Tag Archives: korea

photography, viajes

Soldiers and ogres

Image


Watch out for man-won man. Book street, Nampo, Busan.


Yellow and green ladies. Seoul.

Trail running. Jangsan Mountain. Night.
Up the pine tree forests.
Then soldiers on the road.
Out of the innocent shadow. Crouching and smoking.
I light them up with my torch not knowing they don’t want to be seen.
Lit up they recede like creatures that can only hold power in the night.
I turn off my light.
Helmet cat eyes shinning.
Cigarette ambers floating and then flaring up with the breath of new life.

I turn around slowly. I run back home pretending I saw neither war nor warriors.
Then I hear them chanting or laughing or crying.
They are waiting for the things that only exist in the dark.
Little soldiers with ambitious imaginations.
Then silence.
Orange lights deep in the forest.
Smells of meat.
A cauldron boiling slowly.
Dogs bark then silence again.
A running stream and the wind in the trees.
A lone bird cries, intermittently. Singing in morse code.
Folkloric creatures and curious soldiers watch me
while I make my way down to Busan.

memoria, viajes

Little Korean Treasure Hunters

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The envelope’s wax seal is ripped apart and the kids start shaking.

The kids got all clammy and nervous. They were excited in a very strange, unpredictable way which was unsettling. The bell rang and they fled down the hallway of the school screaming about mysterious codes and blood stains. I went pale and chased them. Before I could get them to shut up, the Korean director of the school where I work approached me and very seriously told me “The children are very shocked, they say blood on a treasure map. Very very shocked.”

“It’s not blood. It’s red wax. It’s just a story I invented… for teaching”.

She smiled gracefully but I couldn’t tell if I would eventually get in trouble.

It was a sunny afternoon many many many many many weeks ago when I didn’t know how to kill 5 minutes of Kinder class. I was fairly new to teaching and the children could smell my fear like a pack of roaming dingos. Kids know how to exploit the little awkward silences when an unprepared teacher falters.

I told my students I was from Colorado and that there were treasures in Colorado. Which is true. Sort of. When I notice I had secured most of their attention, I started improvising a story “Many many many many many many many years ago…” and pieced together details from a collection of old treasure tales I had heard and read. The classroom had been wild at first but as I continued the story, it grew quiet.

Map Elements: page with the “Dead Tree Treasure” story, the code key, burned pictures of some of the locations near the treasure, a missing piece of the map.

Narratives are sometimes linked to survival. The old Persian king stayed the execution of the storyteller every night in One Thousand and One Nights because he wanted to hear the end of each story. I didn’t have experience telling oral stories and felt I was learning something special and important that day in the classroom.

“…And my uncle… no, my father has the treasure map. He lives in Chile. I’ll ask him to send the map and then I’ll make photocopies for everybody.”

When I finished the story, the Dear Leader of the class, six year-old Elizabeth, stood up and made a pronouncement: “and then, when we are older, we and you go to Colorado and find the treasure with you!” She had the presence of a little Korean Margaret Thatcher. The whole class seconded the motion by banging on their desks and letting out war cries “KO-RE-A! KO-RE-A! KO-RE-A!” I tried to quiet them down but I was laughing too hard.

From then on, every day, kids would come up to me and ask me “Where’s the map?!”. The map’s journey developed a story of its own. I told them it was coming and used an assortment of excuses… “My dad went to get the map at his grandmother’s abandoned, burnt out house where she had kept it buried in a box under the lemon tree… My dad mailed it but sent it by “sea mail” rather than “air mail” so it will take longer to arrive… because it was cheaper, that’s why, he’s cheap like that… Oh no! there was a typhoon and the mail ship sank off the coast of the Northern Mariana Islands… …the Taiwanese Coast Guard has found the missing cargo on a beach in Keelung and it’s being sent to Korea… it should be arriving at Inchon international airport any day now…”

The wait for the map had an important dramatic effect that I stretched for a while.

Little Miss Thatcher with the map

The map finally arrived. I was a little unsure about how the kids were going to respond to it. I thought they would immediately tell it was an hoax. Then I thought the opposite… I would get fired for scaring the kids because it would be too real. I imagined a sensitive parent complaining to the school that their child was being taught by “crazy teacher.” To make sure the kids wouldn’t run away and travel to Colorado by themselves Goonies-style, I stipulate that the treasure could not be recovered until the first full moon of the sixth month of 2027.

The kids used the map as a prop on their graduation play. I wrote the script based on a story about treasure hunters who seek riches but end up finding friendship.

I love the idea of treasure and I think most kids do, too. As a kid, I looked for treasure everywhere. I had a conviction that in the Andes existed treasure caches waiting for me inside caves filled with giant multi-colored quartz crystals. In my house, I combed the yard for anything that would lead me to the riches I knew the old owner had hid behind the adobe walls.

Perhaps the map I brought for the kids leads to no treasure. I don’t know if there’s a dead tree with an “X” mark on its trunk in Colorado. That doesn’t really matter. We search for treasure because we love adventure and a good story to tell our grandchildren. And one day, that story may save us from the sword of a king or the wrath of unruly children.

Three characters from the play: from right Dreaming Cloud The Storyteller, The Queen of Snow, and Luna Coyote. Missing: Cowboy John, Paco the treasure hunter, Old Miner Bill, and The King of the Wind.

memoria

read my mind

I look up and see them.

Window workers in Centum City

I think the same thing other people think about people hanging from buildings.

I’ve been listening to one song over and over. “Read my Mind” by The Killers. I don’t like the music video and the song is not something I would normally enjoy. The video is weird in a lazy way. But there are some manjar-covered parts within the song that feel nice and sweet to me… like Brandon Flowers, the vocalist, unexpectedly changing his voice to sing “Oh Well”… or his appearance… his western mustache and tie. When I watch the video I see myself in the future. I’m in the future listening to this song and reminiscing about the past (now, the present)… my nights here in Korea. And in that past, I’m wearing a western mustache and tie, and I’m on a hipster bike cruising down Korean alleyways after a light rain. The wet streets shine under neon signs.

So even if the video and song feel lame, the combination has an emotional effect on me… and about 13,000,000 other viewers. That effect is total star-quality.

For your consideration

memoria

Guess who I saw at the beach last night

Mr. Park

Mr. Park a.k.a. The Trolling Ahjussi (Wikipedia)

I saw a film shoot on the boardwalk of Haeundae beach. I approached it with innocent curiosity (which to me is to get as close as I can until somebody tells me otherwise) and inadvertently broke through the restricted perimeter. Me hice el weon and kept walking because nobody was stopping me. I didn’t mean to screw the shoot but…

I was able to get pretty close to Park Jin Young, a Korean pop icon and the star of the shoot. I got close enough for Mr. Park himself to turn around and flash me a look of concern… I was wearing my mystery fedora. As I recovered from star-struckness, one of the location assistants ran up to me holding a glowing traffic baton. I played the dumb foreigner card and inclined my head to the right like a puppy making sense of a strange sound.

The Star, second from right

I tried to get a picture of “The Asiansoul” as he is known here, but I was too far and my hipstamatic had no zoom capabilities. Nice try. Once again I had missed an opportunity to achieve fame by tackling a famous person.

The video that introduced me to Mr. Park (he’s the one who needs toilet paper):

I did try to get close again for a picture. This time, however, I had been placed on the watch list.

history, memoria

El Baile de la Botella and the tragedy of the mid-1990s

My favorite view in Busan

January 15, 2012. Worked at Twosome Place coffeeshop in Gwanlli beach on a play for 5 year olds. I love this place because I can see the bridge. The Gwanlli bridge is one of the things that charmed me about Busan before I moved here. Now, four months after my arrival, its sight reminds me why I’m here.

Skyped my sister, who pointed that this was the sound of our generation.

Then, on a more somber note, I went to Beached Bar in the same seafront strip. Talking with the owner, I discovered a horrific event that happened in Seoul in 1995. A mall collapsed killing 501 people. The Sampoong Department Store.  Hearing and reading more about the event made Korean malls and Seoul have an ominous feel. Even the name Sampoong is disturbing. I tense up reading this section of the wikipedia entry as the disaster begins to unfold but nobody does anything about it…

“In April 1995, cracks began to appear in the ceiling of the south wing’s fifth floor. During this period, the only response by Lee and his management staff involved moving merchandise and stores from the top floor to the basement.

On the morning of June 29, the number of cracks in the area increased dramatically, prompting managers to close the top floor and shut the air conditioning off. The store management failed to shut the building down or issue formal evacuation orders, as the number of customers in the building was unusually high, and they did not want to lose the day’s revenue. However, the executives themselves left the premises as a precaution.

Civil engineering experts were invited to inspect the structure, with a cursory check revealing that the building was at risk of collapse; the National Geographic documentary seriesSeconds From Disaster indicates that the facility’s manager was examining the slab in one of the restaurants on the fifth floor, eight hours before the collapse, when, unknowingly, vibration from air conditioning was radiating through the cracks in the concrete columns and the floor opened up.

Five hours before the collapse, the first of several loud bangs was heard emanating from the top floors, as the vibration of the air conditioning caused the cracks in the slabs to widen further. Amid customer reports of vibration, the air conditioning was turned off, but the cracks in the floors had already widened to 10 cm.

At about 5:00 p.m. Korea Standard Time (UTC+9:00), the fitfh floor ceiling began to sink, resulting in store workers blocking customer access to the fitfh floor. According to Seconds From Disaster, the store was packed with shoppers 52 minutes before the collapse, but the owner did not close the store or carry out repairs at that time. When the building started to produce cracking sounds at about 5:50 p.m., workers began to sound alarms and evacuate the building, but by then it was too late.

Around 5:52 p.m., the roof gave way, and the air conditioning unit crashed through into the already-overloaded fifth floor.[1] The main columns, weakened to allow the insertion of the escalators, collapsed in turn, and the building’s south wing pancaked into the basement. Within 20 seconds, all of the building’s columns in the south wing gave way, trapping more than 1,500 people and killing 501.

The disaster resulted in about ₩270 billion (approximately US$216 million) worth of property damage.”

Sampoong Department Store collapse. In Wikipedia. Retrieved January 15, 2012 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampoong_Department_Store_collapse

The aftermath.

image from: http://baileybrosbuildingandloanabroad.blogspot.com/2011/04/incompetence-negligence-and-greed.html

 

memoria, viajes

Yangsan

SATURDAY JAN 14. 2012. This morning I ran up Jangsan Mt. where the Korean army had emplaced land mines to make things more exciting for trail running… see happy mined trials.

Back home, I started writing an essay on two movies I’ve been thinking about a lot.  The essay compares “The Notebook” and “Blue Valentine”. Two movies that have a lot in common and seem to be in dialogue.

Then got on the first train out of Jangsan for Yangsan.  Yansang’s the furthest point in the green line of the Busan subway. This is the first part of my plan to go to every end point in Busan’s subway system. It took me about 1.5 hrs to get to the station… I live at the other end of the green line in Jansang. I wrote part of my graduation play for the kids I teach on the train. On the train, I listened to the later works of Bob Dylan and read Atlas Shrugged on my iPhone.

Pretty soon all the cosmopolitan Koreans got off the train and the old Koreans got on. They were ajimas and their male counter parts.  Yansang must have the ajima manufacturing plant and all ajimas must have been recalled for their weekly perm. The train went above ground and I saw the Nakdonggang river glistening in the afternoon sun.  Across the water,  strawberries fields spread away into the hilly horizons.  White apartments buildings grew out of the green eastern hills.

Yansang was a little boring. Here is what I thought was most interesting.

Horizontal lines under a bridge

 

Pipes

Then I went to see “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” good movie but with a lot of sexual violence.

David Fincher is the shit. I hope Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross do an evil cover of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”.

The movie finished late… at 00:05… I ran across a darkened Lotte Department store to catch the last train out of Seomyeon. I failed. The train had left a long time ago… sad face… took my fail as a sign that I was going to find something interesting on the streets of Seomyeon… perhaps a mystery to solve…

I followed my intuition… found some friendly Korean soldiers out for a night of fun waiting outside of the Milk Boy club (which I first thought was a gay bar and then remembered I was in Korea and that there’s no “doble sentido” here).  The line to get in was too long but the Koreans kept me entertained until they told me I was going to be waiting for an hour to get to “the best dancing hall this side of the street.”  Took a picture of them. Koreans, like most other humans, love the immortality of a photograph.

Couldn’t wait an hour. Took a cab back to Jangsan.

At home, I listened to a Fresh Air episode on Rin Tin Tin, a Ted Talk on inspiration and a Moth podcast about the holocaust.  Then I made my necessary FB check and saw a picture of Lionel Richie… decided that THAT was definitely a sign to listen to All Night Long.