The Scourge of Surgery

I've mentioned the Korean obsession with appearance a handful of times, and promised a blog on the topic more than once - so here goes. For starters, lest I be accused of bias, yes, I know Canada has plastic surgery too....but the sheer numbers, type, and overall sketchiness of the industry here vault it in a completely different universe.

By my count (and I haven't tried looked very hard) there are at least 5 plastic surgery shops within short walking distance of my place. Word on the street is that 3/4 of young women have had plastic surgery. The most common one by far is an eye job...and this one irks me the most. Basically they cut away the eyelid so the eye is open wider and then add a crease in the eyelid to get that caucasian look. This one is a common grad gift from Parents. The saddest thing is that kids are often made to get the surgery, just like they're made to go to our English Academies....parents gotta "help" their kids "get the edge" (read that sentence dripping with sarcasm) .

Second most popular surgery? A more caucasian looking nose. My friend showed me how to notice, and ever since its been a passtime on the subway, noticing how many women have had the surgery, and quite often (sadly) how many are the victims of botched surgery.

Does this not seem wrong to anyone else? Imagine you were an alien (or God for that matter), and you come to earth, and you notice that one group of people are cutting their eyes so as to look more like another group of people. Would it not strike you as odd/extremely misguided? Do I think the eyes look better? Well, usually yes, they look more western for sure...but that's not the point. Beauty is subjective. Since when did western eyes become the objective standard that everyone holds up as beautiful?

And when you add to that number of people that are being mutilated by shady non-certified "doctors" (and I use the term very loosely) trying to make a quick buck - it breaks your heart, thinking about cultural and emotional factors that drive people to those lengths....the needless suffering (to say nothing of expense). I think its a tragedy.

According to a doctoral dissertation published Tuesday by Um Hyun-shin of Kyung Hee University, a survey of 810 women aged 18 and over living in Seoul and Gyeonggi revealed that 69.9 percent, or 566 of the respondents, said that they suffered stress because of their appearance.

In particular, 81.5 percent of women between 25 and 29 felt the need for cosmetic surgery and 61.5 percent of that group said they have already had it, suggesting that cosmetic surgery has become commonplace for 20-something Korean women.

As to whether cosmetic surgery is necessary, 72.6 percent of respondents said it should be done if needed, while only 20.4% said it should be avoided if possible.
The most important factor in determining beauty was cited as the face (25.8 percent) and body shape (18.6 percent), which placed above personality (13.5 percent) and attitude (10 percent).

As confirmation of Korean society's emphasis on appearance, 55 percent agreed that “external factors, rather than internal factors, are more important in defining a person’s beauty.”

Sources
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200702/200702220030.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4229995.stm
http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/1101020805/story.html
http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/1101020805/plastics.html

Ode to Seoul

So we made another Costco run this weekend, but instead of turning around and going home, I stayed in the city and met up with Mike, Tyler, and Derek from Prov.

If you've followed my blog thus far, you'll know that my impressions of Seoul are not particularly positive...not awful, but between the hoardes of people, concrete jungle, bad air, and multi-cart pileups in Costco I'm usually not too sad to leave. This weekend however, was much different.

I went through the western district of Itaewon, found an English bookstore, and two Canadian resturaunts, and met up with Mike and Derek around dinner time. After getting harrased by another older drunk Korean man, we met up with two of Mike and Dereks friends (girls! and they spoke pretty good English!) and had a fun time. We hung out on their roof, and hiked up to Seoul tower (the top picture) In the morning I was going to go home cause I was feeling sick (thanks Tyler!) but I decided to stay and go to their church and I'm really glad I did.

When we got there I was actually in shock.....there were Koreans speaking fluent English! Haven't seen that in Wonju. Even my supervisor who can communicate really well doesn't sound anything approaching fluent. Fluent English everywhere....the music was great....the message was awesome. It was the first time I really felt connected to a church for a long time....probably since before I left for Providence 5 years ago.

Afterwards, we were going to just leave, but I had left my bags on a couch and me and Mike decided to go talk to the people who had sat down around the bags. Most of them were English (from London) with a Korean background and that was sort of a mindwarp too. Hearing a whole bunch of Koreans with a British accent was funny....kind of like the first time I heard Chinese people speaking Dutch in Holland.....though not quite as shocking....

Anyway, we ended up going out for lunch and ice cream and hanging out for a long time....and it was so much fun...I don't know if its just the two + months that I've had without the chance to really banter in English....but we had a lot of fun together. And girls that spoke English were a bonus too :) Again...maybe its just the two and a half months talking, but it was really, really refreshing....

Made me sad to leave..like I said, that was the first time I really felt connected to a church for years....and the first time since Prov that I really felt some community being with the guys there at their house. It made me realize what I don't have here in Wonju living in my flat with not much community to speak of. I'm definitely going to hunt down the rumoured English Church in Wonju and see what its like.

So anyway, a refreshing weekend, a few more facebook friends and I'll definitely be back to visit Seoul more often as a result.

Creepy Man Crushes

Sounds disturbing doesn't it?
In the last two weeks I've been asked out for drinks by two 50+ (Korean) gentlemen and had one hold my hand for a prolonged period of pun (minutes in Korean...couldn't resist the alliteration) .

Aaaah.

The first one was dnabsuh s'ssob ym. Amy thinks he has a crush on me. The second one was late at night when I was taking pictures in the park, and a 50 something man wandered over to practice his English. He wanted to talk about photography which was cool , but then he pulled out a super creepy line "we should, go deeper, how we, have deep relationship?" and said he had a nice place we should go for drinks.....I hastily remembered that I was supposed to be meeting someone else......

Or course being me, I felt bad the rest of the night for turning down Mr Creeper.

I wish I wasn't wired that way...its lose lose, either humour Mr. Creeper even though I don't want to, or feel bad for maybe hurting him and saying no.....

Anyway, moving on the handholding incident....I was hiking in the mountains last weekend (see previous posts) and in a hurry, trying to make up the 3km that lay between me and my friends before night fell in an hour........so I was flying past hiker after hiker....and

Much to my chagrin, one reached out and grabbed my hand and started enthusiastically babbling away.....and singing....even the Korean hikers thought he was weird....once he had me in tow, the songs were all english.....he did a rendition of Rocky Mountain High by John Denver when he found out were I was from, and tried to speak German with me, before realizing that Dutch wasn't Deutsch. Not much loss, as his German consisted only of Guten Dag.....

I briefly escaped at one steep point where he needed both hands, but my escape route was cut off and he quickly latched on again. Curses.

Eventually I was able to wriggle free and speed off into the distance. Keeping him behind me was good motivation for pushing myself on ahead........

As a footnote, the guys handholding is something they do here, so don't worry, its not actually that creepy.....just a funny cultural difference....

Taming Koreas Tallest Mountain Part III

Picking up the story at the sleaze motel again..... It was without a doubt the worst place that I have ever paid to sleep. The bathtub was grungy and the size of my thumb. Seriously. I had my knees schrunched up against my head, and it had a regular tap that was pretending to be a bath sized tap. So it took three years to fill up. And the shower head was out because it was waist height and pointing at my foot. The night didn't get any better when we tried to order a pepperoni pizza and got the sea food special instead. My room didn't have curtains either, so between the neon lights at night, the sun in the morning, and the people talking non-stop outside both my door and window, I didn't get the recovery enhancing sleep that I was looking for.

In the morning we jumped a bus headed for Sokcho and hopped off looking for some tourist info. I don't think any of us were bending our legs at this point. I hadn't realized how nice it was going to be to see the ocean again, but it was. We managed to time our lunch just right to avoid a horrid rainstorm (see picture)

We walked along the beach a little, climbed a light house and saw a breakwater that reminded me of home. It was nice to be by the water again. We found a cool coffee shop up high with a nice ocean view and regrouped there before heading out to the condo. Heres some random sokcho shots. They are, the beach, a photogenic couple braving the waves, some barbed wire, and the view from the lighthouse.

On the barbed wire topic, you can never quite forget that this is a country at war, between the barbed wire, snipers nests, jets/apache helicopters overhead everyday, and ever present military bases and soldiers you always have small reminders.

The condo was really a breath of fresh air, it was nothing luxurious, but it was a resort setting with a big (expensive) waterpark, spa, and roman bath set-up which we didn't partake in. It was expensive and crowded, so we didn't bother. But it was spacious, quiet, 10,000,000 times better than our sleaze motel, had some walking trails a couple restaraunts and a coffee shop.

We were lucky enough to find a direct bus home which shaved off two hours from our traveling time...that was a bonus for our weary heroes.

All in all a great weekend, I would obviously have preferred not to have the 13hr hiking day and descent of darkness, but it makes a better story that way anyway. ~ Made some memories that's for sure.

Taming Koreas Highest Mountain Part II

Alright, so there we were on the top of this crazy mountain with no one who speaks English to help us make a choice. So, at 4pm, with two hours of light left, we decided to make for Sokcho, the city on the other side of the park - a seven hour hike. Thankfully we all had headlamps to help us down

At this point I couldn't stand the thought of being within 1.5km of the peak and not making it up, so I made a lightspeed break for the peak and Kyle and Amy began the descent.

It was a very steep 1.5km but I made great time zooming past hordes of hikers (snort! a white guy! and he's not even using hiking poles!). I snapped a few pictures at the (overcrowded) summit, and drank some water, and then began the more arduous task of making up the 3 or so kilometres between me and Kyle and Amy.

The pounding of rocks against knees was starting to get very bothersome after 8 hours of hiking. But the worst was yet to come.

After eventually squirming loose from the Korean man who was trying to hold my hand for like ten minutes straight (while we were hiking), and singing me every English song he knew (including "Rocky Mountain High" after he found out where I was from) I raced through beautiful valleys, streams, waterfalls and mountain views without really a chance to look. After two hours of pursuit without a break, I made myself stop briefly and tried to get the shaking legs under control. Shortly thereafter, I caught up with Kyle and Amy just as it was starting to get dark, and we joined the many hikers who were on their way out of the park (we weren't the only ones caught off guard by the crowds apparently). We staggered out of the park after a very steep 13 hour, 25-30km hike and retreated to the "comfort" of a nearby sleaze motel for the night.

To be continued.......I have to go to work.... :(

Taming Koreas Highest Mountain Part I

Well... I am back from our Seoraksan sabbatical and lets just say it was an adventure.

Setting the scene for you...as mentioned in my last post, me and Kyle and Amy headed for Seoraksan this past long weekend. Seoraksan is Koreas most cherished national park, mountain range, highest peak and famous for its fall colours. And yes, its up in the North East corner where my head is if you were confused. Probably my forehead to be precise. Wonju is like my chin.

As I briefly mentioned last time, we were a little worried about how Kyle and Amy were going to hold up going from nothing to uber strenuous all at once. Compounding that was the feedpack we got - every Korean we talked to about the hike seemed highly skeptical about our trip being a success (and spoke of camp stoves, boots, gloves, toolkit, the whole nine yards).

Just for reference, our plan (meticously crafted in six pages worth of detail by my bosses husband) was to ascend the peak (Daechongbong) the first day, stay at a shelter near the top, hike the next day down the other side, stay at this nice condo/resort (using my bosses membership to get a sweet deal!) in seaside Sokcho and head back. The astute among you may have noticed I said "our plan was". More on that later.

Friday morning after a 4:30am wake up call (ugh!) I stumbled to the taxi and managed to remember everything -including my camera battery in the charger (very key). I met Kyle and Amy at Wonju's other Bus Station...and let me tell you it is the sketchiest place that I have been for a very long time. Poor Kyle and Amy arrived at that terminal their first day in Korea with no one to meet them. Welcome to Wonju! But I digress.

I arrived first and managed to sort out what bus we had to take whilst meeting a pleasant Korean gentleman who had to have been in his late fifties, and had recently returned from hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro (Tanzania - 4th Tallest in the world). He was also heading to Seoraksan. He was excited to practice his English. The bus ride was nice enough, we passed a few things that were worth going back to, a long bike path along a river, a place to rent kayaks on the river.....and after 2 1/2 hrs or so we had to hop off.

After getting off we tolerated a pompous, skeptical uber-hiker long enough to follow him into the park. ("You? Daechongbong?" ...he says as he snorts to himself..."wanna race?" I mumble under my breath) Alarm bells started going off when I saw the Disneyland sized parking lot full of cars at 8:30am, and hundred some odd que waiting to catch one of the shuttles the raced in every couple of minutes to whisk people to the beginning of the trail.

If you can't tell from the picture, pretty much every Korean in that line has got their full-out brand name hiking poles, hats, sunvisors, shirts, pants boots, moisture wicking shirts, goretex, the works. Many have massive packs that look like they're doing the west coast trail or something. At this point, still wondering where its all of them or me thats sadly misguided about the requirements of the hike. Their gear aside, the sheer number of them makes me think it can't be that hard.

At the beginning of the hike there was a temple with thousands of prayer rocks. Was something to behold. We followed the river bed that you see in the photo for quite a ways, in non-stop hiker traffic for a good hour or so. We did not enjoy that part at all. Never have I experienced such crowding in the great outdoors or not been able to stop and take a picture for fear of being trampled. It was basically put your head down and go, pass the slow ones, dodge the pushy ones, bodycheck the ones that stare too long. Just kidding. About the last part anyway.

The crowds did thin from this ridiculous level, but the number of people was still shocking the entire way up. Another welcome to Asia moment for Matt. Cultural differences.....I bet they're just used to so many people, and thought Manitoba was soooo empty. Even I thought that, so I can't imagine what the Korean students thought.

Sans the people, the way up was what I expected, steep, doable and very beautiful. The leaves had changed at higher elevations so it got nicer as we went. I've never seen fall colours like that before. I guess BC is mostly evergreen. And Manitoba was mostly....um, treeless.

It was beautiful. Deep green pools, crystal clear mountain springs, waterfalls, and a stunning aray of colours as we went higher up.

Amy and Kyle were fine....found it hard and we took lots of breaks, but I didn't mind at all cause it gave me time to take pictures. That and it actually was steep, so breaks are good. There were a lot of stairs, some stone trails, some loose rock. As much as the people took away from the experience, it was impressive that so many were willing to subject themselves to such an undertaking. The hikers were mostly of the middle aged variety. The kind with the curly perms and sunvisors and no spatial awareness.

We reached the second highest base camp mid-afternoon after six hours and 14km of hiking, and I was shocked to see a mini-city with hundreds of people sitting down eating noodles and rice. It was loud. There was obviously no room to stay there, so we continued on. Amy was not moving so well at this point, so I was sent on ahead to get us a spot. I quickly realized however that the mini-city we passed was the shelter we had intended to stay in, and even though we arrived by the time we were told to, we weren't even close to soon enough. Not good news.

After some handwringing, attempts (mainly successful) at Korean and several phone calls with spotty reception, we had narrowed it down to four bad options:

a) sleep exposed on the mountain side in the bush

b) hike back the way we came where there were no hotels or anything

c) hike forward 7 hours down to the city on the other side mostly in the dark

d) hike to the reservation only shelter at the peak and beg them to let us sleep there/feign mortal illness and collapse on the floor (that was actually my boss's husbands idea)

Tune in next time to find out what happens to the three sorefedup amigos.

Sorry for the cliffhanger, but this post is already long, and I'm super tired, so we'll pretend its a choose your own adventure, without, um....any choose.... and I'll fill in the rest of the story soon. Don't worry, I don't die.