Korea

Greetings from Busan!

I arrived in Busan this morning.  I will be here for 10 days working at the APEC Summit.  While it’s a great opportunity for me, I will be staying here solo, without my family.  That’s unfortunate–my son and I had a wonderful time yesterday, and I hate to be away from him for so long.  It’s never easy being apart from your spouse, either.  I will also work a lot of hours while I’m here.  I worked nine hours today and will work even more tomorrow, even though tomorrow is Sunday.  APEC gears up on Tuesday and winds down on Saturday.
 
Events such as APEC are rare, as are the opportunities and requirements for an event of such magnitude.  Thousands will descend on Busan by early next week to attend a variety of APEC meetings.  Much has happened since I last wrote, as you can imagine.  I don’t usually miss two days of blogging in a row, but preparations for my trip to Busan and other circumstances drew me away.  I will try to keep writing as much as I can while I’m here.  I’m glad that I have an Internet connection in my hotel room, although the room itself isn’t very nice and it’s much too hot (they turned off the air conditioning).  It’s not nearly as nice as the room I stayed in when I was in nearby Haeundae for a couple days in late September.  It is closer to where I need to be during the APEC Summit.  I would prefer a better location over a better hotel.
 
Tonight I met up with a World Adventurers fan and some of her coworkers.  Monique has been reading my blog for awhile, and I’ve also been reading hers, Quemino’s World.  Her blog is great.  I’m lobbying for it to get a "Best of MSN Spaces" nod.  I call hers the "literary blog," because she posts far more literary references than I do.  If you haven’t checked out her MSN Spaces blog yet, have a look.  She is here in Busan now as part of the APEC delegation.  She is just as nice and congenial and thought provoking in person as she appears to be through her blog–what you read is what you get.  (She’s reading this, so I need to write nice things about her!  Seriously though, she is a great person.)  One of her coworkers asked about how to make a successful blog.  We told him that you need a "hook," something unique that sets your blog apart from other blogs and keeps people coming back for more.  Really, you can blog about just about anything, even something you know nothing about.  That can be even more fun, because then you can write an expository and be blissfully ignorant about the subject matter. 
 
Monique and her coworkers will spend the next week here too as APEC delegates.  I will work behind the scenes.  Tomorrow night I will backtrack and tell you all about the exciting things that happened while I was away.

The absence of graffiti

I had my first encounter with graffiti in Korea today when I noticed cryptic writing and macabre paintings sprayed in black spray paint on the walls of a murky, pedestrian underpass.  I saw them in Seoul near Itaewon, a district frequented by foreigners.  I have noticed since I arrived here last February that Korean infrastructure noticeably (and mercifully) lacks signs of graffiti scrawl.  I’ve heard that graffiti exists in Hongdae, an free-spirited, bohemian district in Seoul, but I have not seen it.  It’s my observation that Koreans generally do not deface public places by scrawling graffiti on buildings or infrastructure.  In Korea, graffiti is neither a widely accepted art form, nor is it typically used for decorative purposes.  Not far from where I encountered the graffiti, I saw a wall ornately painted with a mural of children flying kites in a grassy field.  The mural has been there for awhile, and it still has not been defaced by graffiti vandals.
 
This is a far cry from American culture, where graffiti is widely used, particularly in urban areas.  Recent news reports claim that Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman advocated punishing those caught defacing freeways with graffiti by cutting off their thumbs on public television.  While I doubt that remedy will work and is a very harsh punishment, it underscores that graffiti has a much greater impact on American culture than it does in Korea.  While some consider graffiti an art form, many in the U.S. consider it a nuisance, even criminal.  However, graffiti is a non-issue in Korea because it is virtually nonexistent here.  I don’t think this is because the punishment for unauthorized graffiti is necesarily harsh in Korea.  More likely, it is because graffiti is not a manifestation of Korean culture.
 
I was curious about the origins of the English term "graffiti," which is derived an Italian word.  Graffiti.org explains:
The origins of graffiti go back to the beginnings of human, societal living. Graffiti has been found on uncovered, ancient, Egyptian monuments, and graffiti even was preserved on walls in Pompeii. Graffiti is the plural form of the Italian word grafficar. In plural, grafficar signifies drawings, markings, patterns, scribbles, or messages that are painted, written, or carved on a wall or surface. Grafficar also signifies "to scratch" in reference to different wall writings ranging from "cave paintings", bathroom scribbles, or any message that is scratched on walls. In reference to present day graffiti, the definition is qualified by adding that graffiti is also any unsolicited marking on a private or public property that is usually considered to be vandalism.
Murals, mozaics, and wall carvings are all technically considered graffiti.  Ancient cave paintings in France are technically graffiti, as are markings carved into lava formations by ancient Hawai’ians on the Big Island of Hawai’i.  It’s interesting that the term "graffiti" has taken on such a negative connotation in the English lexicon.  Someday what people consider a nuisance may someday become cultural artifacts.  Some of it, anyway.  Probably not in Korea, though.

It’s all about the music

I enjoy listening to traditional Korean music.  I sometimes listen to it in the car when I’m out and about town.  There is a music station here in Seoul that specializes in traditional Korean music.  It doesn’t play traditional music 24/7, but it does play it in the evening when I’m most keen to listen to it.  I am far from a music expert, but I am a music aficionado who appreciates listening to good music.  My tastes have changed over time.  I’ve moved away from listening exclusively to American top 40 pop and rock music toward appreciating diverse musical genres.  I’m not an avid fan of international pop music, including Korean pop, but I enjoy modern music mixed with traces of traditional rhythms and instrumentals. 
 
Traditional Korean music is a unique part of Korean culture.  Beyond the Korean drum processions you may have heard at Korean cultural exchanges, traditional Korean music comprises a family of musical styles ranging from royal court arrangements to rural folk music.  Although shades of traditional Korean music mirror certain aspects of other forms of Asian music, notably traditional Chinese and Japanese music, it is very much its own music form.  (Before I knew anything about Korea, I mistakenly assumed Korean music was just like Chinese music.  I was wrong.)  Traditional Korean music features percussion, stringed, and woodwind instruments, mostly of Chinese origin.  However, the way they are played is distinctly Korean.  Traditional Korean music is earthy and more melodic than it is harmonious.  It features odd musical beats that often leave one feeling unbalanced and restive for more.  Some traditional Korean music is an acquired taste for Westerner ears; it’s not for everyone.  But if you give it a chance and listen to it closely, it can grip you and draw you in.
 
I prefer traditional Korean music over its Chinese or Japanese counterparts.  Although it can be loud and triumphant, for the most part it is moody and ponderous.  It reflects the passion and spirit of the Korean people, their hopes and aspirations.  At the same time, the music reveals a sense of inner pensivity and a hint of despair and fatalism that comes with the belief that you cannot control your own destiny.  It can leave you feeling helpless against the forces of nature and society that continually assail you.  You can feel it with every accented fluorish of the reed instrument, the dull thud of the percussion beat, the grating bend of the strings, and in the wailing voice of the singer who strains to beseech the heavens for some relief from misfortune.  It may sound strange, perhaps annoying to the uninterested ear.  It may sound more alternative at times than a group on the fringe of alternative music.  But it is powerful all the same.
 
Here are a couple links with some great samples of traditional Korean music:
 
 
Give it a listen, and enjoy!