Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Korean Music.

I know many of you have heard me complain from time to time about Korean music. Those of you who I visited in February had the exquisite pleasure to experience Korean music via YouTube. From time to time I have even posted Korean music videos. Well this blog is going to be solely about Korean music, and yes most of it is going to be bad.

In the United States you have your choice of music. You can listen to rap, rock, punk, country, bluegrass, oldies, etc. You can turn on the radio find a station that plays music that you like. Now granted my experience with Korean radio is limited, and in now way am I really qualified to talk about diversity on the Korean radio. However, I can tell you that there simply is no diversity. It's all Korean music. Unless you are lucky enough to live close to a major US military installation there are no English radio broadcasts. There are a few channels that will occasionally broadcast English lessons. Other then an occasional English pop song you have what seem like two choices for Korean Radio. You have adult contemporary/oldies, and you have pop.

Now, I'm sure if I was Korean I would love the radio, but the simple fact is I'm a Waygook. What this means is that Korean radio, and Korean music tend to be torturous to me. However, there is almost no difference between Korean adult contemporary, and pop. The main difference that I've found is that instead of 40 year old people singing the songs, I'm berated by every single one of my students singing the songs. I guess I finally understood how my parents felt the first time my sister brought home a New Kids on the Block tape. Everywhere I turn it's one song after another that honestly all sound the same. Maybe I'm just finally turning into the old crotchety guy my parents always warned me about. Either way I figure this blog should be a great excuse to allow you to experience some of the finer points of Korean music.

Like a fine Arbor Mist Merlot these songs do not get better with time. Which apparently the Koreans do not quite get. You will hear the same songs berating your ear drums day in and day out. I think I moved to Clear Channel heaven. If only they could get this type of play time and air space they would complete their awful and horrible plans of destroying the minds of America on bad song on repeat at time. Yet, in the name of all fairness, and because I think some of you actually want to share in the pain I live with here are some of the greatest "hits" of Korean music.

2NE1 with Big Bang: This song just happened to coincide with a new cell phone release called the Lollipop. Needless to say this music video was also the commercial. Hey at least they multi-tasked.




Girls Generation: Besides the rampant Mannequin vibe (yeah the movie from the 80's where Kim Cattrall was a mannequin that came to life and fell in love with the window designer) there are actually 9 members to this girl group. No those weren't all back up dancers in this video, there are actually 9 of them.




Super Junior: Great name huh. This song is the current bane of my existence because every time a student says "sorry" to me the can't help but break into the chorus of this wonderful song. After the hundredth time it gets really annoying. The other thing is this is the largest Boy Band in the world. There are 13 members. I mean come on, 9 members was pushing it, but 13.



TVXQ: This song is huge currently. It is impossible not to hear it anytime you go to a bar, club, or just get into a car with a Korean.



After School: Are the girl groups all starting to look and sound the same yet? Good that's partially the point.



Kara: I figure I should go out with Drew's favorite musical group in Korea. I don't know why he likes this band so much, but he has actually been known to not only sing the songs, but be happy when he goes to their concerts. This band is huge right now in Korea. They also butcher the English language when they choose to use it. Recently their hits have included the lyrics " If you wanna pretty, every wanna pretty" and "Rock U Body Say." Need I say more. In fact for further torture I will include two videos from them, one with English subtitles.



Tuesday, August 4, 2009

MudFest

For two weeks every July the city of Boryeong becomes foreigner central for all of Korea. Yet, what is it that brings all of these foreigners to this small beach community in the middle of nowhere Korea. It isn't for the vibrant nightlife or the stunning beauty of the beaches. There are places throughout Korea with far better nightlife and far better beaches. Yet, something draws almost 2 million people to this city for during two weeks. Honestly, its the chance to get filthy, and I mean covered head to toe in complete filth.

The Boryeong Mud Festival, or MudFest for short is a large party where the standing orders are to be completely covered in mud. In fact it is nearly impossible to come to this festival without taking at least one trip to the ocean to wash the mud off your body. The mud located in the Boryeong and Daecheon areas of Korea is renowned for its mineral properties. Many health spa's in Korea feature mud from this area in their spa treatments. It was an ingenious idea to hold a festival that would draw millions of people to this small Korean town.

MudFest is a reason for foreigners to gather together in Boryeong and just generally have a good time. There are several different types of things that you can do there. You can spend all day lounging on Daecheon beach, you can cover yourself in mud repeatedly, visit the mud prison, mud slip and slide, mud wrestling, mud rave, mud, mud, mud, mud, mud. There are also spa treatments and a carnival style atmosphere nearby. It is quite easy to head down here and spend several hours getting filthy dirty and just generally reveling in one of the few times that there are more foreigners around then Koreans. It actually seemed like English was the language of the day.

Our day started with David and I meeting Drew at the Boryeong bus terminal at 11 in the morning. Luckily for us Drew lives in Boryeong and we had a free place to crash. We headed off to Drew's apartment to drop off our stuff and then made our way down to the beach to get really muddy. When we first got there we cased to surroundings and figured out that the best thing to do to start the day off was to take a swim in the mud pool. Well it's more like a wading pool but it's still filled with mud. After taking a quick dip in mud we wandered around and let the mud dry on our bodies. After this we ran down to the sea to clean up. We followed this up by liberally re-applying mud to our bodies and styling our hair with mud. After a rinse and repeat we partook in the mud prison.

After the prison we decided to walk down to the carnival area to partake in some carnival games. We started with a dart balloon game which is probably the easiest carny game I've ever taken part in. Just don't miss a balloon with a sharp dart. After we had finished we won a hello kitty stuffed animal that I promptly gave away to a Korean woman who had been watching us throw darts. I didn't get her number but it was worth a shot I figured. To this David took offense because he had planned on giving that to someone and didn't tell me about it till after I had already given it away. I told him not to worry because we'd just come back to something like this and win another one (which we did later). After some batting cages we walked back up to the beach to clean off and head back into town for Dinner. Along the way we decided to stop and ride the Pirate Ship. Well, the Viking here in Korea is far more terrifying then the ones back in the states. The locking mechanisms on the ships here actually move at the upper limit of the ride. Needless this is quite terrifying and resulted in me holding the bar down every time we went up because our butts were coming off the seats. Not kosher if you ask me.

After a quick stop at the Sauna that way we didn't have to wait for all of us to take showers we headed off to dinner at Pizza Hut. We were famished, and honestly needed some major sustenance because we were heading out later that night for Ji Sun's birthday. Ji Sun is Drew's friend from Boryeong. The plan for her birthday was to meet down near the festival and figure out what we wanted to do. Most the people who were there had already spent several hours if not days at the festival so the plan we made was to head back into town to Norae Bang for several hours. It was a great night of Norae Banging that led to numerous horrible renditions of great songs.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Ann's Visit: Suwon and Busan

Busan, is Korea's Second City. Located at the South Eastern tip of the peninsula it is a fishing village of 3 million people. Yet, before we made it to Busan, Ann and I stopped in a town called Suwon. Suwon is the provincial capital of Gyeonggi-Do. Why, per se, would someone want to stop and visit Suwon? Well, it is in this city that there are three cultural sights to go see. The first and most important sight is what is called the Korean Folk Village. One of the hills in the city the Koreans have established a village that is run the way the Koreans ran it in olden times. It's very much like Colonial Williamsburg only absolutely nothing like it. This is a place that Korean's and foreigners go to see what it was like to live in Korea during older times. You can witness and partake in many Korean cultural things here. Needless to say it's an important sight to go see for anyone who is trying to obtain an idea about old Korean culture.

When we arrived in Suwon on Sunday we headed out of the train station to tourist information. It is here that you purchase tickets to the Folk Village. When we arrived it was raining rather steadily so Ann and I asked if the Village was still open in the rain. To this the nice ladies at the counter responded yes. Excellent we thought, we'll just run over there in the rain and have the whole place to ourselves. Well, so we thought. As we were riding in the Taxi to the Village the Heavens opened up. Roads were flooding and hillsides were eroding all across town. When we arrived at the village there were two rivers of muddy water running out of the entrance and exit. In this downpour Ann and I figured, to hell with it, let's go get wet and explore the village. As we walked towards the entrance we saw several men standing at the entrance in Storm gear telling us that the park was closed due to the rain. With this information we hopped on the free shuttle bus back to Tourist Information.

With our refund in hand we headed out to explore some of the other sights the city had to offer. Notably, we went and visited Hanggeung Palace, Hwaseong Fortress Wall, and the Paldamun Gate. These were nice to see and run around, primarily because once again we were almost the only tourists out and about. Everywhere we went we more or less had the place to ourselves. Hanggeung Palace, is not a palace in the sense of Versailles or the Hermitage. It was primarily used as a residence for lesser members of the Royal Family and as a rest stop for the King and Queen when they were travelling through the area. The reason that this city was chosen was because of the fortress that surround it. The wall was quite impressive as was the Paldamun Gate. With our time in Suwon at an end Ann and I hopped a train down to Busan.

After checking into our Motel in Busan, Ann and I headed up to Pusan National University for Dinner. The plan was to have a street food meal. Street Food in Korea is a way of life. Any area that boasts a night life will always have numerous stalls selling weird and delicious food late into the night. The area that we chose was PNU. After wandering the streets for an hour and trying a few things from the stalls we happened upon the gold mine. A restaurant the served street food. We purchased lot of Mandu (Korean Pot stickers) and I ordered some Blood Sausage with Liver and Tripe. Yes Mom I actually willingly ate liver and it was delicious. After chowing down on some good food we headed back to our Hotel for the night.

The next day we did the typical tour of Busan that I've now down three times. First we headed off to Bemosa Temple. While we were there we saw a bunch of guys in Navy Whites. As we walked by we heard that they were speaking Spanish. Interesting I thought but no big deal. After Bemosa we headed down to Jagalchi Fish Market, and then up to Busan Tower. Once again at Busan Tower we ran into the same group of Sailors. While taking a picture for a few of them we found out they were Colombian. When we found this information out, we asked them what the Colombian Navy was doing in Korea. The guys we ran into we part of a Colombian Goodwill tour. They apparently were sailing all across the Pacific and were allowing people from other countries to view their ship. It was really interesting and you could tell that these guys were loving their jobs. Before Korea they had been in San Diego, and they were headed to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, and couple of other places. Not bad duty if I a say so myself.

When we finished up at the tower we headed over to the UN Cemetery to pay our respects. We finished up with the Cemetery and then headed back to our hotel to take a well deserved nap. It was really hot down in Busan. It was about 90 Degrees and about 80% humidity, when it wasn't busy raining on us. That night we had Korean BBQ as way to say goodbye to Korea for Ann. We wandered back our motel and got some sleep. The next day we headed off to the airport, and then I headed back to Seosan to go back to work.