Tracey Stark on...

Tracey's Top Ten, er, Top Five Things He Likes About Korea

2008-01-26T19:32:00.000+09:00

Originally published in The Groove, January 2008

A Stark View
By Tracey Stark

My wife complains that I have nothing good to say about Korea. After five years, she says, I should be able to look around and see things I really like about this country. So for this month, if you will indulge me, I am going to come up with things I really am happy with. (This list will NOT include any of the following: spitting, littering, noisy eating, criminally-insane bus drivers, Saturday traffic jams, motorbikes on the sidewalks, the smell of garlic and soju on the subways and public smoking.)
Typically, a “Best of” list contains 10 items. Since I am constrained by both space and the number of things I am actually pleased with here, I am only going to get to five. So, here we go…

1. If you have ever had a conversation similar to the following before, you will know the sinking feeling I had at the beginning and the complete elation I felt by the time the call was over:

“Yoboseyo?”

“Yes, hi. I left my cell phone in your taxi. Can I get it back, please?”

“Yoboseyo?”

“Yes, hello. My hand-u-pone in your tak-shi. Please, I get it back, juseyo?”

“Yoboseyo?”

I don’t speak Korean, so I passed the phone to a Korean friend and let him take care of it. In the end, the taxi driver was willing to drive back to where I was (for a small fee) and return the phone that I had so carelessly left on the seat.

This is not a one-off occurrence. In fact, I have left my phone in taxis five times in five years. I have gotten my phone back four times. It isn’t just phones that I have lost and re-found. I frequently forget to take my pool cue home with me when I leave a bar as well as books, keys, clothing, umbrellas, unpaid bar tabs, my wallet and even my wife. Overall, the odds are 10 to 1 that I get my stuff back (the odds are slightly higher for my wife). Those are much better odds than anywhere I’ve lived in the States.

2. Speaking of taxis, I love the fact that you can catch a cab at any hour and pay a fraction of what it costs in, say, Washington, D.C. or Tokyo. Sure, the doors on the cabs here don’t open automatically for you like in Japan, but I don’t think it’s worth paying a 50 percent premium.

3. Safety. Yes, aside from the fact that motorcycles tear up and down the sidewalks and everybody is talking on their cell phones when they drive, it is still among the safest places I have ever been. I hear stories from time to time about an attack or a burglary, but overall your chances of being a victim of a crime in Korea are pretty slim. There are few neighborhoods in Seoul in which I would be reluctant to walk through in the dead of night. Koreans are, for the most part, respectful of other people’s property and physical well being. If you pass out drunk on the side of the street, you will have your money in your pocket when you wake up. If you leave your keys in your car there is little reason to worry about it getting stolen unless, and this is a sad unless, it is parked in a neighborhood full of foreigners.

4. Deliveries. Let’s set aside the fact that the guys making the deliveries would sooner run you down on their 100cc scooters than swerve to miss you and concentrate on the fact that you can have anything delivered almost anytime. If you order something on the internet from any of the major Korean websites, you can expect to have it within a day. If you order food, you can expect it within an hour. This is something you won’t find anywhere in the West.

5. Finally, I must say something about Korean food. Love it or just merely like it, you won’t get a more filling and cheap meal anywhere. The side dishes alone would cost you $10 in the U.S. Take for example my favorite meal here, Bibimbap. That with four different bowls of, for lack of a better word, side stuff, would run you $15 or $20 in any decent Korean restaurant in the U.S. Here? The equivalent of $5 or less. You can’t beat that.

So there you have it. If I had to give five reasons why I am still here, these are the ones that would mean the most to me. There are other things I like about Korea, but these are the top five. Hopefully my wife will stop referring to me as Mr. Negativity from now on.

Cat-Man-Don't!

2007-12-19T19:09:00.000+09:00

Originally published in The Groove, December 2007

A Stark View
By Tracey Stark

Cat-Man-Don't!

Whenever I talk about our cats in public, my wife cringes. “Nobody cares about Philly and Max but us,” she says. “Put the pictures away.” But I usually ignore her because I believe you can judge a lot about a person by the way they react when you show them a picture of your child (whether biped, quadruped or moped).

I’ll admit it, I gush about the cats (especially Max, but please don’t tell Philly). They make me laugh and give me unconditional love. In return I give them a bonus can of moist cat food that my wife and I have dubbed “crack” because of the way it sends them bouncing off the walls. You really should see it. See, I’m gushing and telling you things that you don’t really care about.

When I was younger, my mother’s single sister had several cats with names like Mr. Chuckles, Napolean and Lady Kitsy. She had imaginary conversations with them non-stop and became the butt of many jokes in our family – behind her back, of course. To my brother, sisters, and me it appeared she had a mental illness. Years went by and Aunt Marilyn stayed the same, only the rotating population of cats changed.

As children, we had cats. Plenty of them. My sisters and I would test their landing skills from various heights, dress them up in capes and pretend they were superheroes by carrying them around like they were flying. But even then we knew that nobody would be even the slightest bit interested in our cat games.

Then one day, many years later, tragedy struck. When my sister Amy turned 35 she began telling me stories about her cats more and more frequently over the phone. “Dexter was chasing Chairman Meow and ran full speed into the sliding glass door and just shook his head like, ‘I didn’t know that was there…” She spoke in a low, dumb-sounding voice for Dexter. It had finally happened: she had succumbed to Aunt Marilyn’s debilitating illness and had claimed the family title of “cat lady.”

The title cat lady explains why I’m not worried about catching a full-blown case of it. I would be a cat gentleman. And as far as I know, there is no such thing as a cat gentleman.

But allow me to get my train of thought back on track.

When my wife and I are out and the topic of pets comes up (and it comes up surprisingly often these days) I flip open the phone and pull up the photo album. “There’s Max sleeping on his back. Isn’t he cute?” I gush. “There’s Philly as a kitten. Isn’t she the sweetest little thing?” And on it goes. Meanwhile, my wife has taken leave of me to make another trip to the ladies’ room or the bar to privately converse with her beer.

The reactions of our friends differ, as do the levels of our friendships. Close friends who know how much I love my cats will politely take a look, nod appreciatively, and promptly change the subject, vowing to themselves never to let it return to the topic of cats ever again. The few friends of ours who actually like cats will give my pictures a perfunctory gush of their own, scroll through a few more of them and return my phone to me.

Then there are those who don’t know me very well and don’t necessarily like cats. These people are my favorite, though I’m almost certainly not theirs. These are the people who don’t want to offend me by refusing to look at my pictures, but do so in various states of distress ranging from nervously babbling about the virtues of dogs (no offense, they add) to breaking out in hives or a cold sweat.

These reactions are understandable. When confronted with a picture of an ugly baby most people are reluctant to tell the truth. We may temporarily recoil from the sight, but we invariably recover and keep our food down long enough to find something nice to say. So why should the sight of an animal you may be allergic to or who may have scarred your childhood in unspeakable ways be any different? (As a child, my cat Joey liked to spray on the head of any human female who was dumb enough to lay in the grass when he was on the prowl.)

With the knowledge of my inherited condition and the love and understanding of my wife and friends, I know I can pet this problem. I can scratch its tummy and kiss its little nose. Then I can dress it up like Superman and carry it around the room like it’s flying.

Ddeok Ddeok Revolution!

2007-12-19T19:04:00.000+09:00

Originally published in Seoul Magazine, November 2007

Ddeok Ddeok Revolution!

By Tracey Stark

In an age of fluffy white bread, Krispy Kreme Donuts and chocolate chip cookies, Koreans found themselves looking inward in search of something flavorful, wholesome and, well, Korean for dessert. The search led straight to one of their most traditional and versatile foods: ddeok, or rice cakes.

The well-being trend, which started around 2002, brought attention back to many traditional Korean foods, such as kimchi, ddeok and dishes made with doenjang (fermented soybeans). Along with the well-being craze came entrepreneurs looking to capitalize on the trend, preserve a part of Korean culture and compete with Western-style bakeries and coffee shops.

Although among Westerners the term “rice cakes” often brings to mind the crunchy, flavorless puffed-rice crackers sold in health food stores (known in Korea as bbeong tuigi), the Korean translation of the chewy, steamed or pounded rice desert is a more accurate use of the term.

Ddeok has traditionally been a food served only on special occasions. Over the years, though, the number of occasions has grown to the point that if you had a particularly large and prosperous family, hardly a week would go by when you did not eat ddeok.

Three weeks after a baby is born, family and friends celebrate with baej seol gi, a very pure-white colored ddeok. After 100 days, they break out the chal su-su gyeong dan (ddeok made with millet and red beans), o-sek song pyeon (five-colored ddeok) and again the baek seol gi.

During the Chosun Dynasty, when a student advanced in school, the family would send in ddeok for the teacher and students.
Weddings, birthdays, funerals and the anniversary of a parent or grandparent’s death all command a special kind of ddeok. There is a special ddeok for when a person turns 61 years old, or hwe gap. This is to celebrate the return of the zodiac sign of their birth year.

But, as the sphere of Western influence spread in Korea, bakeries have usurped the ddeok bang at gan, the neighborhood ddeok maker. Birthday cakes have replaced rice cakes as the centerpiece of the celebration. While ddeok is still served, it often remains on the periphery.

That modern tradition may be changing, however, as new methods of making ddeok meld with the taste buds of today’s Koreans resulting in more flavorful and varied types of ddeok than would typically be found at family gatherings.

Taking it to the masses

On the ground floor of the Institute of Traditional Korean food in Jongno-gu is the Jilsiru Rice Cake Café, which opened in 2002. The café serves 40 types of sweet and savory ddeok, ddeok sandwiches (in which the “bread” is made from rice served with an egg salad filling), tea and more.

In front of the café are parked several tourist buses. Being located between the Jongno and Insadong neighborhoods has attracted many people to the food institute, the ddeok museum, and of course, Jilsiru Rice Cake Café.

“The café was opened to let more people know about ddeok,” said Kim So-jung, manager of the Jilsiru in Jongno. “The well-being trend increased the popularity of ddeok and by 2004 we were much busier.” Ddeok is considered a low-calorie, low-sugar dessert.

Now, as the well-being craze wanes, Kim believes the introduction of more ddeok cafes is fueling the continued interest in the traditional Korean dessert.

Kim said the Insadong location was opened to introduce rice cakes to foreigners who might be more likely to go into a Starbucks.

Carolyn Papworth, a former food and travel writer for Lonely Planet Books and The Age newspaper in Melbourne and a current book editor in Seoul, has lived in Korea for five years and loved ddeok from the first time she tried it. “I’m inclined toward the texture of ddeok. I used to eat it all the time when I first moved here.”

“But the idea of a ddeok café seems a bit too contrived,” Papworth says. “If you want to add ddeok to your existing menu at your café, fine. But a ddeok-themed café? It seems gimmicky.” She does admit, however, that a place like Jilsiru is a great way to introduce tourists to ddeok and an aspect of Korean culture.

Although head to head competition between coffee shops and rice cake cafes tends to lean more toward The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf than to Jilsiru, Kim hopes time and a sense of cultural loyalty will change that.

Sung Jin-woo, 31, an English teacher in Seoul, prefers ddeok to bread. In fact, he says, he eats it for breakfast every day. But he is not a coffee or tea drinker and rarely frequents coffee shops. Until one was pointed out to him, he had never taken notice of a ddeok café. He still has yet to eat ddeok in one.

When his freezer is empty of the rice cakes his mother sent back with him from his last trip to Busan for Chuseok, Sung said he will probably buy a whole cheesecake and not look for more ddeok. “But,” he adds, “if there is ddeok and cheesecake available at the same time, I will buy both.”

Still, Sung believes the cafes and the evolution of ddeok is a good idea. “Making ddeok is important,” Sung says earnestly. “It’s our food.”

Although she eats it less frequently, she still enjoys it on occasions such as Chuseok and the Lunar New Year. “Ddeok is about celebration,” she said.

The changing face of ddeok

In an effort to turn new generations away from cookies and back to rice cakes, Jilsiru has taken the “less is more” approach.
“Traditionally, you had to buy ddeok in large quantities and bigger chunks,” Kim said. By making it bite-sized, Kim says, ddeok becomes a more elegant dish.

Size aside, Jilsiru also focuses on making ddeok pleasing to the eye and palate by combining common and uncommon flavors with modern food styling. One rice cake resembles a California sushi roll but is actually a ddeok stuffed with kimchi. Other varieties resemble cheesecakes or bon-bons. This, she believes, is what will attract the younger generation.

One of the main problems with ddeok is its relatively short shelf life. It typically keeps its optimum flavor for only one or two days. After that, it becomes stale and spoils rather quickly. Ddeok can be frozen and eaten for months at a time, as Sung has proven, but the flavor begins to suffer. The director of the food institute Sook Ja-yoon has been working for years to address these issues through developing a new style of packaging. What she has come up with is a vacuum-packed ddeok that can be heated in the microwave when one is ready to eat it.

One of Jilsiru’s most popular items is the ddeok sandwich. In the past 20 years, it was common for children to have pizza or hamburgers for school celebrations, but they have found in recent years the sandwich has been gaining in popularity.

Jilsiru also offers “lunch boxes” with a small salad, a ddeok sandwich and several varieties of sweet rice cakes for those on the go.

Though some of the flavors available from Jilsiru, like pumpkin or berry, might seem modern, there were around 100 ingredients used to flavor ddeok over the centuries. Many of these recipes were lost and many were just not available to the average Korean because fancy, flavored ddeok was most often reserved for the wealthy.

Other ingredients, such as cocoa, coffee, cheese, or green tea fit into the “fusion” category of modern ddeok.

Jo Ji-eun, 26, a translator at the National Palace Museum of Korea, thinks the new flavors are just the normal evolution of food that happens to all cultures, but she fears cafes will change the way people think about ddeok.

“Ddeok is about sharing,” Jo said “It never used to be possible to eat ddeok alone.”

She added that she would hate to see ddeok lose it cultural relevance.

Kim, on the other hand, looks forward to the day when ddeok becomes “Korea’s donuts.” As more rice cake cafes open and more specialty shops (ddeok jibs) and department stores offer a wider variety of rice cakes in more manageable portions, she may get her wish.

The Institute of Traditional Korean Food, the Ddeok and Kitchen Utensils Museums and Jilsiru Rice Cake Café are located at 164-2 Waryong-dong, Jongno-gu, two blocks north of the Jongno 3-ga Station (line 3) exit 7 and about four blocks southeast of the Anguk Station (line 3) exit 4. The Jilsiru Rice Cake Café in Insadong is one block south of Anguk Station exit 6.

Step Aside Simon Cowell, There's a New Mogul in Town

2007-12-19T19:01:00.000+09:00

Originally published in The Groove, November 2007

A Stark View
By Tracey Stark

Step Aside Simon Cowell
There’s a new mogul in town

I am writing today to announce my retirement from writing. Simply stated, writers don’t make jack unless they are among the likes of Stephen King, Danielle Steele or Dr. Seuss. Or else they need to have a PhD after their name. I, unfortunately, am none of these people and only have a humble bachelor’s degree in communications.

So what, you may be asking this page out loud (much to the consternation of fellow subway riders), do I plan to do? In the history of the world, there have been only two surefire get-rich-quick schemes. The first one is to start your own religion.

Since I am no fan of organized religion (think the Spanish Inquisition, The Crusades and The Osmond Family), my choice is simple: I am going to form and manage a pop band.

Since the days of New Kids on the Block, these groups have proven to be cash cows for anyone who can assemble four or five diverse, yet good-looking young people and foist them on the masses of teenagers who have an estimated $10 gazillion to spend on music, strange looking clothing and 50-gallon drums of hair gel.

My plan is thus: I will hold auditions to fill the roles of chubby-but-cute guy, tough guy, best friend’s older brother, sexy guy and jokester. At the same time, in order to hedge my bets, I am going to hold auditions for sexy girl, sporty girl, best friend’s sister, #2 sexy girl and girl who has big eyes and resembles an anime character. I think that about covers it.

The next most important thing to do is to come up with a catchy, yet inane name, along the lines of Korea’s “Super Junior” or the all-girl “Wonder Girls.” Here are a few of the names I came up with by randomly opening a dictionary twice and pointing to the page: “Quirky Box,” “Significant Testes,” “Nuclear Nozzle” and “Ohio Cabbage.”

Once these issues are settled, the bands will need songs. As a writer, I can probably whip up some catchy tunes with the help of a bottle of Cuervo and a few Milli Vanilli albums. In fact, I just came up with the opening lines to Ohio Cabbage’s first single Ooh ooh, red bean love: “I been lookin’ for a boy like you, one who will be true, red bean lover…” Catchy, no?

As you can see, these things will take care of themselves. Beyond casting, naming the groups and writing the songs, the next issue to tackle will be choreography. To save time and money I will engage in the time-honored Korean tradition called “benchmarking.” This would involve downloading a bunch of music videos from current and former pop sensations and then having my kids copy the moves. Why spend money on professionals when these other groups already have?

Lastly, but most importantly, is creating buzz. My pop idols will spend several hours a day in a sweat shop-like environment talking themselves up under various pseudonyms on websites like Naver and Daum. They will cross-promote each other by talking about how “sexy Ji-won from Nuclear Nozzle is” and how “great a dancer Mi-jeong from Quirky Box is.” This will snowball until every teenager is talking about these bands, despite never having seen or heard them.

Finally, after a single is cut and palms are greased in order to get significant radio play, they will be ready for their stage debut. The spotlights of the World Cup Stadium will shine down on the stage, the fireworks will explode, the music will rise and the five members of Significant Testes will skip onto the stage dancing and lip-synching their way into the hearts and wallets of tens of thousands of Korean girls who will be waving inflatable phalluses bearing their likeness.

This formula is airtight, a “slam dunk” if you will. I’ll give it a month and if it doesn’t work out, you may very well see A Stark View in December. Until then, remember: “Significant Testes ROCK!”

“It says here that you worked at NASA, before serving as a Supreme Court Justice…”

2007-12-19T18:57:00.000+09:00

Originally published in The Groove, October 2007

A Stark View
By Tracey Stark

“It says here that you worked at NASA, before serving as a Supreme Court Justice…”

Recently, several high-profile cases have come to light in Korea involving people in important positions who apparently have lied on their resumes. It shouldn’t be shocking that someone would twist a few dates or titles to make them look better to a potential employer. Heck, even I’ve extended my dates of employment to make it look like I’ve never been jobless in my life. But what these recent cases have shown is that there is a right way and a wrong way to fake your resume.

Wrong way: Claim to have graduated from an Ivy League school with a doctorate as well as a bachelor’s and master’s degree from another school, when, in fact, you didn’t go to any university. This is what Shin Jeong-ah did, and with much success for quite a while. With those claims on her resume, she landed work as assistant professor of art history at Seoul’s Dongguk University and named a co-director of the prestigious 2008 Gwangju Biennale. (As of this writing she was being sued by both the school and the Biennale foundation.) When she returned from the U.S. last month after her supposed search for proof to support her claims, she was questioned and then checked in to a hospital for stress, as is the custom here when you are caught with your hand in the cookie jar.

Right way: If you don’t have the gumption to go to university for the long haul and get your degrees fair and square, pick a lesser school, perhaps something in Nunavut or Puerto Rico, and buy some quality forged diplomas and transcripts. These things are available on the internet. If you pick something prestigious, you will end up running in the same circles as people who actually did go to those schools. This will lead to awkward moments and unanswerable questions. You will get caught. The lesser-known the school is, the less likely people will even want to talk about it, for fear of embarrassing you (or themselves, if they, too, claim this school as their alma mater). This is your second best choice next to actually going to school.

Besides educational records, your employment history is the other category in which you can and will get stung if you get too carried away.

Wrong way: Claim you are qualified to coordinate disaster relief for an entire country, when the sum of your actual experience amounts to going to school and being a member of an international Arabian horse club. This person is, of course Michael “Heckuva job, Brownie” Brown, the former head of the U.S. government agency FEMA, whose job it was to save people from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

According to his resume he had been a university professor, an assistant city manager in charge of emergency services, and a director of a nursing home in Oklahoma. As it turns out, Brownie was in fact a student at the university, an intern for the city manager, and a lawyer of whom his boss said “he was not serious and somewhat shallow." Now, had the flooding from Hurricane Katrina been a bit more shallow, and the FEMA response a bit better, then perhaps the stuffing in Brownie’s resume may have stayed intact. Still, had he really done a “heckuva job,” the fame he might have gained as a “hero” would have outed him in the end.

Right way: If the truth about your employment history includes something like “Loading dock worker at The Electronics Depot” then consider it completely okay to change your title to “Logistics Supervisor.” Or, if you were a prep cook at a fast food restaurant, feel free to rewrite it to read “Sous Chef, Burger Barn.” Neither of these lies will raise an eyebrow, but both will add to your overall ‘hire me!’ allure as a potential checkout clerk.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my duties as Chief Domestic Engineer. (My wife gets a bit upset when she comes home to find the dishes unwashed and the cats’ litter box full.)

Does Tracey Have a Boo-boo?

2007-12-19T18:52:00.000+09:00

Originally published in The Groove, September 2007

A Stark View
By Tracey Stark

Does Tracey have a boo-boo?

Please bear with me this month. I’d like to share an experience of mine regarding hospitals in Korea. Don’t worry though, I’m in fine health as of this writing.

Almost two years ago I injured my hand at a bar in Shinchon doing something not important enough to mention. I made it to a hospital that could do with a wrecking ball and was x-rayed. The bone poking through my skin led me to suspect I had broken something, so I wasn’t startled in the least when the doctor said, “compound fracture.” Even when he said “you need surgery” there was nothing to do but shake my head and mutter a curse for my stupidity.

Within a few hours I walked into surgery in a pair of shower shoes and climbed up onto the operating table. The surgery was successful, as was the surprise surgery the following day – another broken bone was apparent in follow-up x-rays.

While I lay in bed recovering, I wondered when I would be discharged. After all, I had only broken my hand. It’s not like I had open heart surgery.

And so began my painful endeavor of leaving a Korean hospital against doctor’s wishes.

As the nurse changed my IV bag and injected some additional meds into me, I asked her if I could go home the next day. She laughed and moved on to the next patient. (Perhaps I should have asked in Korean.)

“To prevent infection, is necessary for you stay two weeks,” the doctor told me during one of his infrequent trips to the broken hand room. (Next door to the broken leg room.)

Needless to say I balked. “I’ll be fine, doc. Just give me a prescription for antibiotics and I’ll clean the wound every day.” I thought that would clear things up. He would understand that I could take care of myself and that I knew how to prevent an infection. I would even save him and his nurses some time and supplies. But his answer was no. He explained that I needed intravenous antibiotics for the next 10 days. Pills, he said, were out of the question.

There was no way I was going to lie back and watch lame variety shows for two weeks, so I called in a friend to help me. A Korean, he is rather imposing in stature and good looking enough to command instant attention and respect. After a half hour arguing with first the nurse and then the doctor, he persuaded them to process me, issue me a prescription for pills, and send me on my way. (They tsk-tsked non stop.)

I understand the importance of caution and I do enjoy a bit of pampering from time to time. But there is a difference between giving someone a bowl of chicken soup and treating them like Terry Schiavo.

I believe my case is far from an isolated one, however. About a week ago, my wife had some bruising, swelling and pain in her wrist after an unfortunate run-in with a door. Fearing a minor fracture, she stopped in at an orthopedic clinic and was examined by a surgeon, x-rayed, and splinted up. She was told it was a sprain and that she should keep her wrist wrapped for two weeks. She was full of praise for their care and diligence and marveled at how little the whole ordeal cost her compared to Australia. That night she unwrapped her arm for a shower and found that the swelling was gone and that it no longer hurt so much. As a precaution, though, she wore the splint to bed. In the morning she tossed it in the bin along with the two days’ worth of mystery pills he had prescribed.

I’m not trying to sound ungrateful for the high-quality and low-cost medical treatment I’ve received. While a child may need his boo-boo kissed and an extra bowl of ice cream, most adults can’t take two weeks off to tend to an ingrown toenail.

But who am I to complain? Back home in America I’d have to be George Bush in a coma to get this kind of treatment.

Sol Hospital, Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinic: Giving injured athletes a sporting chance

2007-12-19T18:47:00.000+09:00

Originally published in Seoul Magazine, August 2007

Giving injured athletes a sporting chance
By Tracey Stark

From the outside, this unassuming eight-story building in the southern part of Seoul gives the impression of just another health clinic. But step into the waiting room and you will be greeted by a wall covered with a dozen pictures of Dr. Na Young-moo in action, some showing him tending to the Korean National Soccer Team during the 2002 World Cup.

Another noticeable difference from other hospitals is that you won’t hear anyone coughing, because the Sol Hospital, Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinic specializes in physical and mental rehabilitation for athletes and regular citizens alike who have suffered an injury or were born with a disability.

While serving as the team doctor for the Korean National Soccer Team in 2002 Dr. Na, at the time a physical rehabilitation specialist at Yonsei Severance Hospital, had an epiphany. Coach Gus Hiddink flew in a team of sports medicine specialists for the games. Up until that time, Dr. Na says, “There was no such thing as ‘sports medicine’ in Korea.” Athletes here relied on a blend of massage therapy, physical training and traditional Korean and Chinese medicine and techniques. He learned a lot from the western doctors and immediately set out to qualify as a sports medicine specialist.

Dr. Na was determined to combine the two areas of medicine and in June 2003 he opened Korea’s first clinic specializing in sports medicine.

A well-published doctor and the vice chairman of the medical committee for the Korean Football Association, Dr. Na is known throughout Korea’s athletic community. Professional athletes who hurt themselves while training or competing will come from as far away as Jeju to get what they consider the best sports medicine treatment in Korea.

More than 100 patients come through the doors each day for a variety of problems. Many of the hospital’s 3,000 regular patients are athletes with injuries, but a large portion of them come for frequent rehabilitation treatments to help them recover from serious accidents or the effects of aging, which have left them injured or disabled.

Each floor offers different services. On one floor is a room used for occupational therapy to help people regain at least some semblance of a normal life by re-teaching them basic tasks necessary to get through each day. In another room there are physical therapists working with patients with every level of injury and disability on various platforms and machines. And in yet another room, therapists use state-of-the-art techniques and equipment for pain control and mobility.

On a separate floor are athletes of different ages working out with the assistance of physical trainers in a gym on weight machines, treadmills and stationary bikes. One young man is jumping one-footed from a trampoline to a bench and back again. Not an easy feat, but an exercise said to greatly improve his balance as a soccer player.

Across the hall are more physical trainers working with young athletes – most in their teens – doing more traditional exercises for strength and flexibility. One boy does sit-ups holding a heavy ball over his head and places it between his knees with his feet off the floor. A tall girl sits up straight in a stool and repeatedly stretches a length of rubber cord back, using only her triceps. She is a volleyball player strengthening her spiking and serving arm. In all, the room has at least 10 young athletes, each with a clipboard nearby with a “prescription” of exercises to conquer any weaknesses they may have in relation to their sport.

“Korean culture is go, go, go,” says Young Lae-nah, the head of public relations for the hospital. “Parents want their children to be great athletes, so they send them here for training and assessment. Some of them come six days a week for six hours a day.” Although these children may not be injured, they come to Sol Hospital to get better.

The facility boasts 70 beds for overnight stays, lab facilities and high-tech scanning equipment such as a CT scanner and a digital infrared thermal imaging (DITI) machine. The hospital is staffed by four doctors, 25 certified physical therapists, a chiropractor, eight personal trainers and a nutrition team. These professionals are assisted by a constantly moving hive of nurses, assistants and receptionists, keeping the hospital running smoothly.

Dr. Na’s plans for the future include a school for sports medicine in Korea, but for now his clinic in Banghwa 2-dong, Gangseo-gu, southern Seoul keeps him and his team busy learning and applying the latest techniques in sports medicine and rehabilitation therapy.

Them's the Rules

2007-12-19T18:43:00.000+09:00

Originally published in The Groove
August 2007

A Stark View
By Tracey Stark

Them’s the rules

Since it’s already more than midway through 2007, I thought it was about time to do my good deed, my selfless act, if you will, for the decade. I figure I’ve lived in the Haebangchan neighborhood for almost a year, so I should give something back.

My project: to clean up a festering pile of trash down the street from my house that had been there for about three months. Now, some people might say, “Why hadn’t the trash collectors cleaned it up yet?” The answer is: because there is a right way and a wrong way to dispose of your rubbish in Seoul. And this was definitely the wrong way.

You see, in Korea there are rules for almost everything you do. Some are actually laws, like the one requiring you to buy special bags for your trash and to sort recyclables and food rubbish as well. And then there are customs, such as the one where women over 50 years old must get a perm and dye their hair. These customs strengthen over time. Ask an ajumma today why she gets a perm and she may not know the answer, but she will assure you that if she doesn’t it will likely result in her death by stoning. When given the choice, in fact (and I have nothing with which to back this assertion), more Koreans will choose customs over laws in almost any circumstance.

For example, while hiking a few summers ago at Soraksan my friends and I stopped to eat our bagged lunches partway up the trail. Not knowing any better, we packed mostly sandwiches and fruit. A large group of locals walked by us very slowly and a murmur began to pass among the hikers. I asked a friend who spoke better Korean than I do what we had done.

“It’s what we didn’t do that has them bothered,” he replied.

“What did we miss?” I pleaded, really worried by this point that a lynch mob was being formed just around the next bend.

“We didn’t pack kimbap,” he said gravely, “and we aren’t wearing black or red clothes.”

Needless to say, we turned back and headed for the car.

On another occasion, I went to a public swimming pool with a few Korean friends. When we got there, they donned swimming caps and jumped in. This is a requirement at pools to prevent great clusters of hair from bunching up and dragging some small child under to his or her death. But I shave my head clean, so I jumped in without a swim cap. Almost immediately a lifeguard summoned me out of the pool and ordered me to put on one of these rubber yarmulkes. I balked and pointed at my bald head, but he wouldn’t budge. “Everyone must wear one,” he said. There was no getting around it. On went the cabesa condom.

But my faux pas don’t stop there.

One morning last autumn I was riding the bus through one of the Namsan tunnels. It was a cool day and I was heading to work, enjoying the morning breeze through my window, which was open about an inch or two. About 100 meters into the tunnel the man behind me literally climbed over me and slammed my window shut. He had a look on his face that said, “You idiot! We could’ve all died from breathing tunnel air!” It’s like that silly game my sister and I played as children during long trips where we would hold our breath when passing a cemetery or lift our feet when crossing railroad tracks. (Well, almost the same except these are adults here.)

After five years, though, I think I’m getting the hang of it, which is why I decided to help someone out who obviously didn’t know any better.

So I bought the biggest trash bag available and headed for the flyblown pile of trash down the street for a little karmic workout. As I separated the tennis shoes from the broken beer bottles an old woman with a bulletproof perm, plaid pants and a floral shirt walked up, stopped for a minute, pointed at me and muttered something about doing outdoor work without wearing white cotton gloves and a vest. Then she walked away shaking her head in disgust.

(I hope she doesn’t report me, because I can’t remember if that one is a custom or a law.)

Modern dentistry with a traditional touch

2007-12-19T18:37:00.000+09:00

Originally published in Seoul Magazine, July 2007
By Tracey Stark

If you fear the infrequent trip to the dentist because of the inhospitable and overly-sterile environment associated with most dentists’ offices, e-Trust Dental Clinic in Gahoe-dong’s Bukchon neighborhood may be more to your liking. Built in a hanok house – a style of Korean architecture featuring a “madang,” or central courtyard and surrounded by several rooms with doors which all open out – this clinic offers patients a cultural experience as well as state-of-the-art dental care.

When entering e-Trust, there are none of the usual dentist-office smells or harsh lights. The most common materials here are wood and paper, not stainless steel and plastic. Instead of bright fluorescent lights, the place has a soft, natural glow from the glass-roofed madang, which serves as one of two waiting rooms. Soft green chairs sit amid pebbles and stepping stones instead of the usual faux-leather sofas pressed up against stark white walls and darkly carpeted floors.

Through an adjacent waiting room and across an open garden courtyard is a café and art gallery, which can be reached from the street as well, where patients can begin or end their visit with a cup of tea and check out the newest pieces of modern art on display.

For patients at e-Trust, it’s like stepping back in time 80 years, yet receiving the most modern care available.

“It’s good for the patients, psychologically,” says office manager Kim Young-ae. “Especially children,” she adds. “Children normally fear the dentist. But here, it’s like a trip to their grandparents’ house. They run around and play.”

The clinic offers all dental services – cleaning, whitening, checkups, fillings, surgery, implants, orthodontics, and even Botox.

Four dentists share the practice and work here several days each week, while practicing at other clinics the rest of the week in places like Gangnam and Yeouido. The founder of e-Trust Dental Clinic, Kim Yong-hwan, was a lawmaker in The Korean National Assembly with the Democratic Party and served as the Minister of Science and Technology under Kim Dae-jung. After leaving politics, he spent some time in Europe and was inspired by their use of older, traditional architecture for non-traditional uses. Thus, he chose the hanok style, favored by the wealthy in the early part of the last century, for his clinic.

There are six dental stations in the rooms surrounding the madang, all state-of-the-art equipment attached to hardwood floors and enclosed by traditional wood and paper doors. On a warm day, you might find all the doors open and a breeze blowing in from the garden courtyard connecting the dental clinic to the café/art gallery.

One room, which is used primarily for implants, has two short doors which open to the garden and allow the patient to let his mind wander while probing fingers and metal tools do their work. This room, Kim Young-ae says, would be the “sarangbang,” a sort of meeting place for men in a hanok, were this used as a house instead of a clinic.

Across from the primary waiting room, which is furnished with a low table, cushions and a wood floor, which is said to be several hundred years old, is former-minister Kim’s office. Like all of the other dental stations, his is equipped with an identical chair and lighting setup, but unlike the others, his walls are adorned with photos from his previous life in politics – framed portraits of himself with the likes of Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking and Mohammed ElBaradei, to name just a few. He specializes in crowns and implants.

While it may seem an unsettling thought to undergo a dental procedure with all of the doors open and the central waiting room busy with the comings and goings of patients and staff, the sight above your chair of the century-old wood on the vaulted ceiling, the smell of fresh air blowing in from the garden, and maybe even the sound of rain tapping out a rhythm on the glass-roofed madang may put you at ease.

In the search for a balance between east and west, tradition and modernity, Kim Young-hwan may have found the formula in his e-Trust Dental Clinic.

Checkups and X-rays: 20,000 won
Cleaning/Scraping: 50,000 won
Whitening: 300,000 won
Crown: 350,000 won
Botox: 600,000 won
Implants: 2,000,000 won

To get to Bukchon e-Trust Dental Clinic, leave exit 2 of Anguk Station, line 3, and head north in the direction of the Constitutional Court. Continue on from the court until you pass Kahoi Catholic Church. The dentistry is just past there, across from Gyeongnam Villa. For more information call the clinic at (02) 764-7528 or visit its website (www.dentaltrust.co.kr).

The Doppelganger Syndrome In Korea

2007-12-19T18:32:00.000+09:00

The Stark View
From The Groove Magazine,
July 2007,
Seoul, Korea

The Doppleganger Syndrome in Korea

By Tracey Stark

“Do you know who you look like?” a bartender asked me one night a few years back. I thought about it, and my poor self image conjured up a picture of Uncle Fester with a light bulb in his mouth or some other bald-headed goon.

She surprised me by saying she thought I was the spitting image of Andre Agassi, one of tennis’ greats and, although bald, far from a goon. A short time later a much older Korean woman told me I reminded her of Yul Brynner, a bald-yet-ruggedly-handsome actor from a bygone era.

My case is far from an isolated one, I must add. Almost every foreigner in Korea is compared to some famous white, black or Hispanic person. (A short, chubby black guy I know used to be told he looked like Denzel Washington.)

A friend of mine, let’s call him Dave since that’s his name, came to Korea six years ago. With darker hair and a younger face, he was compared favorably to Mel Gibson and even Rowan Atkinson – a combination that not even my fertile imagination can conceive. Now, with his hair speckled with gray, this truly nice, non-war mongering type of guy is compared to – wait for it – George W. Bush. (I don’t see the resemblance, nor do I want to see it.)

Then there was the case of the young Canadian woman who came to Korea to teach English at a hagwon. She was tall and thin with short brown hair and freckles. Cute, really. One of her Korean colleagues excitedly approached her a few days after she started her job and, barely able to contain herself, told her, “You look like a famous British pop singer!”

As you can imagine, names like Dido or Posh Spice or even Madonna (she’s British now, right?) came to mind as she prepared for, no doubt, a great bit of flattery.

“Who?” she asked, smiling widely and perhaps even blushing a bit.

“Sting!” he co-worker replied, beaming. Needless to say, Sting’s female doppelganger was a bit deflated. But it was her first introduction into the average Korean’s appreciation of Western popular culture.

If the roles were reversed, my knowledge of famous Asians would leave me telling everyone that they looked just like Jackie Chan or “a young Mr. Miagi” from The Karate Kid.

My wife has been compared to Sigourney Weaver. Mind you, this is not an insult, but considering my wife is about 5 foot 2 and Ms. Weaver is a bit over 6 feet tall, it is a bit of a stretch. Her favorite, however, is Audrey Hepburn.

But Koreans aren’t always that far off the mark. I personally know the spitting images of Johnny Cash, Jesus Christ, Jude Law and Alec Baldwin.

But after hearing Scottish Dave’s tale of woe, going from favoring Mel Gibson (and Mr. Bean) to George W. Bush, I wondered how far from Andre Agassi and Yul Brynner the next few years would take me.

Dr. Evil or Minnie Me? A white Samuel L. Jackson? Or Marlin Brando as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now? The horror!

I Survived Fan Death

2007-08-19T19:41:00.000+09:00

The rainy season has come to an end and the gochu peppers are visible in front of almost every home around here, but don’t let this benign visage fool you. There is still evil lurking in the shadows, in the dark of night, plugged into a wall during these dog days of summer.

That’s right, I’m talking about fan death and my own personal near miss.

As we all know, fan death occurs when a person (usually drunk, older, and with a pre-existing heart condition) falls asleep with the fan on and the windows and doors shut. What happens next, according to Dr. Yeon Dong-su, dean of Kwandong University's medical school, the current of air from an electric fan in an enclosed room will lower your core body temperature below 35 degrees celsius and you will then swiftly die from hypothermia.

The other scientifically proven belief is that a simple electric fan – nothing high-tech, mind you – will create a vortex (not really sure what that is, but it sounds scary) and suck the oxygen out of the air and send it to a parallel universe where oxygen is deadly, thus killing not only you, but your parallel-universe you. You bastard!

I had previously believed that this idea was crazy. How can your body temperature drop when the fan’s motor is actually creating heat? How can oxygen actually disappear? From what I learned in science class, matter can’t disappear. But this urban legend shouldn’t be ignored, after what happened to me.

Despite the media reports about several deaths already this summer attributable to deadly fans, and the fact that my own fan has a warning on it that says (in Korean) “Don’t aim at your face and for God’s sake don’t EVER close the windows or doors!”, I came home from the pub heavily intoxicated, closed my door, turned on the fan and the mosquito griller and went to sleep.

I had strange dreams that night. I heard what sounded like growling. I flipped on the light and looked around. Either I was hallucinating or the fan was glowing bright orange and hovering off the floor. It had a menacing grin and it appeared that all the air in the room was being sucked into it. My skin was turning blue and I could see my own breath. It felt like a meat locker in there. I only had seconds to spare and had to think fast. The fan was blocking the door, so I leapt for the window and flung it open with a screech of metal. Like holding a cross to Dracula or shooting a werewolf with a silver bullet, the fan recoiled in horror and dropped back to the floor.

The growling ceased and the room went dark again. Only the hum of a simple electric fan was audible above sounds of cars and motorbikes and spitting out on the street.

Although this story is complete and utter bullshit, it shows what fear many Koreans have of fan death. When I ask some of my Korean friends what they think, they kinda shrug and say, “I don’t take any chances. I sleep with the window open.” When I try to explain the flawed science behind it and the fact that most fan deaths turn out to be heart attacks or someone choking on their own vomit, they still say, “I still must be careful. The Korean physiology is different from the western body.”

So my last resort is to encourage the sheep to continue to fear their fans and let them swelter in a pool of their own sweat and get devoured by mosquitoes, while I sleep like a baby with the air con and fan on, the doors and windows shut, and my mind at ease.

I got your vortex right here.

Maximus T. Ursus

2007-07-27T21:40:00.000+09:00

He has a bit of the devil in him and there is nothing behind his eyes. But I love him anyway.

A large retailer in Korea can't even get it right...

2007-07-24T20:52:00.000+09:00

They try and try, but they just can't seem to get the most basic things right when they "adapt" their signs to English. But this photo was taken in Chuncheon, which is a bit outside the larger metropolitan areas where we KNOW all business owners take pride and care when making signs in English.

But maybe these are the hours for foreigners? It really wouldn't surprise me in a country that treats all foreigners like criminals when one of "us" commits a crime. But there are only about 100,000 of us, so it's hard to tell us apart. O.K. I got off the point of the bad editing and use of English here and started getting political. Sorry. This was meant for a laugh. Ha-fucking-ha.

(Kim Jong-neil-- I hope this will tide you over until tomorrow)

Letting the days go by…

2007-06-10T14:14:00.000+09:00

Originally published in The Groove, June 2007
by Tracey Stark

What follows is not my attempt at being deep or philosophical, but more an expression of my frustration with getting older.

I’m not frustrated because I’m getting a few wrinkles, a gut I can’t seem to lose, worsening vision or am suffering severe hair loss. Those can all be corrected through various medical procedures, should I so choose. No, what I’m frustrated with is time.

More specifically, the increasing pace of time as I get older.

When I was a child, and I suspect most of us felt this way, a week went on forever, summer vacation was an eternity and it seemed like Christmas would never come. A few years later, the school week went faster because of a heavier workload, summer vacations seemed shorter because of a job, and Christmas always came out of nowhere, because I already knew that Santa Claus was dead and I no longer cared.

Enter college. The school week became mostly irrelevant, summer vacation was an opportunity to earn some extra credits, and Christmas meant it was time to go home and deal with the family for a week. By this time, things had already started picking up pace. There was more to concern myself with and a greater sense of urgency to get things done.

At 8 years old, the only times I felt a sense of urgency was when I had to walk past the Ryan’s house. They had a German Shepard with a mouthful of teeth, a taste for moist, pink, human flesh and the ability to leap fences. I urgently needed to know the quickest escape route and the nearest climbable tree.

And now it’s almost halfway through 2007, I recently suffered another birthday and I can scarcely tell you where the first five months have gone. Hell, the last five years in and out of Korea have been a blur. My family has nearly forgotten what I look like because it’s been so long since I’ve been home, and I don’t feel like I have as much to show for my time as I did when I was younger.

It’s like that Talking Heads song, Once in a Lifetime, where David Byrne sings,
“And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack. And you may find yourself in another part of the world. And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile. And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife. And you may ask yourself, ‘Well...How did I get here?”

How did I get here? It feels like it’s been only five years since I was camping in the Florida Keys with some friends. But that was in 1990. It feels like it was only last year when I was running around Seoul for the first time, marveling at the sights and sounds of Korea. But that was in 2002. And it feels like only last month when I met the woman I eventually married. But that was in 2005.

It’s unfair if you consider that you spend all of your early years filling your time learning how to do things like reading, riding a bike, picking scabs, and burning ants on the sidewalk using a magnifying glass. Then as you get older, you don’t have as much time to do these things anymore.

Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t time go slower as you get older? Then you would have more time to appreciate all the good things in life, more time to stop and smell the roses and pick the scabs.

But, I suppose, it would leave you with way too much time to develop a sense of ethics and morals and wonder what it’s really like to pop under a magnifying glass.

So maybe there is some logic to it in the end. But not much.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some Christmas shopping to do before I retire.

The Weller Side of Life

2007-05-15T14:04:00.000+09:00

Originally published in The Groove, May 2007
by Tracey Stark

Every so often a new “healthy living” trend will come along and sweep people up in a frenzy. While most of these fads die a rather rapid death, some manage to stick around because of the hard work of marketing geniuses.

Think of all those useless contraptions sold on late-night television designed to give you the “ultimate workout.” Most households have one or two of these things in a closet somewhere or perhaps being used to prop open a door.

Oxygen bars popped up in cities all over the world a few years back. Then, when people realized that they were already surrounded by oxygen, they stopped paying $20 to sit in a room designed for breathing.

The same can be said for diets. Low-carb, no-carb, high-fat, all-fruit, all-popcorn, all-bacon, no-taste, the list goes on. And as with every other trend, they have come and gone, replaced by the next big thing.

Then, in 2003, a private economic think tank in Korea advised companies that the new “well-being” trend was going to be big. It was even chosen as the management keyword for 2004.
In the beginning, this trend seemed to be based on the consumer’s best interests. Foods with all-natural ingredients were being marketed more. New healthy drinks and negative-ion air purifiers popped up everywhere.

But then, somewhere along the way, something went terribly wrong. Products began appearing, seemingly out of nowhere, touting their “well-beingness” when the relationship was tenuous at best.

I first noticed it more than a year ago when a new restaurant was going up in my neighborhood. The sign in front of the construction site said the diner was going to be called, simply, “Well Being.” Hopeful that it would be a vegetarian restaurant where I could take my then-girlfriend (now wife), I was anxious for its opening.

Within a month the restaurant opened and I excitedly ran up to the window to read the menu. The main dish at this shop was samgyeopsal (basically chunks of pork that are about half meat and half fat). Plastered on some of the walls inside were posters promoting soju, Korea’s favorite liquor. To say I was confused is a bit of an understatement.

As time went on, more examples of this well-being bizarro world appeared. Newspaper were writing stories and promoting goods like well-being refrigerators, well-being cell phones and even well being sneakers for old people. We used to call these shoes “orthopedic.” But I guess you can’t expect to keep pace wearing a pair of orthopedic shoes.

It all came to a head for me last year when the Doosan beverage company introduced a well-being soju. It contains 20 percent alcohol, versus the normal 25 percent alcohol content. By promoting booze as “well being”, they more than doubled their market share. It started to make sense to me. Apparently, it’s all about the money.

And it gets better. An editorial in a local English language newspaper written by a foreigner living in Seoul sounded frighteningly like ad copy for a cigarette company. In it, the author describes her discovery of a new low-tar version of her favorite smokes, designed, she said, in the spirit of the well-being trend with the health of the consumer in mind.

“It being winter, and feeling especially "fresh" from my Pilates workout and two-hour visit to the local sauna, I decided to try the menthol variety…” she writes. Her blather about this particular brand of cancer stick continues: "…it took amazingly little time to adjust, and after several weeks, I’m already feeling the benefits of smoking a lighter cigarette, not just physically but mentally as well, for having taken yet another step towards a better, brighter me."

Still, my favorite is of a business owned by a former friend of my wife. He decided it would make sense to call his new enterprise “Well Being Concrete Co.”

But, as I’ve pointed out already, all good things must come to an end. So, in order to promote a smooth transition to the next commercially-viable trend, I am going to suggest a replacement for the “well-being” fad: “Psychiatry.”

Think of the possibilities.

Chiro with a twist

2007-05-14T14:21:00.000+09:00

Originally published in Seoul magazine, May 2007
By Tracey Stark

The mere mention of a chiropractor causes some people to cringe from remembered stories they’ve heard about a “friend of a friend” who had to go once a week for the rest of his life to get his neck and back cracked and crunched all for the sake of “proper alignment.” For this guy, a week missed meant a week of agony.

But Dr. Phillip Yoo (or Dr. Phil to his patients), the founder of the ChiroPilates method, is quick to dispel that myth of dependence on chiropractic treatment.

“Some chiropractors focus on pain care, they don’t treat the cause of the pain,” Yoo says. “If I wanted to have people just come in week after week, why would I try to teach them how to prevent the pain and take care of themselves?”

That’s where ChiroPilates comes into play. It’s a combination of chiropractic therapy and Pilates, one of the most popular fitness methods in the United States, which incorporates flexibility training, strength training of the core muscles (the muscles around the midsection) and correction of the posture. One of the main advantages of Pilates is that it can be practiced with very little equipment and, like yoga, has many basic exercises requiring only a mat.

While Yoo believes Pilates is a good system on its own, he notes that many people suffer injuries while practicing Pilates because a lot of instructors don’t understand the human anatomy.

“It’s not like aerobics. Pilates is about technique and body awareness,” Yoo says, which is why he limits his class size.

His Itaewon, Seoul sports medicine clinic has room for about six ChiroPilates students at a time and also offers therapeutic massage, fitness training and, of course, chiropractic care.

He’s even coined a phrase to describe the purpose of ChiroPilates: “To strengthen and flexen.” This, he says, means to workout in order to increase a healthy range of motion for your joints and spine and lengthen core muscles to assist in maintaining a normal posture.

“Only about 20 percent of people have good posture and exercise regularly, while 80 percent suffer from some kind of musculoskeletal disorder or pain.”

The American-born doctor, who is also a certified personal trainer and certified meridian therapy acupuncturist, believes that many conditions can benefit from chiropractic care.

He gives headaches as an example.

“A headache isn’t a brain ache. The brain itself can’t feel pain,” Yoo says. “But it’s the pain-sensitive structures in the skull, such as the web of nerves emanating from the back of the skull and the first few vertebrae of the neck which control things like sinus function and eyesight. When these vertebrae are out of alignment, the nerves are often squeezed, pulled, compressed or otherwise irritated, causing headaches.”

And so it goes down the rest of the spine. When the spine is out of line, things like digestion or strength can be affected. The main purposes of the nerves are to sense pain, temperature and touch, control motor function and reflexes and control organ function.

“Taking an aspirin may help relieve the pain temporarily, but it won’t fix the structural problem and the pain will return,” he says.

According to Yoo, the Chinese belief in chi translates in chiropractic medicine as “the body’s innate ability to heal itself.” It’s about the flow of energy which, Yoo says, is really the messages being sent by the brain via the nerves to the rest of the body. Block the flow of these messages through a misaligned spine and you effectively block your body’s ability to self-heal.

When spring returns, many people hit the trail or the court and find themselves in agony the next day. This is because they’ve failed to maintain a higher level of fitness over the winter months and returned to their warm-weather pursuits without the proper preparation. As a result, Yoo says, spring is his busiest time of year.

“People are afraid of chiropractic therapy because they want a quick fix,” Yoo explains. “But if you want to stay in shape do you go to the gym only one time?” he asks.

After a while, Yoo insists, his clients learn how to prevent their pain and maintain a proper posture. “Follow-up visits are really just for a tune-up.”

His commitment to removing the barrier between himself and his patients can be seen in his insistence on being called “Dr. Phil” and through developing and offering his ChiroPilates method. This leads to better communication and trust, which leads to real healing.

“The word doctor doesn’t mean God, it means teacher,” Yoo says. “A lot of doctors forget that."

Waiting to Inhale

2007-04-25T13:48:00.000+09:00

Originally published in The Groove, April 2007

by Tracey Stark

A guy I know, let’s call him ‘Don,’ came to Korea five years ago. It never occurred to me to ask him why he left the States, thinking he would give me one of the three basic reasons people most often give for coming to Korea: “I wanted to try something different/experience a different culture,” “I needed a job,” “I was running from the law/bad relationship.”

And then a week ago I saw Don puffing away on a cigarette, as he is known to do, so I sat down at the bar next to him for a beer and a chat.

“So Don, why the faraway look?”

“Just thinking about home,” he replied then exhaled a lungful of smoke at his reflection in the mirror across from us.

I waited for more. I learned as a reporter that you will often get more information from not asking questions than you will from asking them.

Within a few seconds he gave in, sighed, and said, “I was remembering the times when I could do this back home.”

“Do what? Drink a beer in a bar?”

“No,” he said, “have a smoke in a bar.”

I nodded silently. I don’t smoke and don’t have much sympathy for displaced smokers who find themselves huddled out in the cold because the law has turned against them. This is the case all over North America, Europe, Australia and now Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand, where smokers must leave restaurants and bars to get their fix.

“So is that what brought you to Korea? So you could smoke in a bar?” I joked.

“Yeah,” he said earnestly. “That, and the price. I was paying about four bucks a pack.”

Don was completely and utterly serious. He had left California in 2001 because he felt forced out. The cost to manufacturers in the U.S. had risen, partly because of litigation, to the point where one pack costs as much to make today as it sold for in 1997. Add in the taxes on cigarettes, which are partly used to fund anti-smoking campaigns, and smokers in the States are paying twice as much now as they were 10 years ago.

I was dumbfounded. I had heard of a few people coming to Korea to get away from drugs and the bad crowd they were hanging with, but for cheap cigarettes and the freedom to smoke next to children at the internet cafe? This was new. It took a minute to digest, and while I sat there thinking Don lit another.

I leaned closer toward him and in a whisper asked, “Are there more of you people?”

He smiled. “You have no idea how many of us there are,” he said, then leaned back to give me a clear view down the bar.

I saw a sea of blue-gray smoke and contented looking foreigners. Some of them were just watching their cigarettes burn down to the filters, because they could. One man was staring at the red glow on the end of his Marlboro and moving his lips, as if in prayer. But they were all smoking. It was surreal, like a scene in a Fellini film, or worse, an R.E.M. video.

“You do understand that smoking is bad for you, and since I’m sitting next to you, bad for me too?”

He nodded sagely. “It’s a choice we’re both making right now. Not just me. You too.”

We sat in silence for another few minutes, sipping our beers, watching our reflections and listening to an old song by Mental as Anything. It was me who finally broke the silence.

“You know, Korea will eventually become enlightened on this issue and ban smoking in bars and restaurants.”

“Look around you, man,” Don said, nodding at all the smokers. “Korea is enlightened.”

Then he chuckled and added with a shrug, “Anyway, if it does happen, there’s always China.”

An auspicious year for resolutions and barbecue

2007-03-30T13:30:00.000+09:00

Orignially published in The Groove, March 2007
By Tracey Stark

Every year in late December I think long and hard about the 12 months gone by and decide in what ways I can better myself. Then, on January 1 I begin my concerted effort to apply my New Year’s Resolutions. As soon as the hangover wears off, of course.

Within a month, many of my resolutions have fallen by the wayside. Take this year for example. On my very long list is “No.27: Write the great American novel.” As you can imagine, writing this monthly column takes up all of my extra time, making this a bit of a lofty goal. So I can scratch that one off. Then there’s “No. 42: No more beer.” Again, I don’t know what I was thinking.

Anyway, the point I’m getting to is that by living in Korea you get a second chance at the yearly self-improvement game: Lunar New Year. And this year is not just any year, it’s the Year of the Pig. Or, depending on which media outlet you believe, “The Year of the Golden Spicy Barbecued Pig with a side of Baked Beans.”

This year is auspicious in that the Golden Pig only comes along once every 600 years (or 60 years, depending on who you ask) and is believed to bring wealth to all those who are born in this year. That obviously rules out you and me, but if you know a newborn, this may be the year to let the little booger eater pick your lottery numbers for you.

As it’s already March, we’re a few weeks into the new new year, but ending procrastination was not on my old list, nor will it be on my new list. You heard me right, my new list. I suspect that a majority of you have also failed miserably in your resolutions, so follow my lead and start over.

What follows are some examples from my original list and how they have been altered to suit this auspicious year.

Original resolution: “No more beer.”
New resolution: “No more cheap beer.” (There’s no sense in being miserable for a year.)

Original resolution: “Go to the gym every day.”
New resolution: “No more cheap beer.” (See what I did there? I combined two seemingly unrelated resolutions into one, thereby cutting down on the chances for failure.)

Original resolution: “Learn Korean.”
New resolution: “Get a bilingual best friend.” (Korean is a really hard language. I’m serious.)

Original resolution: “Pay off all debts.”
New resolution: “Eat more noodles.” (This allows me to keep my expenses down and drink more expensive beer.)

With just a little thought this can be the first year you have made and kept your resolutions. The Year of the Pig is a year meant for luxury and excess, not a year for privations and hardship. Don’t put yourself in the position I did at the end of December, Year of the Dog, when I thought more about what I had to sacrifice in the year ahead to better myself than what I could do better to make 2007 great.

Hwighting! An Ode to Konglish

2007-02-22T11:15:00.000+09:00

A Stark View

Hwighting! An Ode to Konglish

By Tracey Stark

Originally published in The Groove magazine, Seoul, Korea, February 2007

“More than 350 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to,” Bill Bryson writes in his book The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way.

In Korea, English is a multi-million dollar a year industry. But what happens when you mix the Korean language’s syntax with a limited English vocabulary?

Answer: You end up with a pidgin known locally as Konglish.

The rise in Konglish has resulted in the creation of English-based phrases used in a uniquely Korean way. Terms like “level-up” instead of upgrade, “hwighting” instead of go for it, and referring to a person as a “mania” of something instead of the something being the mania (or the person being a maniac for that matter). The list goes on and new phrases arise all the time.

A great example of Konglish in its written form can be found at the western entrance to Itaewon (the side coming from the army base), on the left hand side, near the big map of the neighborhood. Here is just the first sentence of it:

“As for Itaewon dong that the Han River is located at south and the Mt. Nam is located at north, Dong name originated from the fact that the post-town in which is Itaewon existed at Chosun era (14C).”

This example perhaps best illustrates how translations can go terribly wrong. If you haven’t seen this sign, I strongly suggest you make a pilgrimage to it the next time you are in Itaewon. When read aloud by a mildly inebriated native English speaker, it has a strong intoxicating effect, leaving the reader befuddled and perhaps slightly drunker.

Restaurants and other businesses sometimes seem to advertise their wares in Konglish/English to appear more sophisticated to non-English speakers. Bars with signs that read “Live and Hof” signify that they are more international in nature than a pojangmacha, because they are using both English and German to advertise their offerings. I have yet to figure out what they mean by “Live.”

Or else they translate their menus directly into English using the first word on offer in their bilingual dictionary - “Ooh, look! Rice with spawn! Sounds delicious.”

Restaurants with creative names like “Born to Be Chicken” near Seoul Station, “Sexy Pig” in Hongdae, and “Donkey Fried Chicken” abound. Knock-offs of Western retailers like “Foot Rocker” proliferate. And misspelled translations made into expensive-looking signs like the “Cigalettes” stands along the main road near City Hall are also common.

While admiring the sheer number of places with such names, one has to ask if this is not a marketing ploy to lure you in instead of the result of ignorance, over-ambitiousness or an innocent mistake on the part of some of these merchants.

A case in point is a little clothing boutique in Itaewon called “Make Yourself Fucking Lovely.” The owner speaks some English and is savvy enough to know her sign alone will attract foreigners and her engaging personality as well as sense of style will entice them to spend.

English is commonly used in products marketed primarily to Koreans to give them a cachet that regular Korean products do not have. Take my jeans, for example. They boast “genuine quality” and the “energy of denim.” I think I get what they are trying to say, but still find myself shaking my head like I have water in my ears.

But I digress.

I’m a big fan of Konglish. I’m fascinated by it and have tried to write it and speak it, but my innate attachment to English grammar rules will not allow me to think in this particular idiom. My attempts sound silly next to a true practitioner of the dialect, such as an Itaewon cab driver or bartender or most any hagwon director.

And so I removing cap for the Konglish. Let’s having funny times tonight. Hwighting!

When the Road Hits Back

2007-01-26T11:38:00.000+09:00

A STARK VIEW
When the Road Hits Back
By Tracey Stark

Originally published in The Groove Magazine, Seoul, South Korea, January 2007
www.mygrooveonline.com

Reasons to travel beyond our borders and comfort zones are numerous, but not as numerous as the reasons we would be better off locking the door and staying in bed.

We do not travel so we can sit on an airport shuttle bus for two hours in downtown traffic on a Friday evening. We do not travel so we can watch, horrified, as the man across the aisle on the plane empties half his lung into a piece of tinfoil from the dinner. And we do not travel so we can be jostled by short people while trying to remove luggage from overhead. Yet, these are only a few of the hardships we are willing to suffer just to get there. And we repeatedly suffer them as though we have some sort of jet lag-induced amnesia.

When we can finally take off our shoes and dig our feet into the sand or look down into the misty jungle or snow-covered slopes, we must consider all we were willing to endure to get to that moment. It is the sum of all of that hardship – spitters, pushers, crying babies, smelly buses and more – that makes up a trip.

Those reasons not to travel do not stop upon arrival, however. From here we can experience the joy of malaria, the pleasure of the runs after deciding to eat meat pies at a truck stop, the ecstasy of breaking a tooth on an unseen rock in our rice, or the bliss of finding a snake in the toilet. The list goes on and we have heard or experienced it all.

If it wasn’t for the flies, stray dogs, stiflingly-hot buses and endless rubbish tips along the highway, the clear waters of the Gulf of Wherever would not be worth the 24-hours and $800 it took to get there. Those waters may as well be the local swimming pool.

While we are traveling/suffering, however, we say things like “somebody please kill me” or a fever-induced “why?” and still we push on. Traveling does not build character because we see exotic animals or dirty people in funny hats. It builds character because we are out of our comfort zone and can not get back until we disembark in a familiar airport or train station.

It is easy when recounting a trip to friends to find yourself suddenly blind to the misfortunes you have survived. It is because those you wish to share your “magical” experience with would find it so much less magical if you told them you spent the entire month fighting mosquitoes or frantically searching for the next public toilet.

For your friends, malaria and amoebic dysentery are but a footnote, an unfortunate problem that, were they to take a trip of their own, would not affect them.

And therein lay the rub. If you describe in the most minute details the trouble with travel, you will never fully prepare someone else for it. Your friend will see you as either a complainer or an amateur when it comes to the pursuit of being worldly.

When friends return from their trip, they will regale you with tales of the exotic and leave emergency room visits as a footnote. Pressed to explain their miraculous weight loss, however, they will give you details about fevers and hallucinations and IV tubes and say, “I wish I had known in advance.”

But knowing would not have made the trip less troublesome. It is possible that malaria would have been traded for a head wound or an armed robbery. Who can say? The important thing is that the trials and tribulations were uniquely theirs in the sense that everything happened under exacting circumstances that can never again be repeated to the letter by anyone else.

I enjoy travel immensely. I have broken a tooth, suffered innumerable stomach maladies, caught pneumonia, suffered heatstroke, been attacked by swarming black flies, and more. Still, I can honestly say that it is because of these problems rather than in spite of them that I continue to hit the road every chance I get.

And the road, needless to say, continues to hit back.

Books I Read in 2006

2007-01-03T09:38:00.000+09:00

This wasn't such a good year for reading books. It could be that as a copy editor I spend all day reading. It could be that I was focused on Carolyn so much I couldn't take my eyes off of her long enough to read anything. Or maybe I was just too lazy and attached to my iPod, listening to podcasts all day long and downloading more music and books on tape, etc. I have a feeling the last reason is the most accurate. I could say I've listened to at least 1,000 hours of podcasts. Damn.

So here it is, with the author and the grade I give each book:

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet (A)
The Closers by Michael Connelly (B+)
The Big Bad Wolf by James Patterson (A)
The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert (A+)
Praise by Andrew McGahan (B+)
Lost Light by Michael Connelly (A)
City of Bones by Michael Connelly (A-)
Chasing the Dime by Michael Connelly (A-)
Witch Hunt by Ian Rankin (A)

Thinking and Drinking in Seoul

2006-10-11T08:53:00.000+09:00

Bars hosting quiz nights find it to be

anything but a trivial pursuit

By Tracey Stark

(a shorter version appeared in Seoul magazine September 2006)

At 7 p.m. on Thursday two couples walk into 3 Alley Pub in Itaewon and ask for a table. The waitress tells them there are no tables available. They look incredulous, as half the tables appear empty.

“They’re reserved,” the waitress says without being asked. “It’s trivia night.” (In fact, some of the tables have been reserved by the same people every week for months.)

They nod in understanding and wander toward the back in hopes of finding a few stools near the pool table or dart board. In a few minutes the reserved tables are filled and a man walks around the bar passing out score sheets to those wishing to compete.

Trivia night at Rocky Mountain Tavern in Itaewon. (ts '06)

As more and more new bars, restaurants and clubs open in Seoul and just as many fail, the main goal for owners of existing businesses is to keep the seats full seven nights a week. Friday and Saturday take care of themselves. But what about the other five days?

In Itaewon there are three ways that have proven successful: dart league on Tuesdays, pool league on Wednesdays and Trivia night on one of the other remaining “dead” nights.

“What I do every day is try to fill my bar. I went to a pub in Australia that had trivia night and I liked it. It’s something that a group can do,” says Gunter Kamp, the Australian owner of 3 Alley Pub, which has the longest-running quiz in town.

There are now four bars in the Itaewon-Haebonchong area hosting quizzes on four different nights: 8:30 p.m. on Sunday at Jesters, 9 p.m. on Monday at Rocky Mountain Tavern, 9 p.m. on Wednesday at New Phillies in Haebonchong and 7:30 p.m. on Thursday at 3 Alley Pub.

Todd Jenkins, from New Zealand, owns New Phillies and says he didn’t take the other bars into consideration when he chose Wednesday for his quiz night.

“Wednesdays weren’t busy. It’s made a bit of an impact,” he says, scanning the small, but packed bar after the conclusion of a recent quiz.

It also offers those not interested in pool an alternative.

The attraction seems to be the idea that you can think when you drink in a calmer setting than you’ll find on a Friday or Saturday night in any of these venues. There is also that sense of community and mateship when a bar is stuffed to the gills with people engaged in a game together.

Another reason people go are the prizes. Every bar rewards the winning teams, whether per round or at the end, with free beer or wine. 3 Alley Pub, which has been hosting trivia night for five years now, offers other prizes in addition to booze.

“I have two World Cup t-shirts for a person wearing underwear of the opposite sex,” the host begins as a way to warm up the crowd at 3 Alley Pub. He offer prizes throughout the night to give more people a chance to walk away with something.

He gets no takers and changes the requirement for winning the t-shirts “the first person to prove they aren’t wearing any underwear.” A woman climbs out of a booth and exposes the top half of her buttocks. The host, satisfied she isn’t wearing any underwear, gives her the shirts and she climbs, red faced, back into the booth to the cheers of her female teammates.

“Three Alley gives away more than just booze, and that’s great,” says Carolyn Papworth, an Australian and a regular at both Rocky Mountain Tavern and 3 Alley Pub. “But,” she adds, “I just wish they didn’t ask us to show our bosoms for them.” (She insists that she has never shown her breasts for any prize, anywhere, ever.)

Although getting a person to expose a part of their body in exchange for a prize is often the case, it isn’t the rule at 3 Alley. At the same quiz a shot of liquor was awarded to the first person to show the host a nail clipper and a soccer ball was given to someone with a Korean flag in their possession.

One bar asked each team to ante up a small amount of money before the quiz to go to the first and second place teams in the form of a food and drink tab.

Robert Curr, an American, organizes trivia night for Rocky Mountain Tavern, or RMT as regulars call it. Most weeks he hosts, but as often as he can he passes the responsibility to one of the regulars interested in hosting so he can sit down and play.

“I wanted to host a quiz at 3 Alley after our team won,” Curr says. “They said no, so I went to Rocky Mountain and asked them. If they (3 Alley) had let me host just one, I probably never would have started it here.”

Corry Day, a Canadian and co-owner of RMT says, “It didn’t take much convincing. Robert had the will and the know-how,” he says with a nod across the room to Curr. “Trivia night turned out to be more popular than hockey games.”

Death by Vegemite, a team which frequently wins one or more rounds at RMT and often has the best overall score, consists of two or more Americans (sometimes Curr is one of them), Papworth, who is Australian, one or two Canadians, a Scot, and sometimes a Brit. This, Papworth says, is part of their strength.

“We all come from such diverse backgrounds that it can’t help but make us better,” she says, then adds, “plus we love not paying for beer.”

But diversity isn’t a guarantee of success at some trivia nights.

One recent quiz at RMT featured a myriad of questions about video games and comic books, topics obviously of interest to the quiz’s host. Scores were low that night for Death by Vegemite.

“I had no bloody clue what he was talking about and neither did most of my team,” Papworth says of that night.

But despite an occasional bad quiz, she keeps going back. Everyone does.

Though some hosts make it seem like writing a good quiz is easy, it’s not, they say. Curr says that it often takes four to six hours to put together a themed quiz.

Papworth, who has hosted in Curr’s place several times, says she spends more time than that scouring the internet for interesting and, hopefully, a variety of questions that aren’t too difficult.

Ron, an American who declined to give his last name, and one of the hosts at 3 Alley Pub, says the key is to find a balance when making a quiz.

“Even though the majority of these people are from North America, we have to remember our European friends and our friends from Down Under,” he says. “I like it when people miss a question and say ‘Oh man, I knew that!’”

Matt Clement, a Canadian and one of the quiz hosts at Jesters, says that once you start seeing the same team win over and over again you have to mix it up. On the night of his recent quiz one of his categories was devoted to the TV show Sex and the City. There were moans from what appeared to be the most confident teams from earlier rounds and smiles from those who had previously looked frustrated.

The host at New Phillies, Mario Abrams, an American, said the quizzes started out too difficult and too Eurocentric. “The one thing we tried to do was put together a potpourri of categories. The challenge is to make sure the bottom team is still in the competition.”

Keeping things moving also proves to be important. As all of these quizzes take place on week nights, they have to end at a reasonable hour. This is where choices have to be made about scoring.

At 3 Alley Pub and New Phillies the quizzes are collected and then redistributed to other teams to check each other’s sheets while the host reads out the answers. At Jesters and RMT the answer sheets are collected at the end of each round and checked by a scorekeeper while the answers are read aloud.

Each system has its merits, but all of the pubs have found a way to finish well before the buses or subways shut down.

After the scores are tallied, the winner is announced and the beer is awarded accordingly. The losers most often end up staying for another round or two and talk about the questions they “should have known.”

When RMT started the quiz in July 2005 Curr told a few friends to come and support him. For a few weeks it was small. But friends of friends of Curr’s and others began to come and in time the bar was standing room only.

None of the bars advertise their quiz nights extensively in any traditional media outlets, although 3 Alley Pub has a small line listing in the K-Scene classifieds.

“Word of mouth is the most important kind of advertising,” says Wayne Gold, a Canadian and owner of Jesters, who has been hosting trivia for only two months.

In time, it seems, most would aspire to be as successful in their trivial endeavors as 3 Alley Pub, who have a full house every week and reservations weeks in advance.

“For me, the main thing is fun, and that’s the real bottom line,” Kamp says from behind his crowded bar.

Gunter Kamp, owner of 3 Alley Pub.

Cease and Desist: The Bush administration and the use of my name

2006-08-18T16:15:00.000+09:00

For the past several weeks members of the Bush administration have, when referring to the war on terror, been using the phrase: "A stark reminder."

Please stop. Please go back to your other more popular phrases like "Cut 'n run" or "flip-floppers" or "Nucular."

Thank you.

Tracey Stark (Reminder)

Traditional Healing

2006-08-16T08:30:00.000+09:00

Suction cup treatment

A traditional Asian treatment for an inbalance in the body's systems. The cups are attached to the body using heat and draw blood to the surface. This causes bruising, but some claim it also heals everything from a cold to cancer. Carolyn only had a little upper-back pain.

I'm being punished for not speaking Korean

2006-08-06T08:48:00.000+09:00

After getting by on my looks for the last four years I've been coming and going to and from Korea my lack of language skills has reached up and bit me in the ass.

It all started last Tuesday...

I had come home from work on a hot first day of August and wanted to update my iPod and have a nice cold drink. All the while being cooled off by the air conditioner. Everything was going as planned when suddenly there was a POP in the other room followed by silence.

My electricity had gone off. Shit.

I found the fuse box (or whatever they call it here) and tried to see the switches, but it was too dark. I reached in and felt around and found three switches, all in the up position. I lit a candle and looked at them and could see they were on.

Time to get help.

The landlady was out, the owner of the convenience store was on vacation, as was the owner of the Chinese restaurant who happens to speak a little bit of English.

So I called Cal in Australia and asked her where the real estate office was. I got there just in time to find the one person there who DOESN'T speak English. Cal talked to her and she came over and then found someone to come up and show me that there was a fourth switch. He turned it on and it seemed like that was that.

But it wasn't.

Ten minutes after he left it popped again. The air conditioning was overpowering it. Or maybe it was the computer. But if I had to choose which one I would use it would be the air con. So I flipped the switch, waited a minute, then turned on the air con.

Did I mention the burning smell? Yeah. Like an electrical fire.

This time it took only 5 minutes for the power to shut off.

On Wednesday I went back by, but they were closed. I tried my landlady again, but she still wasn't home (or wasn't answering). I had to tough it out for the night.

I awoke at 3 in the morning and was halucinating. I was sweating and there were traffic noises outside and I wondered aloud how I got to Calcutta. "I've never been to India. What am I doing here?" I found the fridge and grabbed some water and then flipped the switch to turn the power back on. Great. Now it's dying for no reason.

Thursday I wrote a letter explaining in detail what was wrong. I gave this letter to one of the translators/reporters I work with at Yonhap News Service in Seoul. She translated it in a few minutes and printed it out for me. Great. My problems are solved.

Not so fast.

I took the note to the real estate agent and found the guy who speaks English there. He said the note explained everything and he would take care of it. But nobody came by that night.

Friday came and went with no results.

That night I dreamed of Thailand, but not the good parts. I dreamed I was in prison there and couldn't get anyone to listen to me. Nobody spoke any English and weren't even interested in hearing me.

On Saturday I called the realtor from my office. He said they sent someone over in the morning, but the key wasn't with the convenience store lady, so the guy left. Over the next 10 minutes I explained to this guy that the key was currently in the washing machine out back and the electrician could go back and try again.

"No. Take key to convenience store," he said.

"I am at work now and the key is in the washing machine. It's very easy to understand."

"It would be best if you take key to convenience store."

"I am at work. I can't leave work to move the key 100 feet so an electrician doesn't have to lift the lid of the washing machine."

"Key is in washing machine?" he asked, sounding very surprised by this sudden revelation. "O.K. I tell landlady."

When I got home Saturday evening the owner of the Chinese restaurant was trimming the potted tomato plants outside and told me that "the man come to fix air con, but no key."

The air con? What is wrong with my air con?

When I called the realtor he told me the same thing. The landlady had called a specialist to fix the air con.

I spent the next 10 minutes explaining how the air con was a side effect of the problem, and not the problem itself. There wasn't enough power to run more than one large appliance at a time in my apartment. Before Tuesday I could have my fridge, air con, washing machine, computer, and a small fan on the floor running simultaneously. Maybe it sounds wasteful, but it worked at the time.

"Oh! So you have problem running air con?" he asked.

"Yes. When I turn it on, all of the power goes out."

"So we fix air con."

"NO! Fix power. Fix electricity."

"What about washing machine?"

"It also causes the power to go out, unless I unplug the fridge."

And so on. Eventually he got the picture and said he would make one last call to the landlady. He told me that it wasn't his responsibility and he wasn't going to deal with it after this. I thanked him and hung up.

This morning I left the key in the washing machine and left the lid open, in case the electrician is an idiot. I also left the original note taped to the fuse box with the number "10" (for 10 minutes and then the power goes out) crossed out and "2" written below. Let's hope the translation is what I want it to say.

It was 92 degrees F or 34 C in my apartment last night. Outside it was around 27 or so. My roof is made from a giant concrete slab that absorbs the heat. With the windows open I get a little respite, but not much. I also get mosquitoes.

I got home and the power was off. I flipped the switch and it went on, so I tried to run my air conditioning. The power popped. So did I.

I have seen it in Korea a million times: someone losing their shit and getting what they want. I had a letter translated by my editor at work and went to give it to my landlady. She wasn't there, so I gave it to the owner of the Chinese restaurant next door. He got right on it.

Maybe it was the cursing. Maybe it was when I banged on the door of her empty apartment and screamed at the top of my lungs.

Whatever it was, it got action. A few hours later the electrician showed me the new circuit breaker and showed me the old one, which smelled like an old set of brakes on a tractor trailer. There were also burned up wires that were apparently touching and shorting out the power.

In the end I got my computer and air con on, popped open a can of OB and updated my iPod. But Cal and I are definitely getting out of this ghetto-ass apartment.

T

10 Ways to Make Korea a Better Place

2006-08-05T14:46:00.000+09:00

1. Psychiatric exams for bus and taxi drivers
Froce ALL taxi and bus drivers throughout the country to submit to rigorous psychiatric exams and personality tests. The results will surprise no one. From these results, determine the acceptable level of psychosis among these people, based on the availability of sane replacement drivers, etc.

2. Ban smoking
Start in the PC bangs (internet cafes) to protect the children then move on to office buildings and eventually to bars and restaurants and finally to public parks and outdoor gathering places. The government has in the past pushed people toward brushing their teeth and eating more dog stew through propaganda campaigns foisted upon the media. They can start telling people that smoking is disgusting and they will all die from it and show famous people not smoking. Peer pressure works in this country. If you want to be considered a first-world country, then follow the lead of the rest of the first world.

3. Get the motorcycles and scooters off the sidewalks
If a deliveryman can't walk from the curb to the building, then maybe he should get a job as a dispatcher instead. It's already illegal, so it shouldn't be so hard to prevent this dangerous and stupid practice.

4. Eliminate Konglish
Hire native-English-speaking government editors whose job it is to walk around the city and force people to correct their English translations on signs, placards or menus or to remove them altogether. Konglish is not English and it is not endearing or cute. It should be seen as an embarrassment.

5. Enforce intellectual property laws
There are too many people selling illegal DVDs and fake brand-name products in Seoul. I have not been to China, but on a per-capita basis, Korea must surely compete at the Chinese level of IP theft.

6. Fine people for littering
Police should force people to not only pick up the trash they were seen disposing of improperly, but they should also issue a citation and an on-the-spot fine. They should then be taken by the paddy wagon to the recycling center to sort recyclables for a few hours. No exceptions.

7. Trash bins at regular intervals
In line with the above suggestion, place public trash receptacles on street corners or near bus stops to discourage people from throwing their cigarette wrappers and ice cream wrappers where they stand. There are a few bins in Korea, which are always overflowing. The fear, I suppose, is that people would take their household trash to the corner can and avoid spending 300 won (about US 31 cents) on a bag of their own.

8. One-way streets
Let's face it. When they laid out Seoul and many other Korean cities they didn't think that someday everyone would own a car. Most streets are too narrow for the fruit carts, passing cars and pedestrians. If one-way streets are designated -- and it won't be easy -- there will be fewer of the standoffs between drivers coming from opposite directions on narrow streets in which one is forced to back up to an appropriate point to allow the other to pass.

9. Put your damned shoes ALL THE WAY ON YOUR DAMNED FEET!
Another campaign should be started to encourage people to wear their shoes completely on their feet. If there are straps on your shoes, you must have them on and not flapping behind you. People should also not be allowed to walk around on the crushed backs of their shoes. This makes these people appear lazy and mentally retarded (though the few retarded people I've seen here have had their shoes on completely and tied tightly).

10. Enforce animal rights laws
And if they don't exist, copy the laws of the U.S., Australia or Great Britain when setting them up. If I see one more large-sized dog tied up with only three feet of chain I am going to break the owner's nose and take the dog away. And stop beating them in public. Another infraction that will result in a physical attack by me. And no more dyeing the dogs' tails or ears. In fact, make it illegal for people to own dogs in Seoul and many of the other big cities in Korea. There isn't enough room for a dog to have a good life here.

With all that said, I must add that I'm having a great time here. Being in a city of 8 or 10 million brings people that much closer to one another and brings the bad things out in the open. If the above items are all I have to complain about anymore then I must be starting to love this place.

Peace on the peninsula.

Tracey

The Apple Experience in Seoul

2006-04-11T19:07:00.000+09:00

Today I had some time to kill and made my way to COEX, a giant mall in southern Seoul where there is an Apple Computer store.

It is aptly named "The Apple Experience."

Here's my Apple experience.

When I walked in the spacious, brightly lit, distinctly Apple-esque store I asked the guy at the front counter if he spoke English and if he could answer some questions about my iPod. He told me no, and pointed me to the Help Desk around the corner.

I walked over and sat in the small waiting area along with a few other people --- all with their iPods. Each of the others were called up and taken care of in a few moments. I suppose they may have been simply asking how a function on the iPod worked.

When it was my turn I walked up carefully, almost tentatively. I worried the Apple-certified help guy wouldn't understand English. And if he didn't, I wouldn't be surprised or upset by it. But as I approached, Mr. Ko, as his name tag read, said "How may I help you?"

Whew, I thought. Relief.

"First I want to tell you I love my iPod," I said as a preface, assuming he would take my complaints personally. I guess because I was about to unload on him my three problems with the sexy little gadget I wanted to make sure he knew I wasn't completely unsatisfied.

"But..." I began. "The battery dies after only three hours, the memory claims to be 30 gigabytes, but is only 27.8 gigabytes, and the screen is all scratched up after only two weeks." This was all said in my "Native-English-speaker-talking-to-a-Korean-with-a-minimal-working-understanding-of-English-and-a-need-for-slow-and-ennunciated-speech" tone.

He asked me what format it was and then hooked it up to the Windows-based laptop in front of him and ran some diagnostics. I made small talk and told him I would buy a Mac in six months or so and then change the format to Mac and reload my music. He nodded at this and then told me the tests had shown that my sleek, black media player was healthy.

Without asking me, he then hooked up my iPod to the Mac laptop and ran what I thought was some other test. When he was done he handed it to me and said, "There, now it is formatted for your new Mac."

"WHAT? Are you kidding? Why did you do that?" I screeched.

"You say you have new Mac," he replied defensively.

"I said I WANT a new Mac, but not yet."

"Oh," he said and paused for a minute while his error sunk in. "I am sorry. I will change it back."

"Thank you," I replied, relieved he was going to fix his error.

"But," he added. "You will have to reload all of your music again. It has been erased."

All I could do was laugh. I had come in to buy a protective rubberized case for my iPod and ask a few questions about the machine and was leaving -- so far -- with an empty iPod which I wouldn't get to enjoy on my one-hour commute back to Hongdae.

But my Apple Experience didn't end there.

I found the case I wanted and saw that it cost 35,200 won. So I left the store and found an ATM to get a little money and go back.

When I placed the case on the counter, the guy scanned it and smiled at me. He was the same guy who didn't speak English earlier and decided it wouldn't be worth trying any Korean on me. What he didn't know was that money was the only Korean I was fluent in. You really can't survive if you don't understand how many won something costs.

The screen for the cash register wasn't facing me so I handed him four 10,000 won notes. He opend the drawer and gave me back 200 won. I was owed 4,800. When I aksed him where the rest of my money was, he showed me the receipt for 29,800 won.

Shit. How will I explain this?

"I gave you sa man won," I said. (40,000 won)

"Ne. Sam man won," he replied. (Yes. 30,000 won)

"Anio. SA man won. (No. 40,000 won) The price there says Sam man o chun ee bek won (35,200 won)," I said and pointed at the sign on the shelf. "So I give you SA MAN WON."

At this point a young girl who worked there and spoke some English came up and asked what the problem was. There was no anger between us, only confusion. I already had a blank iPod, why would getting ripped off $10 bother me now?

I showed her the receipt for the case and explained that I had gotten 70,000 won out of the bank and only had 30,000 left and showed her that receipt and the money as well. She nodded sympathetically and touched the screen on the cash register and brought something up.

Then the guy says in English, "I must count money. Please wait." He then proceeded to run all the bills through a counting machine and add it up on a calculator -- twice.

The count came out in my favor. He handed me 10,000 won and said he was sorry.

I accepted his apology and asked the girl to hand me the case I had just purchased so I could go. She told me they had made an error and re-rung it. Then she asked me for 35,200 won!

"You already have 29,800 won," I said, exasperated by now. She shook her head and gave me that dismissive wave Koreans give when they think someone is wrong.

So I did what Koreans do to me when I don't understand their provincial accents or their mouths stuffed with food: I took the calculator and typed in 40,000, subtracted 35,200, and handed them 5,000 won. The girl smiled and took my money and gave me another small pile of coins in return.

And as I walked out the door the man called out to me his favorite phrase in English:

"Have a nice day."

Choi's Tacos: Muy bien!

2006-04-05T12:27:00.000+09:00

(From The Korea Herald, April 5, 2006)

CHEAP EATS
Choi's Tacos: Muy bien!

By Tracey Stark

It's 8 p.m. and the place is packed. There's a line forming outside the takeaway window, the smell of seasoned beef and chicken is wafting through the air and everybody is smiling. Especially Thomas Choi.

He has good reason to smile inside his 11-seat Shinchon restaurant. It's busy and it isn't because of bulgogi or dalk galbi. It's Mexican food he sells; food he learned to cook from a chef in Los Angeles and then later in Mexico City.

"Many Koreans don't know about Mexican food or about our menu," Choi says. "But when they see the ingredients and see me cooking, their eyes get big. Whoa!"

He said he chose Mexican food because it's different, yet it's spicy enough to attract Koreans. The shop is often packed with foreigners craving a little something different as well as younger Koreans.

On this night two well-dressed elderly American couples sat along the far wall under the wooden cutout of Mexico covered with Post-it notes from adoring customers. When they left they praised Choi's cooking and suggested he might even make a good Mexican.

He laughs and moves on to the next four people who immediately fill the empty seats.

I was attempting to go vegetarian for a time and see if I could lose some of my gut. But when he asked if I would have the usual, I couldn't resist. Especially when one of the other cooks was sauteing steak in front of me in Choi's special recipe marinade.

The beef burrito (3,300-4,800 won), medium (there is also a super burrito, which is not for the timid) and the cheese quesadilla (2,500-4,000 won) came hot and fast. Weighing in at close to a pound, I dove in to the burrito with closed eyes and an over-active salivary gland. The taste of refried beans, shredded cheese, seasoned rice, and marinated beef made it the most satisfying event of my week. For variety I got a side of guacamole (700 won).

The quesadillas come in two sizes and can be a meal on their own if you get the larger-sized beef or chicken variety. After I finished my meal I ordered another quesadilla and promised myself a trip to the gym the next day.

Other items include tacos, fajitas, nachos and soft drinks.

Partway through my meal Choi excused himself to go eat dinner - Korean food.

"I had Mexican for lunch," he said and rubbed his ample belly.

Sometime in the near future Choi plans to host an event such as a taco eating contest.

I will admit that all this cheese and sour cream can't be too good for you. So I suggest going no more than four or five times a week.

To get there:
From Shinchon subway station, exit and follow the signs to Yonsei University. Take the smallest of the five roads that meet at Shinchon rotary. Turn right at the first street (opposite Sybarra Records) and walk down the right side about 100 meters.

Hooked on Korean Phonics

2006-04-03T11:35:00.000+09:00

A chain of news stands all over Seoul.

The accidental journalist

2006-03-28T20:36:00.000+09:00

From The Korea Herald, March 29, 2006
By Tracey Stark

When Oleg Kiriyanov was ready for college in 1991, the Soviet Union had just celebrated a year of formalized relations with South Korea. This changed not only the course of history, but young Oleg's life as well.

Almost 15 years later Russian journalist Kiriyanov can say he has been a witness to it all.

"There was a lot of excitement about Korea, so I decided to study the language at St. Petersburg University." Because of the USSR's relationship with North Korea to that point, the Korean language was a well-established field of study.

In 1994 he decided to take it to the next level so he came to Korea to study International Relations at Seoul National University. In the six years that followed he collected both a bachelor's and master's degree and wrote his thesis entirely in Korean.

If someone had told him when he was a child that he would be in Korea for more than a quarter of his life by age 30, he would have laughed because he had another dream from the time he was 7. "I wanted to be a military officer and was planning to enter Military Academy - nothing related to Korea. But my eyesight was not good enough and I failed the medical check up so I had to change all my life plans."

After graduating from SNU he had to find a way to put his degree to good use. The business climate in Russia was still very difficult, so he opted to try his hand as a foreign correspondent in Seoul.

"It was kind of an experiment," Kiriyanov says. Two years later and he says it's still up in the air.

But the opportunities his life here has afforded him could not have easily been duplicated in Russia.

As a fluent speaker of Korean he's able to cover the same stories as the Korean press. As a holder of a foreign passport he's invited on the foreign press junkets, like a recent Gaeseong Industrial Park trip and the first outing for foreigners in recent years to Dokdo Island last April.

Among other things Kiriyanov has been able to do as a fluent Korean speaker and foreign journalist were to train with the Korean Army (including parachute training, though, regretfully, he wasn't allowed to jump) and to go out for a day's work with squid fishermen in the East Sea.

Yet the one negative aspect he can find about life in Korea has to do with his job.

"I'm only one man here, so it's difficult to cover everything I need to cover." Besides Kiriyanov there is only one other Russian journalist in Korea and he works for a separate news organization.

But he does love his job. "It's quite flexible. My office is my home," he says, then adds with a smile, "and the closest bureau chief is 9,000 kilometers away in Moscow."

His main purpose here, he says, is to bridge the cultural gap between Russia and Korea through his writing.

"Most people in Russia don't know about Korea. They think I'm here working for Kim Jong-il," he laughs. "But Koreans don't know much about Russia either. There is no big picture."

As Russiskaya Gazeta is a government-run newspaper, his priority is to cover issues that have a direct impact on Russia or involve Russians in Korea.

One such event was the APEC summit. But he wouldn't end up covering it as a journalist.

"There was a shortage of Korean speakers in Russia, so I was 'rented out' to President Putin's press people," Kiriyanov says.

Over the years he has seen big changes in Korea.

"Basically I felt the change of the attitude towards foreigners. At the beginning sometimes I felt like a being from another planet, but gradually that changed, more foreigners came," Kiriyanov says. "At the beginning when I talked to my Russian friends many Koreans thought it was English, but not now."

After living in Korea for almost eight years, he says he even thinks like a Korean.

"When friends ask me 'why do Koreans do that?' I sometimes don't see any other way," he says with a laugh.

Of course Kiriyanov misses Russia, he says. His family and friends are there and the country is so vast and beautiful.

"I miss the sense of distance in Russia. I mean, 400 to 500 km is not a distance at all but here it's the end of the country." He looks up as if to capture a memory. "And I like enjoying nature without being crowded with people. That's why I probably like traveling to Siberia."

Kiriyanov likes his life in Korea. He has a lot of Korean friends, including some he has known for more than 10 years. He has no language problem and an interesting job.

"You know sometimes I have a strange feeling like I have two homes: here I miss Russia, in Russia I miss Korea."

After Korea? Kiriyanov hopes for another assignment in Asia. Maybe Japan, since he speaks a little of that language as well.

The Best of Mexico in Hongdae

2006-03-22T10:53:00.000+09:00

(From The Korea Herald, March 22, 2006)

By Tracey Stark

When Hwang Sung-won returned to his native Seoul from studying in Denver - one of America's Mexican-food capitals - and decided to open a restaurant, it was a no-brainer as to what he would offer.

Margarita Mexican Bar and Grill offers the standard Mexican fare of burritos (4,900-5,900 won), fajitas (6,900 won), quesadillas (7,900 won) enchiladas (3,500-6,900 won), nachos and the not-so-Mexican chicken wings.

For the third time this year I sat down amid the cacti and miniature Spanish chandeliers in one of the window seats and tucked into a grilled steak burrito. It's served in a basket and stares up in a come-hither manner. And thither I went, slowly this time, so I could tell you what keeps me coming back.

Enchiladas at Margarita Bar & Grill

The burrito was packed with Spanish rice, beans, lettuce and small bits of seasoned grilled beef. The jalapeno cream cheese and green chili sauce kept it from being bland. I would have liked shredded cheese too, but that's not included.

On the side were tortilla chips, sweet mango salsa and sour cream.

When the burrito was gone, I headed for my dinner companion's plate under the guise of "research." She was eating the crab and shrimp enchiladas, which consisted of flour tortillas stuffed with mixed seafood and cheese sauce, then topped with cheese, enchilada sauce and green chili sauce. Again, delicious.

I admit I have a more-than-healthy appetite when it comes to Mexican food. So when I see a plate of quesadillas stuffed with chicken and cheese my hunger quickens. And at Margarita I've never been disappointed by the quality.

But the portion sizes do disappoint me. The meals don't come with any sides, unless you count the chips that come with the burritos.

The prices, though, make it affordable to get an extra main dish or appetizer for every two people. For under 15,000 won each you and your friends can have a main dish-and-a-half and a Margarita (recommended) or a beer (Corona for only 5,000 won). Nonalcoholic drinks are 2,000 won.

Before I left, Hwang informed me that he's changing the menu and adding a new weapon to his kitchen arsenal: French-trained chef Sim Soon-chul, formerly of the Park Hyatt.

Overall, Margarita is a good "cheap eats" value in the heart of one of Seoul's hippest neighborhoods.

How to get there: From Hongik University subway station (Line No. 2) take exit No. 6, turn left towards Hongdae's shopping and restaurant district, cross the second street and turn right. Walk 100 meters and look for Margarita on a side street to the left.

Living on the edge

2006-02-25T14:37:00.000+09:00

The 53-year Mission of the NNSC
(From The Korea Herald, Feb. 23, 2006)

By Tracey Stark

Hidden from the view of most visitors to the misnamed Demilitarized Zone at Panmunjom is an enclave of nine soldiers representing the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission, an important but often overlooked part of the 1953 Armistice Agreement.

Resembling a woodland retreat, surrounded by evergreens and rolling mossy hills, it is the home of the Swedish and Swiss contingents of the NNSC whose jobs are to act as supervisors, observers, inspectors and investigators along the DMZ and, more specifically, in the Joint Security Area.

The mission

Visitors to the NNSC are ushered into the theater, a building that comfortably seats about 30, and are introduced to five Swiss and four Swedish soldiers. Five of the nine salute and are dismissed. A PowerPoint presentation then begins, describing in detail the work of the NNSC.

Head of the delegation, Maj. Gen. Gerhard Bruegger of Switzerland explains their mission. It's his turn to present this week and his Swedish counterpart, Maj. Gen. Lars Frisk, stands at an adjacent podium and only interjects occasionally.

"We see ourselves as a symbol of the armistice, having not been in the conflict," the 53-year-old Bruegger says.

He explains that the ongoing task of the NNSC is to observe and report troop deployments and rotations, and to conduct special observations and investigations where violations have been reported. Their findings must be reported to the U.N. Military Armistice Commission.

They would conduct an investigation for the KPA - North Korean People's Army - if they were asked, but that hasn't happened in more than a decade.

As times have changed, so have their tasks. In 1995 all formal contact with the DPRK ended. Now they engage in confidence-building measures to try to bring the North back to the table.

They are also developing new tasks, such as validating the nature of any military exercises engaged in by the United States Forces Korea, the ROK - Republic of Korea, and the United Nations Command as well as the verification of helicopter flights between Camp Bonifas and the Joint Security Area.

The latter task was a result of complaints by the KPA about the flights, which were subsequently suspended from 1991 to 1997.

"We aren't tasked by the UNC to do these things. It is entirely up to us," Frisk, 55, interjects.

From time to time the NNSC will interview a defector, most often a soldier, who has crossed to the South through the DMZ. But these interviews are purely for humanitarian purposes, Bruegger insists.

"We don't do intelligence work."

In the NNSC's earliest incarnation, the Swiss and Swedes - chosen by the Republic of Korea and the U.S., were accompanied by Polish and Czechoslovakian contingents - selected by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea - or North Korea - and China.

In 1993 the Czechoslovakians left, as their country in its previous form no longer existed. In 1995 the Poles were asked to leave by the DPRK. The Poles continue to participate in annual plenary meetings.

Additionally, the NNSC engages in public relations work and gives tours to media, VIPs, and government and military officials. In 2005 more than 2,000 people visited.

Last Wednesday the two major generals attended the elementary school graduation of Koo Je-won, the only sixth grader this year in Taeseong-dong, a farming village in the DMZ.

Palpable tension

Despite the availability of office and conference space in their own camp, the Swiss and Swedes hold weekly meetings at the JSA, a short ride down a narrow road. This is part of the protocol according to the Armistice Agreement.

They lead the way to building T-1, an aging, tin-covered structure straddling the North-South border. (The T stands for "temporary.") On the center of the conference table sits the flag of the NNSC. It is blue, yellow, red and white - the colors in the flags of the original four members.

North Koreans have an entrance at their end of the building and although they are welcome to attend, they don't sit in on the meetings.

Just inside the North Korean entrance are cubbyholes for exchanging papers. The Swiss and Swedish boxes are empty. The North Korean box is filled with summaries of the weekly meetings left by the NNSC. They date back to Aug. 2, 2005.

Frisk says they occasionally clear out the box and start over again.

Outside the windows of T-1 stand two KPA soldiers in their brown uniforms and Russian-style winter hats looking in at the delegation and guests. When a camera is raised to take their picture they scurry away.

On the South Korean side, the ROK soldiers stand in the 'ROK Ready' stance, which is a modified Taekwondo pose with one half of their body behind the cover of a building's edge and the other half in the open, facing the North.

Bruegger and Frisk are unfazed by the hostility and tension that is palpable in the air at the JSA.

They are neutral, after all.

Living on the edge

Outside the theater is a reminder of the war that never officially ended.

A rusty yellow sign reading 'Military Demarcation Line' marks the border 50 meters away, a few feet to the other side of a chain link fence topped with barbed wire. The fence curves around the camp and away from the border proper, partially enclosing the dozen or so acres with a false sense of security. In the event of an invasion, it could be likened to a "stop" sign - more suggestion than deterrent.

They say they occasionally see North Korean soldiers near the fence collecting firewood, but not too often.

Despite their ranks and uniforms these neutral soldiers have no weapons in their encampment, located half a kilometer east of the JSA.

Bruegger leans back in the soft blue sofa and unwraps a chocolate from a bowl on the coffee table in the Swiss Club. He looks out the window toward North Korea 20 meters away and says, "You cannot do diplomacy with a gun."

Frisk looks equally at ease sipping his coffee in what has been described as "the scariest place on earth."

"Security is an issue, of course," Bruegger says, "but we don't feel that we're unsafe."

He adds with a chuckle, "There are probably more ways to get killed in Seoul than here."

The Swiss club is a cozy building with a pool table, bar, fireplace, soft chairs, highly-polished coffee tables and a satellite TV.

"You can learn a lot from watching North Korean television," Bruegger says earnestly.

On the top shelf of the club's bookcase sit 32 volumes of "Kim Il Sung: Works." Other books about the two Koreas, war, diplomacy and history fill the shelves and appear a bit more worn than Kim's tomes.

The walls of the club are lined with plaques and photos illustrating a five-decade-long NNSC history.

One black and white photo shows a barren landscape, covered with tents and temporary structures. It is the NNSC camp in 1955, at its largest. There were 400 members from the four nations stationed in either the camp or the 10 designated points of entry in both North and South Korea.

But when the points of entry were abandoned by the NNSC later in 1955 the need for so many members was gone as well. What remains today is a camp that Frisk estimates could comfortably hold "five more people" on top of its population of nine.

The Swedish club across the grounds is equally comfortable and contains the same collection of works by "The Great Leader," but lacks a pool table. (The Swedes keep theirs in a separate building.)

To get to the Swedish side of the camp one must walk along a concrete path and across a bridge over a dry creek bed, then up a flight of stairs on a small hill. Today it's slightly misty and the colors of the evergreens are muted and dull. But in the summer, they say, the place explodes with life and color.

Frisk says that he has seen wild boar, deer and foxes, along with some stray dogs that roam freely throughout the DMZ.

Down the hill, next to the dining room, stands a metal sculpture of a winged bull. It would look aggressive were it not for its silverware wings made of knives, forks and spoons. Perhaps another symbol of the members' neutrality.

While the two delegations have separate camps, they are equal in size and design. The members each have single rooms and adjoining offices - larger than the average Korean apartment.

With Seoul close by, most of the Swedes keep an apartment at Yongsan as well, provided free of charge by the U.S. military, where they spend up to two days a week with their wives.
Only one member of the Swiss delegation is married.

The right stuff

Becoming a member of the NNSC is no easy task. Surprisingly, it's a very popular assignment.
"It is totally voluntary," Frisk says.

Both the Swiss and Swedes sign one year contracts to work on the DMZ and have the option to extend. The heads of delegation have longer contracts; four years for the Swiss and two years for the Swedes.

But not everybody can cut it for a year.

"We need people who can cooperate, who are settled," Frisk says. "They are not only representing the camp, but also their country." He says it requires a lot of self-discipline.

People have dropped out in less than a year for various reasons, but it's rare, Frisk says.

Each member is trained as a military observer. The course is run by the United Nations and lasts three weeks.

"We are basically put through all of the situations that could be encountered," says Lt. Col. Marc-Andre Ryter of the Swiss delegation.

This includes being abducted in the dead of night. "But the abduction is not for an extended period of time," Ryter explains. "Remember, the course is not very long."

They are also subjected to rigorous psychological tests to assess their ability to cope amid such tension.

While Bruegger rejects the notion that they are to be considered elite, he concedes with a laugh that they are at least "mentally stable."

The future of the NNSC

"When the Armistice Agreement was signed, nobody thought 53 years later it would still be the only valid document governing, technically, the war that is still there," Bruegger says.

Frisk explains that there are really only two ways for the NNSC to leave the DMZ.

The first possibility is when the NNSC's status is reviewed annually by the UNC. If it is agreed that their mostly-symbolic neutral presence is no longer needed, then it may be suggested that they leave.

The second is if a formal peace agreement is signed.

If there is a contradiction in pursuing a diplomatic mission while wearing a military uniform, Bruegger is the first to acknowledge it.

"It was the second secretary general of the United Nations, a Swede, who said, 'Peacekeeping is not a job for soldiers, but only soldiers can do it.'"

(traceystark@heraldm.com)

The Apron Girls

2006-02-11T13:35:00.009+09:00

I live in an area chock full of art schools, universities, and did I mention art schools?

A funny thing about Korea is that they like to stick all similar businesses next to each other. Go to any area with restaurants and you will frequently see all the galbi restaurants in a row and then all the pork restaurants in a row, then all the seafood restaurants clumped together.

The same holds true for the art schools of Hongdae. There are other places suitable for art schools, I'm sure. But the majority of them are along a single road in Hongdae, home of Hongik University.

The students in the Hongdae area are similar in one way: they are all striving to be different. But they want to be different in the same way. As art students they have an idea of what they should look like and then they all go for that look. That affords them some comfort in that they ARE different from non-art school students, but they are the same as the rest of the art school students. No one will stick out like a sore thumb and will not have to suffer for being too different.

So in the art school section the way they differentiate themselves is by wearing full length aprons everywhere they go. Six days a week you can see them walking down the street in their aprons. Who knows if they even have art class that day? It doesn't really matter.

Girls (and they are mostly girls) wearing blue aprons won't walk down the street with the girls in the green aprons. They clump together or walk alone. But they never cross the line. Even talking to an other-apron girl is unheard of.

When I first moved here and saw this I thought it had to do with all the restaurants in the area. But I realized that there aren't THAT many restaurants. And finally my girlfriend Cal pointed out the paint splatters on some of the aprons. A lot of this paint appeared to be strategically placed on the apron in a very artistic way.

What bothered me when I realized this was a status symbol was that it seemed ridiculous to walk down the street in an apron, when you could just roll it up and put it on when you get to class. I expressed this opinion (in a very negative and accusatory way) to Cal. She told me to calm down and not let this be seen as a pretentious "look at me, look at me" statement I was making it out to be.

But what else can it be? First of all, art school is usually attended by pretentious idiots anyway. And second of all, in Korea the need to conform overrides all other rational thinking.

"No," Cal protested. "It's just like letter jackets jocks wear in high school in the U.S."

"No," I argued. "Letter jackets serve a purpose. They keep the wearer warm for one thing."

"But they are really just worn to differentiate the wearer from everyone else."

After a while of pondering this and the fact that most of these girls are really only 18-21 years old (the emotional equivalent of 14-16 year old girls in America), I began to accept the fact that it really was harmless and probably no more pretentious than a letter jacket.

Maybe my problem is that I never had a letter jacket or an art school apron. Or maybe it's because I never gave two shits about conforming.

Just like everyone else.

Countries I've been to... yep, that's it.

2006-01-17T23:42:00.000+09:00

This was an interesting site. It isn't as accurate as I'd like, since it shows the entire Indonesian Archipelago, for instance, when I've only been to a few of the islands. Anyway, it gives you an idea of how big the world is, though I find myself saying more often that it's a small world.

Here's the link if you want to try it yourself: http://douweosinga.com/projects/visitedcountries

Books I read in 2005

2005-12-30T18:42:00.000+09:00

The following is a list of books I read this year. It wasn't such a great year for reading books, and as a copy editor now it's even harder to read in my spare time.

Anyway, this list includes the author's name and the grade I gave the book.

1. Contagion by Robin Cook (B+)
2. Off the rails in Phnom Penh: Into the dark heart of guns, girls, and ganja by Amit Gilboa (C+)
3. The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks (A)
4. The Death Freak by Herbert Burkholz (B)
5. Pagan Babies by Elmore Leonard (A-)
6. Swimming to Cambodia by Spalding Gray (A-)
7. Coming into Country by John McPhee (A+)
8. Digital Fortress by Dan Brown (A+)
9. Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock (A-)
10. Rough Water -- Stories of survival from the sea by various authors (A-) recorded book
11. The Secrets of Inchon by Eugene Clark (A+)
12. Rogue Regime by Jasper Becker (A+)
13. Among Whales by Roger Payne (A+)
14. P.S. I love You by Cecilia Ahern (C)
15. Hiroshima by John Hersey (B+)
16. Crisis on the Korean Peninsula (B)
17. Vanishing Point by Morris West (A-)
18. War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (A)

2004 was a better year for reading books, though I finished writing one in 2005. Maybe 2006 will be a year for both. I like to think so.

Danger in Korea: Western Myth No. 1

2005-11-15T18:02:00.000+09:00

From The Korea Herald
Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Very few Koreans can conceive the possibility of the North attacking

The following is the second in a five-part series of articles on how Korea is perceived by foreigners and what efforts Koreans should make to enhance its images abroad. - Ed.

By Tracey Stark

It is a commonly held belief in the West that the Korean Peninsula is a powder keg waiting to be ignited by some random event, resulting in a second Korean War.

A foreigner might also believe that in Seoul - a scant 50 kilometers from the North Korean border - there is palpable fear and worry that their northern neighbor, nay, their brothers, are inclined to attack. But ask any Korean or foreign resident walking down the street and they will tell you the same thing: Anxiety over the communist state to the north is minimal and seldom a subject of everyday conversation.

"When I traveled abroad it was something people asked me about often," said Lim Seung-eun, 27. "I was even urged not to return to Korea by my friends in Australia."

A teacher in Gyeonggi Province from the United Kingdom, Graeme Armitage, 27, recalled before coming to Korea more than three years ago that although he and his parents didn't have any preconceived notions about Korea, he had friends and family who continually confused North and South Korea, and thought he was going to live in the communist North.

"There was no concern from my parents that I was in any danger, but other relatives weren't so clued up on Korea. They knew very little about the place."

Western media may be partly to blame. News with the mention of Korea is most often sensationalized stories about the looming threat of North Korea, or a story involving large animals running wild through Seoul. (Recently a story about a woman in Seoul whose baby stroller got caught in the doors of a subway is being shown frequently on CNN.)

That is changing these days with international events being held in Korea like the World Cup, Pusan International Film Festival and the current Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit being held in Busan. While the coverage may only last a few days, and then return to the ongoing saga of the six-party talks, it is effective in separating myth from reality.

"Before I came to Korea I didn't know what to expect. It seems like all the news you hear about the country has to do with North Korea's aggressive stance," said Dan Secor, a 34-year-old American, who lives in Ilsan with his Korean wife. "But you get here and see that this country has been neglected by the media."

Secor added that on a trip home to Massachusetts when he told people he was in Korea the second most frequent question - after the North Korean issue - was "Did you see the elephants run rampant through Seoul?" referring to an isolated event in a very small part of a very large town.

A group of dedicated Koreans have taken up the task of spreading the truth about South Korea. The Voluntary Agency Network of Korea began in 1999 and now has 15,000 members and set its task as the disseminating of the truth about Korea.

"All VANK's members are guiding overseas Koreans and foreigners so that they can better understand Korean culture, language, or situation, etc. through e-mail or postal-mail and at the same time we are building friendships, bridging cultures and changing the image of Korea as cyber diplomats," VANK's website, www.prkorea.com, says.

But the question must be posed: Why would people worry?

For starters, in the event of a war, the initial bombardment on Seoul would be in the neighborhood of 500,000 rounds per hour landing on Seoul, according to the U.S. military. This bombardment wouldn't be contained for several days. The outcome would be disastrous.

Secondly, North Korea dropped out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and then subsequently bragged about possessing nuclear fissile material - enough for several warheads. They have also advanced in short- and long-range missile technology.

With the breaching of multiple international agreements on the part of North Korea, it is accepted by many in the South that the North's government can't be trusted. But with recent progress in the six-party talks and the nuclear threat diminished, the world may be breathing a collective sigh of relief.

Very few ordinary Koreans can conceive the possibility of the North attacking them.

"They look like us and we speak the same language. The only way they would attack is if they were attacked first," said student Cho Hyun-i. She added that it was unlikely that South Korea would make such a move and pointed to the United States as the most likely catalyst of a war ever starting on the peninsula.

With a population of 48 million in an area about the same size as the U.S. state of Virginia (population 7.4 million), crime can be another worry.

The numbers show this to be false as well, as 2002 crime rates for Korea were significantly lower than those of neighboring Japan, in most areas, and the United States, United Kingdom and Germany in all categories.

The overall crime rate was 1,674 incidents per 100,000 people in Korea, while those numbers were more than one third higher in Japan at 2,240 per 100,000. The United States and the United Kingdom followed with 4,119 and 11,240 per 100,000 people respectively. Murder rates in 2002 for Korea, the United States and United Kingdom per 100,000 were 2.1, 5.6 and 3.5 respectively. Rape and sexual assault in those same three nations were 19.8, 33 and 86.6 per 100,000 respectively.

"I feel safer walking down the street late at night in Seoul than I did in Boston," said Secor. He added that the drug culture of the big cities of America were what led to higher crime rates. "Korea seems pretty drug-free."

An outsider may be surprised to see many busloads of Korean police around the city, but this in no way reflects a high crime rate. They are most often used as crowd control around important buildings or to prevent the frequent protests from getting out of hand around the capital.

"It's a reflection of our growth as a democracy to see so many protests. Under President Park (Chung-hee) these things would not have been permitted," said university student Cho.

Although it may not be an urban utopia, Seoul has lifted its status in the world from the center of government of a less-developed, semi-democratic nation, to a rapidly growing, culturally diverse, center for international business and travel. Infrastructure improvements and an economy that made a quick recovery from the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis has proven to the international business community that Korea is no longer a poor Hermit Kingdom.

"Life is too short to worry about such things. We have learned a lot from our mistakes of the past. We will someday be united and that will make everyone in the world safer," Lim said.

(traceystark@heraldm.com)

PETA protest against KFC in Korea

2005-10-24T15:05:00.000+09:00

PETA Protest at KFC in Seoul --- Protesting the inhumane treatment of chickens used by fast food chain KFC, Brandi Vallodolid and Christina Cho stayed in a cage for more than an hour Monday, October 24, 2005 outside the KFC in Seosomoon, Seoul.

KFC　target　of　bikini-clad　PETA　protest

2005-10-24T15:00:00.000+09:00

by　Tracey　Stark

Two　bikini-clad　protesters　squatted　in　a　small　cage　for　more　than　an　hour　yesterday　in　front　of　a　KFC　in　Seoul　to　protest　the　inhumane　treatment　of　chickens　supplied　to　the　fast　food　chain.

As　the　regular　lunch　hour　was　beginning　in　Seoul,　two　women　in　yellow　bikinis　and　silver　high　heels　walked　down　the　street　carrying　a　small　wire　cage　and　signs　that　read,　"KFC　Tortures　Chicks,"　in　both　English　and　Korean,　stopped　in　front　of　the　fast　food　restaurant,　squatted　on　the　ground　and　placed　the　cage　over　their　heads.

They　were　in　Seoul　as　part　of　People　for　the　Ethical　Treatment　of　Animals'　ongoing　protest　--　called　"Kentucky　Fried　Cruelty"　--　against　what　they　say　is　the　fast　food　chains'　suppliers'　continual　inhumane　treatment　of　chickens.

The　cage　was　less　than　one　meter　wide,　and　three-quarters　of　a　meter　deep　and　tall.　But　the　women　were　not　complaining　about　the　cramped　space.

"It's　not　as　uncomfortable　as　having　a　beak　cut　off　and　being　trampled　in　a　cage　my　entire　life,"　said　Brandi　Vallodolid,　who　works　at　PETA's　main　U.S.　office　in　Norfolk,　Virginia.　

"We　have　way　more　space　than　the　chickens　do.　Their　personal　living　space　is　smaller　than　a　standard　sheet　of　paper,"　Christina　Cho,　a　classical　pianist　and　part-time　activist　added.

According　to　PETA's　website　and　a　documentary　narrated　by　actress　Pamela　Anderson,　the　chickens　supplied　to　KFC　live　in　over-crowded　conditions,　develop　diseases　from　high　ammonia　levels,　become　lame　and　crippled　from　drugs　that　speed　up　growth　and　accidents　related　to　being　top　heavy,　and　when　they　are　caught　for　slaughter　they　are　often　thrown　violently　into　small　containers,　resulting　in　broken　legs　and　wings.　The　video　also　showed　the　operation　of　a　beak-trimming　machine　used　on　young　chicks.

The　slaughtering　process,　PETA　claims,　is　even　worse.　First,　the　chickens　are　hung　upside　down,　then　run　through　a　stun　bath,　with　voltages　so　low　the　chickens　are　often　completely　conscious.　The　chickens'　throats　are　then　slit　and　they　are　next　dipped　into　scalding　hot　water　for　feather　removal.　Again,　PETA　says,　the　chickens　are　still　often　conscious.

"The　beak-trimming　machine　shown　in　the　PETA　video　…　is　no　longer　in　common　use　in　our　industry,"　said　Richard　Lobb,　a　spokesperson　for　the　National　Chicken　Council.

PETA　spokesperson　Bruce　Friedrich　insisted　that　all　the　video　was　shot　within　the　last　year　and　a　half　of　its　release.

KFC　could　not　be　reached　for　comment,　but　animal　welfare　guidelines　and　press　releases　at　http://www.kfc.com/　refute　every　accusation　that　PETA　has　made.

"As　a　major　purchaser　of　food　products,　we　have　the　opportunity,　and　responsibility,　to　influence　the　way　animals　supplied　to　us　are　treated.　We　take　that　responsibility　very　seriously,　and　we　are　monitoring　our　suppliers　on　an　ongoing　basis　…　As　a　consequence,　it　is　our　goal　to　only　deal　with　suppliers　who　promise　to　maintain　our　high　standards　and　share　our　commitment　to　animal　welfare.

They　also　show　their　animal　welfare　and　poultry　guidelines,　covering　comfort　and　shelter,　catching,　transport,　holding,　stunning,　and　humane　slaughter.　"If　an　audit　reveals　dirty　or　sick　birds,　corrective　action　at　the　grow-out　house　must　be　taken　by　the　supplier,"　KFC's　website　said.

The　website　also　lists　an　animal　welfare　council　consisting　of　animal　welfare　experts.　"In　consultation　with　our　Council,　Yum!　Brands　(the　parent　company　of　KFC)　has　developed　guidelines　and　audit　programs　for　our　suppliers　in　the　broiler　industry,"　the　website　said.

Broilers　are　chickens　used　for　their　meat.

Several　of　the　people　still　listed　on　the　website　have　recently　resigned　their　posts　over　a　proposed　confidentiality　agreement.　Dr.　Temple　Grandin,　Colorado　State　University　and　Dr.　Ian　Duncan,　Department　of　Animal　&　Poultry　Science,　University　of　Guelph,　Ontario.　The　agreement　would　prevent　them　from　speaking　to　the　press　about　any　of　their　findings　or　conclusions　related　to　KFC　suppliers.　

In　a　Chicago　Tribune　article　former　advisor　Adele　Douglass　said　that　KFC　"never　had　any　meetings.　They　never　asked　for　any　advice,　and　then　they　touted　to　the　press　that　they　had　this　animal-welfare　committee.　I　felt　like　I　was　being　used."

Although　PETA　had　no　concrete　information　about　suppliers　of　Korea's　KFC　restaurants　they　say　it　is　the　same　everywhere.

"We've　never　done　an　investigation　anywhere　where　there　weren't　egregious　violations.　It's　the　nature　of　mass　production,　but　they　have　to　find　a　way　to　do　it　humanely,"　Vallodolid　said.

One　such　supplier　was　Pilgrim's　Pride,　in　West　Virginia.　Hidden　video　cameras　caught　workers　stomping　on　the　chickens,　drop-kicking　them　like　footballs　and　throwing　them　violently　against　a　wall.　And　it　appeared　that　the　workers　were　doing　it　for　fun.

The　footage　was　shot　by　a　PETA　investigator　who　worked　from　October　2003　to　May　2004　at　the　Pilgrim's　Pride　plant　in　Moorefield,　which　won　KFC's　"Supplier　of　the　Year"　award　in　1997.

KFC's　president　Gregg　Dedrick　said　in　a　press　conference　after　the　release　of　the　video　in　July　2004,　"As　a　responsible　corporate　citizen,　we　require　all　our　suppliers　to　treat　animals　humanely.　This　behavior　by　Pilgrim's　Pride　employees　is　not　only　appalling,　it　violates　the　standards　we　have　in　place　for　all　our　suppliers."

"We　think　it's　outrageous　that　PETA　is　unfairly　singling　out　KFC.　They've　done　this　because　we're　the　most　recognized　brand　selling　chicken　today,　and　our　name,　Kentucky　Fried　Chicken,　is　synonymous　with　chicken.　So　we　have　become　their　target.　The　truth　is,　we　sell　about　5　percent　of　all　the　chicken　in　America　today　--　that's　less　than　the　leading　burger　chain."

Dedrick　added,　"PETA's　campaign　distorts　the　truth　and　we　would　ask　the　media　to　report　the　true　facts　of　the　situation."　

Cho　was　arrested　in　Korea　in　January　this　year　for　a　similar　protest　in　Myeong-dong,　Seoul.　The　difference　then　was　that　she　and　a　cohort　were　topless.　She　was　charged　with　indecent　exposure　and　blocking　traffic.　

She　added　that　the　policeman　who　arrested　her　told　her　that　he　didn't　want　to,　but　had　to　do　his　job.　"He　said　he　hoped　his　daughters　would　be　like　me　and　stand　up　for　what　they　believe　in."

As　for　protesting　in　bikinis　and　even　topless,　they　say　it　is　the　best　way　to　attract　the　most　attention.

"It's　the　MTV　generation.　We　have　to　do　something　flashy　or　we　just　won't　get　people's　attention,"　said　Jason　Baker　of　PETA　Asia-Pacific,　and　one　of　the　organizers　of　this　protest.　"If　you　just　hold　up　a　sign　people　just　don't　care."　

He　said　that　he　has　been　in　the　cage　before　on　demonstrations　and　attracted　a　lot　of　media　attention.　"But　nothing　like　this,"　he　said,　pointing　at　the　swarm　of　camera　men　and　women.

"We're　not　here　to　make　a　problem.　We're　here　to　bring　awareness　to　people　everywhere,"　Cho　said　from　inside　the　cage.

Vallodolid　added,　"This　leads　to　more　hits　on　the　website　--　http://www.peta.org/　--　and　that　leads　to　change."

The　protest　ended　after　about　an　hour　without　incident.(traceystark@heraldm.com)

2005-10-24T14:40:00.000+09:00

IN THE CAGE-- Brandi and Christina fighting for the rights and humane treatment of chickens in Seoul, Korea.

2005-10-24T14:36:00.000+09:00

Brandi Vallodolid of PETA.

2005-10-11T19:08:00.000+09:00

A man protesting against low funding for education for the disabled is chained with a chair to the main gate of the Seoul government complex in Gwanghwamun. (See story below)

Police break up disabled protest

2005-10-11T18:55:00.000+09:00

The Korea Herald, Oct. 12, 2005

Police　break　up　disabled　protest

By　Tracey　Stark　
and　Kwon　Ji-young

Activists　demanding　proper　education　for　the　disabled　chained　themselves　to　the　gate　of　the　Seoul　government　complex　and　painted　slogans　on　the　sidewalk　yesterday　in　a　protest　that　resulted　in　police　detaining　43　people.

The　demonstration　began　at　11　a.m.　when　about　six　people　in　wheelchairs,　out　of　a　group　of　50　protesters,　were　chained　to　the　front　gate　of　the　Gwanghwamun　complex　by　able-bodied　compatriots　to　protest　low　government　funding　for　disabled　education.

"We　decided　to　stage　a　surprise　protest　which　went　to　extremes　because　we　didn't　receive　any　response　from　the　government　during　a　long　protest　in　front　of　the　Blue　House,"　said　Kim　Ki-ryong,　representative　of　the　coalition　for　the　educational　rights　of　disabled　people.

A　sign　complaining　about　a　lack　of　funding　was　spread　across　the　ground　in　front　of　the　protesters　while　four　members　of　the　group　spray-painted　slogans　in　red　and　black　on　the　sidewalk.　The　main　English-language　sign　next　to　the　gate　was　also　defaced　with　red　paint　to　resemble　dripping　blood.

In　the　early　minutes　of　the　protest,　several　officers　attempted　to　stop　the　spray　painters　but　were　met　with　shoves　and　shouts.　The　outnumbered　police　and　complex　security　guards　backed　off　and　waited　for　more　police　to　arrive.

"Over　300　police　came　and　dragged　43　of　us　to　10　different　police　stations.　There　was　a　struggle　between　the　police　and　protesters　as　they　were　forcibly　dragged　away,"　said　Kim.　As　of　press　time　the　detainees　remained　in　police　custody.

Of　the　protesters,　10　were　disabled　students,　15　were　their　parents,　and　25　were　university　students　of　special　education.　

The　group　wants　an　increased　budget　for　disabled　education,　more　special　education　teachers　and　education　laws　for　disabled　students.　

"This　year,　the　government　cut　back　the　budget　for　special　education　by　8　billion　won,　and　reduced　the　number　of　teachers　from　444　to　36,　and　the　number　of　assistants　from　3,000　to　2,500,"　said　Do　Gyeong-man,　executive　director　of　the　coalition　for　disabled　education　rights.　

Yesterday's　protest　follows　a　two-week　demonstration　Sept.　22-Oct.　5　in　front　of　the　Blue　House　during　which　the　group　asked　to　meet　President　Roh　Moo-hyun.　"The　government　did　not　respond　at　all　to　our　requests,"　said　Kim.　Receiving　no　response　from　the　government,　the　group　decided　on　more　desperate　measures　to　draw　attention　to　their　case.

Within　15　minutes　of　the　start　of　the　Gwanghwamun　protest,　two　busloads　of　police　officers　arrived　and　parked　in　front　of　the　protesters,　effectively　blocking　the　view　of　passing　motorists.　Several　other　police　units　arrived　from　around　the　corner,　making　a　total　of　more　than　100.　The　helmeted　police,　many　armed　with　shields　and　meter-long　batons,　surrounded　the　disabled　protesters　and　began　pulling　them　from　the　gate.　Several　other　officers　with　bolt　cutters　were　sent　inside　the　complex　to　cut　the　chains　in　order　to　remove　the　wheelchairs.

One　severely　disabled　protester,　once　unchained,　accelerated　his　electric-powered　chair,　pulling　along　four　policemen　and　knocking　a　police　photographer　off　a　ladder.　When　he　was　subdued,　the　protester　was　removed　from　his　chair　and　ended　up　writhing　on　the　ground.　

Another　protester　escaped　the　confines　of　his　wheelchair　and　crawled　under　a　police　bus　while　a　man　with　a　loudspeaker　voiced　the　group's　complaints　to　a　growing　crowd　of　onlookers.

After　a　little　more　than　an　hour　most　of　the　protesters　were　removed,　although　the　spray-painted　slogans　were　still　visible.　There　was　no　immediate　word　from　the　government　about　the　budget　for　the　education　of　the　disabled. (traceystark@heraldm.com)　(jkwon@heraldm.com)

The Promotion: a short story

2005-10-06T11:53:00.000+09:00

By Tracey Stark

They said he wouldn’t go far, but he had proven them all wrong. There he sat in that office with his name on the door, four floors above the manicured courtyard and opposite the stacks, marveling at his reflection in the smoke-stained window.
“I have arrived,” he said, then grinned broadly to his window-self, his bleached-white teeth glowing and fighting for prominence behind sagging rubbery lips. He repeated this every morning since his promotion to Assistant Director of Accounting, Payroll and Pension Department of the Allegheny Electric Co-op.
BUZZZ
“Ms. Lintel, come in here please.”
“Yes, Mr. Bottoms,” a tinny voice replied through the antiquated call box.
The door opened and a dour woman of about 50 walked in, ruler straight in posture, gray in demeanor. A smile would surely crack the thin coating of skin covering her angular face. (In certain light, towards the end of a winter’s day, she appeared translucent, Mr. Bottoms had noted.)
“I need more, um… notepads and paperclips,” he said, then turned back to the window and resumed smiling at his reflection.
Ms. Lintel looked at the stack of notepads on the spare chair and the boxes of paperclips scattered about the otherwise-empty bookshelf, shook her head, and left. She would fill the order by lunch and remain idle until 5 p.m. Then at 5 she would rise to leave for the day and receive one more buzz from Mr. Bottoms. When she went into his office he would invariably say to her, “Good job today, Ms. Lintel. See you bright and early tomorrow, I’m sure.” She would thank him tersely, make an abrupt about-face, and march from the office straight to her car at the far end of the lot.
This had been going on for the two months since his move from personnel to accounting, a move precipitated by an accident. Not an accident of paperwork, but an accident involving a filing cabinet and a portion of rotten flooring. (It could be argued that paperwork was involved, as the filing cabinet was full when it fell through the ceiling and crushed his right leg.)
The out of court settlement was favorable for all involved. Mr. Bottoms was not a greedy man and his request for a promotion to the fourth floor, a small raise, and a parking space among the executives (as well as medical costs, of course) was accepted with a smile and a handshake and delivered before the steel rods were removed from his fractured bones.
Through the thin walls Ms. Lintel could hear queer mutterings in different voices. She didn’t ask, but suspected the accident had left him a bit shell-shocked.
Back in his office, Mr. Bottoms continued to stare out the window thinking about what it had taken to get here. He worked his way up from the ground floor. Five years in the mail room, and then the little incident with the sorting machine and his pinky finger. Cost him the last digit, but earned him a job in customer service on the second floor. Seven years on and then there was the electrical fire that left him with third degree burns on his left arm. Skin grafts and a promotion to personnel (third floor), followed by his longest stint: 13 years. Lucky 13, he thought. The sagging ceiling should have been a dead giveaway, but everyone seemed to regard it as normal. So he didn’t ask any questions and sat at his desk, two inches closer to the ceiling than everyone else, until the distance closed to zero in a matter of seconds on that fateful Tuesday in October.
And now he was in an office devoid of computers, sagging ceilings, windows that opened, and furniture that could fall on him. (The bookshelf was bolted to the wall and his chair had no wheels.)
Pondering this he realized it was time for him to knuckle down and get to work. But his responsibilities were vague at best. They told him, “We will utilize your expertise in certain areas of accounting from time to time.” But he had no expertise in any areas of accounting, he thought.
He also knew there was little he could do about it this day, so he resumed his self-congratulation and continued to stare out the window.
At five he buzzed Ms. Lintel once more into his office.
“Good job today, Ms. Lintel. See you bright and early tomorrow, I’m sure,” he said and smiled his oversized mouth at her, and gave her a waving salute with his 4 2/3-fingered right hand.
Moments later, when he was sure she was halfway down to the lobby, Mr. Bottoms picked up his briefcase (empty but for half of a sandwich and a few notebooks), and walked to the elevator.
To his surprise, Ms. Lintel was still waiting for the elevator car to come pick her up. It was a strange sensation, for both of them, be assured, to stand side by side in silence at the end of a day during which they had spent the better part of eight hours one on each side of the wall, like a confessioner and priest.
It was Ms. Lintel who spoke first.
“I don’t suppose taking the stairs would be good for your leg, would it?” she asked.
Mr. Bottoms was pleased by her sudden interest in him.
“Well, I guess I won’t know if I don’t try,” he replied and swagger-limped to the fire stairs door. She hesitantly followed and for a moment looked as if she might smile. (She didn’t.)
Upon opening the door he was greeted by crumbling and missing stairs, the stench of mildew and a complete lack of lighting. His first step would have been his last had Ms. Lintel not reached out a boney hand and pulled him back with surprising force.
“Oh my,” he said grasping his tie and loosening it an inch. “That would have been a doozy of a fall.”
“Yes, and you might have made vice president had you survived it,” she said with a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
But Mr. Bottoms only heard the words “vice president” and lost himself in a reverie about a bigger office on a higher floor.
“Vice president?’ he asked the air around him.
Ms. Lintel followed his gaze and saw that it ended in thin air only a foot or two in front of his face.
“I was only being facetious, sir,” she said.
“Vice president,” he repeated.
Ms. Lintel stepped away from him and toward the elevator. He turned and followed, still lost in those two magical words.
“And you would have been the vice president’s executive secretary,” he said to her, his mouth stretched into a frog-like grin.
“Indeed,” she said, pondering the implications, and looked toward their small office suite. She noticed the room was still aglow and she shook her head at Mr. Bottom’s absentmindedness. She was taught not to waste electricity, even if you did work at the power company. “Let me just go turn off the lights. I’ll be right back, in case the elevator gets here.”
“Of course,” he said and watched her walk through the tall wooden door.
A moment later the elevator chimed and the doors opened.
“The elevator’s here, Ms. Lintel. I’ll hold it for you,” he shouted, and stepped backward into a starless void.
As he plummeted the five floors to the basement, only one thought went through his mind: “Vice president.”

2005-09-15T16:04:00.000+09:00

A small alley off the main street of Insa-dong in Seoul. These alleys are usually the best places to find good Korean food in small, family-owned restaurants.

Drunken Man at a Busan Subway Station

2005-09-01T16:56:00.000+09:00

Six weeks...

2005-08-21T16:03:00.000+09:00

Six weeks in Korea now...

This time has been different. I admit I don't always have the warmest feelings for Koreans, but the same holds true for Americans, Canadians, etc. I guess it's all about attitude. So I catch myself getting into a mood and refuse to blame the people around me. And then I keep walking down the street, bumping into people like a human pinball and just smile about it. If I let that define my experience in Korea, I will leave in six months or less. So I just laugh about it and realize that there are even Koreans getting annoyed with their fellow countrymen, and that helps. "Don't let the bastards grind you down."

Another difference this time has been working with Koreans. The first few times I was here I didn't really work closely with Koreans. Now, at the newspaper, I work with English speaking (and some who try, but fail) Koreans, both men and women. It's strange how I can be so friendly to the other foreigners at work and they know how to take it, but among the Koreans they look at me as if I'm crazy. It may be because I am partially crazy, but more likely it's because of social constraints. Because I'm male and most of the business writers are women, we can't be friends. Because the editor of the business section is in his 50s and the one male writer is in his mid-20s, we can't be friends. Age matters, as does sex. Since we weren't school mates, the girls cannot see me as anything but a co-worker or a potential mate. There is no other option. As it is, I don't mind. I have things to accomplish and would be better off not starting anything at work. And I'm not looking for a potential mate at work.

So I go in, do my best for six to eight hours a day, then go to dinner with a couple of foreigners. We aren't isolating ourselves, as some might say. We always eat at Korean restaurants and always have to speak some Korean when ordering, paying, etc. This is mostly the basic stuff, but it keeps us in practice and keeps us humble. I go home and listen to my Korean language CDs and maybe read, write, or watch a movie.

On the weekends I sometimes go to bars in a section of town called Shinchon, about five minutes by foot from where I live, where there is a good mix of foreigners and locals. My favorite is a place called "Woodstock: the 70s." No joke. It is a request bar, which means you get a paper and pen and write down whatever songs you want to hear and give it to the dj. Odds are good that if you ask for classic rock or eighties music, he'll have it. I have my favorites and sometimes they play one of my songs without me requesting within a few minutes of arriving. A friend of mine described the Koreans that frequent that bar as "the weird Koreans." Maybe he thinks because they want to sit around listening to classic rock and making small talk with foreigners they're weird. I think they're just taking advantage of what Seoul has to offer that the rest of the country lacks: diversity.

Today I went downtown to find a department store called "Lotte Mart" to get a few things for my apartment. It's something like Wal-Mart, but a bit more expensive. There are markets all over town, but I'm not good at haggling and the seller always starts with some ridiculous price that is often two or three times what I would pay at Lotte Mart or Wal-Mart. So I've given up on those markets for anything but souvenirs and maybe ginseng or other traditional foods. Saturday in downtown Seoul is a mess. But I forced myself to go, because I could easily lock myself in my apartment like I did the last time I was in Korea. That time I was in the south and the main problem was being such a novelty to the locals. This time it's the overcrowding and the way people seem to go out of their way to get in your way. It's better than being stared at, I guess.

Even though it's Saturday night I don't plan to go out. My co-worker, Dan, is stuck working on a side project that pays really well, Graeme, an English friend of mine, has a strange infection or perhaps is just paranoid, and Ronny, a German guy here studying Korean for his fifth or sixth year, has a date. There are other people to ask, but I figure if the three I can usually count on are unavailable, it's probably better I just stay at home or spend an hour in a PC bang (internet cafe). Which is what I'm up to now.

Tomorrow, Sunday, is the beginning of my workweek. We are a six day a week paper, but a new law took effect recently eliminating the six day workweek. Lucky me. So I work Sunday through Thursday and so does Dan. The only problem is Dan is a man-whore and has a different girlfriend every week, which makes it hard to plan anything with him beyond dinner. He also makes double what I make with his side job and his extra years of service at The Korea Herald. This means his tastes in venue are a bit more refined than mine. So an early bedtime will do me good, though I don't feel at all tired yet.

In a week I'll get a paycheck and maybe join a gym. I know there are things that I should be doing with my money, but if I don't start getting some exercise in a safe environment (unlike jogging in the streets or hiking on the crowded mountains) I'll go crazy. Within the year I may take up Tae Kwan Do, not to add to my formidable fighting skills, but to become more flexible and to find some balance and harmony that my body and mind are currently lacking. Please stop laughing. I mean it.

A few of the newer employees of The Korea Herald

2005-08-01T17:35:00.000+09:00

We all began working at The Korea Herald close to the same time this year. There are many others, of course, but this should give you an idea of the makeup of the paper. Mostly young, and then there is me.

2005-07-30T16:19:00.000+09:00

Enjoying a little soju at one of the many galbi restaurants in Seoul. Nice shirt!

2005-07-29T16:30:00.000+09:00

Great lighting makes it easy to find an attractive person to dance or drink with.

2005-07-29T14:27:00.000+09:00

I liked the lighting and felt like a spy or else just a creepy old guy sitting here.

2005-07-09T15:20:00.000+09:00

This was my first night back in Korea. Dan (center, back) took me out with some of his many friends around Ilsan. Front left is Graeme. Next to Dan is Michael. I'm the bald guy leaning over the table below Dan.

Goodbye, Colorado and fresh air!

2005-06-17T16:13:00.000+09:00

Tracey Stark

My Friend the Witch Doctor

2005-04-30T19:20:00.000+09:00

My Friend the Witch Doctor
by Tracey Stark

(published on www.bootsnall.com and www.glimpse.com in January and February 2005)

I was very sick, coughing like a dog with an old squirrel caught in its throat and sweating even though I was cold. And the worst part is that I was in Korea. Normally I would go to the store, buy some alcohol-laced cough syrup, down three shots, and in the morning I would awake hungover, but coughing less. Sadly, there were no alcohol-laced cough syrups in Korea.

I tried self-medicating with rum and an over-the-counter sleep aid. That knocked me out and gave me interesting dreams, but it left me still coughing in the morning.

Then a friend told me about a man who could cure me. He asked me if I had any experience with Oriental medicine and I told him about dum (really) therapy. This is where a nurse or "pyrotechnician" places burning bits of incense (or perhaps jet fuel) on several dozen points of your body leaving you with a cross-shaped connect-the-dots burn on your back and chest. As soon as one spot goes out, another fires up on cue. This is repeated 36 times. Getting a tattoo hurts less.

They wanted me to come back for four dum treatments, so I agreed, said, "See you tomorrow" with a smile and ran from the building.

Now I was considering going back to one of these practitioners, this time an herbalist. I promised myself, though, not to be dum this time. My friend explained how he'd suffered from diarrhea so severe he had slept with a towel on his bed, fearing an unfortunate nocturnal accident that would destroy his sheets. He told me several other things I wish he hadn't, but most importantly told me that the herbs worked.

"And since it's herbs he can do this without any government regulation." This was very reassuring.

He dropped me off at the shop and left me. It looked like a typical pharmacy anywhere, offering assorted goods for health and well-being: toothbrushes, bandages, aspirin, crutches, breast pumps, and, of course, roach spray.

Everyone stared at me silently until the herbalist stepped from the back room and asked in English what was wrong. I described my symptoms and brought up a few coughs for him. He winced at the sound and told me to come back in an hour.

"I must check condition of your blood."

I had nowhere to go and no desire to risk the deadly motorcycle-laden sidewalks of South Korea so I sat and coughed patiently in his lobby. A little girl of about two walked over and opened her mouth revealing a hard candy. I showed her my butterscotch. She handed me her wrapper and silently walked away. An elderly woman with permed, crimson hair in a checkered jacket and flowered pants stared at me unblinkingly for about 10 minutes.

Children walking past the shop stopped at the door and yelled "hello" to me then covered their mouths and giggled. This is the only time Koreans cover their mouths. Coughing and sneezing are done with great force and pride, yet strangely there were no reported cases of SARS there. Koreans claim it's the kimchi and garlic in their diet that prevented it. It definitely wasn't the good manners.

Mr. Park, the herbalist, was a young 70. When he stepped up to the counter and called me to the back his eyes had a youthful eagerness that suggested he was ready to try a new remedy on a customer unlikely to sue him. He smiled, exposing tiny teeth, white and perfect.

He slid a book in front of me and had me write down my personal information. After staring at it for a minute he mispronounced my name.

"Please, take off your watch and remove all metal objects from your person and put on lab coat."
I did so and stood at attention in front of him. He buttoned up the jacket and connected a strap tightly around my neck. He then held my hands for a moment and rubbed his fingers on my palms with his eyes closed. I half expected he would begin speaking in tongues or channeling a lost loved one. Instead he dropped my right hand and looked triumphantly at my left. (I'm left handed.)

The examination had begun.

Mr. Park pulled out a small plastic box of glass vials with screw-top lids variously containing wood shavings, seeds, what looked like rabbit pellets, and a liquid resembling urine in two others. There were also two metal tubes: one gold in color, the other silver.

"Please hold this silver tube in your hand." He placed the tube in my left hand.
"Make a ring with these two fingers," he said, indicating my right thumb and forefinger. OK. "Now look at the silver colored object and resist me when I pull your fingers apart."

I resisted, but he was able to separate my thumb and forefinger with ease. He repeated this with the same result. Next he placed the gold tube in my hand and repeated the process. This time he had more trouble pulling my fingers apart. I felt strong. He rechecked with both batons and the results were the same.

I held a vial of what looked like twigs. The twigs didn't make me stronger. The vial of possibly rabbit droppings made me stronger. As for the vials of the urine-like liquid, only one made me stronger. I wondered how a vial of urine could make me stronger and decided it might be best to not think about it too much.

When I told him my blood type was "O-positive" he smiled like a kid who had just solved a very difficult riddle. (In Korea everyone knows their blood type and it's often a topic of long conversations.) Mr. Park muttered to himself and wandered about his bottles of powders and pills. Finally, he placed a wax paper envelope over the end of a tray with six separate sections and pulled a bottle down, almost randomly, off a shelf near the ceiling. Only Chinese writing was visible on the lid. He scooped a healthy spoonful of powder into a sectioned envelope, sealed it, and shoved it into my hands.

"Take this with hot water two hours after meal, three times each day."

"What is it?"

"It is herbal medicine," he replied.

"Can you write the name down?"

"It has no name. You cannot buy it anywhere."

His smile was fading. He seemed a bit irritated and was not about to give up his secrets. I just wanted to have it written down somewhere so the cause of my death would be easier to figure out.

"Give me 6,000 Won and call me if anything happen."

Perhaps I would morph into an elderly Korean woman with clashing clothes? It sounded very Kafkaesque.Whatever the outcome, there are an estimated 6,000 different herbs in Oriental medicine, in use for thousands of years, so I wasn't worried.

I took the powder home and mixed it with hot water after dinner that night. It was delicious! Just kidding. It tasted like all of the contents of a barn had been dried, mixed, and crushed into a powder.

By the time I went to sleep its effects had worn off and I was coughing even worse now. In the morning I repeated the process, but now my cough was moist, like a dog choking on something dead fished from a sewer. That's an improvement, I thought. The mixture had a tendency to clump up and leave a pile on the bottom and in my haste to finish it, I usually ended up with a pile of this gunk on my tongue. But I swallowed it all and smiled at my girlfriend with bits of green and brown mud in my teeth.

The two days passed and no improvement was evident. So it was time to go back to Mr. Park's World of Herbs and Pesticides.

He was surprised when I told him it didn't work, but took it in stride and had me don the lab coat and stare at metal batons while he pulled my fingers.

This time, though, I had just walked three miles (briskly, I might add) to his shop, and my hands were swollen. He realized that it would be tougher to make a diagnosis today with my fingers so easily pried apart, so he called over one of his assistants in the pink uniform. He placed her next to me and had us hold hands. Then he placed the various objects in my hands and tried to pry her fingers apart. She was my conduit. This time it was silver that I responded to and not gold. Very strange. We tried all of the different objects with different results from the previous visit. He said I was getting sicker.

Mr. Park seemed vexed. He mixed a new concoction and gave me three packets. I asked him how much and he smiled and said, "Free. You are my new experiment."

I was to take one immediately, one before bed, and one if I woke up coughing. I was pleased to find that this powder dissolved completely in water and tasted like green tea. I was displeased, however, to wake up coughing so violently I thought I was going to give myself an aneurism.
When I returned the following day I told him what had happened. He was again surprised and called me into the back. My girlfriend was interested in seeing the examinations I had described, so she came with me. I handed her my watch, mobile phone, and loose change and donned the lab coat.

Instead of pulling out the regular basket of vials, Mr. Park opened a large briefcase on his desk. Inside were more than 100 vials in their own pockets, each with a corresponding Chinese description on the inner lid of the briefcase. It was a sort of Oriental Whitman's Sampler. He pulled out three and had me hold them and resist his pull on my fingers. The yellow powder allowed him to open my fingers with ease. A darker powder gave him more trouble. And the third, a grayish-brown powder, gave him the most trouble. He tried the first again and saw that he could still separate my fingers, and wasn't just tired. Finally, he had me hold both of the vials that had given me strength.

He couldn't open my fingers at all when I held both vials and I had to laugh out loud at this. My girlfriend was smiling at me the whole time, a bit skeptical, but when she saw me relaxing and this old man trying to pull my fingers apart with all of his strength and failing, her smile turned to surprise. I could feel his strength as before and heard him gasp once, and try again.

Again he flashed his white Chiclets at me and looked confident that he knew the answer. He set me up with six packets of several powders mixed together and asked for me to return on Monday. Again, it was free.

"You are difficult experiment," Mr. Park said.

"Like a lab rat that already has cancer, huh?" I joked. Of course, I was the only one who found it funny, but he smiled his mischievous smile anyway.

This third medicine began to work immediately. I didn't wake up holding onto the bed for fear of coughing myself out of it, and I didn't spray phlegm all over my hands in mid-sentence. Mr. Park had found the magic bullet.

This powder, when mixed with a gallon of hot water, still didn't dissolve. I assumed that since he didn't really measure how much he put in each dose, it was o.k. to pour some down the drain.
I returned the next day and told him it was working. "I even coughed up some yellow stuff this morning," I said as proudly as a toddler who had taken his first unsupervised dump.

He smiled, made a note in his book, and went away for a few minutes. When he came back he handed me two more days' worth of the same mixture and asked me for money.

That was it? I was hurt. He didn't want me to wear the lab coat and stare at magic bottles while he pulled my fingers? He didn't want to ignore my jokes and evade my questions? I liked the process more than I liked the cure. It was fascinating and mystical. It worked. I liked and respected Mr. Park. He was the oldest sort of medicine man. And, most importantly, I didn't feel dum when he sent me away

The Book is Done!

2005-04-13T10:10:00.000+09:00

Thirty minutes ago I stood from my computer and walked triumphantly away after I saved my book and removed the flash driver to transfer it to my brother's computer.

It's not the first time I've felt the elation of completion of a huge project. Actually it's really only the second time. The first was for my 70,000 word novel "Kill Clyde," which still hasn't recieved any interest from an agent. That was in October, 2003. Eighteen months later I have typed the last words and punctuated the last sentence of the first draft of my second novel, "The TADPOLE Plan." This one is also a thriller, but is 100,000 words long. I hope I'm not starting a trend that will lead my next novel to be 170,000 words and the one after to be 250,000 words. That will make writing a synopsis a bigger bitch of a task then it already is.

Stephen King said in his book "On Writing" that a writer should put the first draft away and not look at it for about 6 weeks. Then he should remove it from the drawer and read it with "fresh eyes." This allows you time to detach yourself from your work. I agree, but am always so anxious to start on the marketing part that I give it a week and then tear into the second draft and then the third. At least, that's what I did the first time. (I ran out of steam on the third draft and put it away for about three or four months at that point. Then I started TADPOLE in earnest and didn't finish the third draft until a year after the first draft.)

My job on the boat will keep me busy for about eight weeks, during which time I'll work on some other stories in my head: one is a travel memoir about my sailing experience in 2003 from Phuket, Thailand to Darwin, Australia. I remember things about that trip so vividly that I can't avoid it any longer. The other story going through my head is about me as a 10 year-old and the things that happened on the street on which I grew up. It will be fictionalized, of course, and some names will be changed to protect the innocent and not so innocent.

For today, though, I'm just going to crack one cold beer, sit back, and soak up the feeling of accomplishment. I think I deserve it. Don't you?

The latest news...

2005-03-23T05:43:00.000+09:00

Early this morning the phone was ringing. I was still in bed. I didn't want to get up, knowing that nobody who I call "friend" would call me before 9 a.m. But I did and as suspected it was a debt collector. I knew this because I said "hello" three times before they said anything. I hung up on them and went back to bed.

About 20 minutes later the phone rang again. I didn't like it, but was more awake now. So I got out of bed and as I walked to pick it up said out loud (to no one-- I was alone), "This better be Andrea from Lindblad, because I don't want to talk to anyone else."

"Hello?"
"Hello, Tracey? It's Andrea from Lindblad Expeditions."

I was ecstatic. I knew that the only reason she was calling me was because the job I applied for came open and she was offering it to me.

"I called to offer you the pantry chef job. What do you think?"
"WOOOOOOHOOOOOO!" I howled. Or was it more of a hoot? Anyway, I got it.

The job is as a prep cook on board an eco-tour cruise ship for Lindblad Expeditions. I will work in a tiny kitchen for 60 days straight cooking for up to 75 guests and 25 crew. Three meals a day. The pay is decent and includes a share of tips, which are probably added to the final tab of the guests.

http://www.expeditions.com/

After 60 days I'll be sent home for a 30 day break. They pay for the flights to and from the ship and there are no costs involved for me to work on board. Nice, huh? If I want to go somewhere besides my home (in Colorado) I can as long as the ticket price is comparable. Or I can stay where the boat drops me off.

When I join the boat April 19 I will be in Washington State on the Columbia River. We will head to Seattle from there, get new guests and head up to Alaska, following the migration of various whales. In late fall we follow the whales back and head to Baja, Mexico. ( http://www.mexonline.com/sanignacio.htm )

What this means for me is that this is going to be the fifth year in a row when I came to Colorado, stayed with my brother for a while, then left. In 2001 I came out here after quitting my job, but returned because my girlfriend was in North Carolina. In 2002 I came out here long enough to store my possessions, then left to teach English in Korea ( www.daveseslcafe.com ). In 2003 I came back from Korea-Australia, etc., and then returned to Korea a few months later to recruit English teachers for private schools there. In 2004 I returned from Korea then got a job in Wyoming for the summer, then headed to Canada to live with my girlfriend. Now, 2005, I've been dumped and have returned again. I got a job here, but it doesn't pay much, so I'm leaving again to work on a boat heading to Alaska.

When does it end? I guess when I get out of debt or get published. Time will tell.

TV Nazis Part II

2005-03-10T12:46:00.000+09:00

Thanks to a comment from Telly, I now see there is a voice of reason in this vast sea of insanity. And that voice is www.speakspeak.org . They have an anti-complaint campaign with the hopes of setting a standard once and for all.

They ask the obvious question: Why can you show Saving Private Ryan with all of the bad language (common among men in combat, I would guess) while you wouldn't be allowed to show an unedited version of Malcom X or Ali or Full Metal Jacket? Each of these films depicts historical events and the language used and the nudity or sexual nature of each is in the context of those events and not just for a gratuitous reason.

The answer, the author of the article assumed, was that Saving Private Ryan was introduced on TV by a U.S. Senator and veteran (and a major player in communications policy on the Hill). The film was also made by a beloved director.

Since the Senate is about to pass the bankruptcy bill that will allow fewer seriously poor people get out of debt, they will now have time to consider these questions.

Please click on the link above and scroll down to : Thierer Prepares to Request Indecency Clarification

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a few back episodes of C.S.I. and That 70s Show to watch. And I will be partially nude and cursing at the screen in a purely gratuitous manner.

The TV Nazis

2005-03-09T11:11:00.000+09:00

I was surfing around and found a site for a group called The Parents Television Council. www.parentstv.org .These people, it turns out, are the ones who accounted for 95% of all complaints to the FCC regarding Janet Jackson's breast. I don't have TIVO, so I didn't catch it.

The way this group works is you visit the website and they tell you which shows to complain about. They will even provide you with a letter to copy and paste or print out so you can sign it and send it in. Most of the complainants, therefore, have never even watched the shows they are all up in arms about.

They are complaining for the sake of complaining. Their current target? CSI. There is a banner at the top of their site that changes every second or two. First it says "The Parents Television Council. Over a million members strong." Then it switches: "PTC Members File over 12K FCC Indecency Complaints Against CSI." And finally: "VICTORY. House Votes to Increase Indecency Fines."

This group's next objective is to control cable television and make the rules for decency on all of those channels. HBO would be their main target. Anything resembling real interaction between people would be eliminated and replaced with shows featuring talking puppies and Leave it to Beaver-type families. Except you can't call anyone Beaver anymore. The Sopranos and Sex in the City would be gone for good. South Park? Forget about it.

Here are the top 10 most offensive shows according to the PTC website:
1. Everwood. (Never-would have heard of it)
2. That 70s Show. The PTC goons rated it number two because of it's "casual and irresponsible treatment of teen sex and drug use." Give me an effin break. That kind of comment makes me want to light up a fattie and go get laid.
3. Fear Factor. Because it "continues to push the envelope with its disgusting and physically dangerous stunts." Sounds like fun.
4. Two and a Half Men. Too much sexual inuendo and a bad example of parenting. But I'll bet it's damn funny.
5. C.S.I. (Crime Scene Investigation). Too many grisly scenes of murder, etc. Flashbacks that are real looking, etc. One of my favorites of all time.
6. The Surreal Life. A bunch of has-been celebrities live in a house together to get free publicity. It's a W.B. show, so what does anyone expect?
7. Girlfriends. Has words like "vagina" and "yeast infection" and "orgasm" in the dialogue.
8. Las Vegas. Vegas. Sin City. Sodom and Gomorrah. Say no more. Another one of my favorites.
9. Will and Grace. Did you think you homosexuals could hide from the PTC? No way! We will find you all and string you up and light a fire under you, and.... Wow! I got a little carried away pretending to be a TV Nazi. Sorry.
10. Cold Case. Deals with unsolved murder cases. The PTC would probably replace it with Andy Griffith re-runs if they could. "Hey, it's still a cop show. Right?"

To give you a taste of what they really like I'll run down the top 10 "Family Friendly" Shows: Joan of Arcadia, Doc, Sue Thomas F.B. Eye, Reba, 7th Heaven, Extreme Makeover Home Edition, Everybody Loves Raymond, American Idol, American Dreams, and Bernie Mac. Some of these shows are good, while others are so sugary sweet my diabetic mom wouldn't be allowed to watch them.

The group isn't without its moments of sanity though. The president and founder of PTC, Brent Bozell, wrote that Saving Private Ryan wasn't indecent because "Context is everything." He went on to explain: "We agreed with the FCC on its ruling that the airing of 'Schindler's List' on television was not indecent and we feel that 'Saving Private Ryan' is in the same category. In both films, the content is not meant to shock, nor is it gratuitous. We applaud ABC for letting viewers know ahead of time about the graphic nature of the film and that the film would be uncut." Saving Private Ryan was shown for several years in a row with no problems.

The fact of the matter is they don't want to butt heads with Spielberg. PTC may have clout, but in the entertainment industry Spielberg is God. When those movies were aired, Spielberg stipulated that there could be no editing and there could be no commercials. Period. Still, more than half of the stations set to air Private Ryan pulled the movie at the last minute for fear of having to pay unnecessary fines levied against them by the likes of then-FCC Czar, Michael Powell (son of Colin). And that fear was based on the clout the PTC has in the halls of Congress. (Their site even shows you how your congressman voted.)

As long as this current administration is in charge, you might want to start taping episodes of C.S.I. and other favorites before they are yanked from the air or censored down to nothing. In one half of the world profanity on television is acceptable. Nudity also happens after a certain hour in many countries. In other parts of the world an on-screen kiss will get you killed. The U.S. happens to be somewhere in the middle. But not for long.

Go to the website and look at how it's run. I don't think the Nazi machine was as organized as this when they went out and burned books and exterminated a race of people. But the idea behind both was the same: Freedom of speech only when it agrees with their ultra-conservative values.

http://www.parentstv.org/

Bringing you up to date...

2005-03-08T08:05:00.000+09:00

For those of you who don't know: Agnes dumped me last month right before we were set to go to Korea for a year. This pretty much ruined my day for a month. If you knew Agnes, it would have been a surprise to you. If you didn't know her, you're probably cursing her name right now. To tell you the truth, I don't want anyone to think poorly of her. She did what she felt she had to do. It cost both of us a lot of sleepless night, but everyone gets hurt and almost everyone gets over it.

The first thing I was looking for was a job once I got here. I turned in about 25 applications until I finally ran across Washington's Sports Bar and Grill. They were renovating, so I walked in on the construction and convinced them I could do anything they needed me for. I sanded tables, installed tables and lighting, mopped, scrubbed, and painted. Now we're open and I have worked the kitchen, bar, and floor. I won't be bartending for at least three months, so I'm holding my breath for a job on an Eco-cruise ship in Baja http://www.expeditions.com/ . They would have hired me, but they had an employee who went to culinary school and then applied at the same time. I don't blame them. I would have hired that person over me. Anyway, they have me on the list for the next position to open.

Sometime during the last 10 days working at Washington's I hurt my back. It started out just a bit sore in a location familiar to me-- I tore a muscle in the gym in college. Then it went from soreness to agony. Finally I gave in and went to a doctor. He told me what I already knew and gave me some drugs. Good stuff. The only problem is when I take them I can't use my right arm for shit. Oh yeah, and my brain goes a little loopy. But it's only temporary. I hope.

(New symptom: my right hand goes numb quite frequently. Any doctors reading this, please advise.)

So I sit here with a free buzz (the bartender bought me a few beers for helping him today) wondering if I should try to write something good tonight. My fingers are protesting, because the accuracy is down to about 25%. So I shall wait until everything comes back to me.

Until then, read with pleasure, surf with ease, and research with a keen eye.

T.S.

Welcome to My Mind

2005-03-07T07:10:00.000+09:00

Come on in! There's plenty of room. This is my new place to vent, create, share, and predict. In the coming months you can come here to find out what the hell is going on in my mind. Some of you may already be afraid to go there, but trust me, it's a rather peaceful place. Especially lately, what with all the muscle relaxers and pain killers I've had to take for my back.

Tangent: Why would people refer to pain relievers as pain killers? Doesn't that sound even more painful?

Anyway, welcome one and all. Today I'm just out here saying hello and checking to see if the PH levels are o.k. and if the water is warm enough. So far, so good.

Look for more in the days and weeks to come. For now I've got to get back to my laundry, dishes, and meditating.

Tracey Stark on...

Tracey's Top Ten, er, Top Five Things He Likes About Korea

Cat-Man-Don't!

Ddeok Ddeok Revolution!

Step Aside Simon Cowell, There's a New Mogul in Town

“It says here that you worked at NASA, before serving as a Supreme Court Justice…”

Does Tracey Have a Boo-boo?

Sol Hospital, Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinic: Giving injured athletes a sporting chance

Them's the Rules

Modern dentistry with a traditional touch

The Doppelganger Syndrome In Korea

I Survived Fan Death

Maximus T. Ursus

A large retailer in Korea can't even get it right...

Letting the days go by…

The Weller Side of Life

Chiro with a twist

Waiting to Inhale

An auspicious year for resolutions and barbecue

Hwighting! An Ode to Konglish

When the Road Hits Back

Books I Read in 2006

Thinking and Drinking in Seoul

Cease and Desist: The Bush administration and the use of my name

Traditional Healing

I'm being punished for not speaking Korean

10 Ways to Make Korea a Better Place

The Apple Experience in Seoul

Choi's Tacos: Muy bien!

Hooked on Korean Phonics

The accidental journalist

The Best of Mexico in Hongdae

Living on the edge

The Apron Girls

Countries I've been to... yep, that's it.

Books I read in 2005

Danger in Korea: Western Myth No. 1

PETA protest against KFC in Korea

KFC target of bikini-clad PETA protest

Police break up disabled protest

The Promotion: a short story

Drunken Man at a Busan Subway Station

Six weeks...

A few of the newer employees of The Korea Herald

Goodbye, Colorado and fresh air!

My Friend the Witch Doctor

The Book is Done!

The latest news...

TV Nazis Part II

The TV Nazis

Bringing you up to date...

Welcome to My Mind

KFC　target　of　bikini-clad　PETA　protest