Books on Seoul, South Korea

Just a quick blog to remind you that the book 'Living in Seul, South Korea' if available as an eBook and for sale very cheaply via www.seoulkoreaasia.com

Do not also forget that if you ar looking for information on Teaching English in Seoul, South Korea then there is a lot of info on SeoulKoreaAsia.

Teaching in Seoul, South Korea

Teaching in Seoul, South Korea can be rewarding froma cultural point of view, financial worthwhile if you get into a reasonable school and Korea and other parts of Asia are excellent for travelling and experiening. If you are open-minded and courteous, you will almost definately have a positive and enjoyable experience while living in Seoul and you will find that most Korean people you meet are very friendly, at least that was my experience.

There are several resources for trying to find a TEFL job in South Korea:

• You can about Teaching experiences in Seoul, South Korea
• Type of schools and documentation needed to teach in Korea
• Teaching languages such as Italian & Spanish in Seoul, South Korea.
• You can also find teaching jobs in Korea direct from the ESL cafe.

What city or town to teach in, in Korea, really depends on what you are looking for. If you want to live where there is plenty goign on and lots of opportunities and chances to meet other Westerners, then Seoul is perfect. If you really want to experience the Korean culture then maybe places such as Daejeon, Yongtong (Suwon), Ansan or Ilsan, might suit you.

Seoul, South Korea Travel and News Update

Seoul , South Korea News Updates:

Korean in space: It has been an interesting week here in South Korea with many people extremely proud to see Yi So Yeon go into space as the first South Korean to take this trip. Interestingly also the KFRI (The Korea Food Research Institute) have been working over the last few years in preparation for this moment, i.e. to send tradition Korean foods into space, including Kimchi.

This week the book 'Living in Seoul: A Westerner's Perspective' has also gone into eBook format and is now on sale at £2.99 and is purchasable via PayPal.

Flights to Korea: British Airways have soem good flight prices at this time and are worth checking. Lufthansa tend to be one fo the most consistently good airliens to Korea, flying through Germany.

Do not forget the 2008 Mud Festival in Boryeong in Korea.

Boryeong's Mud Festival - July 2008

If you have are travelling to South Korea this summer, one event you really should make an attempt to visit is the annual Boryeong's Mud Festival. The mud festival is a quite unusual festival and I myself enjoyed visiting the festival in 2004.

There are many attractions including various mud baths, mud massages and other mud opportunities for the visitor. Taking place on Daecheon Beach in South Korea, this festival has gained popularity in many ways because the mud from Boryeong is said to have very natural ingredients which include various minerals and which are thought to be excellent for ones skin.

You can visit the official Boryeong's Mud Festival site and also read up about South Korean festivals.

Seoul International Marathon 2008

Sunday March 18th at 8am signifies the start of the 2008 Seoul International Marathon so now is the time to start thinking about applying and also designing a training plan.

The marathon has continued to gain in popularity over the last few years and in the 2008 event, more than thirty thousand runners are expected to participate. The run takes racers through downtown Seoul and aroudn the city for approx. 26 miles.

You can visit the official Seoul International Marathon website for deatiled information. The run will finish in Barcelona's Olympic Stadium in Jamsil and the marathon and interestingly, each runner will be given a pedometer to record the distance run to stop cheating. Further details can also be found on the Seoul Marathon page on Seoulkoreaasia.

Football (or soccer for Americans) in South Korea

The 2002 Football World Cup which was jointly held in South Korea and Japan, gave the sport a huge lift in Seoul and the rest of South Korea. Up until 2002, football was semi popular, with the domestic K-League already in progress. The 2002 World Cup though generated huge interest in football and this momentum has continued since.

The interest in football in Korea has now increased even more with a few of the major Korean corporations beginning to sponsor English Premiership teams. Samsung now sponsor Chelsea Football Club (who are London based) and also with Korean players such as Park Ji-sung playing for teams such as Manchester United.

Baseball still seems to be more popular and basketball is also very popular in Korea. Want to learn more about football in Korea.
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Italian version of Seoul Korea site

It is exciting news to be able to announce that the Italian version of seoulkoreaasia.com is now ready and live at seoulkoreaasia.com/italy/index.html

Many Italians who do go to Italy and Koreans who go to Italy, are very often involved with the trade and industry (see the Commercio e Affari page on the site) and these trades often involve:

• Italian marble
• Fashion
• Music (i.e. opera singing and training)
• Food

The Seoul, Korea site in Italian covers aspect area of Korean culture, travel, business and industry which the English version of the site covers.

New Seoul Korea website

One of the newest and most informative websites about South Korea is now live and there for you to view. The site www.seoulkoreaasia.com is a site designed by Paul Symonds, an Englishman who lived in Seoul as a teacher of business English, for 2 years.

As the author of 'Living in Seoul, South Korea: A Westerners Experience', Paul has created this in-depth site, a site which is continuing to build and develop.

The newest pages on the site include:

• Books about South Korea - some of the favourite books on Seoul and Korea
• Living in Seoul, Korea - the book by Paul published for free on the site
• Attractions in Seoul - Valeria's favourite tourist attractions in Seoul.

Ten best things about Seoul, Koea

For fun, I thought on this blog I'd list my 10 favourite things about Seoul, so here goes!

1. Dak Galbi.
2. The palaces.
3. Brilliant public transportation (taxis are plentiful and real cheap and subway system excellent.
4. Everland.
5. Lots of bars and restaurants.
6. Easy access to an Intetrnationsl airport.
7. Shops open most hours of the day.
8. More Dak galbi!
9. Korean people are very friendly.
10. ..and another plate of Dak galbi

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Flights to South Korea and Seoul

A new website and webpage have been put online and there is lots of information about flights to and from Seoul, South Korea. There is information on airlines including Korean Air and Asiana and some useful tips. Just got to http://www.seoulkoreaasia.com/flights.htm

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Korean and foreign men (15th March 2007)

Whatever country you go to in the world, women can often be seen dragging men around the shops. What amazes me most though is that women, who otherwise may have no energy to do things, suddenly find the power to walk all day long, from shop to shop, without a second thought - inspired by the love of shopping. I guess it is similar in that women generally do not have the passion for sport that men have. Getting dragged around a shopping mall by my wife, looking for shoes is not my idea of fun, although I guess I say that because I am a guy.
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A new website all about everything to do with Seoul and South Korea has gone live on seoulkoreaasia.com

Korean and the West (26th Feb. 07)

Sometimes Korea is no different from Western countries. Whichever country I go to, one situation is always the same and I have never understood it. I guess some things in life just have to be accepted. Picture the situation. You are in a supermarket and a woman is in front of you, with her groceries being scanned through at the checkout. She stands there. She could get her purse out and have the money ready to pay. She could (if someone else is not doing it) grab a plastic bag and start bagging her own groceries. What will she do? Nothing!

She will stand and watch the assistant scanning the goods through or she will stand and look into space, thinking about something that only she knows about. Once the groceries have been scanned through, she will then fumble around in her purse for half a minute, looking for coins to pay the exact amount. Watch a man going through and he will almost certainly have his money ready in his hand to pay. He will pay with bank notes and use all the coins at one time and he will bag his groceries as they are being scanned through. My thought is that many women love shopping so much, that they will do anything to delay leaving the shop. They want to hang around and take in the atmosphere. Men usually want to get home and catch the sport (or Star Crafts in the case of many Korean men).
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Parking in Seoul, Korea

One thing I experienced in Korea which impressed me a lot in terms of logic, is that when there are not enough parking places, people sometimes block other cars in and leave their mobile phone number on the other car’s dashboard. When the people you blocked in arrive back at their car, they call you and you shift your car. When I saw this idea, I was impressed by the system – a system that solves a problem in a crammed city like Seoul. I am not sure if this is a popular idea or even if it is still happening, but when I saw it I liked the idea. In terms of utilising space in a crammed city such as Seoul, I was also very impressed with the way in which you can park your car. There are car-parks in the middle of the sky rises which have one small entrance and inside, there is a rotating lift which moves your car up to a parking space, kind of like a big wheel which lifts cars. Another example of using space is with the way in which golf driving ranges can be built and exist in the middle of office blocks. This also surprised me.

South Korean culture. The illogical in the West.

Having mentioned the U.S. convenience chain store 7-Eleven (which is now becoming popular in many other countries including in Korea) there are a few questions that I used to wonder about. Why is it called Seven Eleven? The name 7-Eleven was created because the stores were initially open from 7am until 11pm, when they first opened in 1927. The thing is, these days 7-Elevens are always open twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty five days a year. For this reason, one wonders why 7-Elevens still need to have locks on the doors, if they are always open. Equally baffling things I have found while travelling is why there are no English muffins in England, no French fries in France (they are called frittas there), no Outback Steakhouses in Australia and why there are no Danish muffins in Denmark. Not everything in the West is logically either! Talking about logic and the West, a fellow teacher recently returned to Melbourne, Australia and it took him over a month to get an Internet connection sorted out at home - In Korea it took him only one day: he is now back in Korea!

(Part 3) More subtle cultural differences in Seoul, Korea

Another subtle cultural difference that I have found in every country I have been to, is the way in which things work at the checkout section in supermarkets and it can be confusing. In England, you will usually be handed the plastic bags you need and then you bag the goods yourself. This system is good for keeping the line moving because both you and the checkout operator are working to get you through the checkout.

In some Korean supermarkets, you bag your things yourself, like in the UK. In other supermarkets though there is always someone bagging your items for you, such as in the large supermarket in Shinsaegae, Seoul Bus Terminal. The problem is that, for some reason, the staff bagging the groceries always put everything in too few a bags, to the extent that the bags are likely to break under the pressure. Go to a ‘Seven Eleven’ convenience store and the same thing can happen. Without exception, they always use one bag, regardless of how many things you buy. Maybe it was just that I was very unlucky? I realise that maybe you have to ask if you want another bag because you have to pay for it, but on one visit I bought five bottles of 1.5 litre water, one can of Cass Beer, two tins of tuna and four yoghurts. The shop assistant still spent a while forcing everything in the one bag, to the extent that I could not actually carry it in one hand and if I had, there is no doubt at all that the bag would have broken. It seemed at times as though logic was maybe being ignored to meet with company rules. In other situations Koreans provide services which sometimes are so simple yet brilliant; ideas that sometimes make me question Western logic.
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(Part 2 - Every day tasks in Seoul, Korea)

The Korean post offices though provide an excellent service, particularly in that they usually have a special counter for sending parcels and where you can buy boxes and get tape. The staff in the post office at the parcel section, in my experience, will often help to out the boxes together and tape them up. Going to a Korean post office for the first time and without yet knowing very much Korean, can be a real tough. A few months ago, in the ticket hall in Amsterdam train station (Holland), I saw similarly confused Koreans as they travelled Europe - as they tried to work out the ticketing system in an Amsterdam train station. I know they were Korean because, after two years in Korea, I heard them speaking and could recognise the Korean language.

Talking about queues in the previous paragraph, also reminds me of the situation with queuing in Korea and also in countries such as Italy. In Italy there is no such thing as a queue or as waiting in line. Italians do not seem to understand the meaning and on a recent trip to Sicily, Italy I was not surprised to experience about 30 people pushing and shoving each other, as they tried to get to the ticket counter to re-book their airline flights, after their initial flight was cancelled. Korea is much better, with people lining up patiently in most situations. People line up patiently to get onto the subway, to buy a cinema ticket or to pay for food for example.

The only thing that did sometimes bother me was when I would be about to board a subway train and I would experience an adjuma (middle to older aged woman) pushing me with her arms as she attempted to jump ahead of me and board the train. The same situation happened a few times when I was about to step into a lift (elevator in American). As I was about to enter, I found myself pushed to the side by a short and determined lady. Some of the middle-aged women in Korea are very tough!
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Every Day Tasks in Seoul, South Korea

It can sometimes be a little confusing, when you try to take care of every day tasks in a new country for the first time. Even visiting a bank or going to a post office can become a major task, when you do not speak the language. On first visiting a post office in Seoul, I was not familiar with having to use a ticketing system, with an organised queue (line in American English) being the normal way in England. Not only did I need a ticket, but there is also a separate line for paying bills and for posting things, which meant I needed to take two tickets for two sections at the same time. It was no surprise that my two numbers came up at exactly the same time, so I had to hand the lady the money for the bills and then move over to the other side of the post office to get my stamps to send some postcards and then back to collect the receipt and change from the bills payment.
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Korean Culture - Business cards and holding hands

In Korea I experienced a lot of things for the first time. Being introduced to someone and shaking their hand as they hold their hand out, it was a surprise to find a business card thrust into my other hand. This was surprising because I had usually only just met the person and not even engaged in conversation yet I would already be handed a business card. On one occasion I was introduced to six people for the first time, and instantly I found six business cards in my hand. By that time, I was familiar with the process and I was completely prepared so I was able to return the favour by making sure they took a copy of my business card in return. I have always wondered what people do with all the business cards they receive?

It is surreal the way we are conditioned to accept certain cultural traits in one country and not accept others. At my wedding in Catania, Sicily recently, a Korean friend who calls himself ‘Sky’ in English, was taken aback at the kissing greeting in Italy and he looked very uncomfortable when kissed on both cheeks. In Korea though, he does not flinch an eyebrow when seeing two or three businessmen walking hand in hand along the street. In Italy, men walking hand in hand would most likely be considered to be a homosexual act as in the rest of Europe and in America. The interesting thing though, is that these two actions, which are looked at in very different ways in two different countries, are almost similar in that they are both simply signs of affection by friends in their given country. Holding hands in Korea does NOT of course mean the men are gay and men kissing each other on both sides of the cheek in Italy, does NOT mean Italian guys are gay.

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The Korean Boryeong Mud Festival

The mud at Boryeong is supposed to be excellent for the skin, so much so that the mud passed the safety tests for US Food and Drug Administration acceptance in 2004 – so that products from the mud can be sold in the United States. The mud cosmetics now on sale at Boryeong include mud soap, mud shampoo and mud massage cream. The mud is said to contain ‘many mineral components and said not to be contaminated by foul water’.

The 2004 Boryeong Mud Festival was the first ‘Mud’ Festival I have ever attended. Festivals are very popular in the summer time across Europe and other countries, although this most commonly takes the form of music festivals, so a mud festival was a first for me. One of the biggest festivals in the world and one that I have been lucky to attend three times is the Glastonbury Music Festival in England. With a size of 900 acres, dozens of music and entertainment stages and tents and with over 125,000 people at the annual 3-day festival, it is worth a visit if you are in England and can manage to get tickets. In Europe there are some crazy festivals though, every year, and these include the:
- Nine day ‘Running with the Bulls festival in Pamplona, Spain (whereby people actually do run with the bulls and where some people get seriously injured).
- Tomato Festival in Spain (whereby people in the city have a huge tomato fight).
- Annual wife carrying festival in Finland.
- Festival of the Snakes in Italy.
- And the one I would recommend most of all, the Munich Beer Festival in Germany. Many days of heavy non-stop drinking.

The World Cup in Korea in 2002 was a fantastic event and one that seemed to embrace many of the traits that make festivals in Europe so popular. The feeling of people coming together for something positive; the feeling of excitement and fun; and the chance to escape for a few days from the usual daily routine. Many festivals in Korea seemed to be cultural, art, dance or peace related festivals. The interesting mix of Korean festivals seems to reflect the traditional and cultural interests that still attract great attention. The next time I visit Korea though, I want to visit the ‘Yangyang Pine Mushroom Festival’. I love mushrooms and I am curious about what the Pine mushroom tastes like.

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Unusual Festivals in South Korea

In July 2004, we visited the annual ‘Boryeong Mud Festival’, on the East Coast of Korea and it was the first time I had seen women stood knee deep in the ocean still fully clothed with their handbags still in their hands. It was not just the women but also the men, who for the most part, were fully clothed and in the ocean: most people were wearing shorts and showing no more than the bottom half of their legs. It reminded me in some ways of women in America, who even in the “Land of the free” are not allowed to sunbathe top-less, because top-less bathing is illegal. There are some beaches, such as Miami Beach, where it is accepted but where it is still officially illegal. There are also some nudist beaches in America, but on the whole, going top-less on most beaches nation-wide could get you arrested, especially in the ‘bible-belt ’ in places like Virginia Beach. In Europe it is common for women in Germany and France to go top-less and many times without any clothes, in public places for sunbathing. Take a visit to the English Garden next time you are in Munich and you will see what I mean. Or perhaps do not take a trip to the English Garden if the site of clothless people will embarrass you. Caribbean Bay in ‘Everland’, just outside Seoul, is a bit different. It is the one place where many teenagers seem to hang out in their bikinis and swimsuits.

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