually up to three letters combined in a single block, which gives it a little bit of an appearance of Chinese, but is entirely phonetic.  Chinese letters, which are also used in Japan, and in Vietnam before the 20th century, and Korea before 500 years ago, is ideographic.  The symbol for man, fire, respect, entrance, washroom, etc., are all the same characters, regardless of the local pronunciation of those words.  Person is jen/ren in Chinese and hito in Japanese, but both are written as 人.

I can actually read bits of Chinese and Japanese, but hangul script requires a knowledge of spoken Korean to make any sense of.  Hangul was the invention of King Sejong in the 15th century, who believed the Chinese system of writing was unwieldy and contributed to illiteracy.  The shapes are supposed to represent the mouth position of the sound being made, and the maxim is that an smart man can learn hangul in a day, and an idiot in seven.  The Koreans are therefore rather proud of this combination alphabet-syllabary.  I, however, am something less than an idiot, because it's figural static to my eyes.  I remember things written in hangul by imagining the shapes are small pictures, backwards E and 21 over 0 for cream; kicking waiter, man on toilet, man pouring soup down a drain for Laura's brand of ramen; something written under the lid of our toilet, which I don't know what it says, but I see it as egg on a table, 2 on a stand, man on a platform closing a screen door.  Google Translate is not helpful in this case, but from context I assume it's the washlet manufacturer's operating cautions.  (Toilets here, if you didn't know, are high-tech, with their own control panel, heated seat, etc.)

So, this lack of being able to read hangul means I can't figure out if everything really is a chain, but I suspect the hangul obscures to Western eyes a number of small businesses and mom-and-pop operations.  Whatever the merits of its writing system, Korean is one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn, and most visitors and expats (a large number of which are actually here as English teachers) don't try.  English is, of course, an imperial language that stretches around the globe, while Korean is limited to a small peninsula.  And Koreans are given English instruction from a grammar school age, which only furthers our reliance on English here.  The more's the pity, really, because you don't really know a culture, and the mindset behind it, if you don't speak the language.  I therefore have to file the "everything is a chain" claim in the unsolved folder.

But if nothing else, I did get in a good two miles' walk.

An innocent abroad, in a taxi

Well, it's Sunday already here, so I have a candle and some incense going for the icons.  Laura's working this weekend—indeed, every day—as she may be doing for the foreseeable future, but maybe tonight we can do Communion.  I have a small pyxis full of consecrated wafers, which is the way you want to do it traveling, in a pandemic.  If there wasn't a plague on, I might link up with some Anglicans, but there aren't a lot of them in Korea, mostly it seems at the cathedral practically on the grounds of the British Embassy in Seoul.  Only Anglican church I've seen in the whole country, in as much of the country as I've seen.  A warm hello to our friends back home at Church of the Redeemer, thank you for your prayers, sending some back your way, and looking forward to seeing you all again, whenever that will be, if only virtually.  (Special regards to Mrs. Boland, who is keeping an eye on things back at the manse.)

So Saturdays are the day I have appointed to get out of the room for the afternoon to let the maids do their work.  Having worked at two hotels, I can tell you the management gets nervous if you don't let them in sometimes, even if the place is clean and you don't need linens or supplies, because they want to check on their investment and make sure you're not doing dangerous (say, open flames, candles, incense, etc.) or immoral things.  Yes, if you thought you were just paranoid, the maids really are spying on and judging you.  (Another tip from a former hotel auditor: bring your own pillow. And the sweetest smell in a hotel is not flowery air freshener, it's bleach.)  In ordinary times, I don't want to be in the room when they're making it up, just because I don't want to be underfoot or risk a mutually unintelligible conversation.  But in Year Two of the Great Coronaplague, I don't really want to be in an enclosed space with a stranger, and understandably so.

With Laura off at the plant doing her science-y things, I decided to get out for three hours (the window I specified with the desk) and get comfortable with the cabs.  I've never lived in a major city where cabs are a prevalent way of getting around, so they kinda make me nervous.  But boy, have smartphone apps taken a lot of stress out of getting a cab in a foreign country.  You can have them pick you up and take you to any point on the map right from your screen, without any language difficulties or having to write out addresses in Korean, as we did in Chinese in Taiwan.  (Really didn't do many taxis the last time we were in Korea.)  The cabs all take credit cards now, and there's no tipping here, so you really don't need cash.  I paid for a pizza in cash last week (we had pizza and watched Groundhog Day, as is our usual custom for that holiday), but I didn't need to and it's the only cash I've spent this whole time.

The destination I picked was the Cheonan city museum.  It's a fairly impressive edifice, and what's there is very interesting, but it's underdeveloped.  Still, you can see some ancient bits and bobs dug out of the ground from around here, including paleolithic axes, neolithic and Bronze Age potsherds and some pottery, and old bronze horse tackle and weapons, some old books written in Chinese script (hanja, as Koreans call it).  There's a giant bronze bell in the style of the Chou/Zhou, which is from a local Buddhist monastery and designated National Treasure Number 280.  There's a fun little display of people (mannequins) dressed in traditional Korean clothes, doing Korean things, as it might have been any time in the 500 years preceding the Americans and Japanese.  Cheonan was and remains a bit of a government hub, at a convenient proximity and remove from Seoul, and at the confluence of three provinces.  Giant dioramas with tiny buildings show what it might have looked like in the medieval period.  Outside, there are some traditional houses with thatched and tiled roofs, but they were closed up for the season, it looked like.

However, for all the stuff, it barely filled an hour, even though I photographed practically everything to show to Laura.  However, I noticed a trail headed up the hill behind the museum, so I decided to check it out.  It was fairly vertical, and by the time I got to the top, I was fairly winded, because winter inactivity.  All along the way, there were CCTV cameras.  South Korea is one of the most heavily surveilled countries in the world, and there are cameras everywhere, including some bathrooms.  The only time you're not liable to be videotaped is when you're in your own home, and I imagine even that is conditional, depending on your reputation with the state security apparatus.  So, not fully knowing what the mask laws are here, and being in need of air after my climb, I wandered off trail a bit and found a stump to sit on, take my mask off, and even smoke a pipe, the first since entering the country.  (Mind you, lest you think me irresponsible, there was no one on the trail except the cameras.  Even in the museum, I only saw two couples with a child each.)  The weather was 12 or 13°C (mid-50s Fahrenheit) and sunny, so I was able to take off my fleece and hang it on a twig while my shirt dried from sweating up the trail.  Being refreshed, I still had two hours to kill and decided to magically summon another cab.

This cab dropped me off at the Galleria, which in Korea is high-end Western brand names, as at the Shinsegae store we visited the weekend before.  Scarcely a lick of Korean script to be seen on any of the signage, which is unsettling as it is comforting.  Apart from being gleamingly white and well-lit and sparkling, it is a very tall, 9-story structure, on a more compact footprint than Shinsegae but with two extra floors.  We had been disappointed not to find the rumored Gudetama store at Shinsegae, so I thought perhaps someone was mistaken and it was in fact here.  Up the escalator, around the floor, up the next elevator, and so on, until finally I got to the 8th floor, which is restaurants (9th floor is customer service and offices, so Gudetama isn't at the Galleria, either).  I had a look around, and although there was a fancy American-esque buffet, I didn't want to be one of those Americans, so I decided to go to a Chinese restaurant, for something familiar and yet probably different, with a distinctive Korean spin, as it was with the Vietnamese last weekend, or the Groundhog Day pizza.

Got on the waiting list, took my temperature and signed the contact tracing form, got my table, and took my mask off to have some of the pot of jasmine tea they brought.  I looked over the menu and found a W20,000 several-course meal, which I thought was a tad expensive, but it's in a ritzy mall.  Through an exchange of various pantomimes, the waitress let it be known to me that it was a meal for two people, and then flipped to the back for the à la carte noodle soups.  The page with the meals in courses was in English as well as Korean; this page was entirely in Korean.  So I shrugged and said whatever you recommend, and the lady said "Spicy okay?" and I said sure.  Now, let me tell you, I was raised on the Mexican border.  I like spicy things.  But in Korea, the tap water is spicy.  If a Korean asks if you want spicy, always say no.  Whatever "mild" thing they bring you, it will still be a little spicy for the average American.  

Foolishly having said, Sure, please melt my face off, they brought me a bowl of liquid that was red as the Devil's aft scupper.  No, it was not tomato-based, that's red Korean chili paste.  Floating in it was kimchi, onions, scallions, and some unidentified sea creature cut into various shapes.  I don't know what it was, but it had a somewhat uniform, rubbery texture, white color, and fortunately not too much of a fishy taste.  Under this was noodles, and under that, a couple surprise jumbo prawns, which were nice.  It would appear, as Laura had observed, that I had gotten the equivalent of a cheeseburger at a Chinese restaurant at home, this being definitely a Korean concoction, and the kimchi a giveaway.  Overall it tasted good, what part of it I could taste.  The major flavor note was a lake of fire in hell.  The tea was useless as relief; only the pickled daikon banchan on the side offered any cooling.  I tried not snotting too much, but by the end I had a great wad of biohazardous napkins from dabbing at my nose and lips.  In Korea, as in all of East Asia, blowing your nose is considered terrible table manners, which is a bit unfair when you consider how spicy Korean and sometimes Chinese food can be.  After I had paid and left, the first place I headed was a restroom where I could blow my nose all I wanted.  (My lips were still swollen by the time I got home.)

After this I went back down the escalators, and fortunately all the down escalators were proximate, so I didn't have to walk around to the other side of each floor.  I found a taxi stand, which if you're not familiar, is its own lane next to the curb of largerish attractions, and the taxis queue up for passengers.  Take the first cab, and the next cab moves up and they get the next fare.  I showed him the hotel business card, he punched it into his GPS, and off we went.  He was a little bit of a daredevil, and the suspension on the car wasn't great, so I arrived a little queasy (the bowl of bear spray I just ate probably didn't help), but safely.  I should mention here that some of the cabbies are a little nuts, and drive way too fast, and when they merge you're sure you're going to die and the LPG tank in the trunk will explode and all they'll ever find of your body is your tooth fillings and shoelace eyelets.  But they really are masters of merging, and do so seamlessly.  I think everyone lets everyone in not out of courtesy (Koreans famously pay little regard to strangers), but self-preservation.  Everyone is a stunt car driver and also a defensive driver, and so traffic comes together like a zipper.

That was my big day playing with taxis.  I'll try it again next Saturday and see whatever I can see.  Or eat.

On this note, I should mention that generally I like Korean food, with a few exceptions (squid, uranium-grown chilies), but it often contains a greater share of calories from carbohydrates.  This probably isn't helped by eating from the convenience store, even though I only eat the semi-fresh bento boxes.  The amount of vegetation is right, but the carbs come at the expense of proteins (which frequently are sea creatures).  This plays the devil with my blood sugar and slows my digestion.  Ideally I would do Korean barbecue for every meal, which is all vegetables and steaming gobbets of charcoal-roasted meat, but it's not a thing one does by themselves here.  Dining alone is actually a bit unusual—it seems Koreans prefer to do everything socially, but especially dining.  Korean barbecue will just have to wait until Laura gets on a more normal work schedule, as she rarely gets home before 8 and the restaurants are currently mandated to close at 9.  So cold bento it is.  It's what I ate in quarantine, and the 7-Eleven stuff is somehow better, so I'm used to it.  Just makes you appreciate hot food when some of it comes your way—even if "hot" is also immolation by 1,000,000 Scoville units of fire peppers.

Comparison is not always the thief of joy, sometimes it gives needed perspective—however bad things are, it could be worse, and however good things are, they're better for having once had it worse.  I'm paraphrasing here, but Mark Twain once wrote that the value of travel is to teach you the value of home.

Footloose and fancy-free in Cheonan

We're out of quarantine, and the less said of that experience, the better.  It is the closest thing to jail that I ever want to experience.  Necessary, and I am glad the government here takes the pandemic seriously, but not for the faint of heart.

We're in Cheonan now, ensconced in our upscale hotel.  Our room is something like 450 ft², so quite large, indeed apartment-sized, though it lacks some of what you'd expect from an apartment, chiefly a kitchenette and additional closet space.  Not much to be done about the lack of cooking capabilities, though we have a very small mini-fridge and can use the similarly undersized 800-watt microwave in the lobby downstairs.  But we have been able to address the lack of storage, with various storage boxes and folding cubes and trays obtained from the Lotte mall around the corner, so everything has its own place.

Our hotel, despite being very nice, is suspiciously inexpensive, and now we know why: it's in the older part of town, surrounded by love hotels.  If you're not aware of the phenomenon, these are short-stay (three to six hours) hotels where Korean couples go to get away from relations and have relations of their own.  (These exist in Japan, too, as rabu hoteru.)  Because of the Confucian culture and the high price of real estate, people live with their families until they marry, often into their 30s.  The love hotel is how young people manage to get away and satisfy an adult need.  Some of these hotels have off-street entrances, and automated check-in, to minimize the risk of being observed.  Unfortunately it's all a little seedy, though by no means is the neighborhood dangerous.  South Korea has very little street crime, probably due to the Confucian shame-based culture and stiff sentences handed out by the vaguely authoritarian regime here.

Speaking of authoritarianism, I generally lean anarchist, but I am grateful for the strong response to the pandemic here.  Everyone wears a medical-grade mask at all times except in their own homes or when eating, enforceable by the police.  The government keeps everyone apprised of nearby cases by use of Amber Alert-type mobile alerts, and it seems like testing and isolation are not optional in case of exposure.  Social distancing isn't really a thing, but the ≈600 cases a day in a nation of 50,000,000 people would indicate that social distancing is a poor substitute for good masks and rigorous contact tracing and testing.  This means one can dine out with relative ease of mind.

What do we eat?  Well, we do have a box of snacks here in the room, and if we keep up with shopping, I can avoid going to look for food midday.  If we do get hungry and don't want to venture very far, we can go to any number of the convenience stores ubiquitous here.  There is a 7-Eleven or similar on every block, sometimes opposite each other.  These are better than convenience stores in the U.S., and one can get a fairly generous bento for $4.50 or so.  But we've had a few very good meals out, including a Korean soup restaurant, an American-style sandwich shop, a Vietnamese restaurant, and Korean-style fried chicken sandwich concession.  If you don't recall from our 2014 trip, the Koreans have taken our fried chicken and topped us by a mile.  Some things on our list we haven't yet managed is pizza and Korean barbecue.  Typically, you walk into a restaurant and point at a picture, as staff speak little or no English.  Translation apps can help decipher menus, and you can go back and forth with waiters on your respective phones as necessary.  You sign in on a contact tracing sheet, wait for the food to be served, unmask, eat perhaps a little more quickly than you otherwise might, and mask up again after your last bite.  If take-out is an obvious option, you might take your meal to go.

We have made some forays into the wider city, and learned to summon cabs with an app.  (Our 2014 trip would have been made vastly easier with smartphones; it's amazing what a difference they make.  Our 2017 stay in Taiwan was greatly enhanced by this capability.)  On Saturday, we went to an English-language used bookstore, and I found a 1902 copy of Samuel Pepys' diary and a novel by Umberto Eco, and Laura found a small stack of Terry Pratchett books she hadn't already read.  There is an Australian bar next door that we understand serves a very creditable Western-style pizza, but unfortunately they weren't open until after we were ready to head home.  We also visited Shinsegae, a six-level luxury mall with public art on the grounds, though the rumored Gudetama store wasn't to be found.  (I understand there is another luxury mall in town, and perhaps that's where Gudetama may be found.)

Sunday we went to a mountain park, the weather being vernal (a few days before it was 19 F, so highly variable), with winding, very muddy trails up to the top and along a ridge.  At the top was a pagoda-like gazebo and various outside public exercise machines, all of which were in use by a surprising number of people.  The "mountain" itself is no taller than Pine Hill in Alfred, and much less steep, and probably only exists as a park because it couldn't be built upon, as it is surrounded on all sides by development.  (South Korea is a continuous sprawl of concrete and neon, large hills being the sole exception.)  Along the ridge were several Buddhist-type tombs near but off the path, and it was unclear to us how old they were or how they ended up in a park.  Coming off the hill, we encountered a small temple that seemed to be run as an advice and counseling center, if Google translated the sign correctly.  We then walked a couple kilometres, stopping along the way for a bite at the Tous les Jours French-esque bakery, before catching another cell-conjured cab back to the hotel.

That's about it for now.  I spend my days reading, mostly, or watching Marc Maron's daily coffee casts and his attempts at intervention with his nip-addicted cat.  I have projects I could be working on, but my usual routine has been interrupted and hasn't quite sorted itself out, and I lack the right work surface—the "desk" in the room being more of a vanity, without a chair.  With the 14-hour time difference, our days are bookended by messages from folks back home, and in the middle of the day, we can watch the hamster on a webcam Rachel has graciously allowed us to set up in her home, as his primetime is now our daytime.  A deserved shout-out to her for watching our precious fuzz bijou while we're away.

Tous les jours

So just how do I fill my days, locked as I am into a small hotel room?  A week in, I think I can reliably answer.

Well, meal times provide structure, and it's something to look forward to, even if they're like as not to disappoint—perhaps this time you'll get lucky.  Also, someone comes by to take your temperature in the afternoons, and though the entire interaction is maybe 10 seconds, it's seeing somebody that isn't through binoculars, even if they're head-to-toe in Tyvek and PPE.  This temperature we enter into a mandatory government app on our phones, and we take our own temperatures in the morning, for a total of two readings a day (Laura does this just once a day and it's entirely on the honor system, with no fleeting visitors.)

I usually wake up between 6 and 7, and listen to NPR for a couple hours.  I do my morning grooming and take my pills, put on the tea kettle, and make up the bed.  (Coffee here is in a pour-over filter pack, but it doesn't work either with the flimsy Dixie cups they gave me or the rice pots I save from meals to make my tea in.)  I poke around on the internet and catch up on Gudetama Tap.  Eventually I put on music—opera last week, but '20s jazz today—and read.  One source of fun is an internet nanny cam Laura's sister Rachel has allowed to be put in her house, trained on our hamster.  For once, with the 14-hour time difference, he's on the same schedule as us humans. 

After lunch, more internetting and reading.  I may put on NHK World, which is one of the few TV channels in English, or stream France24, in French, for a challenge.  Yesterday I had a nap, but I try to avoid them so I sleep better at night.  Today I did a little light laundry in the sink, and of course I'm writing this now.  Next I will probably read, or gaze out the window, until dinner.  Laura and I will chat a few times a day over Google Hangouts, though her internet connection doesn't seem great for video calls.  Could be the particular protocol, as she seems to use Zoom fine.

I don't have the greatest view, but it's better than Laura's view of an interior courtyard.  I am above a marina drydock, with all manner of boats put up for the winter or repair.  Beyond that is a channel, which runs under a major highway overpass, and has a lock.  The bit of the harbor I can see is frozen over, but the channel is clear and frequently features ducks.  The channel is blighted by industrial infrastructure.  Beyond the highway, Seoul can be glimpsed in the haze.  Sometimes high in the sky I can see dueling seagulls.  I have small birdwatching binoculars, and I watch the boat yard workers, usually the same 2-3 guys, as they go about their business.  Sunday I had a treat, when ordinary people walked down the access road towards the hotel, or visited the boat yard, maybe to shop for their first boat.  Here was the people watching I had hoped for.  It was the first time I'd seen any women, apart from the occasional temperature-taker under three yards of Tyvek.  Yesterday I saw a cat, possibly in search of li'l smokies.

Yesterday was a sport event.  It was a windy day—the afternoon particularly clear, with a good view of Seoul—and somehow, one of the orange biohazard bags they give us for our meal waste, had gotten loose outside, and it was engaged in aerial acrobats, riding the eddies and currents and vents and what-not, tumbling and gliding, even coming close to my window on the 11th floor.  It was sheer delight to see this stupid bag gamboling on the wind.  Then the wind took it around the side of the building never to be seen again.  But while it lasted, it was glorious fun. 

(Addendum: Were I able to get on top of the building,  I could see with the binoculars into North Korea, which is about 20 km away, albeit just barely.  You can tell where the DPRK starts from where the trees end, having been all cut down for fuel.)

After dinner, I have a routine of eating one See's bonbon, followed by a sip of (scotch) whisky, which is technically contraband in quarantine, but it adds a little civilization to my captivity.  I'll read a bit, and maybe take a shower, if I didn't earlier.  A bit before bed, after I do my nighttime bathroom routine, I will watch an episode of Frasier on CBS All Access, using a VPN, to get around region restrictions.  A bit more reading and then lights out around 10.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

I will mention a bit of intrigue here on the 11th floor.  Smoking in quarantine is forbidden—the literature threatens a fine and imprisonment and deportation—but a neighbor keeps getting in and out of his room at all hours to go smoke up on the roof, I think.  What's definitely worse than smoking is leaving your room.  When he comes back, the hallway is filled with the scent of stale smoke, as though this chain-smoker never washes and moves in a Pigpen-esque cloud of his own miasma.  It of course travels under my door, and all I can do to fight it is spritz a cheap Avon cologne I brought.  Every time I hear his door slam, I just know my world is about to smell like an ashtray in continuous, unwashed use since 1963.  I haven't quite worked up the nerve to blow him in to the desk, but I'm on the verge of it (will today be the day?).  At home I'd merely tut-tut such behavior, but here, cooped up, it's become a mild obsession.  It's unchristian of me, but I keep hoping he will step off the roof during one of his late-night sorties.

(Update: I finally called the desk, and they said they'd check on it.  A little more noncommittal than I'd hoped for, but maybe they'll come through.  If they properly understood.  Updated update: haven't heard or smelled peep since I called, so something happened.)

One of the phenomena I find interesting is what I call "prison inventiveness," though doubtless professional psychologists have a word for it.  But what you brought into quarantine is all you have, apart from meals.  You begin to save any bit of packaging that has potential use.  I have a bundle of chopsticks, rice pots turned tea mugs, fruit cups turned drinking glasses, a burgeoning rubber band ball.  When LEDs on all the switches were keeping me awake, I peeled apart my luggage routing sticker, cut it up, and covered all the lights.  This provides a measure of satisfaction in my own ingenuity, until I think about the parallels with making do in prison.  This whole experience has given me just a tiny taste of what it must be like to be a prisoner—less the gangs and constant danger of assault, sexual or otherwise.

So yes, the mental health toll is real, and I wouldn't do this again or recommend it to anyone else, but here we are, and thankfully nearly over the hump.  Thank you for all the check-ins, e-mails, notes, social media comments, etc., that help maintain my sanity a little.  It's very much appreciated.