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I Want to Punch Seomyeon in the Face
Six Months In Country
My poor blog has been whimpering in the shadows of neglect for a couple of months. I write when I want and I haven't felt like writing down the day-to-day of the life into which I have now, officially, settled. The holiday calendar in Korea is lumpy: there are no official holidays on the calendar for over three months and so we are in the last weeks of a long slog toward Christmas vacation. This has meant little travel outside of regular trips to Daegu, and I have written about that. So subject matter has been lacking a bit.This should change as a week's vacation and a lot of three day weekends are around the corner.
The Buddhist texts that I have been reading say "You are what you think." I was obsessed with the thought that I was being exploited, ridiculed, and overworked. In addition, I reached the point of paranoia that I felt my employers were looking for a reason to get rid of me. Maybe they were, because I wouldn't have blamed them. My attitude was horrible. Then, one day, after reading about Right Livelihood, I realized that this job wasn't about me. At all. I had become a captive of my own negativity. By realizing that my own perceptions of my position were the only thing that mattered I made a choice to make this about what I could offer to others, not what they could offer to me. What they owed me and whether or not I was getting it ceased to matter at that point and my job became a source of joy to me, not an anchor. I work for the kids. And they need me. And, more importantly, I need them.
There is one sad thing to report. It was with great regret that I bid farewell to my friend Tom this last week. His shipping company had invited him to work in an exchange program and his six months here were up. We met in September and enjoyed many great adventures together, including one memorable trip to Japan. I, and others here, feel his absence. He is a fine individual.
Six months! Merry Solstice everyone!
The Christmas Show
Grave Mistake
If.
The whole premise of the American bailout is that they can get money from Asia and Europe to plug up the holes. But according to the Times, the double-digit growth period enjoyed by the Chinese economy is a thing of the past. The growth rate in China is expected to drop to as little as 8% next year. This credit crunch will eventually affect the dollar as foreign funds become more and more pricey. That is one side of the Won/Dollar coin. The other is this: for two thousand years South Korea has been the ground meat of a cultural and economic sandwich between Japan and China and that has never been more true than today. Korea also needs capital as an emerging economy and far worse. To compound things, the Korean export economy is far more dependent on Asian demand that of the US.
My complaints about income erosion led my boss to tell me what has become a mantra in South Korea: now is the time to save money. It will bounce back. Wait it out. But what if you have no choice? What if you have to turn your hard won Won into dollars? You want to see grown men cry? Go sit in the waiting room at a Korean exchange bank. As of today the exchange rate is $1/1393. It was sitting at $1/950 when I signed in June. That is a drop of something like a rather large number in front of one of these: %.
So ok. I lied. I am complaining a little. Sorry. But I have a readership (and I really appreciate both of you) and I ultimately have to say how I really feel. People email and ask if coming to Korea is a good idea and I am responding with a resounding "IF." If you don't have to send it home right now. If you are good at saving money and can live frugally. If you enjoy working really, really hard and like teaching for teaching's sake, then by all means get your butt over here. If not, go work at Walmart. You can save a lot of money with your employee discount.
The real problem, of course, isn't the world's economy, but my own personal lack of fiscal discipline. I put off sending anything home as long as I could but I can wait no longer. And IF I would have save more this wouldn't have been as painful but... The economy, the paraphrase the poet who wrote it, is a big shit pie and everyone gets a bite.
So if it is time for dinner, lets look at the entire meal and not just desserts. I have said before and I will say it again: I love this place. The food, the city life, the people. And if you have to live on the cheap somewhere, this is a pretty good place. I could be getting paid in pesos or godforbid American dollars. The inflation rate in Korea is so low that it is actually too low. This is a two-edged sword as well: while the local buying power of your income is steady there is little justification for employers to increase salaries. I am wondering how this currency situation is going to effect salary offerings for foreign teachers. We could, after all, go teach elsewhere. But I predict that as the unemployment rate continues to climb in the US many young people might see this as a great option regardless of the economics and thus serve to hold down demand over here. Or maybe blogs like this one will influence people to take a good hard look at the realities of thier finances before making the jump. This, of course, would have done me little good in June. And I did look at the exchange rate and show it to my friends and go: "Look, it's a goldmine." A goldmine with some serious structural issues maybe, but how was I to know?
The other way to look at it is that there is probably no where to go but up. And the action by the ROK central bank yesterday bears out that they are going to do everything they can to stop the skid. Short of a worldwide economic collapse there has to be a light at the end of the tunnel so coming over here now really wouldn't be all that bad of an idea. If....
Dog Day Afternoon
On Saturday Sarah and I took advantage of a spectacular clear and crisp (and cold) afternoon to go explore a side of Korea we’d heard much about but had yet to see for ourselves. The practice of eating dog meat is one which has earned Korea a considerable amount of infamy in the West and with Busan’s largest dog market only four stops from our apartment, it was something we couldn’t resist seeing for ourselves.
Gupo market lies a short walk from Deokcheon subway station, the other side of the hill from our neighbourhood in an area we’ve up until recently left largely unexplored. This side of the mountain things seem to get a little less polished than the downtown and beachside areas, with the city gradually giving way to rice paddies and other agricultural land the further north you go. The market itself is a sprawling maze of alleyways and backstreets where everything from live frogs to house slippers fill the buckets, tanks and tables of the work-beaten market ajummas.
While our original plan had been to find something to eat before hitting the dog market, after only a few minutes walking the cawing of chickens heralded the onset of the livestock section and with it a heavy dose of culture shock. Rabbits, chickens, ducks, geese and black goats were all on offer but while the array of live animals was astounding, as we’d expected it was the dogs themselves that proved the most striking.
They were large, reasonably young looking animals, confined seven or eight to a cage and resembling a cross between a wolf and a labrador. They looked surprisingly domestic, and for the entire time we were there remained eerily silent. Behind the cages, dog carcasses lay either splayed and ready to be butchered or (more unrecognisably) hanging from hooks and laid out on meat counters.
Sarah and I were unsure about whether we’d actually eat dog soup, but after seeing the dogs we decided to pass. I don’t have any qualms per se about the practice, providing everything is done humanely (though by the looks of it this may not be the case,) but the truth is I like them too much to eat them myself. There is something dopey, faithful and reassuring about dogs and to turn on them like that would just seem like a betrayal
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