Articles with South Korea

100-day birthday celebration

We spent the evening at a friend’s place celebrating his son’s 100th day birthday.  My friend is a World Adventurers reader, so I’m sure he’ll read this post.  He’s welcome to post a comment, but I’ll leave it to him to reveal his identity.  He’s always good for a quicky witted, pithy comeback, so I’m sure he’ll take the bait.  Yesterday I told him we planned to bring gifts for the entire family, but he protested, “Please don’t buy any gifts if you haven’t already.  I feel guilty [taking gifts].”  Well now, let’s see.  Although he is American and his wife is Georgian, true to Korean custom they threw a 100-day celebration (Baek-il, or 백일) for their son.  As is Korean custom, guests should come bearing gifts whenever they are invited over to someone’s home.  Therefore, our friends must accept our gifts with glad hearts.  I also bribed them with some cilantro, which they have had difficulty finding in Korea. 
 
I did a little research to understand why the 100-day celebration is such a significant milestone in a child’s life.  The 100-day celebration is also observed in Chinese culture; it is virtually unheard of in western cultures.   Baek-il is the second of three events in a child’s first year of life celebrating his or her continued health.  According to Korean tradition, these events should only be celebrated if the child is healthy.  The first event, the 21-day celebration, celebrates the child’s first 21 days of life.  It is not as well known as Baek-il because at 21 days the child and mother are traditionally confined to the home and are not allowed to see guests.  The child’s family members traditionally observe the day in absentia by praying for the child.  Baek-il is the official coming-out ceremony for most Korean child.  The child’s first birthday, or Tol (돌), is the third and perhaps most important of the three events.  Once the child passes their first birthday happy and healthy, it is very likely that they will live a longer life.  It’s easy to forget in this day and age that many of our cultural celebrations such as birthdays originated out of the need to survive.  Child mortality was very high in Korea until the 1960’s, and these celebrations are testaments to the fact that many Korean children did not live to see their first birthdays.
Now that you’re thoroughly depressed, let me share the happier side of these celebrations.  Baek-il and tol are opportunities for families to come together and meet the newest members of the clan.  It is often the impetus for family reunions, just as Chuseok (추석), a day to remember one’s ancestors, brings together Korean families every year.  These celebrations give families an excuse to share their bounty with family and friends.  They serve foods that are typically served only at special occasions, such as rice cakes, or deok (덕).  Food becomes even more significant on the child’s first birthday, when the child is seated in the midst of a variety of foods.  Korean tradition maintains that a child’s future will be determined by the first food that they touch.  (I wondered whether that led parents to game the system by putting the most desirable food closest to the child.)  Traditionally, the children have received money, gold trinkets, or clothing as gifts, although modern families may give more eloborate gifts such as toys or tech gadgets.  Thus, it is customary for guests to bear gifts to these types of events, just as we did.  If I didn’t, I couldn’t call myself Korean.  Oh wait, I’m not Korean.  That’s OK.  He better accept them anyway.
For more information on Korean birthday celebrations, visit:
 
 
Note to Quemino’s World:  Welcome back to Seattle.  I hear there’s been some snow in the area.  It was great meeting Alex and you for dinner and drinks in Busan.  I hope you had a great trip to Thailand…at least better than your last day in Busan!  Sorry to hear about the bummer ending to your APEC trip.  How did I blog during the APEC Summit?  Well, when you are stuck at a hotel near the airport, as far as you can get from the action, and you get back to your hotel room too late to do much, your family is five hours away, and the cable TV features one English channel but has an Internet connection, you cope by posting blog entries.  I’ll see you in July when we return to Seattle for a visit.

Korean Folk Village

My family ventured today to the Korean Folk Village in Giheung, an exurb of Seoul.  Reputed to be one of the best daytrips out of Seoul, Korean Folk Village definitely lived up to its great reputation.  If you visit Seoul and only have time for one daytrip out of the city, visit the Korean Folk Village.  It is well worth the visit.  Opened in 1974, the village is the most comprehensive of all the folk villages dotting the Korean countryside and cityscapes.  It’s truly a functional village.  I’ve heard that most of the people who work at the village and dress up as peasants and in hanbok (traditional Korean dress) actually live and work at the village.  It’s an intriguing sight to see next to the modern high-rise apartment buildings that end at the village gates.

We saw too much today to document in a single blog entry.  I will continue my story tomorrow or early next week.  We puttered around the house in the morning, until my wife finally lit a fire under me.  I dragged my heels a bit because weekends are sacred to me.  So much happens at work during the week that I prefer to hang out at home and unwind.  My wife and son want to venture further a field because they spend a lot more time at home than I do.  During the drive to the village, we missed the Giheung exit off Interstate 1 and ended up driving down to Osan (the village is situated between Giheung and Osan, closer to Giheung).  We backtracked on an arterial road that paralleled the freeway.  The route to the Korean Folk Village is definitely not well marked, and finding northbound Interstate 1 heading north Seoul isn’t easy either.

By the time we reached the village, we were very hungry, so we stopped to eat at “Korea” Restaurant near the village gate.  We decided that eating at a restaurant with a lofty name like “Korea” surely must be delicious.  It turned out to be a cafeteria-style, limited selection, massed-produced food operation.  All the restaurants near the village entrance are that way.  The food was mediocre at best.  The help was friendly and took a liking to our son.  If you visit the village, you’re much better off making your way all the way to the far end of the village and eating at the open-air village “Bazzar.”  We eventually arrived at the “Bazzar” and noted what other visitors ate there.  It looked delicious!  Live and learn.  I’m sure we’ll go to the Korean Folk Village again when we entertain my family next year, and we’ll eat there.  We’ll spare them the cafeteria-style lunch.

After lunch we went to “Seonangdang,” a religious shrine where one can pray to the village guardian spirits and ask them for favors.  Traditional Koreans, like many peoples around the world, carve ancestral totems out of wood.  They remind me of the totems made by the Native Americans and First Peoples of the Pacific Northwest, although Korean totems are bit more free spirited (no pun intended).  Korean totems can be whimsical and a bit chaotic with laughing, asymmetrical faces.  They also follow the curvature of the wood so that they occasionally lean.

We then went to the ceramic village, where I bought my first kimchi pot (I mean a ceramic jar, not kimchi-flavored marijuana).  As the national dish of Korea, kimchi is held in very high esteem in Korea.  No meal would be complete without a side dish of spicy and sweet cabbage, radish, or cucumber kimchi.  Even the Italian restaurant where my wife and I dined on Friday served sweet pickles as a kimchi substitute (western restaurants in Korea often serve sweet pickles in lieu of panchan, or side dishes).  I’ve wanted to buy a kimchi pot for quite some time.  Mine is not too big, perhaps one gallon.  It’s not large enough to adequately make kimchi, because it’s easier to make in bulk.  To make kimchi you would need to buy a monstrous 20-gallon kimchi pot.  Although I paid more for the pot than I needed to pay, I was happy to buy a pot from the ceramics shop where it was made.  I saw the artisan who made my kimchi pot making another ceramic pot, and I saw the mud used to make my kimchi pot.  Buying from the source is worth more to me than buying an anonymous one in a market.  This one had character and an identity.

We made our way slowly through the village.  We visited a Disneyesque replica of a typical traditional Korean peasant farm, and we stopped to watch two elderly women in hanbok making silk.  I had never seen how silk is made.  One woman boiled silkworm cocoons, killing the silkworm larvae.  She separated each larva from its cocoon and cast it aside, and she helped a second woman unravel the silk cocoon.  The second woman spun the raw silk thread around a spinning wheel.  The silk-making process was utterly fascinating.  It’s amazing that such a manual, unglamorous process ends with the creation of one of the world’s most luxurious fabrics.

We moved on to an open area in the middle of the village.  We came upon a couple of traditional Korean games, arrow throwing and see-saw.  We saw some Koreans trying to throw 3-foot long straight sticks into narrow jars.  The game simulated the old Korean game of arrow throwing.  (Arrow throwing is akin to the American carnival game of throwing baseballs into small holes).  We also saw Korean see-saws, thick planks straddling sacks of hay.  My son enjoyed giving it a try.  Daddy put his foot on the plank and bounced him up and down.  He laughed and held on for dear life as daddy bounced him on the see saw.  He then took over and did it himself.  After that, we made our way to the “Bazzar” and stopped for ice cream.  I really liked the atmosphere of the “Bazzar” filled with old buildings and workers in peasant clothing serving customers in the open air.  At that moment, Seoul seemed so far away.

We left the “Bazzar” and crossed the Arch Stone Bridge, a picturesque bridge straddling a calm river that divides the village.  A water wheel mill next to the bridge is absolutely idyllic.  We wandered along the shore of the southern bank of the river.  I discovered my son is an adventurer like his dad.  As I crossed over a foot-wide footbridge to take a picture of the Arch Stone Bridge, he started to follow me!  Mommy caught him and helped him to the edge of the bridge.  I came back and took him with me partway across the bridge so mommy could take a picture of us together.

We then wandered through a group of farmhouses modeled after those found on Jeju Island (made with volcanic rock).  For the first time, my son saw farm animals he knows well but had never seen before—rabbits, chickens, pigs, goats, and geese.  His eyes lit up as he saw the real version of animals he reads in story books and sees as toys.  He especially liked the rabbits.  The geese were quite unruly.  We stood about ten feet from them, but four of them decided to come after us.  We backed away quickly and moved out of their territory.  I would have liked to scare them away from my family, but geese are notoriously temperamental and I decided to be non-confrontational.  If a goose comes after you, don’t confront it.  It could attack you.  I remember hearing stories of geese attacks in Seattle.  I wasn’t about to get bitten by a goose and end up getting rabies shots.  That would have been a lousy end to a beautiful day.

To be continued…

Checking in from China

I talked to my wife tonight on the phone. She has been in China with my son since early last week. They are doing very well. Life in Shanghai is not as comfortable or convenient as it is in Seoul, but she’s glad she went home to spend time with family. My wife and son are staying with my in-laws, who as you might recall returned to China last December before we left for Seoul. My sister-in-law’s family, who also live in Shanghai, met my son for the first time. My son has really taken a liking to his aunt (probably because she is a lot like his mom, her sister). They all live in pretty cramped quarters and have had a few minor family quarrels, but all in all, the visit has been a good one. My son really misses me. Whenever he sees a photo of me, he says excitedly, “Baba!” the Chinese word for “daddy.” I can’t wait to see them again. My temporary, pseudo-bachelor life has its good moments, but there’s nothing like being with the ones you love.

My son is apparently quite a celebrity in China. As a mixed-blooded child—half American, half-Chinese—he obviously looks different than Chinese children. My wife told me that strangers go out of the way to meet the little guy because he looks so different. She recently took him to a neighborhood photography studio for a photo session. The session so well that the studio acquired the rights to his photos and will display his album as a studio sample. He is a very photogenic kid. (I’m glad he inherited his mother’s good looks!) Although my son has been noticed here in Seoul, he has gotten far more attention in China than he has in Korea. This may be because Koreans have seen so many foreigners and mixed-blooded children that they are no longer a novelty. Chinese, on the other hand, have experienced much less exposure to foreigners and have met few mixed-blooded children. When I first visited China in 1994, I received many inquisitive looks from Chinese. I was a bit of a novelty, even when I was in Shanghai. However, in recent years the foreign mystique has diminished, and many Chinese now won’t give foreigners a second glance.

On the other hand, mixed-blooded children in China born to a foreign parent are still relatively rare. As a result, like my son, mixed-blooded children still elicit stares from Chinese. And Chinese typically hold them in high regard. Some Chinese believe that mixed-blooded children are physically more beautiful than either full-blooded Chinese or foreigner (e.g. Western) children. A recent poll indicated that 63% of Chinese would like to marry a foreigner. During my 1994 visit to China, my wife and I received critical stares from strangers who disapproved of our bi-racial relationship. Now, our mixed marriage is apparently hip. Attitudes in China have changed dramatically in the past decade. This may explain why Chinese are generally favorably disposed to mixed-blooded children. Rather than being a social burden, mixed-blooded children have become a status symbol of sorts.

Koreans, in contrast, typically do not hold mixed-blooded children in such high esteem. Koreans tend to prefer full-blooded Korean or non-Korean children. This is partly due to the fact that some mixed-blooded children in Korea are born out of wedlock to Korean mothers who are abandoned by foreign partners (particularly soldiers) who leave the country. Many of these children are born into unfortunate circumstances where the father reneges on his responsibility to take care of the child and disappears from their life. It is a very interesting contrast between two cultures that are similar in many ways but differ in some key social aspects. It is partly a product of cultural and historical influences.