korean cuisine

Now, I'm far from knowing all there is to know about the fascinating world of Korean food, but I've learned enough to have my bearings. I at least know a standard group of popular dishes, and can read these from a menu. I also am becoming familiar with the different types of restaurants and the different food they serve. Korea offers something for everyone in the way of food, especially if you are particularly fond of spice or adventurous in your eating habits. Most food is extremely spicy, and involves at least one sea creature. If want to eat something you didn't even know existed as an animal, a seafood restaurant here will delight you. Before we get started on individual dishes, a few notes about the presentation and process of eating. In Korea, a meal consists of anywhere from 4 to 87 dishes. Every restaurant will serve a series of complimentary "side dishes" which come along with your main dish (which probably itself will be at least two dishes). Also, it is very common for everyone at a table to share dishes. This is of course true with the side dishes, but often the main dish will be one huge serving of food that everyone shares. This dish is often cooked by you, right at your table, in a pot of boiling broth, or on a hot kind of grill-dome. Okay, let's get into some examples of the deliciousness.

We'll start with side dishes. You ALWAYS get kimchi with your meal. If you haven't heard about this delightful product, it is fermented cabbage that is literally doused in red chili paste. Tangy and spicy, to say the least. Secondly, you almost always get slices of yellow pickled radish. I'm talking the giant radish, that if you're familiar with it in Japanese food, you will know as daikon. This is salty, sweet and vinegary. Rounding out the list of ever-present side dishes is a weak soybean soup (you get this only if your meal isn't soup). However, there are probably hundreds of other side dishes that you may or may not receive, depending on the restaurant. Quite possibly my favorite is jon. This is a fried egg and/or flour pancake type object that has some sort of vegetable or octopus inside of it. It is always greasy, and usually delicious. Small servings of seaweed or mushroom salad are also quite popular and tasty. Radish kimchi is a regular on the table, taking many different forms and styles. One dish I'm quite fond of is what I think is sauteed spinach with garlic. Speaking of garlic, raw garlic is served on occasion as well. Some places (usually bars, I've found) serve an inexplicably burn-your-fucking-tongue-off spicy clear bean sprout soup. Be careful with this one; it may be the spiciest food product in Korea, and because it's not red, it'll sneak up on you and leave you crying, like the best friend who steals your girlfriend. There are definitely more side dishes to mention, but I think you get the point.

The most accessible food is at lunch/snack/all night restaurants that are kind of the Korean equivalent of fast food. Here, you can get quick, cheap food, but unlike American fast food, it is not greasy, meaty, fried, or cheesy. The main staple of this type of food is kimbap. This is rice rolled up in seaweed with goodies inside. It looks like sushi rolls, but doesn't have raw fish, crab or avocado inside. Inside kimbap, you'll find egg, ham, yellow radish, fish cake, inexplicable brown vegetable (I think I've determined that it is fern sprouts), and occasionally an extra item of your choice. My favorite is tuna (chamchi) kimbap. Another staple at these places is mandu, or dumplings. They are steamed, and filled with salty, meaty, vegi goodness. Bibimbap is quite possibly the food product that has most nourished me here. This is an excellent dish that is a big bowl of rice, topped off with fresh greens, seaweed, a healthy dollop of red pepper paste, and a fried egg. You can also get a number of noodle soups, like udong (Japanese style wide noodles) and spicy lamyeon (ramen). Tappap is a food of your choice (beef, kimchi, tuna, etc.) over a heaping helping of rice. Naengmeon is like cold slimy ramen that is impossible to bite through. It literally comes with scissors to cut the slimy mess hanging out of your mouth after a bite. Finally, you can even get a fried pork cutlet that comes with a fork and knife to eat it with. This is called dongasu.

(At this point, it is worth pointing out the eating utensils you are provided. Of course, you get chopsticks, but these are slippery, stainless steel chopsticks, not the forgiving wood or plastic type you are used to. Luckily, you also get a spoon, which you are encouraged to use for rice and dishes like bibimbap and tappap.)

Outside of these quick bite spots, restaurants usually focus on one or a few dishes. Soups are incredibly popular. Kimchi chigae is just like it sounds; spicy kimchi soup. The best place for kimchi chigae in Daejon (reputedly) is just down the street from my house/work, and their soup is made with kimchi that is aged for 3 years. It is almost indescribably sour, salty, spicy, and mouth wateringly delicious. Tang is another type of soup, usually one which comes with beef or ribs. A soup-type food dish is one that involves a boiling pot of broth at your table, in which you cook thin strips of meat, mushrooms, vegetables, etc. Ja jong myeon is udon-style noodles with a delectable black bean sauce. Bulgogi is very thin strips of marinated beef and vegetables. Kalbi is fatty, greasy barbeque pork. I wish I could remember the name of the bacon-like pork product you fry up at your table. I can't. But, imagine a thicker, fattier, greasier bacon, which fries right in front of you, while dousing the rest of your meal on the grill with delicious hog grease. It's even better than it sounds. Often with the meats, you take the cooked product and wrap it up in a leaf with raw garlic and a droplet of chili paste. One of the leaves you use is sesame leaf. I don't know why we don't have sesame leaves in the west. They are large, almost minty tasty and unbelievably fresh tasting.

The seafood in this country is absolutely out of control. With any luck, you've already seen the photos from the Pohang fish market. Octopus is everywhere, as are small dried fish. However, when our boss took us out for a seafood feast last week, I ate things I had never dreamed of. It's always good when you ask what something is, and the reply is that there is no English word for it. Quite possibly the best dish in terms of shock value was the raw octopus tentacles that had literally just been chopped off of the puss. They were wriggling around on the plate, and the suckers would definitely grip weakly to the inside of your mouth on the way down. Raw eel was served with with a spicy red sauce. There were several raw invertebrates that all taste kind of vaguely salty and chewy. You had some more standard raw sea products, such as oysters and tuna, but they were much fresher than any I've ever had. (These restaurants keep their product alive in tanks until you order it. (Well, not the tuna.)) I'm pretty sure it was conch that was a small shelled creature that you literally had to rip still living out of its shell. These tasted good, but I wasn't fond of ripping a living creature out of its home. I don't really know how to describe the several dishes that don't have English names. All I've mentioned so far are the side dishes, the main dish was a couple of platters of raw sashimi-style fish. At least 7 varieties of fish, mostly meaty white fish. The English names of the fish were unknown. These you would wrap up in the sesame or lettuce leaves, along with raw garlic, chili paste, and shoot it down. The meal was wrapped up with a literally fish-head soup that was not my favorite dish on the table.

I have two more items to tell you about before you're done with this bizarre rant. They are both extremely prevalent and strange. The first is dok. This is a gluttonous rice cake that can take many forms. It has roughly zero flavor, and is mostly characterized by its extremely chewy texture. It comes in a variety of types and styles, from a sweet-like snack, to a grilled hot dog like tube. The most common form is a street food called dok-bokki. This is heated dok in spicy sauce that you can get on just about every street corner. Dok is not bad, though some westerners (especially upon first taste) find it objectionable. The second item is odaeng. Odaeng is fishcake; basically ground fish (I'm under the impression that it's any generic fish) mixed with flour. This stuff is also on every street corner, in the form of long, wide strips on skewers. It also turns up in soups, side dishes, and your kimbap. It tastes just about as you would imagine it to, fishy.

I keep coming up with more to say, but I think I've given you enough examples for you to be impressed with the variety and flavor Korean cuisine.

korean education system

Whoa, Koreans are crazy about education. Remember in elementary school, when your teacher told you that students in Asia go to school all the time, even on Saturdays? Well, that wasn't just a clever lie to get you to stop complaining, it really is true. My students go to go school essentially from 9 am to 11 pm Monday through Friday. They have public school every other Saturday. When they were studying for high school entrance exams, they stayed at our academy until 2:30 several nights in a row. There is extreme competition and pressure to be academically successful. I still haven't figured out when students do their homework. There are several important differences between Korean and American education systems, beyond just the amount of time spent studying.

First of all, there is the phenomenon of hagwons. These are the private academies that students go to when they are through with regular school for the day. Just about every foreigner teaching English in Korea works for a hagwon. An interesting realization I had was that my students learn much more advanced English at our hagwon than they do in public school. This is also true of the math hagwons they attend, the science hagwons, etc. There is so much pressure to advance academically that many students are literally years ahead of their public school curriculum do to attending private academies after hours. They go to public school because they have to, but they don't learn anything there. A lot of times, I think they read the books we assign them during their public school classes (oh, that's when they do their homework). When kids get accepted to their fancy private high schools, I'm pretty sure they just stop going to their public middle school classes.

The more I began to realize this, the more qualms I began to have with the hagwon system. This sounds to me like a recipe for the destruction of public schools. I don't like this at all. Because, when I say that all kids attend hagwons, what I really mean is that all kids whose parents can afford it attend hagwons. But I also have mixed feelings about this. As much as I believe education should not be something you buy, I can certainly think of worse things to buy. On the one hand, it is really cool that people choose to spend money on extra education for their kids. I mean, these are definitely some of the smartest kids I've ever encountered. I read Civil Disobedience with my seventh graders (granted, it was a little too difficult for them, but still). On the other hand, it just doesn't really seem fair that rich people get the opportunity to give their kids a much better education, and thus much more opportunity in life. But Korea is definitely not the only society designed to keep the rich rich. Oddly enough, I'm not the only person with these concerns; it was actually illegal to pay for education in Korea, prior to 1991. It's still illegal to buy or sell private tutoring lessons.

Second in the list of interesting topics concerning Korean education is the use of corporal punishment. Corporal punishment is definitely allowed and used in public schools, though to a lessening degree. Most hagwons, I believe do not generally hit their students, but ours does. Just to get this out in the open, only Korean teachers hit the kids, we are not asked, expected or allowed to. That, at least, makes my life a little easier. What makes it very difficult to teach these kids is the fact that they don't respond to non-physical punishments. I've had to institute a policy of punishing my kids by making them go out in the hall and hold the push up position for five minutes. I feel really bad even doing this. At the beginning of the term, I had all my kids write me about why they were taking my class, and several actually asked me beat them in order to make them learn English better. This is situation is one of many factors that cause teaching in Korea to be K times more difficult than teaching at home. But, just so you know, Korean teachers are not heartless. I have one class that is terribly behaved, and I asked the Korean teacher who also teaches them if they were bad for him too. His response was "Yes, but they are too cute to beat."

All of this focus on education is obviously with the intent of giving your children a better life. Access to the good jobs, wealth and prosperity, all that good stuff. Interestingly enough, Koreans are actually becoming "too educated", with problems similar to the US, where there aren't enough jobs for the pool of highly educated people. Nobody wants to work the manufacturing or labor jobs, so immigrants come in to work in that sector, but there is strikingly high unemployment among the well educated. Many people actually leave the country to find jobs in their field of interest.

Okay, time for just some fun facts about Korean education. Once you get into middle school, girls must have above shoulder-length hair, and dudes have to have short hair (unclear just how short). If you break the rule, the teacher pulls out the scissors and barbers you up right in class. In addition to learning English in public school, you are also required to take either Chinese or Japanese. You have to wear a uniform to public school, but you get to pick your own shoes. Obvious from the girls in skirts, vests and tights rocking bright green and orange Nikes. Every student carries an extremely well-equipped pencil case with them at all times. We're talking at least 4 colors of pen, several pencils, extra pencil lead, at least two giant erasers, a red wax pencil, and an exacto knife. Text messaging is a rampant problem, with many students performing a blind, one hand under the table looking straight at you while texting technique. I don't know how they do it.

the korean haircut

I have never been a big fan of haircuts, especially professional jobs. For some odd reason, I am never able to clearly articulate how I want my hair cut (the SAME length all around). I always end up with short sides and back and a poofy top. For about the last seven years, I have dealt with this situation first by boycotting haircuts altogether, and then using friends as hairstylists. For some reason, my friends seem to be capable of understanding that my look requires equal length of all the hair. I don't know what they're teaching these people in hair-cutting school that makes them feel they need to always give me the poof top. Despite this beef with the hair cutting industry, I have recently returned from my boycott to allow strangers to cut my hair in exchange for money. I received a couple of cuts in the states that went of alright. But, even if the cut looks okay, there is the other issue you have to deal with. I'm talking here about the awkward conversation with the cutter while they are cutting your hair. What is the reason for this practice? At a restaurant, the cook doesn't expect you to sit around and chat with them while they prepare your meal. Your mechanic doesn't want to hear about your life story while he fixes your car. I will admit that the haircut conversation makes more sense than the dental hygienist conversation (which is by far the worst practice ever), but it still just bothers me. What, is there some bond of friendship that gets passed on when someone cuts your hair? I don't believe so.

Anyway, having ranted for long enough now on my feelings regarding haircuts, my hair was in desperate need of a trim this week. Between my beard and the round curly halo surrounding my face, I look very strange to Koreans always, but the afro was getting out of control. If you take my existing opinion of haircuts, and add to that the "Korean factor"(A universal constant which causes everything done in Korea to be 2.77 times as difficult as it is at home. Let's call it "K".), it is needless to say that I was a little nervous about my haircut. I got a recommendation for a good spot though, and today I sucked it up and took the plunge.

My initial entry into the salon (I guess that is what you call it) did not help my anxiety at all. It was a large, loud room, packed full of cutting stations, people running around, an inexplicable amount of shouting and something being said over a loudspeaker. I think the only thing that kept me there was that one of the ladies at the front desk actually spoke English, and got me set up. I was told no fewer than 5 times that it would be about a twenty minute wait, but that i was welcome to use the internet while I waited. It was only about seven minutes until my stylist, who also spoke English, informed me we were ready to go. The cut started out pretty standard, with the hair wash. I can't remember if there is a separate hair washer in the US, but my hair was definitely washed by a lady who not my stylist. It was a good wash. I was reunited with my stylist at one of about 23 cutting stations. Instead of each stylist having a personal cutting station, they keep all their tools in a super efficient tool belt, and each cutting station consists only of a chair in front of a mirror.

I thought it would be a safe bet to bring a picture of myself with short hair, and just show that to my guy. He was pleased that we could communicate the style this way, but I realized upon showing him my passport sized photo that it was not exactly clear what kind of style my hair was in. I didn't even bother trying to explain the same length thing. My cutter was very precise and dedicated to making each snip properly. After cutting a section, he would use a weird second pair of scissor-like tools that he would us to basically shear the tips of my hair. I didn't really understand what was going on here. I originally thought I would be off the hook as far as the awkward conversation situation goes, not being to speak Korean and all. But, as I mentioned, my guy spoke English. Not enough, mind you to communicate tricky subjects like "ALL THE SAME LENGTH!", but enough to chat. The chatting was good though, not too aggressive or bothersome. He was very nice, and kept checking to make sure I was happy with how things were going.

Now, after the cutting is done is when the Korean haircut really starts to shine. First, I was whisked away from my chair by a third person, and taken back to the sinks for a second washing. This included a very pleasant scalp massage. When they wash your hair, they scrub your ears a bit too. Very nice. After wash two, it was off to a strange looking device on the windowsill. This thing was an open plastic box that kind of resembled a toaster with only one big slot. There was some liquid in the bottom that I was instructed to dunk my hand into. Actually, the wash girl ended up dunking the hand for me a few times due to my general confusion and hesitancy. Turns out the box was full of melted wax. A little shocking at first (not the least hot thing I've ever dunked my hands in), but pleasant once the wax cooled. The girl then took me back to my cutting chair, where she gave me a neck and shoulder rub while the wax dried. After a few minutes, my stylist came back to dry and style my hair. During this process, the wash/wax/rub girl removed the wax coating from my hands. Those hands felt extremely smooth and clean after the wax came off. After I was dried and styled, I was given a slice of cheesecake and a glass of water to enjoy.

Now, you're probably wondering how a lowly English teacher like myself could afford such a glitzy haircut. I was actually nervously wondering that myself as I finished off the cheesecake. My stylist reappeared as I approached the counter to pay, and informed that it would be $11. I can handle that. I had been told previously that it is not appropriate to tip your stylist (you don't tip anyone here). But I really felt like a should, because the guy even walked me to the elevator and hit the button for me.

How did the cut come out? Like I said, I always end up with short sides and a poofy top. This time was no exception.

vote, dude

Okay, so I've never been one to be too preachy, and I know everyone of you (US citizens) already know that you need to vote. This is more just a friendly reminder that all of you had better get your asses to the polls tomorrow. Or, if you're out of the country, you had better have already put your absentee ballots in the mail. Especially those of you in Colorado. Even if you don't smoke pot anymore, you have to realize the opportunity and potential implications of being the first state to legalize dope. Also, Tancredo needs to know that he doesn't have his talons around all of us, Beauprez cannot be allowed to follow in the shameful footsteps of Bill Owens, the 7th district is hot, and for god's sake, bush was campaigning in Greeley! Fucking bush in fucking Greeley! This is the chance to take a red state and make it blue. True blue. It's time to show the country that Coloradans cannot be trampled on by right wing religious representatives of National Socialism. If you're not in Colorado, you're not off the hook. Even if you're in a blood red district, take the opportunity to fight back! Do it. Okay, I'm done, because this is getting close to preachy.