Glenna Stearman Park, Living in South Korea

Glenna Stearman Park in South Korea, 1998

LIVING IN SOUTH KOREA, AUGUST 1996 TO FEBRUARY 1998

In the Beginning

In 1996-1998, Joel and I lived in Taejon, South Korea, where he was a visiting scientist at KRISS, the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science, a national lab, built on a mountainside in a country full of mountains.  Before pulling up 17 years of roots in San Antonio, Texas, I attempted to learn Korean, but gave up. I had studied German, Russian, French and Korean, before I decided that I would have to “wing it” with sign language.  I soon learned that Koreans study English every year in school. 

We were given a small moving allowance for mailing boxes to Korea, so I packed a box of new books that I intended to read and give as Christmas gifts, a box of Laura Ashley floral and  ruffled bed sheets, and a dramatic black and white batik square tablecloth to hang on the wall. After saying good-byes, we flew to L.A. where we stayed at an ocean front hotel and met briefly with old college friends.  The next day we flew to Korea.  It was my birthday, so I upgraded us to Business Class and we had a comfortable but very long flight. 

 Joel’s friend Jong met us at the airport in Seoul and drove us to Taejon, stopping at a rest stop where I met head on with some little old peasant ladies in the bathroom.  Waiting for a stall to open, I stood quietly to start a line.  Just as I stepped up and opened the stall door, a very tiny Korean granny ducked under my arm and took the space.  It happened again before I learned that you don’t stand in line for anything in Korea.  Jong laughed as I related my encounter, and admitted that he was not sure how to warn me, so he let me learn on my own.  

Glenna Park, Peasant Ladies

The peasants are painted on illustration board upholstered in various Korean silks.  The ladies had beautiful fabrics and a bold sense of color.  I have made several Korean cut out figures.

An hour later, we reached Taejon and Jong delivered us to our apartment, made ready for us with Western breakfast in the refrigerator and, thankfully, air conditioning.  It was a 3rd floor walk-up, 3- bedroom traditional Korean apartment with Western bed and furniture.  We crashed immediately from the long trip.

First Day in the Foothills of Taejon

We had been warned not to drink water pumped into the house.  Instead, we had a large water jug for collecting from the safe public well right outside.  Everyone in the city had to get safe water from the outdoor pumps.  Our building was only 20 years old, but considered ancient compared to the 16 and 17 floor high rises all around the city.  

By noon we were hungry and decided to venture out to find a restaurant.  I followed my nose down the street and came to a red brick building that smelled like chicken.  We had to leave our shoes at the door and then the hostess took us to a low table with pillows on the floor for sitting.  She handed us a menu that was all written in Korean and had no pictures.  I looked at another table and saw a pot of chicken, and then I found one English word “chicken.” We both said the word chicken and I indicated that we each wanted chicken.  Soon the smiling waitress returned with two clay pots full of soup and a whole chicken, one for each of us.  We laughed a bit at our mistake and decided to eat as much as we could, leaving so much behind.  I did not know how to ask for a “doggie box” and besides, I knew they ate dogs in Korea. 

After lunch, Joel’s friend and wife drove us to a Korean grocery store where we started loading the cart with basics for cooking.  Our friends made suggestions and told us what most of the foods were.  We recognized fruits and vegetables and many cuts of beef, and were totally amused with the live crabs and other creatures crawling around on ice.  Occasionally, one escaped to the floor.

Rice was easy.  No bread anywhere.  Our friends took us to a French bakery and then to the Black Market where we bought peanut butter, hot chocolate mix, Pace picante sauce and tortilla chips.  Later, we found cheese at a German import shop.  In Korea, refrigerators were small and the people shopped almost daily for food.  We were noticed and watched with curiosity and amusement as we heaped our arms and cart and checked out.

Money was something else!

No one used check books or charge cards.  Everything was cash.  You could put your bank card in the cash machine only at the bank, and then you had to know Korean to be able to ask for specific amounts.  I usually gave up and told the people around me that I did not know how to work the machine, Always, some friendly, English-speaking Koreans stepped up and guided me through the transactions.  If you got cash, you counted it out in single wons (roughly equal to $1.00) or a 10,000 won bill (roughly equal to $10.00).  There were NO LARGER BILLS. No stores used bank cards for payment.  You had to carry cash.  The exchange rate was fairly stable, so I never bothered to calculate exactly.  I just carried what I needed.  At the grocery store our bill added up quickly and we probably spent $300.00 or more, all in a small stack of cash.  Curious adults and children got close so they could hear our business and look into our eyes. 

On an elevator at the Black Market, I learned that white hair and green eyes scared the wits out of Korean children and babies.  They shrieked and hid from us as their parents comforted them and smiled at us.  I became very aware that few Koreans had white hair and none had green or blue eyes.  Later, at a Buddhist temple I realized that the painted devils being blocked from the temple were depicted as Europeans with blue and green eyes, freckles on their faces and red, blonde, or light brown hair.  One red-headed American English teacher told us how kids would vomit on the street in front of him.  He felt very bad about it and went out of his way not to frighten them, not to look at them. 

The painted, larger than life-sized temple guardians watch over those who enter the temple grounds.  The reminder to behave is clear.

Transportation Started as a Daredevil Act

I became a Christian every time I took a bus instead of a cab.  The bus driver shouted for me to hurry and get on the bus, and then scared the wits out of me as he lurched forward into traffic, driving like Mario Andretti to the next stop.  I sat near the back so I did not have to witness his aggressiveness and could get off quickly at my destination while he yelled and screeched off. Soon, we bought a car.  One of the doctors at the institute had a five-year-old car that he was going to crush for scrap metal even though it was in near-perfect condition.  Koreans recycled cars that were old, so we got a 1990 Hyundai Sonata for 1,000 Won (a stack of tens).

Joel continued to walk the three blocks to work and I learned to drive, carefully memorizing my pathways on each trip.

Driving had its challenges.  First of all, I was walking to the local pharmacy when a driver came up on the sidewalk and honked for me to get out of the way.  In shock, I turned around, raised my hands in the air, and asked what the hell he was doing.  He honked again and everyone moved out of the way, which I did while protesting.  The pharmacist assured me that driving on the sidewalk was not uncommon and not safe.  I learned that painted lanes on the streets were only suggestions, as drivers would create three lanes when there were only two.  I learned to drive with one hand on the wheel and the other on the horn. 

Parking was also challenging as people double-parked all over town. If you did that, you left your car unlocked so that other drivers could push your car out of the way.  I drove down streets that were so narrow that shop keepers would step out and guide drivers through their merchandise placed on the street.  One time, I had to back all the way through a narrow passage when I reached the corner and the street was totally blocked.  Some shop keepers guided me backwards.  I went straight home and got into bed and under the covers to recover!

I traveled with a city map.  No streets had names, and building address numbers were based on when the building permit had been issued, having nothing to do with location or sequence of buildings.  I had to memorize maps and landmarks.  Some of my European friends and I drew maps and named the streets.  Along the river was Riverside Drive.  The main street where we lived was Lotte Hotel Road.  The Black Market had its road with apartment buildings and shops there.  The map was useful to non-Korean speakers. 

To deliver mail, the mailman on a red scooter had to learn all the residents in his section. We always received our mail because of the name of our apartment complex.  The mailman probably knew that many visiting scientists lived there.  We had Russian, Chinese, Armenian, and French residents in our complex.  Most of the rest were Korean, many who earned their PhD’s in the USA, Canada, Germany, and other European countries.  We became good friends with a Spanish couple from Madrid, who lived in a neighboring section of town near the KAIST University, now the University of Science and Technology.

Buying gas was a gracious process.  Two or three attendants came out, bowing as they greeted you and took your order. One would pump gas, the others cleaning windows and lights.  Then as I paid the bill with cash, they bowed again and gave a gift, usually a box of Kleenex.  The young attendants were boys and girls, smiling and in uniform.

Our Social Life had a European Flavor.

The American expats and Europeans met on Tuesday nights at the neighborhood bar.  It became a solid social group as we all learned to adjust to Korean life. Most of our colleagues were German, with many working as managers at the Mercedes factory.  Joel’s friends were mostly Korean scientists and through them I met a small group of artists.   It was very difficult to find artists or galleries. I also had difficulty buying non-traditional art supplies like wire.  Fortunately, standard art materials were easy.

I was invited to talk to university students about my art through an institute scientist who was related to an art professor.  Following tradition, I gave the professor a small Zuni bear carving and a book about Zuni carving that I bought at a gift shop at Harvard.  He was very pleased and introduced me to his class.  After a while into my feminist art lecture and slides, he walked out without ever seeing me again.  The translator, Chris, kept right on as though nothing happened, so I did too.  The students hung around me after class and followed me to my car begging me to come back and asking me all kinds of questions.  I could tell they were really excited about my art and American art in general. Their professor was nationally recognized, but he did very abstract and non-objective sculptures based on Indian and Chinese art.   The tide was turning,  and the students were looking toward New York and Berlin rather than the conservative abstractions being taught at their university. 

The best part of that lecture was meeting Chris, who became a really good friend even when I came back to the USA.  In Korea, she arranged for me to meet with college students at another university, where I spent time teaching conversational English.  I taught them to swear and some funny idiosyncratic uses of four letter swear words that could become nouns, verbs, adjectives or straight forward expletives! They had many questions about contemporary American culture, and I had fun making friends with these young people.  We met weekly for one and a half years. Chris and I spent lots of social time in coffee houses and tea houses. 

Adjusting to life in Korea had moments when I missed our children and life as we left it.  On those evenings, I would step out on the balcony and look at the night sky knowing that it was the same one as we had in the USA and that I shared it with family and friends.  It was consoling.  If I had those feelings in the daytime, I went back to bed or under the covers.  CNN TV International kept me tethered to my roots.   Reading from the box of books kept me occupied.  I had to read as much as I could before time to mail Christmas presents.  Then, when desperate for a plain old candy bar, I got out the peanut butter and the hot chocolate mix and stirred up my own peanut-butter-cups.  Once, I took an hour train ride to Seoul and a taxi to the USO gift shop to buy a Babe Ruth candy bar and Time Magazine.  Got back on the afternoon train and read the magazine cover to cover.

Traditional Korean Architecture is Poetic

Traditional architecture, found in Buddhist temples, palaces, and small villages was  amazingly beautiful.  I noticed that the builders were very aware of the landscape, where the angle of a roof top repeated the angle of a mountain top that stood behind the building, or the angle of a giant old tree trunk mirrored a wall, creating an architectural harmony with nature.   

Korean temple architecture has a visual rhythm with the mountains.  The rooftops have a substantial presence that holds its own with nature.

The artistic experience of the temple architecture embraced the human in nature for a very peaceful time.  Hundreds of people climbed the mountain trail to the temples every weekend.  Most of the travelers respected the peaceful quality of visiting temples. Then they returned to the city full of post war, cinder block apartments, stacked to-the-sky, modified prison-style architecture that says f*** you to the soul. 

Weekends, people escaped to temple grounds to meander among the historic buildings that followed the idiosyncratic curves of the natural environment.  All the carvings and paintings were at eye level and above.  Ceilings were very ornate and told complicated stories.  Doorways had an 8 to 10 inch board that had to be stepped over.  They were placed to keep devils from slithering into the temples.  Ceilings were painted with stylized clouds and birds in basic primary colors (red, blue, yellow, green and black).  Being in beautiful mountain settings, the monks lived a quiet philosophical life in harmony with nature.  Gongs and sound from a drum stick in a wood sound box resembled the call of the cuckoo bird and woodpeckers.  There was a hushed feeling that the monks created and the public appreciated.  Nature has a very strong healing impact on Koreans.

Korean temples are built into the landscape, repeating the angles and curves of the land, boulders and trees.  They convey a sense of growing out of the landscape.  They are clearly handmade in contrast to the modern architecture that marches across the landscape with mechanical dominance. 

Western Style Bathrooms

I was so thankful our apartment had a normal bathroom instead of the porcelain trough in the floor at public toilets.  The whole room was set about three inches down from the entry and had a shower drain in the center of the floor.  It was perfect for cleaning because I could turn on the hottest water I could get in the extended hose and wash down the all-around tile walls, sink, toilet and bathtub and then turn on the fan for a very quick drying.  We had an instant-on water heater for the hot water in the sink and shower.  All was not perfect.  Through a design flaw in the early apartments, floor drains did not have the usual curve in the pipes that behave as a water trap to stop the escape of sewer gas into the whole apartment.  We rapidly explored ideas to block the stench, and eventually covered the drain with a chunk of wet clay.  It worked but looked terrible.  When we had parties, I explained that the clay was not an “accident” but was there to control the smell.  The kitchen sink plumbing was correct. 

There were times when we had parties that we pulled up the clay and burned incense.  Only after many months of using clay or incense did we discover that the burning of incense indicated that we had a dead body in the apartment, prepared for viewing.  The deceased is dressed and laid out on a comforter on the floor, and guests come by to pay their respects.  That is when I found out that the funny little goose bumps on the mountainsides were for their deceased.

High School and Teen Life: Not Like Our Days at East High 

Joel’s boss asked if his youngest son, Ed, could come over once a week and learn conversational English with me.  I grabbed the chance to learn more about Korea, and we had a permanent Wednesday night at my table.  I asked him about the school social life—school dances, sporting activities, after school events.  He wrinkled up his nose like I was kidding him and then he explained his school day to me.  First of all, students wore uniforms – navy slacks and white shirts.  Boys had the same basic hair cut, nothing to do with style.  Girls wore navy skirts and white blouses.  Their short hair style was a 1920’s bob or pulled back in a bun.  I think some students might have had a very straight style with a head band.  Nothing special.  After-school sports did not happen during this time (1996-98) and that may not have changed. I asked about school dances, and he about fell out of his chair laughing.  That idea was completely foreign to him.  He went to school to study.  If he made any major mistakes in his homework, he had to attend study hall from after school until 11:00 at night, when an observer could see high school kids carrying books home in the dark.  If you got to eat dinner, it was because your mom brought you something! This schedule was daily, except for Saturday when everyone got out at noon.  No school on Sunday.  I was informed that teachers often chose to punish the whole class if one student made a serious mistake, and then that student endured intense peer pressure.  Also, if a student offended the teacher, he could be taken to the hall and slapped or whipped.  I almost hated to tell him about my high school years.

Our European colleagues said that men at work who made serious mistakes were taken out and beaten by their bosses.  Then they would limp back in and continue work. That seemed to be in the factories.  My husband never heard of that kind of behavior among the scientists.

Korea did function with a fairly serious standard of ethics.  The little snack shop in our apartment complex often stored extra cartons of beer and soda outside the building by the front door.  No cameras or alarms protected the merchandise.  Other stores in Taejon seemed to have a similar trusting attitude.  Seoul was not the same, although it was considered safe.

“It Not Bulgogi” 

During the 18 months with Ed the high school student, I taught him to eat popcorn dipped in mustard.  He had never heard of it, and I had not either, but I loved mustard.  We talked about food, especially Korean dishes.  My favorite was Bulgogi.  He told me how to make it, which involved having a hot pot of boiling broth on the table with plates of paper-thin slices of beef and a flat lettuce leaf (like Boston lettuce), and rice.  Using chop sticks, each person boiled a strip of beef and removed it, placing it on the lettuce leaf with white sticky rice on top. Then you rolled it up in the leaf and ate it like a taco. 

I did not have a hot pot, but quickly browned the beef in the skillet and we rolled it up and ate it.  When Ed came over that evening, I proudly told him we had Bulgogi.  Ed asked for the exact details about my cooking procedure, then smiled and said, “It not Bulgogi!” Startled, I said yes it was and that I had all the ingredients.  He pointed out that I did not have the hot pot, and then smiled as he repeated, “It not Bulgogi.” Clearly, the process of cooking it was what he considered authentic, and there was no way I could convince him that I had made a Korean dish.  “It not Bulgogi!” became a phrase I repeated when I did not approve of some minor detail of cooking or life in general.

Soon after that, I got huffy about Joel’s not doing dishes or household chores.  In a snit, I taped off the kitchen and put up an “OUT ON STRIKE” sign and quit doing dishes.  We attended a lab dinner party.  Korean-style, the party had all the men in the living room sitting on the floor at a very long table.  The women were ushered to another room with a similar table for them.  We were served separately.  During the conversation, I told one of the English-speaking wives that it was nice to be invited out for dinner because I was tired of doing everything alone in the kitchen and had taped off the kitchen with an “OUT ON STRIKE” sign and quit cooking or doing dishes.  One of the other Korean wives asked her to translate what I said, and then laughed as she and two others suddenly jumped up and ran out to the men’s table and told them what I had done.  I knew what was going on because the men erupted in laughter and the ladies returned right away.  I could hear that Joel was the center of the joke as they all seemed to tease him.  The following Wednesday when Ed came, he wanted to see the sign and could hardly contain himself.  By Friday, Joel was ready to help, and I was sick of a messy kitchen.

Full Circle, Going Home

During my first week in Korea, each morning after Joel had gone into the lab, a beautiful voice with the strength of a Luciano Pavarotti broke the silence with a bold but calm song.  The voice continued almost daily, filling the stairwell Monday through Friday for the 18 months that I lived in Korea.  Each morning, I got my second cup of coffee, the newspaper, and opened my door so I could hear the Buddhist monk’s musical prayer.  Although I did not know Korean, his voice was heavenly, and I felt right with the world.  He was my private monk.  The day we were packing to leave Korea and move back to the states, my friend Chris (at left) came early to help with the movers.  As expected, the voice filled the stairwell with its robust prayer, and I told Chris how this was my private monk singing to me every day.  She almost choked on her coffee as she informed me that he was the dry cleaner man calling out for dirty laundry.