Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone

Recently I’ve been travelling out from the edge of known space at Jangsan to Gijang, which means that on the return leg of the journey I have found myself trying to catch taxis in the countryside to return to civilisation. It quickly became apparent that this may not be the same as catching taxis in the city.

Situated as I have been, in the middle of hardly anywhere by a long stretch of six-lane pork-barrel project next to a bus stop, I can see the taxis approaching from some distance away, but there is clearly a problem. Out here the taxis have entered into what can best be described as Busan Taxi Hyperspace, and either the taxi pilots have no ability to see beyond hyperspace, or it is impossible for them to decelerate to pick me up without turning themselves into a thin layer of jelly on the inside of their windscreens [that’s a ‘windshield’ for North American Passport Holders].

It has crossed my mind that I am not helping in this process. A reserved English cultural upbringing generally does not predispose me to jumping up and down like an American Televangelist by the side of the rural highway to attract the attention of the taxi pilots in good time. But it has also occurred to me that it may go further than this – because there may be an unwillingness to stop for foreigners. I mean, is it worth the hassle of trying to talk to an alien for the sake of $5? For all the movies and television episodes produced, Star Trek never adequately answered this question.

The first time this happened, four definite taxis obviously passed me and I identified a further two blurs as probables. I was considering a new strategy of starting to run in the direction of Jangsan as soon as I saw an approaching craft in the hope that the reduced speed differential might actually tempt them to drop out of hyperspace briefly for me to jump in, but then one actually did stop for me, and I didn’t even have to recreate any of my greatest moments as a 100m sprinter for my school, which was fortunate because there weren’t any.

When we reached civilisation my unfamiliarity with Jangsan caused me to reach for my wallet early and withdraw a 10,000 won note. The driver, who by this time had finally been forced to come to a stop due to the tiresome ‘red-light convention’ which even Korean drivers sometimes adhere to, saw this in his rear-view mirror and started organising the 1,000 won notes he’d give me in change. And then he gave me the change. This was confusing on account of the fact that we weren’t at my requested destination of Jangsan subway station yet, I had no intention of getting out, and my survival Korean does not extend to phrases like, “the rest of the ride is free”. Maybe I’m not meeting the right kind of women.

So I revert to my well-worn Confused Foreigner Look. Seeing my confusion and sadness as finally outing myself as someone whose Korean ability was more of a carnival act of stock phrases designed to simulate actual cleverness, rather than being the real thing, he proceeded to press a button on his charging meter which moved it to zero, finishing with a fait-accompli gesture which marked him out as a person who even knew more French than me. I thanked him. In simulated Korean.

We got to the subway station and I parted ways with my oddly charitable taxi pilot and waved farewell to his small craft. But it was as I descended into the subspace of Jangsan Station that I had a moment of self-awareness. I was very short-haired, wearing a black suit and carrying a small black attaché case with my documents, but not my Bible. Yes, I might have looked like a missionary, and while my frustrations with being unable to catch a taxi out there in the Forbidden Zone had not quite caused me to adopt the missionary position in a final attempt to attract attention, I may have been projecting the image of a lonely Christian-in-need.

It then occurred that this might explain the philanthropy of the taxi pilot, and also the intriguing outside possibility that the reason the other pilots didn’t stop for me was because they were Buddhists.

It Could Happen to You

I have a psychic Korean aunt, who makes her living travelling around the country dispensing advice about peoples' futures and occasionally cleansing evil spirits using a special dance, along with her spirit guides - an old man and a small boy. I always liked Psychic Aunt because like me she's clearly slightly unhinged, but I didn't much care for her younger spirit guide - while we were back in England he insisted on taking a stuffed toy from our office that we'd been saving for our child. When you're having difficulty having a baby, and someone takes something you'd been saving for if it finally happens, it has an unhappy subtext, especially when that someone is supposed to be able to foretell the future. Perhaps you're entitled to be a bit of an ass when you're dead, but personally I think the dead should hold themselves up to higher standards.

Despite foretelling that I would live an extremely long life and become quite wealthy, neither of which seem very likely at this point, apparently Psychic Aunt is quite well known and very good at what she does. I suppose you'd say she has 'the gift' if you believe in such things. A lot of people in Korea do, and it supposedly runs in my wife's family, so Korean Mother and Korean Brother are both 'seers' too, but they didn't accept the calling when it came to them in an ancestral dream, as it does. I had an ancestral dream once when I was 14. It involved some recently deceased ancestors dressed as death chasing me round a running track, and while I gradually tired they didn't. So I suppose I saw my own future, but they didn't indicate whether it meant I could see other people's.

Their failure to take up the calling hasn't stopped the dreams and premonitions within my immediate Korean family. And to be fair, after about a year of trying, Korean Mother finally had a baby boy dream about two weeks before my wife became pregnant with our son. My background is in science, so while I'm generally dismissive of apparently superstitious nonsense I also try to remain somewhat open minded, and recent psychological research and developments in rather frightening reality-challenging cutting-edge theoretical physics suggest that in actual fact, foreseeing the future might not be quite as ridiculous as it first appears.

I have to admit to being slightly unnerved by some predictions which have been made within my Korean family, and things that have consequently happened over the years. Enough that I've become more open-minded than polite-cynicism would normally dictate. Perhaps it helps that along the way I developed Meniere's Disease, which has given me a more reality-challenging relationship with the concepts of space, time and gravity anyway.

That said, I am not so open-minded that when a conversation begins 'Mother has had a dream', that I don't feel a slight sinking feeling in my stomach at what will come next. Although sometimes that could be the Meniere's - you can never really tell. At the weekend the dream in question was fortuitous money dream which apparently ranked quite highly on the spooky-scale. So my wife bought lottery tickets. Now to me that seems like a leap of faith - who's to say that the dream wasn't telling us to rob an armoured car instead? After all, it wasn't specific about how this money would fortuitously come to us. But lottery tickets it was.

So it was with great faux-excitement that I read the numbers to my wife when she woke up Sunday morning and entered my office brandishing the tickets. But as I read out the first three numbers, and she ticked them off on one of her two tickets, I began to get that unnerving feeling again. And indeed, we'd won the lottery - a prize of 5,000 won. Does this keep Korean Mother's psychic track-record? Perhaps, but the tickets cost 10,000 won.

Apparently she had another dream overnight...

Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead

Having a baby in Korea can expose you to a great deal of culturally odd experiences. There are rules about staying in hospital, rules about keeping the rooms there at high temperatures, beliefs that new mothers shouldn't shower for a week, and when the fortune tellers get involved, the minefield of baby naming to navigate. Eventually, those first few weeks pass by and you're left with your newborn at home, and you think things might start to get a little less strange.

But when my wife came into our office and said "I need a picture of a chicken to hang upside down over the baby's bed", I was hardly even surprised even if I had no idea what the reasoning behind it was. Does there come a point where you've been in Korea so long that nothing surprises you any more?

In this case, it seems there an old belief which has its roots in the practices of Korean Shamanism, and the upshot of it is that if your baby is a bit of a handful, doesn't sleep at night - or at all - and generally cries a lot, you should hang a picture of a chicken (or technically I believe, a rooster), upside down over the baby's bed as this will - apparently - be a calming influence. The reasoning is that during pregnancy the baby generally sleeps during the day and is active at night, so the rooster picture is supposed to reverse the cycle, although it's important that the red part of the rooster's head (the 'comb' - really) is exaggerated, hence the reason why my wife extended it with a red colouring pencil.

Now, it occurs to me that several hundred years ago there wasn't an Internet to download chicken images from, and even having the kind of tools and paper around enabling a person to draw a fair representation of a chicken might have been rare, so I can't help wondering if this means that people back then used to hang real chickens - presumably dead ones - upside down over their babies beds. But I'm afraid to ask. When you can walk into your kitchen and find a pig's head staring at you unannounced from the kitchen table - and I have - anything is possible.

By the way, before you rush out to procure your own chicken, drawn or otherwise, I have to tell you that it doesn't work.

Much Ado About Nothing

Last week a highly respected Korean Buddhist monk, the Venerable Beopjeong, died. It was all over the news.

He'd written a book in 1976 entitled 'Non-Possession', which espoused a philosophy of possessing nothing, and it sparked a non-materialist movement of sorts. Other books on the theme followed. Indeed, the Venerable Beopjeong saw the philosophy as transcending death and to that end asked not to be buried in a coffin, since this would mean he had something. So his body was covered in a simple cloth for his burial.

It was believed that after his death his still popular books on possessing nothing would no longer be printed at the monk's request, which was later confirmed; he didn't want to leave anything remaining in this world when he moved beyond it.

Then we learned that some of the otherwise devout Buddhists we know are scrambling to buy copies of 'Non-Possession' because 'it will go up in value'... It's even hit the news - the recommended price of 'Non-Possession' is normally 8,000 won (£4.69/$7.05), but the average second-hand selling price on a popular auction site is now 50,000 won (£29/$44), with 77,000 won (£45/$68) being the highest price anybody has paid, although one seller is holding out for 154,800 won (£91/$137). So much then, for the lesson - perhaps he left behind even less than he thought.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Korea's Lunar New Year holiday ('설날') occurred over the weekend. It's a time of year that involves families gathering together, and all the inevitable responsibilities that go along with this, both subtle and overt. This year it clashed with Valentine's Day, leaving people with a choice of which to celebrate. With family being so important the New Year invariably won, although once again, ever-evasive Korean Brother managed to avoid any such obligations. As the eldest in her family, and with both parents having passed away many years ago, it is Korean Mother's responsibility to host to her young siblings for New Year's meals, and it's not an event without its tensions; with a sister who works as a Buddhist psychic and a brother who works as a Christian pastor, they are a microcosm of the religious differences which can sometimes bubble away uneasily in Korean society.

Pastor Uncle stipulated that he would only eat food which hadn't been in any way involved in any kind of Buddhist blessings or rituals, which theoretically required Korean Mother to spend the whole day preparing the dishes for the meal. This was unfortunate because Korean Mother was extremely tired having just returned from two days of New Year family duties in Namhae, and Psychic Aunt provides a steady supply of religiously-tainted food and dishes to our apartment. Thus a moral dilemma was created of whether to pander to someone's religious objections - or take the easy path of claiming an incorrect provenance. I was not keen on the latter but my limited experience in the murky world of Korean religion is that neither faction necessarily affords the other much reverence.

Korean Mother and Psychic Aunt wanted Makgeolli ('막걸리') - Korean rice wine whose popularity is rocketing - to drink with their meal, and phoned Pastor Uncle to ask him to buy some on his way to the apartment with his family. He was completely taken aback - he couldn't possibly be seen by his children buying alcohol (despite the fact that Jesus was well known drinker). Perhaps he's one of these people who've made up their own version of the Bible. So the two Buddhists had to go out and buy their own booze.

When Pastor Uncle arrived, our borderline-insane dog tried his best to feign a case of rabies and scare him into leaving. But Pastor Uncle had evidently been drinking the Biblical Kool-Aid and persisted in holding out his hand repeating "I love you, I love you", in English - oddly enough; our dog doesn't speak English nor does he have the gift of tongues. As usual, almost all the hospitals were closed for the holiday, so it wasn't clear where Pastor Uncle intended to have his finger sewn back on, but perhaps he felt that God would provide. He explained that the power of love could conquer any animal, which makes one wonder how these missionaries keep getting themselves killed overseas.

His children performed their 'big bows' to Korean Mother - a ritual at this time of year. It's extremely important partly because it confers respect on ones' elders, and affords them a formal opportunity to impart wisdom and/or lecture their juniors, but mostly because - from the point of view of the juniors - they are given gift money in return. We'd already done our bows earlier and made our profit, and while Korean Brother had to go, he'd somehow managed to stay long enough to get his pay-off too.

Before long the collected family factions were sitting on the floor around a long low table reminiscent of some medieval European banquet - if Europeans ate copious amounts of crab, noodles, rice and plants. But before we could eat, Pastor Uncle had to say Grace, and his faction put on their most serious looks as they bowed their heads while the rest of us waited. Once he'd finished, Psychic Aunt decided to immediately follow it with a Buddhist prayer, which is not normal and very much felt as though it was designed to make a point. I believe this was obvious to everyone and the atmosphere seemed to have become very uncomfortable. It looked set to be a long evening.

But if there's one thing that can unify Koreans it's food - so it wasn't long before animosities were buried in favour of devouring the feast of potentially questionable provenance. Bits of crab flew through the air amidst this fine social scene, with Psychic Aunt pausing at one point to pull a piece out of the hair of Pastor Uncle's wife. Perhaps there could be peace in our time.

I was not faring so well. The soup tasted of seawater, the meat was of the don't-ask-don't-tell variety so popular in this country, and by the time I'd finished I felt like I'd been sucking on a metal bar for fifteen minutes. Five minutes into my re-acquaintance with authentic Korean food the Makgeolli had started to look like a good way of conducting a mercy killing of my taste buds, but it seemed rude to ask the two older Buddhists for a glass of their hard-won liquor. Unfortunately, I'm not usually offered alcohol since I'm possessed by the evil spirit which is Meniere's Disease, and for my sins I go through much of life having the balance of a drunk while actually being stone-cold sober. So it was just me, the seawater soup, and the misery of being all alone behind the language barrier with only the partially-obstructed view of the South Korea v. Japan Asia Cup game for company.

But an interesting thing happened. The Christian wants to know how work is going and the truth is I'm growing fed up with it. My wife and trading partner doesn't want the stress while pregnant, leaving me to work alone, and I've finally realised that if there's one thing I really can't stand about trading, it's the people. So what about teaching he asks - after all, one of my wife's degrees is in English Literature which has to be good for something, and in my abortive attempt to teach English in Japan post-graduation I'd acquired a TESOL qualification, although the more I learned about teaching English the more underqualified I felt - and the more I didn't want to do it. The upshot of that was we may have agreed to a potential career change somewhere on the horizon, though unfortunately I can't blame it on the non-existent alcohol.

While the Christian enthused about all the potential clients he could gather - and he's a very well connected person - his equal and opposite sat in silence, making no offer to network for us. On this evidence, I'm not sure how Buddhists intend to win hearts and minds in this country against the onslaught of a group who so rabidly want to help.

Scar Tissue

On my first full day in Korea I went out with my girlfriend and her mother to look for furniture to buy for our rented apartment, which didn’t have any aside from a bed which had been bought for us beforehand. After several stores in the afternoon, jet-lag caught up with me and I stayed outside the next store on the itinerary to rest against a tree and breathe in as much fresh air amidst the pollution as I could to keep me awake. It was my first time alone in Korea, and perhaps I had that fresh-off-the-boat look, because two proselytising Christians descended on me to try and convert me away from the evil ways of Catholicism. Unfortunately, the gift of speaking in tongues had failed them and the only words I eventually understood were "American" and "English", which were not likely to lead to any Road to Damascus revelations on my part.

Just as I had them tagged as Christians – even with a language barrier there’s something eerily international in the vague waving of books in the hand while speaking through a fixed smile for far too long – they pressed a plastic envelope containing tissues into my hand, leaving me wondering if in fact this was some form of advertising. Well it was, but my first suspicion had been correct; after my girlfriend came out of the store to rescue me I turned over the tissue package which had been pressed into my startled hands to see a rather long-armed but nevertheless unmistakable God-type figure embracing people with the English words "God is Love" above it.

Given that this was my first solo experience in the country, I remember thinking that this type of thing was possibly going to happen a lot, but actually it never did again. At least, not on the street – we still had plenty of Christians, Buddhists and Shamanistic-type people knocking on the door of our apartment, which soon stayed closed after I learned that opening the door to these people was like opening a portal to the Twilight Zone.

I intended to take photos of the Christian tissues so I could write about them, but after my new life in Korea had calmed down sufficiently I couldn’t find them. Almost three years later, half a world away, and several months into a bad case of writer's block which has prompted people to ask me if I’ve abandoned this blog, they fell out of a suitcase and gave me something to write about again. Perhaps the Universe moves in mysterious ways after all, or maybe I’m just hopelessly disorganised.

Comes the Inquisitor

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise... surprise and fear... fear and surprise... Our two weapons are fear and surprise... and ruthless efficiency..." - Monty Python

A constant feature of our old apartment was a steady stream of allegedly spiritually-minded people turning up at the door and ringing our bell, demanding to enter our apartment to speak to us for the the sake of our well-being. I should add, that I use the word 'bell' here in the broadest definition of the word, because it made no mere ringing noise when pressed, but instead would launch into an extended tune reminiscent of the kind of alarm which featured heavily in 1980s digital watches - except very, very loudly. Quite why anyone thought such a bell should be a standard feature on the one-room apartments in our block is a mystery, when you would be lucky to get any further than a few feet away from the door. I will, therefore, henceforth refer to it as a siren.

I came to Korea in October 2006, but my sense of cynicism caught a later flight. Back in the days before it arrived, when I used to open the door to anyone who rang the siren, I think I once talked to one of the inquisitors about Spain or spoons, but they didn't try to attend to my spiritual well-being, possibly because of the rumour that foreigners don't have souls.

Now, on the principle that anyone going door-to-door demanding to be let in shouldn't for that very reason, and that furthermore, such behaviour isn't exactly an advert for social harmony or mental stability, my wife would play along and tell them - through the door - that we didn't need our fortunes read or need to know what vital revelation about our lives they specifically had while meditating at a nearby temple. In any case, I've seen that movie and the punchline is that you're going to be visited by a homicidal maniac and on no account should you let them enter your apartment...

In fact, it's hard to imagine just who exactly does open the door to these people. But, I think we once heard them working their way down our corridor, and a door actually did open and there was a long silence before the button on the next apartment's siren was pressed.

But one of the other residents had clearly had enough, and was perfectly prepared to provoke the wrath of the zealots. Essentially translated, the sign reads:

People from small 'teaching' groups [anything ending in '도'], churches and temples,
Stay away - don't bother us.
Do not ring the bell [siren].
- The Owner

The seriousness of the message and the red highlights though is slightly offset by the subsequent picture of Johnny Depp from The Pirates of the Caribbean, or perhaps it's meant to be Jesus? Anyway, my impression was that most of our callers weren't actually Christians but an eclectic mix of other things. Quite why our apartment should apparently be situated in the middle of spook central will perhaps remain one of life's mysteries. Since we've moved, nobody has come to visit, and it seems there are no more important messages to impart to us from whatever deities these people were communing with. We also don't get our door plastered with fast-food adverts every day either - unfortunately - sadly confirming that the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

Silent Running

"You know when I was a kid, I put a note into a bottle and it had my name and address on it. And then I threw the bottle into the ocean. And I never knew if anybody ever found it." - Freeman Lowell, Silent Running

My father died last Thursday. He developed Alzheimer's at a relatively young age and while the progress of the disease was slow, it means he'd been in a care home for several years. He became very ill in June for no discernible reason and received the Last Rites but recovered somewhat unexpectedly, so when he contracted Norovirus last week, which has been sweeping the UK and has seen his care home quarantined during three separate outbreaks in the last two months, the priest was called in for a second time. I still had some hopes that he would get better so that I could see him again, but it wasn't to be.

I suppose you could say that these are the risks that are run when you travel far away from home and are separated from loved ones, but I can not ignore the fact that I would have been back home if my Government had allowed my wife and me to return there last year. My Government's actions have denied me those final days with my father, and being there at the end with the rest of my family, and I feel I lost out on something that was very important - but as my Government seek to make my effective exile permanent, this is just the beginning of the life they are forcing me to lead. The costs will only continue to mount. Someone once wrote that you can learn a lot about your own country by being away from it, and I certainly did, though none of it was good.

During the last week as I sat around doing little and contemplating life, I reached the decision to write a book about my battle against my Government - or more properly - their battle against me, because there's much to say about what's happened, and not just because of people in the Government. But whether this is ultimately categorised as 'revenge thriller' or 'farce' I can not say. I don't know what my father would have made of my Korean experiences, and if they have Internet connections in the afterlife I'm still not sure what he'd make of it, but as a former union activist, I'd like to think he would have understood how I came to get stuck in this country, and that he's with me in spirit as I try to fight back from this corner of a foreign field.

The funeral was held yesterday but I didn't travel back for it. Meniere's Disease is a fact of life for me. It means a lot of things which most healthy people take for granted are very difficult. Travelling alone is one of them. What you read is this blog - I did this, I did that - not that I often did these things while suffering from dizziness and nausea while pushing myself to the limits of my endurance, in the name of leading, or pretending to lead, as normal a life as possible. Was it a mistake coming out to Korea in the circumstances? I'll tell you now from my experiences - and some of the abusive blog comments I filter - that there are those who will say yes. You know the type - they have all the answers to everyone else's problems but somehow their own lives fail to seem entirely happy. The attitudes I've encountered in the last few years have led me to the conclusion that people who live with a disability can't win sometimes. If you try and lead a normal life you will get criticised for it, or people will forget that you're doing it under duress and sometimes you have to make compromises. And if you lock yourself away at home - and clearly there are quite a number of Meniere's sufferers who feel they have no choice but to do just that - people will criticise you for that too. Still, if people like this didn't exist, who would my Government employ?

I went to the local Catholic church last Friday morning, again, where I got a little upset amongst the memories of a thousand paternally enforced and reluctant mass attendances, and may have scared away a elderly ajumma doing the Stations of the Cross (sorry). It was suggested from back home that we go to a temple to commemorate my father on the day of the funeral, and I thought that in the evening we could attend a Catholic church while the funeral was going on in England. Surprisingly, the decision proved a little controversial in some nearby Buddhist circles. It wasn't that there was necessarily a problem with going to a temple, but going to both a temple and a church seemed to be regarded as - at best - an uncomfortable blurring of the lines between religions. I don't know what to say about this - people do a lot of interfaith activities back home in order to try (clearly unsuccessfully) and remind us that religion is ultimately meant to be about love, not hate. Well, most religions anyway, despite - or perhaps because of - my upbringing, I've never been entirely sure on where the Catholic church stands on this. Like a lot of lapsed Catholics though, I've defined my own stand on this among many other issues. But, I was a bit surprised at the Korean Buddhists. Perhaps that tells you something about the virtual state of Cold War that sometimes seems to exist between Christianity and Buddhism here - though having been harassed by Christians in the street myself - to the point at which on one occasion my wife had her arm grabbed by one evangelical as she walked by him, I can understand some of the reasons.

So my wife and I, along with a friend and Korean Mother, went up one of the nearby mountains where a functional looking temple, as opposed to a grander building hundreds of years old which you might typically imagine, nestled amongst the bare trees. We entered, lit a couple of candles, burned some incense and offered our prayers - each in our own way - while performing 'big bows' towards the statues of Buddha. Korean Mother read some Buddhist scripts. Away from the constant noise of the city, it was completely silent aside from the birds singing outside, so it was nice. We may eventually put my father's name on a lantern here - the type that hang from the ceiling with all names of both the living and the dead on them, and then this will be the place I come to remember him.

Brevis ipsa vita est sed malis fit longior.

In Memorium

There was a death in the family last week and today was the day of the funeral. Not being able to attend I'd resolved to visit a temple or a church on the same day as an act of remembrance. I've never been to a church here, but that seemed the most appropriate venue. I'm Catholic by birth, for my sins, and when I was told there was a Catholic church nearby this was clearly more preferable than a competitor church where they'd probably be lying in wait to convert me the moment I walked through the door.

It turns out I'd spotted the Catholic church before - it's a local building with a large statue of Jesus on it's roof, why am I not entirely surprised? But is this more frightening at night than the neon crucifixes that rival denominations favour? That's the key question.

Entering into the building took us down a corridor of classrooms, which was not quite what I expected, perhaps they still have Sunday School in Korea. Shudder. We had to ask at the office where the actual church proper was - upstairs was the answer. Back home churches are always single ground-floor affairs.

Aside from this, it could have been any modern Catholic church back home, although the bell near the altar was styled like those in Korean temples, which is either a nice touch or a cynical move depending on your perspective. Many of the 'stained glass' windows were somewhat compromised by their evident need to be opened for air circulation - hardly surprising given the Korean summers. It was also possibly one of the quietest places I've found in Korea.

Some things are universal though - the church had a shop at the back where, should you be so inclined, you can stock up on your crucifixes and Mary statues.

Korean tags: 종교, 기독교, 교회

Dark Water

According to one academic, South Korea is the ninth most atheistic country in the world. It struck me as a surprising conclusion, until I realised that the strict definition of atheism used excluded Buddhism, although it still begged the question of why Thailand - currently 94.6% Buddhist according to the CIA World Factbook didn't appear in the top 50, or why North Korea came 33rd considering since the idea that 85% of North Koreans believe in God is contrary to the reality of life there.

In fact though, surveys do suggest that half the population don't identify themselves as Christians or Buddhists, so perhaps they really are aetheists, although it seems more likely many of them are more likely to be agnostic. To my mind, South Korea - a land full of temples, churches and background Confucianism, is a significantly spiritual society.

We were at a hospital when a Buddhist monk came in. Monks are not an uncommon sight in our area of Busan, but what happened next was a little out of the ordinary. As a nurse finished treating him he suddenly stopped and told her "you must be careful of water", which seemed to result in stunned silence on her part. And then he was on his way, meanwhile it's possible the nurse may never go swimming again.

Scratch the surface of Korean society and I suspect there's quite a lot of this kind of thing going on, and even my life has been subject to such advice and insights - either directly or through third parties with whom my existence has come up in discussions with psychics of various kinds. And while no-one has told me to be careful of water, I fear the day a mere sentence from a respected spiritual person launches me into a whole new world of paranoia. Perhaps I can choose not to believe, but this is Korea, and maybe sooner or later it gets to you in a way you can't ignore.

Korean tags: 종교, 불교, 기독교, 물

Battlefield Earth

Just over 400 years ago Japan invaded Korea in the first phase of a plan to conquer China, leading to a war on the Korean peninsula that lasted the best part of seven years before the Japanese, who had enjoyed initial successes, succumbed to their inability to maintain supply lines to their homeland as a result of Korea's massive naval technology superiority in the form of its turtle ships.

Samurai of the day were paid by the number of kills they made, or heads taken if you will, except that they didn't take the heads but rather cut off the noses of their enemies, and sometimes the ears. It seems that by the time the Japanese gave up, between 38,000 and 100,000 ears and noses had found their way back to Japan, where they were displayed, in pickled jars, in Osaka. That wasn't all that worked its way back to Japan; 200,000 Korean artisans had been kidnapped ultimately contributing much to the cultural renaissance under the Tokugawa Shogunate, while Korea was left devastated. Most of captured Koreans never returned home - it's said that as many as 100,000 were sold as slaves to the Portugese and sent to their colonies.

Eventually though, it was the body parts that remained a problem. They came to be buried in a mound in Kyoto called Mimizuka, and 400 years later Korea wants them back, or rather given their total decomposition in the intervening period, it wants Japan to give it the surrounding dirt instead...

Korean Father had a medical recently, and while there's not much of great concern, the doctor thinks it would be a good idea if he could stop winding himself up over just about everything. More Dalai Lama and less Beat Takeshi if you will. To this end, Korean Mother dragged him along to a talk on meditation held by a famous monk. Whatever discussions on higher spirituality went on, the subject turned to the war 400 years ago and specifically, the desire to repatriate the ears and noses, or rather the few tonnes of earth that now occupy the place where they were.

In 1990 the monk successfully negotiated with the Japanese government and brought back some "soil and spirits" but since then there's been no progress. The Kyoto burial mound is guarded so while Koreans go there to visit they can't hatch a plan to liberate it bit by bit. The monk wants to build a memorial to what happened - and preferably get that soil. And that's where the plate comes in.

The monk has, it seems, been busy making plates - and bowls - as part of the effort, and these were available for the attendees to take away, free of charge. To pay for them the recipients should place their spare money in the bowl and when the amount reaches 39,900 won (about £21.73) it should be sent off to him. And there should be a total of ten payments of this amount, with the proceeds going towards the memorial. The monk personally painted the figures and writing on the plates as well as making and painting the bowls, and in that respect they have considerable artistic and aesthetic value, though their ultimate cost is not a logical one on a purely financial basis. It might seem very trusting of the monk to give these away, but people will pay of course. It's simply unthinkable not to hold up one end of a bargain with a monk, especially with as famous a one as this.

Aside from the cause, the plate depicts twelve Gods who will protect your family, and if you pray while picturing a particular person's face in the centre, they will be particularly protected. For reasons which are not entirely clear, the Gods are painted on a phosphorous coating the upshot of which is the plate glows eerily in the dark. And we have one sat by our TV now, because Korean Mother got one for herself, and one for us...

I Wake Up Screaming

I have to let off some steam, but not because it's still hot, although it is. I'd like to take back what I wrote on Thursday about being woken up from 0730 in the morning by unsociable blue-van based street hawkers armed with their loudspeakers, irritating voices and bizarre sales pitches on a tape-loop. Because this morning, this guy was crawling round our apartment block at 0530 - 5mph - giving me more than ample time to get up, open the window fully, reach for a weapon and take a shot. Unfortunately, until Canon see fit to arm their cameras with microwave beams, my chances of burning out his electrics with my IXUS 800 are about zero. Still, at least this way I know I didn't dream it.

And what was he selling? Salt. Just who, exactly, is buying frakking salt at 0530 in the morning? That's what I want to know.

Some people will tell you about the importance many Asian cultures place on the ideal of maintaining social harmony, but I haven't seen too much of that in evidence here. What goes through someone's head to make them think that driving round apartment blocks with a loudspeaker so early is in any way socially acceptable? Aren't there are laws against this? It's amazing you can't get any peace in a country which is allegedly so heavily Buddhist influenced.

But... I think the truth is that this society brainwashes its people into accepting rampant commercialism and the shadier practices which go along with it, and if that means sellers have a right to wake you up at 0530 then so be it. You might even notice that the lamp-posts in the photograph are all plastered with adverts - it's rare to see one that isn't. Sometimes it seems like everyone's selling something.

Anyway, this guy better not be a Buddhist otherwise at this rate I reckon he'll be coming back in the next life as a cockroach.

Birthday Boy

Yesterday was Buddha's birthday, but I didn't get him a card because cards are so hard to come by here. Koreans don't tend to buy each other cards for birthdays, which perhaps confirms my suspicions about the emergence of parents' day. Instead, a trip to a local temple called Neungeum (능음사) was on the schedule.



The temple was crowded which was little surprise because 'Buddha's Birthday' is a public holiday and, in fact, a great many of the shops in our district were closed for probably the first time since the Lunar New Year, though a few still plied their trade - perhaps they were the Christian ones? Indeed, the usually frantic roads on the way were similarly subdued. However, the Korean sense of urgency so lacking elsewhere was in plentiful supply within the temple grounds, where I repeatedly had to move aside lest I be barged out of the way by anxious ajummas intent on beating everyone else to each shrine in turn - or maybe just beating everyone.



Neungeum is an unusual temple in that it sits next to the sea in the outskirts of Busan - or at least what would class as being the outskirts if the city ever seemed to end. Every other temple I've been to in Korea - and while I haven't been counting it's certainly enough to last a good many years - has been up a mountain. Admittedly some are quite small mountains, but one nevertheless gets the impression that, on the whole, monks prefer their elevated retreats. In fact, there's a very good reason for this as their favour has ebbed and flowed through history, and in the periods when they were persona non grata in social and political circles these literally were the places where they hid away until society wanted them again.

When a temple offers you food it seems you're morally obliged to eat, and this being Buddha's Birthday, food is very much on the agenda. So one of the larger temple buildings was full of people eating lunch, but we ate in at spill-over area outside, which was fine by me because it was hot. Next to us an outdoor kitchen cooked while a production line of people washed plates by rinsing them in a progressively cleaner set of tubs until they were probably usable again. From the car park to the food hall there were certainly a lot of hands helping out from the very old to the very young - apparently it's a big volunteer thing here on days like this. When we left, we got these small gifts of rice cakes ('떡') at the gate to take away. They look really great but the taste is perhaps an acquired one.



Building your temple by the sea, and at the end of the barrel of an angry looking channel (at least it felt angry - the wind was brisk), has its disadvantages. It seems that last year the temple was flooded during typhoon season by a storm surge and the monks had to escape by climbing the nearby trees. Since then, all the buildings have been repainted and apart from a rather bedraggled looking adjacent field where the monks grow chillies there's little evidence that anything happened.

Z'ha'dum

Z-0

When you marry a Korean, it's not just an individual you marry. You marry the culture, the traditions, the attitude and of course, you most definitely marry the family. So any private sense of relief which you can have as a foreigner for not having to go through conscription as all Korean men do, quickly dissipates when you realise that in fact you have been conscripted after all - conscripted into the framework of responsibilities and obligations which will ensure your life is never quite your own for as long as you are here.

It creeps up on you. If anyone published a book on what these obligations are then I never saw it, so you're flying blind from day to day until your orders come in, wrapped in and begun by the façade of a civilian 'by the way'. So this week's 'by the way' was that Sunday was the 49th day since Korean Grandmother had died, and our presence was requested and required in Namhae to attend a remembrance ceremony. My wife didn't know about this requirement either, so it seems I'm not the only one discovering things on a need to know basis only. Apparently the fiftieth day is the culmination of minor ceremonies held every seven days for seven weeks which are designed to ensure the deceased will be enlightened and then reborn as a good person in a good next life.

Exhausted by an insomnia driven week behind me, and agitated by a sudden - if minor - Meniere's attack in bed at midnight, I arose at 0440 hours and by 0540 we were on our way to catch our 0620 bus. The roads were quiet, and some Korean girls with very short skirts stumbled around the road Shaun of the Dead style suggesting that they were still trying to find their way home from the night before. There were no men - they having presumably drunk themselves into oblivion many hours earlier. Our taxi was Warp 9 capable and violently bounced along at 100mph down a poorly constructed major highway which was never designed for anything above half this speed. At 0556 we took off and left the road momentarily, the wheels skidding like a plane landing as we reconnected with the tarmac beneath us. It was just like a Hollywood movie, the only thing missing was the sound of the siren behind us.

The bus to Namhae wasn't much better, but at least the driver appeared to have no aspirations towards obtaining his pilots licence that morning. I'd taken my anti-nausea tablet, my wife hadn't, and ironically it was her that was almost throwing up by the end of our journey.



It wasn't long before we were at the temple - or one building of it at least, and a new and seemingly expensively finished one which still smelt of fresh wood. I also couldn't help noticing that we were the only grandchildren in attendance. It seems we are the oldest grandchildren which carries additional responsibility, and I think it's politics too. Even Korean Brother didn't attend. He's still working away, AWOL and I'm not sure he even knows about the death yet. So our peers got a free weekend pass, we didn't, and a whole new generation of rivalries was created.

The remembrance ceremony had been billed as a 'one-hour service'. A monk chanted, and it was calming. I have CDs of this stuff back home, now I had a live performance. An hour passed and I was OK, after ninety minutes boredom started to creep in and after two-and-a-half hours I'd decided to move to Canada. Booklets had the versus written down and at various points some audience participation was directed, and some mumbling could be heard. But the chants were in Chinese - albeit transcribed into Korean - so nobody knew what they were chanting for.

Somewhere along the way we'd burned incense sticks twice, done a couple of dozen big bows to the monk and makeshift shrine, where we also left offerings. Protocol dictates no photos inside of course, SOP. Afterwards, a procession led us up to a place where the paper flowers from the shrine were taken to be burned, along with some clothes.



We ate lunch in a nearby temple building before embarking on the next stage of our journey - up the very narrow concrete mountain road to the cemetery where Korean Grandmother was buried.



More big bows to Korean Grandmother - and Great Grandmother's graves were performed, and then it was back to the house. The senior officers were staying longer but this is where the junior ranks were demobbed for the day, so one of the Korean uncles gave us a ride to the station.

And what a ride it was. It turned out there was a reason why, just before leaving, Korean Father had urgently said "don't sit in the front". Suffice it to say, from here on, said uncle will be known as Uncle Road Rage. As we raced - the operative word - towards our possibly final destination, a succession of Western pop songs played from the radio. Between the speed and the hip-hop blasting from the speakers it occurred to me that all we needed were the guns and it was just like being back home. I also realised what had been bothering me up to that point was that this was the first time I'd heard Western chart music for over seven months. The Internet can keep you connected in certain ways, but you do miss out on other things perhaps without even realising.

It's not that Namhae is a terrible place, in fact it probably has a lot going for it if you want to get away from the chaos of the city and connect with a more peaceful community living more in balance with nature, but it's what it represents that I can't reconcile. When my grandfather died back home there was a funeral and generously, it took a morning. Maybe that's not enough, but Korean Grandmother's funeral has consumed three days - and that's the 'lite' version - the senior ranks have done much more. That's too much for something I married into. If that's harsh then yes I admit I'm not cut out for all these family responsibilities of death, life, festivals and ceremonies and I desperately need to feel I'm not always on duty. But Federer beat Nadal on clay for the first time in two years and my tennis-obsessed wife thinks that this is grandmother's reward for attending, so at least she got something out of it.

1600. Back at HQ. Awaiting further orders. Out.

A Walk in the Park

After my Korean massage torture, I ventured out for the first time since Wednesday with Korean Mother today who suggested we go to Yongdusan Park in the Nampodong area of Busan. In Korean 'yongdu' means dragon's head and 'san' means mountain so it seems this is Dragon's Head Mountain Park. Apparently the mountain looks like a dragon's head from the sea - I guess I'll take their word for it. Anyway, despite the long road to the top of the park, which is lined with poetry carved into large stones, the actual park itself is very small, the main attractions apparently being a performance area, a large tower, some seats and a couple of forest paths which we didn't go down.

We quickly made our way to the collection of buildings which form the base for the park's tower to escape from the heat. Amongst the usual cafes and shops selling tourist trinkets, were an art gallery which perhaps wasn't too keen on photos being taken, and a small aquarium which while interesting was embarrassingly modest, and the fish looked rather bored - though they had a better life than some of their peers which we'd meet later. Also nearby was an artist who busied himself creating pictures by burning them into pieces of wood, a significant number of which showed some Christian leanings, although the piece we eventually bought for Korean Mother was of a more traditional kind. Many of the signs around the buildings were in Korean, English, Chinese and Japanese, and there were certainly a good number of Westerners visible, as well as Japanese, judging from the conversations I overheard. When a Japanese group started talking to the artist I thought we might have to step in to try a three-way translation, but it seemed he spoke Japanese better than I did.

So we went up the Busan Tower, which stands 120m tall from ground level, though by this time that's not where we were starting from, with the rapidly ascending elevator counting off the rise in tens of meters. We stopped at one-hundred to be greeted by a restaurant and viewing area, although to reach the proper observation deck near the top of the tower we have to travel up one more floor via a very narrow staircase. The views were worth the journey and admission cost of 5,000 won, as Busan treated us with one of its rare relatively clear days. That said, it was still hazy from the heat, so we were unable to see the Japanese island that apparently is sometimes visible in the distance.

Back at the bottom, we worked our way towards the Samulnori (사물놀이) performance we'd spotted from the Tower, and this time we were able to see it properly. Buddhist Monks followed this up with a religious ritual called Yeongsanjae (영산재) - designed to lead spirits to heaven. Certainly their colourful clothing in the bright sunshine made for a very vibrant display. We stayed as long as we could but the combination of very strong sun and empty stomachs eventually drove us back down into the city in search of some food and shelter.