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!