KOREAN FOOD

Korean food is one of my favorite things, if not my favorite thing about living here.  There is a joyful culture surrounding food and dining.  Korean cuisine is communal, most meals are shared and nobody minds eating from the same dish.  Unfortunately, cooking is a dying art form here, much like in the US, because of the fast paced lifestyle demanded of workers.  Also you don't have to tip- anywhere, which was really hard to adjust to when everything is so delicious.  Tipping is only done for very large parties or catered events and can actually offend the restaurant owner because it implies that you pity them or have more money than them.  I don't have any pictures of Korean snacks and junk food, but they are worth mentioning too.  

This was our first meal in Korea, in Seoul.  Funny story.  We walked into the first restaurant that looked good and pointed at something we wanted from the menu.  Claire had dumpling soup, which I knew the Korean for, and I decided to try something I had never heard of, Soondae.  Soondae is a traditional Korean sausage of pork, rice noodles and onions, wrapped in intestine, "natural casing."  Sometimes the soup has lung, liver or tripe but this one didn't.  It was a delicious and full fledged first meal in the country.  
Every time I tell the story to a Korean they laugh.

This restaurant serves Tonkasu, Japanese-Western style cutlets.  Here you see two cutlets with curry on the right and basically hot and sour sauce on the other, rice, 3 kinds of pickles and kimchi, cabbage, macaroni salad, and miso soup.  It costs about 7 dollars.

The market at Sokcho, big and fishy.

This is Claire after a wind whipped day hike to a temple.  We're at a Chinese restaurant.  We got tofu, here called Dubu.  I think it was Ma-Po Tofu, which you can get in the US.  Koreans love Chinese food like Americans, and they adjust it to their tastes exactly like us.  Korean-Chinese food always has raw onion and bright yellow radish kimchi with black bean paste, like thick fermented soy sauce for dipping.  I think the yellow of the kimchi is artificial, which is unhealthy but whatever.

Coffee and Latte from a hand-drip place in Seoul.

Falafel sandwiches from a place in Hongdae.  We sometimes go out of our way to eat Western food, just because it's a nice change of Korean food.

Draft Asahi and Japanese food in Gangneung.  Korean beer is pretty bad and comes from one mega-company.  I miss American microbrews a lot.  There are some in Seoul but we don't' go to Seoul very often.

This is a meal on the ocean city Yang-yang.  Their specialty is a kind of squid sausage, also called Soondae.  It's squid stuffed with seafood and rice, onion, and fried with egg.  The kimchi and side dishes are more ocean variety too.  3 different seaweeds.  Amazing.  Claire had Jjigae, a really spicy kimchi stew.

In Uijeongbu we got basically a spicy pasta salad, I don' remember the name.  The other thing is a giant savory pancake.  Both were amazing.

This is ddoeokbokki, a snack food.  Rice dumpling in sweet spicy sauce, plus a salad.  Great.

Sweet cookies and cakes of every form are huge here.  This was a balsamic macaroon, sort of odd but great.  Claire said the baker here seemed happy that I could read the Korean menu but I didn't notice.  I love practicing Korean.

Big dumpling from a street vendor.

Markets from all over:

Another Chinese Korean dish, a mound of fried rice with egg cooked separate, Korean style.  Also came with Ja-Jang, black bean sauce which is really popular.  It also came with seafood soup- huge meal that only looked like fried rice on the menu and cost about 4 dollars.

And lastly, these are some of the meals I cook at home.  I don't have an oven here, which stinks, but I've adapted.  I got some tahini and legumes delivered, can't find those here.  So I make vegetarian stuff, hummus, curry, tofu, salad.

I will aim to get more photos of food, these weren't even the most memorable meals, just the ones I remembered to take pictures of.  There is a lot I want to explore more of but haven't gotten to yet: agribusiness monopolies, sustainability, festivals, regional cuisine, etc etc.  More to come.  Cheers.

What Freedom Means Here

I have lived in Korea for four months and I feel like I have so much to learn.  I got past the honeymoon, all is new phase pretty quick- this is probably the biggest learning period.  After that, it's more interesting, and perhaps more difficult.  This blog, particularly this post, is a mix of things I find important for an American audience, things I learned in college, misconceptions I had, and misinformation I hope to correct.   

I am not attempting to be comprehensive or to speak for Koreans.  None of this is a substitute for a Korean person's perspective.   I only want to offer insight to people like me who may have interest but have trouble finding non-wikipedia information.  

Basically, as always, I will discuss American Imperialism and social justice- which have extremely complicated, brutal, and if nothing else, globally unique history in Korea.  I gladly welcome any criticism or input from Koreans, fellow expats, or anyone.

Geography is low on the list of American interests.  Unfortunately for the world, American corporations and military might have immense impact in literally every country.  We have a positive influence in a few places, but overall, our hegemony is not welcome.  Of course you have to separate the people from the empire, which people around the world have no trouble doing.  When Rick Steves went to Iran he said the same thing, they say Death to America because we overthrew their elected leader and try to destroy their country, not because they hate individual Americans.

This is just down the road from my home in Dongsong.  Another 5 km down and you're at the DMZ.

Needless to say the majority of American soldiers represent our country respectfully, needless to say our military helped fight an oppressor in Korea, the Northern communists.  But when Koreans are polled on who the biggest threat to their peace is the majority say the USA, not North Korea.

To be clear I am not anti-military, I am anti-foreign domination.  I am anti-imperialist.

Every nation has the right to self-autonomy, this is not basic proper policy but a statement on human rights.  From the West Bank and Gaza, to Ukraine, to the indigenous Australian peoples, powerful countries abuse their position- going from helper to oppressor whenever there is money to be made, "interests" to secure.   

And we as Americans talk a big game about democracy but simply can't back it up in the real world.  

We occupy the world, our soldiers are in over 100 countries.  One reason has been to insure the fragile peace the US plays a role in.  But the main reason is to ensure the ongoing perpetuation of imperialist capitalism: exploiting value and resources from the periphery to the core in a way that furthers US interests.  This takes many shapes and forms, and the winner and loser is not always totally clear.

The American military presence in Korea is somewhat (sometimes, very) unwelcome by Koreans because of ongoing sexual assault of Korean women by US soldiers, brazen attitudes by US policy makers, and the prime-real-estate-grabbing US bases on Korean soil.  The best example of this I saw in Itaewon, Seoul.  

This part of Seoul is the main foreigner district, with a lot of cultural history.  Also with a massive hideous US base smack in the middle.  It is cinder block and barbed wire with placards every few yards reading DO NOT ENTER PROPERTY OF US GOVERNMENT.  In the middle of a culturally rich area, museums, art galleries, shops, is this base, and it is huge, covering block after block, I lost count.  

Odd juxtaposition.  But it is life for Koreans.  If America had a Korean or Chinese military base like this on our land... well I can't even speculate "if."  We would never let that would never happen, to us.  

Here it is on the map- that large dark gray area is all US military base.  That small green park is the National Museum of Korea, which is a glorious, free museum full of amazing history and artifacts that I want to visit again for an entire day.  For now, look at our impact:

I think Americans need to know this is not just a base but a presence of our soldiers.  There has been a recent spike in the number of sexual assaults of Korean women and US soldier misconduct, in which Americans typically receive full impunity from Korean law.  I know this might be risky to show, but this is not falsity.  It's not libelous, it is the reality.

Obviously, Korea is very developed economically so the story of capitalism and imperialism is different here.  But in fact, Korea is entirely unique in that manner.  After the Korean War and partition into two countries, the US had a vested interest in helping to rebuild the place, not just because of our military involvement, but because we had an opportunity to make an example of the achievements of capitalism, right smack against the near threat of communism.

The Korean struggle for independence and economic development are totally a product of the culture of Korea, which places high value on education.  There was also a unified goal for economic self-sufficiency that would be wrong to attribute totally to American influence.  Nonetheless, America sent millions in aid to the South, and helped establish the KCIA (sound familiar?) to crack down on organized labor.  I really want to avoid giving credit of economic success in Korea to Americans, that is not my point and not the historical truth.  What I want my readers to know is that America helped prop up right wing dictators and spread anti-unionism in Korea, in addition to constant pressuring and back-door dealings with the elite that excluded the Korean poor and working class.

I am not hopeless about the situation, and I am not afraid of North Korea.  But I want to use my frustration to spread more awareness, hopefully to be part of an ongoing change for the better.  I also see an astonishing silence of critical discourse on the military by American expat bloggers in Korea.  American young people, almost all of them ESL teachers, sounds like a small select group in Korea, but google it- there are thousands of us here blogging about literally every aspect of being American in Korea, every aspect except this imperialism one.  This is a serious concern.  I also want to point my readers towards some Korean tumblr bloggers who have a history of anti-imperialist writing, from a Korean perspective: 

beemill.tumblr.com

lostintrafficlights.tumblr.com

thisisnotkorea.tumblr.com

k0234.tumblr.com

ecue.tumblr.com

koreaunderground.tumblr.com

Many of my family members and loved ones are veterans and active service.  I do hear discussions from these loved ones on reigning in our empire, ending the frivolous war budget that pays people to parachute full time to promote the army.  Those discussions give me hope, particularly because change has to come from within institutions.  Outside pressure can only go so far.

One perfect example of change being pushed from the outside was the massive civil unrest and organized protesting by Koreans in 2008 against the forced importation of American beef, a meat Koreans are really into.  The whole unhealthy cows thing was a big problem, but an even bigger problem, really the core issue was the (correct) Korean perception that the US unfairly bullies its way into Korean politics and economics.  In the end, US economic interests won, the market has been flooded with cheap, sickly American cow meat.  At the very least stores are required to display where their meat comes from, but no surprise, people prefer the cheaper US meat.  


Protests are absolutely a part of Korean culture.  There is a warped idea, that I even had myself, that because Korean culture is eastern, confucian, it does not experience or allow for the questioning of authority.  The reality is that (Neo)confucian ethics encourage innovation, and Korean people have always resisted oppression.  Protests are very common here, like after the president Pak Gyeun Hye (whose father was a capitalist dictator) won in questionable circumstances, after the Sewol Ferry accident, in response to union busting.  

The history of Korea, being 5,000 years old and very far away from Western culture, is victim to many misconceptions.  Part of these stem from the very recent, lingering Cold War division that splits one people into two countries.  As I have said before, the division of Korea is not black and white.  "Democracy versus Communism" is an outmoded trope and it falls short in describing the abuse of human rights by both countries and the USA.  Korean people strive for unification, despite the obvious barricades to that fleeting goal.  Still, there is a shared sense of nationality that transcends the North-South division.  Here is another map, this one is from my classroom.  

What else can I say?  A lot, but I will never totally explain or even understand myself.  The best I can do is offer an alternative to the major narrative about Korea, which either doesn't exist in the main or is totally defined by the supposed threat of the North.

Did you know? Maybe you did.

Did you know Korea did not divide itself into North and South?  This was done by the US and Soviet sponsor states, a totally top-down foreign imposition.  

Did you know Korea was occupied and colonized by Japan?  By colonization I mean dehumanizing-exploitative-strip-you-of-your-culture exploitation, by imperialist Japan for 35 years (1910-1945)

Did you know Korea had metal movable type printing a few hundred years before Gutenberg?  

Did you know Korea went from being an international aid recipient to an international aid donor?

These are only a start.  There is a lot I still don't know.  There is a lot I am coming to love about the country that I never could have expected.  I have encountered so many heartwarming people, and had such a warm welcome in smaller acts of kindness.  I am trying to keep in touch and be lost in a new place, at once.  I am scatterbrained but I am trying.