Cat-Man-Don't!

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!

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

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…”

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?

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

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

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

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

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!