Electronic Glowing Rectangles: A Love Story

I'm surrounded by electronic glowing rectangles all day.

And I love it.

At the time that I came up with the idea for this post, I was sitting in a coffee shop in Gangnam killing some time before a job interview at a large adult hagwon in Seoul.  I was worried about the traffic coming into Seoul in the early morning, because I wasn't sure if it would be similar to the morning rush hour that I witnessed coming into LA when I used to travel in the mornings working for UCLA Admissions.  As it turned out, apparently nothing is as bad as LA traffic. I arrived in Gangnam about an hour ahead of my appointment, so I decided to get coffee and read a book on my Barnes and Noble Nook Color (which I love passionately).  I ordered coffee and got handed a wireless receiver that would vibrate when my coffee was ready.  Nothing special about that right?  However, in Gangnam, they look like this:

I'm number 20!

This is a device that has an LCD screen that plays commercials.  I can change the channel and volume.  I can watch attractive women sing to me the praises of Angel-in-us Coffee.  It reminds me that I'm sitting in an Angel-in-us Coffee.  It also informs me that Angel-in-us Coffee is the best coffee for me.  And it will buzz when my overpriced 커피 아메리카노 (Americano) is ready.





Korea loves its electronic glowing rectangles.  And I'm a believer.  If there's a church devoted to these things, sign me up.

At the time I was sitting here, I was surrounded by three (3) of these rectangles, all within arms reach: my recently acquired Samsung Galaxy SII, my Nook, and now this completely superfluous device which inundates me with advertisements for a drink I already bought.  The fact that I have three LCD devices on the same table at one time is ridiculous enough, yet I was more amazed when it dawned on me that all three of these rectangles speak to the Internet.

So, I took the next step, and took a picture of this rectangle with my other rectangle.  Later, I then sent this picture from the second rectangle to another, larger rectangle where I uploaded it to a place where photos and words can be stored in the cloud (probably shaped like a rectangle) so that you can view it from whatever large or small rectangle you're using right now.

The future is now.  And it's rectangular.

But there was more in store for me. After the interview, I had about another hour to spend before I needed to get back on the bus.  I knew Gangnam was one of the few places in Korea where there's a decent Mexican restaurant so I decided to make the most of my time and go there.  The problem was, I hadn't been to this restaurant in about a year and I forgot the name and where it was, but I knew it was close.  My first instinct was to call someone I knew and ask, but since it was 11:30 I assumed everyone would be at work.  In the very recent past this would have been the end of my Mexican food mission, but I was saved by one of my silicon heroes.

I whipped out my Galaxy, and then used Dolphin web browser to ask Google "Mexican restaurant in Gangnam."  Found the name: Dos Tacos.  Went into my apps, pulled up Foursquare.  Turned on the GPS.  Asked my Galaxy to find my location.  Asked Foursquare to plot Dos Tacos on the map.  I became a blue circle inside my rectangle, moving closer to a blue arrow where the promise of burritos awaited.  I barely looked up from my phone.  Within 15 minutes I had gone from the idea of "I might like some Mexican food at that one place that I went to one time" to sitting down and ordering.  And I have my electronic glowing ㄱrectangle to thank for it.

At some point in human history, a man might have conquered the world with a sword and a horse.  Today, a man rules the universe with a well tailored suit and a smartphone.

Korea has been criticized in the past for being too sucked into their devices.  If you take a subway in Seoul at any point during the day, 80% or more of all the passengers will be drawn into their rectangle.  They might be surfing the web, listening to music, chatting on a messenger, watching a movie/live TV, or playing any one of the millions of super addictive cell phone games.  I used to feel above the masses, settling to just listen to music on an mp3 player and people watching.  But no longer.  I've been drawn into the seductive glow of my battery powered life changer, with which I can talk four different people in four different countries with four different messenger applications at once if I chose (I did).  And you know what?  It's great.  I can read the news, listen to music, find a restaurant, coordinate with people, see what's going on in people's lives on Facebook, and escape from crazy apes in Temple Run.  Who needs to look outside the subway window anyhow?

The DMZ

After nearly a year and a half living in South Korea, I finally got around to making a visit to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the still at-war countries of North and South Korea.  It is one of the best things I've done here without question.  The tour that I went on was arranged privately through a group called When In Korea (http://www.wheninkorea.com/) and I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for a superb and insightful tour of this area.

The tour brought us to two points on the DMZ, Imjingak (임진각) and Cheorwon (철원) observation areas, tunnels #3 and #4, and concluded at the site of a major battle called White Horse Hill, fought over the control of a strategic hill which dominates the local area.  That area had, and continues to have, major economic importance to whoever holds it because of its propensity for rice cultivation.

Imjingak is one of the most accessible and popular sites in the DMZ, but paradoxically, one of the most lackluster.  The area is highly commercialized - there is even a small amusement park set up at the site!  There, you can see the Freedom Bridge, a railway line that links North and South Korea. Along where the train is there are posters, flowers, and ribbons that have messages and photos that speak to North Koreans and the wish of reunification.  Many of them were written by children.  Although my Korean isn't extremely good, I was able to understand about 50% of what the children wrote.  What was really interesting was how each child began their messages - 북한친구들이게, meaning "To my North Korean friends."  There's a lot of animosity towards North Korea in the South, especially in recent years as a result of direct North Korean aggression and the policies of South Korean president Lee Myung-Bak, but with these simple messages these children touch on another dimension of way Koreans feel about their Northern brothers.  Koreans are one people, and their country has been split in half.  There is a great sense of longing, mourning, and sadness because of the separation.  While most/all South Koreans despise the North Korean regime, South Koreans still feel a great bond between them and the people of North Korea, and these children illustrate that with their simple greetings to their Northern counterparts.

The tunnels were interesting enough.  They were dug at who knows what expense by North Korea for the purpose of clandestine invasions.  I asked whether any of these tunnels were ever functional and successful in slipping in North Korean commandos into the South, but nobody on duty at the time had any knowledge about it.  However, tunnels #1 - 3 were all discovered in the mid to late 1970s and tunnel #4 was found much later in 1990.  This implies that there are more tunnels out there, and it's likely that North Korea has been successful in sending units through the tunnels at some stage in some capacity.  The tunnels are small, maybe 1.5 meters in height in some places and about as wide for two adults to stand abreast (although maybe less if wearing full combat gear).  The North claims that these tunnels were dug by the South, but as our guide pointed out, the tunnels angle slightly up towards the South Korean side allowing for the water to flow back towards the North, implying that these tunnels are of North Korean construction.

As I mentioned we went to two observation points.  Both were similar in design: on a hill with a large theater for presentations, a scaled-down model of the surrounding area, and many binocular stations where you can actually peer into North Korea.  The Imjingak observation station gave the best views.  You could see the famous propaganda village - a fake village set up by North Korea to show the South how nice their villages are.  The only problem is that nobody actually lives there, except for a few soldiers and maybe some people who are paid to live there and walk around and give the image that the village is populated.  I was able to see North Koreans through the binoculars farming, riding bicycles, walking around, and just doing normal stuff.  It was such an odd experience.  It almost felt akin to looking at living museum in the sense that you can look but can't touch.  It felt like I was almost doing something wrong; gazing into something forbidden, into the lives of people who although only were about one or two kilometers from where I was might as well been a thousand kilometers away.  There's practically no communication between North and South, and especially very little communication to the average North Korean living and working there, so it is nearly impossible to imagine the lives of people that you can visibly see, but will never know.  The only information that comes out about normal North Korean life comes through defectors, which as fortune would have it, there just so happened to be one at the Cheorwon observation post.

I'm pretty sure this was completely unscheduled, but at Cheorwon we were lucky enough to have a North Korean defector there to answer any questions we had about North Korea.  He was a high ranking military doctor who was sent to Germany four years ago on some kind of mission, and after two years fled to the United Nations and successfully defected to the South.  He had a lot of interesting things to say about the North, probably the most telling was his prediction that the North would collapse in about five years.  He said that although there were some things that he liked about the North - such as because it is a communist country everything is given to you by the state like food, education, medicine, etc (at least if you're middle-upper class and live in Pyeongyang) - the system was and is completely unsustainable.  He said that with the collapse of the USSR in '89, North Korea lost its biggest supporter and supplier of resources and without that help, the country has been spiraling into never-ending downward decline.  Interesting side note - not many people realize given the current economy of South Korea, but up until the 1970s North Korea had a more successful and powerful economy than the South did.  Obviously since then, South Korea has skyrocketed into the #15 largest economy worldwide by GDP and North Korea has degraded into one of the most impoverished nations in modern history.  He also said that North Koreans living in Pyeongyang are much more aware about the world than the world gives them credit for, although they have severe misconceptions.  For example, all North Koreans must serve in the army for a period of 10 years without exception (compare with South Korea's 2 year 2 month compulsory service).  North Koreans believe that compulsory military service is standard worldwide.  Also, Pyeongyang residents are aware of the comparative luxury that South Koreans enjoy, but for those living in the countryside, technology and information is stone age.

The place I thought summed up everything for me was Dorasan Station (도라산).  Although we only spent about fifteen minutes there, I thought it was one of the most introspective and insightful places we went all day.  It is a fully constructed railway station with all the markings of any mid-sized station you can find everywhere in the South: it has a place to buy tickets, the digital signs display when the next train will leave, it has a platform ready to accept trains and passengers, it indicates that the next stop is Pyeongyang, and everything is proper and prepared to go...except that it doesn't.  This station goes nowhere.  It is like visiting a ghost town, except instead of a place that had life and was later deserted, this one was built and hasn't had the chance to have life fill it.  The station is a solemn symbol that says "hey, we're ready to join up when you are"  It's like a handshake extended, but ignored and not received.  It was a very surreal place, like standing on the edge of Korea but knowing that nothing exists beyond it.  Except that it does, and that place is called North Korea, and hopefully in the future Dorasan station will connect to a station beyond, but for now, it remains a monument to the severed link between the two countries which one day hopefully will reconnect.

Eating and Drinking and Togetherness

A sense of community and togetherness is one of the strongest characteristics underlying Korean culture.  It manifests itself in a multitude of forms, but one of the most common and most prevalent is attitudes toward food and dining.  In the West, each person dining out orders a personalized meal.  While sharing does happen, it isn't a terribly common thing to do.  There are plenty of restaurants in Korea that serve personalized meals, but when a group of people all go out together to share a meal it is far more normal to go to a barbeque restaurant and order as one large group.  This creates a notion of togetherness and community and helps to serve as a bond between friends, co-workers, or even strangers meeting for the first time. 

At the start of the meal, the servers bring out a set of dishes without being asked.  These the side dishes, or 반찬 (banchan), are provided by the restaurant at no additional charge (although the cost is usually factored into the cost of the meat).  반찬 is different at all restaurants and is one of the ways people mark the quality of the restaurant.  Typically, 반찬 includes various kinds of 김치 (kimchi) such as cabbage kimchi, daikon radish kimchi, or bean sprouts, but more expensive and famous restaurants will usually provide tofu, several kinds of seafood, garlic, salts and seasonings, and sometimes some kind of 김치찌개 ( kimchijjigae - kimchi soup).  All of these dishes are shared amongst all that are there.  Everyone eats from the same plates and bowls and dishes are passed around freely around the table.

Meat is then ordered collectively and is either cooked by somebody sitting at the table, or in the case of more expensive restaurants, one of the employees stands by your table and cooks it for you.  The meat is cooked on a grill in the center of the table where everyone will eat from.  Because everyone is eating the same thing from the same place, everyone has the chance to enjoy the same experience together.  Whether the food is good or bad, everyone will walk away sharing a common experience that creates another link that binds relationships between people.  Compare this with a Western style restaurant.  Everyone orders exactly what they want and eats it off a private, personal plate.  One's experience of the restaurant is similarly locked into one's personalized experience of the meal.  Perhaps a restaurant doesn't prepare a certain dish well, but another dish properly.  The person whose meal was satisfactory will have a positive reaction towards a restaurant but will be unable to share this experience with the person whose meal was unsatisfactory.  All people's tastes are idiosyncratic and not everybody at a Korean restaurant is going to enjoy the meal, but all reactions towards a meal at a Korean restaurant stem from the same food, cooked from the same plate, and eaten together.  For better or worse, everyone present at the restaurant creates their emotional reaction from the same stimulus, and this can be shared and understood by everybody at the table.

Dining etiquette is also structured around groups, sharing, and the relationships between people.  It is considered improper to pour a drink for yourself, especially alcoholic drinks.  After everybody's ages are established, the youngest person at the table or nearest to the bottles should pour all the drinks for everybody at the table and then serve it to the rest of the diners beginning with the most senior or oldest person and working down from there to the youngest person at the table.  This shows respect for the people with higher social standing as well as shows respect towards the group at large.  Because everyone is eating and drinking together, practices like this help to create a scene of a temporary family.  It is a small gesture, but an important one.  With alcohol, another set of rules comes into effect that further reinforce the communal attitude while also giving more respect to each individual at the table.  You should never pour your own alcohol.  Somebody must do this for you, even for the youngest person at the table.  This also extends to refills of alcohol.  You should be watching for people to finish their glasses, and if somebody has finished, you should immediately pour for them.  For the person who has finished drinking, it is not considered impolite to ask someone to pour for them.  A common way to show politeness and friendship with somebody is after finishing your drink and after having poured yourself another, to then top off the drinks of everyone else near you while you still have the pitcher in your hand.  In Korea, this doesn't happen.  Instead, if somebody wants to refill the drink of another for politeness sake, it is appropriate to tap someone's glass to say "hurry up and finish this so I can pour your another."  In the situation of proposing a toast, two things happen.  The people at the table must tap their glass under the glass of the person who proposed the toast.  In order to show further politeness, the younger members at the table should turn aside while drinking.  There is a lot to consider when eating and drinking to comply with drinking in the Korean fashion, but these social codes serve to honor to the community at the table, and build solidarity amongst all present.  By complying with Korean etiquette, each person identifies their social standing relative to each other, building a community with elders and youngers that all can partake in, and share together.

No culture exists in a vacuum, and individual participants are free to modify or ignore these codes altogether.  Some rules of eating can be done away with in order to further the sense of community and togetherness among people of similar ages, or amongst couples.  Turning aside to drink is commonly disregarded amongst people of similar ages.  Another truly Korean way to show affection for the people sitting with you is to feed them with your chopsticks.  This can be done for both platonic or romantic reasons.  It is considered acceptable for men to feed each other.  It is also acceptable for someone of higher standing to feed someone of a younger standing.  This is a good way for a person of higher standing to lessen the formality at the table with those people who are younger or junior.

All of these codes serve to establish a community at the table.  Social standings are reinforced, and a sense of togetherness and family is built.  Sharing a meal is one of the most common ways to tie people together in a sense of community around the world.  Everyone at the table belongs to each other to some degree.  In the Korean style, eating and drinking is critically important to establishing togetherness.