추석

Last Monday was 추석 Chuseok (秋夕), Korea's equivalent to Thanksgiving.  It is a holiday that celebrates the good harvest, and most Koreans go back to their hometowns to celebrate with their families.  As a result, Seoul becomes eerily quiet and there is nothing to do in the city as most businesses close up shop.  It is normally a 3-day holiday (the days before and after Chuseok are also holidays), but since Chuseok fell on a Monday this year, we only had 2 days off from school this year.  Last year was kind of nice because Chuseok was on a Wednesday, meaning that we got Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday off.  I decided to skip school on Monday  (giving me a 5 day weekend) and take a trip to Jeju Island.  This year, I stayed closer to Seoul and spent the holiday at my aunt's place in Goyang, the same place I stayed when I first arrived in Korea.  It was really nice to have their company, and I'm so glad they invited me to spend the holidays with them.  As I mentioned in a prior post, my aunt is an amazing cook.  The last time she prepared a large feast was for Jesa, a ceremony for honoring ancestors. Tradition stipulates what food should be prepared and where it should be placed on the table.  In a similar fashion, a ritual called Charye 차례 (茶禮) is performed for Chuseok, although the food is arranged differently.  I can't say enough how amazing my aunt is at cooking.  She made everything from scratch except for the rice cakes (called 송편 songpyeon).  I got to help a little bit by putting flour on the fish and cucumbers, while my cousin applied a light coating of egg and cooked it.

So much food!!!

As for Jesa, to honor the dead we performed a 절 jeol, or traditional bow.  Below is a picture of me attempting to do one for Jesa a month ago. 

After paying our respects, we feasted!  Everything tasted amazing.  Following the meal, we had 식혜 shikhye (食醯),  a sweet rice drink for dessert.  

Shikhye

Later, we spent the evening at the 일산 분수, a huge water fountain in Ilsan that holds a large water/light show that is synchronized with music.  It's the biggest attraction in Ilsan and apparently people come from all over Korea to see it.  In addition to playing Korean songs, they played popular American songs like Coldplay's Viva la Vida and Star Wars.  It was a nice relaxing evening.  

Starting this week, in addition to taking Korean classes, I've been helping Sogang develop a new Korean textbook specifically catered to beginner students from Canada.  I worked with 김성희 and 이유진 쌤 on translation and was able to provide some input of my own on how to improve the beginner level textbooks (although usually very minor things).  This project was assigned to me because I wanted to stay in Korea a month after the fall term ended.  Normally, I would have left Korea in mid-November, but then I would have been stuck at home for 2 months without anything to do.  As much as I love my family, I figured this was too long so when I purchased my airline tickets for Korea, I decided to stay for an extra month.  Trying to figure out something to do for that extra month, I asked Sogang if I could pay 30% of the tuition and take 3 weeks (of a 10 week program) of Level 6.  They said that they weren't allowed to accept a partial payment, but that they would let me take it for free if I was able to help them on this project - which I gladly accepted.  Sogang University has given so much to me in the form of an excellent Korean language education (including excellent courses, top notch teachers, and chances to experience Korean culture on field trips around Korea), and I was excited at the opportunity to help them make their teaching materials better.  In addition to the free 3 weeks tuition, on nights that I work for them they buy me free pizza, which is an added bonus.  Fortunately the workload isn't too burdensome.  I only have to come in one night a week, which still gives me plenty of time to focus on my studies.  

In class this week we've been studying 사자성어 (四字成語) four-character Chinese maxims, which are four syllable phrases originating from Chinese.  It's been fun for me because I've had a little obsession with hanja 漢字 (chinese characters) ever since I took Japanese in high school.  At one point I supposedly knew 400 characters, although since I haven't taken any Japanese in 5 years I've forgotten most of them (trust me, I can't speak a word of Japanese anymore).   Having a knowledge of Chinese characters is extremely helpful when learning Korean because at least half of the words in Korean are derived from Chinese.  It's extremely useful when trying to remember the definition of a word.  For example, in Level 4 I was having a hard time memorizing the word 감동 gamdong (感動) (to be emotionally moved, to be touched), until I realized that the word was comprised of the characters 'gam' 感 meaning emotion and 'dong' 動 meaning to move, literally to be moved emotionally (get it?).  For this reason, when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to go over in my private 1-on-1 class, I originally wanted to try to learn hanja, although I realized that actually learning to write the characters probably wouldn't be the most efficient way to improve my Korean.  Instead, now when learning new vocab, I go through my electronic dictionary and try to figure out the meaning of the characters for a specific word.  For example, I have no idea how to write the character 'bi' 비 (秘), but I know it has something to do with 'mystery' since it is used in the words 'bi-mil' 비밀 (秘密) meaning a secret (in general) and 'bi-gyeol' 비결 (秘訣) meaning secret (know-how).  I think that learners of Korean who keep knowledge of Hanja in the back of their mind (not necessarily knowing how to write the characters, but as I mentioned having an idea of what a certain syllable block means) will find it extremely helpful, in much the same way that Latin learners can better understand English.  

For some of the readers of this blog who know Chinese (I'm hoping there are a few?), here are some of the expressions we learned.  I'm curious if they're actually used in Chinese nowadays.  

塞翁之馬 새옹지마 (sae-ong-ji-ma)  - Life is full of ups and downs (Literally: Border Old Man's Horse)

莫上莫下 막상막하 (mak-sang-mak-ha)  - To be neck and neck (Not High Not Low)

東問西答동문서답 (dong-mun-seo-dap) - a nonsensical answer (East Question West Answer) 

咸興差使 함흥차사 (ham-heung-cha-sa) - Someone who goes away and disappears for a long time (Hamheung messenger)

一石二鳥 일석이조 (il-seok-i-jo) - To kill two birds with one stone (One Stone Two Birds)

雪上加霜 설상가상 (seol-sang-ga-sang) When it rains, it pours (Snow Above Add Frost)

以心傳心 이심전심 (i-shim-jeon-shim) to read someone's mind (Through Heart Convey Heart)

While I'm on the topic, I wanted to talk about my Korean name.  My name in Korean is 김상우 (Gim Sang-oo) (金相愚).  It's not completely made up - the first character Gim is my mom's maiden name, and the second character 'sang' is a 돌림자 dollimja, or generational character.  By tradition, all of the males in my family in the same generation (and most other Korean families) have the same second character, hence why my cousins are all named 상훈 Sang-hun, 상민 Sang-min, etc.  The final character 'u' was just one that my mom chose because she liked it.  The first character 'gim' literally means 'gold', the second character 'sang' means 'each other', and the third character 'u' means stupid.  I know what you're thinking - Ben, your name literally means Each Other Stupid?  Why on earth would you want that name?  I've actually gotten this question from a few Koreans and mostly Chinese-Americans / Singaporians.  But as any native Chinese speaker (who completed high school and college in China) will tell you, the 'u' does mean stupid, but in a good way.  How can this be?  Below is something a Chinese friend who took Level 4 Korean with me sent me to explain it: 

大智若愚dà zhì ruò yú, 某些才智出众的人不露锋芒，看来好象愚笨。出自：宋·苏轼《贺欧阳少师致仕启》：“大勇若怯，大智如愚。”

큰 지혜를 가지고 있는 사람은 자신의 재능을 뽐내지 않기 때문에 얼른 보기에는 어리석은 사람같이 보인다.  

He knows most who speaks least.; 

Still water runs deep.; 

A man of great wisdom often appears slow-witted.; 

An empty vessel makes the most sound

So basically while 'u' literally translates to 'stupid', it also has a deeper meaning of being 'humble.'  In fact,  the former president of Korea 노태우 No Tae-u 

(盧泰愚) uses the same character in his name, proving that naming a child with the character for stupid doesn't preclude them from success.  In fact, my mom seems convinced that by choosing 愚 as the character for 'u' rather than a nicer sounding character like 友(friendly) or 佑 (helping), it'll make me more successful in life, just like No Tae-u.  She 'proves' this by informing me that 권상우 Kwon Sang-u, a famous actor/model in Korea whose name uses the more pleasant sounding characters 相佑 (each other helping) was involved in a hit-and-run accident where he was supposedly driving drunk.  I'm not sure if I believe what my mom says, but I'll just trust her for now.  

While on the topic of chinese characters with deep meanings, I used to always wonder why there were very few Nobel Literature Prize Laureates who were Asian (I only counted one).    Are Asians really just not as good at literature as their European counterparts?  I suspect it is because of the richness of information and nuance associated with each character/word in East Asian languages, which gets completely wiped out upon translation to a romance language.  For example, the character 愚 might simply be translated as 'stupid' and lose all the other associated meanings with it (humbleness).  I can't speak for Chinese, but I know that there are tons of words in Korean that translate to the same word in English, having only very subtle differences in use and meaning.  For example, in my private 1-on-1 class, I had to read a newspaper article in Korean about Obama's Jobs Speech after making a presentation about it.  (I wanted to go over newspaper articles since I still have an incredibly difficult time understanding them, because of the difficult chinese-derived vocabulary used in them).  After going through the vocab words I didn't know with the teacher, I came to realize that there are at least 5 different ways to say the word 'to reduce' in Korean: 줄이다, 낮추다, 감면 (Gam-myeon 減免), 경감 (Gyeong-gam 輕減), 인하 (In-ha 引下).  Each has a slightly different meaning and usage, which at this point I don't completely understand. I think this is the main reason why Korean is listed as a Category IV language by the U.S. Defense Institute, the highest level of difficulty for English speakers.  At first, Korean can seem deceptively easy with its straightforward phonetic alphabet and simple (in my opinion) grammar.  But there are just so many different words with slightly different nuances, which don't correspond to words in English like words in Spanish, German or French would.   I think this'll be one of the main challenges in my Korean language studies - not just expanding my vocabulary, but learning in which situation I'm supposed to use a word.    

I realized I got a little off topic, but yes - I suspect that East Asians won't be able to win very many Nobel Literature Prizes because the Swedish judges can't understand the complexities of the Chinese/Korean language.  Which is a shame really.  I acknowledge that I'm not a linguistics major though, so I might be completely wrong.  If anyone has any ideas/thoughts, feel free to leave a comment!

Concert, Illness, New Phone, First Week of Classes, and other happenings

Last Saturday my cousin Kyeongju performed at a concert with some other instrumentalists.  She's a vocal studies graduate student at Ewha University.  There were four pianists, two flautists, one cellist, and one vocalist.  She performed the last two selections, a piece from a German opera and one from an Italian opera, and sang beautifully.  I’m so proud of her! 

From L: My cousin Hagyu, my aunt, my cousin Kyeongju, my great aunt, and me

She offered to take me out to a Noraebang (karaoke) place sometime… although I’m not sure if I should take her up on that offer.  I can’t sing to save my life.

Kyeongju and her boyfriend took me out after the concert to eat Samgyetang (蔘鷄湯), one of my favorite Korean dishes.  It’s a type of soup with a small chicken stuffed with rice and ginseng.  I forgot to take a picture, but here’s one I stole from wikipedia:

Samgyetang

 I’ve been sick most of the past week, which has been a little annoying.  Fortunately it’s nothing too serious, just the usual sore throat and sinus problems I’m accustomed too.  I usually have a sore throat for a few days and end up having to blow my nose incessantly for the next few weeks.  I’ve already gone through three boxes of tissues L  I blame it all on the toast lady outside Sogang University.  I went there during the break between classes because I woke up late and wasn’t able to eat breakfast.  I specifically asked her not to butter the bread, but she did it anyway. 

Me: I said I didn’t want any butter.

Toast Lady: That’s not butter.  It’s margarine.

Me (in my head):  Seriously?  Wtf?  They’re the same thing. 

Me: Since I don’t eat butter or margarine, can you toast a new piece of bread?

Toast Lady: I only buttered one side of the bread, the other side is fine.

Me: Really, I can’t eat any margarine. 

Toast Lady: Ok.

Does nothing.

Me: So are you going to change out the bread?

Toast Lady: Yes

Does Nothing

I would have argued for longer or just refused to buy it, but I had to go to class and I was pretty hungry so I just ate it anyway.  That was probably a bad call because within the hour my throat started feeling a little scratchy, and by the next day my throat was hurting really bad.  To the toast ahjumma – I shake my fist at you!

With my nose clogged and my voice all funny, my Korean speaking ability has been rendered essentially incompetent.  I went to the bank yesterday and the teller, while telling me that I had to fill out a form, asked me if I could read any Korean.  Apparently my pronunciation is that bad now :(

I’ve been eating a lot of jook (粥)lately, which is a type of Korean porridge.  It’s excellent for sore throats.  I wish they had this stuff in the U.S.  I also bought some green tea packets at the local supermarket.  The place where I am staying has a hot water dispenser, so I can make tea easily whenever I want to.   

Jook

After a two week long wait, I finally got my 거소 등록증residency card, which enables holders of an F-4 visa (those who were former Korean citizens or have a parent who was a former Korean citizen) to work in Korea, open a bank account, and sign contracts.  Even though I’m only going to be in Korea for 4 months this year, since I’m planning on coming back for at least a year after I graduate, I decided that it would be convenient to have a bank account and a check card.  Apparently there was some confusion when I went to open a bank account.  They said I needed an Alien Registration Card, which I didn’t have because my visa only makes me eligible for a residency card, which is supposed to be much better.  The teller had to call up her bosses and sort it all out, but was finally able to open a bank account for me.  I found it strange that they had never seen or even heard of a residency card before.  I guess the F-4 visa is a relatively new thing (it started 2 years ago, I think?), but I’m surprised that no former citizen or gyopo has ever gone to open a bank account at that branch.  I was pleasantly surprised that my checking account and check card that came with it had no fees.  I repeat – NO fees.  Seriously, why can’t American banks do this?  In America if you don’t have a certain minimum balance and are not a college student, they charge you (or at least Bank of America does) an $8 monthly maintenance fee.  My Bank of America account also charges me a fee if I make more than 3 withdrawals from my savings account in one month.  My Korean bank doesn’t even charge an overdraft fee (it just won’t let you make the payment).  Banks in the U.S. really need to learn from this. 

I was originally going to wire money from my American bank account over, until I realized that it was ridiculously expensive.  The exchange rate is supposed to be 1 USD to about 1080 KRW, but had I wired it over the exchange rate would have dropped to 1 USD : 1010 KRW, plus a $35 fee.  Interestingly, it is actually cheaper to withdrawal the money using a debit card from a Korean ATM and redeposit that money back into one's account (exchange rate 1 USD: 1070 KRW, $5 fee).  So I had to withdrawal $1000 in cash and bring it up to the teller to deposit, which seemed utterly ridiculous.  Doesn’t it cost more to restock an ATM than to tell some foreign bank’s computer that money is on its way?  Hmm…..

Now that I had a bank account, I was able to sign up for a cell phone contract.  I went to the electronics market in Yongsan to look for a phone.  I was originally going to just buy a regular flip phone because smartphones are ridiculously expensive without a contract, and I’m not able to sign a 2-year contract.  However, I ended up finding a place that was selling a used SKY Vega Xpress phone (normally $800 new) for $200.    It looked brand new, and closer inspection of the back casing revealed that it had only been manufactured 5 months ago.  Although I wasn’t originally going to get a smartphone, it seemed like such a good deal that I decided to take it.  I was even able to negotiate the price down to $190 with some extra freebies, making it cheaper than the smartphone I bought in the U.S.  I probably wouldn’t have done it if I was only going to be in Korea for 4 months, but since I’m planning on returning for another year, it seemed like a worthwhile investment.  A bonus is that I can study vocab with a flashcard app I downloaded, and listen to dialogues with the music player.  I signed up for a plan with LG Telecom, which had a very reasonable voice + text + data plan for only $45 a month - much much cheaper than what Verizon charges back at home. 

My new phone!

Classes started last Wednesday and they’ve gone pretty well so far.  Despite being in a KF (Korean Foundation) class again this year, I was a little disappointed.  When I was in a KF class last year, it was an amazing experience because everyone was really friendly and tight-knit (since they had taken Korean class together since Level 2), and we would usually eat lunch together after class everyday.  My Level 5 class doesn’t seem to get along too well, however.  There are 4 Japanese girls and 4 Russian girls, and they usually only talk amongst themselves.  In contrast my Level 4 class was much more diverse (1 person from Austria, China, Canada, Armenia, and 2 from Japan, Russia), and I felt that that forced everyone to talk to everyone else in Korean.  I’m hoping my class will end up getting closer as the term goes on.  Fortunately, my teachers are amazing.  My 말하기/읽기 teacher is 이정화 선생님, and my 쓰기/비디오 수업 teacher is 이춘희 선생님, who is one of the nicest and funniest people I’ve ever met.  I don’t know how Sogang does it – all of the teachers I’ve had there have been nothing short of amazing.  I would even say that the ‘worst’ teachers I’ve had here would probably be on par with some of the best professors at Yale – they’re that good at what they do. 

Next Monday is the Chuseok (秋夕)Holiday, which is basically Korea’s version of Thanksgiving.  During Chuseok, Koreans celebrate the good harvest by going back to their hometowns and sharing a feast with their relatives.  Since we have Monday and Tuesday off from school, I’ll be going back to my aunt’s place in Goyang (where I first stayed when I arrived in Korea) to hopefully enjoy good company and my aunt’s amazing cooking.