Meditation on Korea

2014年05月11日

Almost as soon as I had gotten settled, I found myself departing.  And yet, I feel as though I had experienced a significant portion of the Korean culture.  My strategy was as follows: try everything (bone soup, extremely spicy foods, kimchi for breakfast, and even Korean natto), walk without fear of getting lost, and bring a map so you don't actually get lost (unless you speak or are trying to learn the language, in which case being lost is an excellent excuse to approach a stranger and start a conversation).  In Seoul, I walked all day long without being able to speak to anyone or read most of the signs, but that just meant I had to be more observant to figure things out.  Below are some of clever ideas I noticed:

Most restaurants have these call buttons on the table to hail a waiter/waitress.  This both allows them to use their time more efficiently and prevents unnecessary interruptions by well-intention, yet overly eager, servers.

Metal chopsticks are used almost exclusively, but at home and in restaurants.  This prevents the unnecessary waste of using disposable bamboo chopsticks.  Of course, disposable chopsticks are still used for take-out.

Most restaurants and foodcourt areas have metal cups and self-service water.  Some places even had these UV cup sanitizers!  Incidentally, very few places offered beverages with your with your meal aside from water, and I didn't see a single soda outside of a vending machine the entire time I was in the country.  Even then, most vending machines offered only tea and coffee (and maybe juices).

The other beverage I saw with some frequency was Pocari Sweat, which is similar to Gatorade.  The primary difference: this beverage lists the ions (as in the chemical notation of elements with positive and negative superscripts denoting the scarcity or abundance of electrons, respectively, as compared to the total number of protons, thereby denoting the net charge of each atom of the element) that it replenishes, instead of masking them all with blanket term "electrolytes," which many people forget are actually salts (and a lot more sugar than in Pocari Sweat).  Another difference, the size of the can.  Every drink can is the size of a Red Bull, or smaller, which is really more than enough to quench one's thirst.  

And it's not just their beverage habits that are healthier.  I found that tomatoes and fruits were just as common for dessert as chocolate or western sweets.  Just a thought.  Though I will say that Korean sweets are really good, especially at the bakeries, which are amazing and remind me of Brazilian bakeries.

In addition to the healthier eating habits, everyone walks everywhere.  This can be attributed to the fact that Korean cities are incredibly compact.  Most cities, regardless of overall size and population, have the same urban feel to them.  This means that most people love in high-rise apartment buildings, every necessity is within walking distance, there is abundant public transportation, and a lot of the country remains forested and relatively untouched.  Granted I haven't conducted a thorough research study and analysis of how these dense populations affect the surrounding natural areas, it seems like a pretty good model.

In this picture, you can see how most of the crosswalks I encountered were directional, meaning there is a predesignated path depending upon which way you are crossing the street.  No one actually seemed to follow the arrows, but it's still an interesting idea.  What people did do, almost without exception, was obey the cross signal.  Most people would not jaywalk, even if there were absolutely no cars coming and it was a very small street.  Very small streets with little car traffic didn't always have sidewalks, so people would walk in the streets and yield when necessary, but wherever there was a cross signal, it was obeyed.

In addition to all the walking, every stairway either had a ramp for handicapped people or a narrow ramp for people to wheel bicycles rather than carrying then, whichnis both burdensome and dangerous).  That's something NC State could definitely use. 

Many parks and public spaces also had these sturdy exercise machines that utilize the user's weight as resistance, meaning most ages and body types are accommodated.  The wooden structure in the background contains free weights, for those who prefer them.

I also encountered many of these machines, in addition to volleyball and basketball courts, under the highway that runs along the Hangang River.  In the US, this is the kind of public area in which one would expect to find homeless people, drug addicts, plentiful graffiti, and the lingering stench of urine.  Yet here, I found none of those things, but rather happy couples eating picnics and senior citizens enjoying their days without fear of harassment.  It seems that on average, everything was slightly better cared for.  Even the asphalt!  I didn't see a single pothole or even even a questionable patch of asphalt in need of replacing.

Aesthtics also seemed important in Korea.  This cellphone tower was made to resemble a tree.  And it wasn't a special tower; most of the towers I saw looked this way, which is quite important given the number of towers that appear in natural areas in a country where you still have a cellphone signal in parking garages and subways.

And here we are at the last picture I have to share.  Congratulations for reading through all of that!  In this picture, we see a safety harness with which one may descend from the window of any high-rise building, should it become impossible or otherwise impractical to exit one's room through the door in the event of an emergency.  Just one more clever idea for which the proper consideration should be given.

Not pictured:

-Spaceship toilets with heated seats, automatic lids, built-in fans to remove odors, and the notorious bidet feature, which is supposed to be more effecient than toiletpaper alone.

-Squat toilets, common in public restrooms, which are not at all uncomfortable and allow one to use restrooms of questionable cleanliness without having to touch anything!  I really wish we had some of those in the US...

Now off to Japan!