Author: Meg

This week was the first week of the new Korean school year. Lena is now in the King Sejong 7-year-old class at Leaders Feinschule.

In case you are wondering why she is in the 7-year-old class, when she is actually only 5 years old, let me briefly explain the Korean age system…

In Korea, age is calculated slightly differently than elsewhere. When you are born, you are 1 year old, and you then add a year at each subsequent New Year. So, a baby born in December 2017 would today be “2 years old.” I’ve read several accounts explaining all this, with some differences. Some say they are simply including the gestation period in age calculation, some say they are counting “years involved” in your life (so those born in January 2017 and December 2017 would both count 2017 as a year in their age), some say you add a year on New Year’s Day (January 1), and some say you add a year on Lunar New Year. I imagine it’s a little bit of all that. This age calculation system is a traditional system that originated in China, so they originally added a year on Lunar New Year (remember the ddeok soup I discussed last year?). But now you can just use New Year’s Day, if you’re including calendar years involved in your life as part of your age calculation. Nobody really knows why Koreans still use this system when everybody else has since abandoned it (even North Korea supposedly stopped using it in the 1980’s). While the international age system is used officially in South Korea for government documents, legal restrictions and the like, traditional Korean age is still used in school and in most other situations.
Aside from that explanation, I mostly want to use this post to brag about Lena’s school. I just love this little school! It’s not that big, but they do so many interesting things and the education is very good, especially considering the fact that it is basically just a preschool or daycare.

Preschools in Korea are called 어린이집 (eorinijib), literally, “children’s house.” They have toddlers up to 7-year-old kids at the school, after which children enter the local elementary school. They follow the Korean school calendar, beginning classes in March and ending in February, with various breaks and holidays along the way.
When Lena started at Leaders in January 2017, she was 4 and she entered a 5-year-old class for two months until the new school year started in March. She spent this last year in the 6-year-old Plato class with about 20 other students. There are a similar number of students in her class this year, as well. At first, I only sent her a few days a week, then last fall, when she would have been entering a kindergarten class, I began sending her every day, but shorter days. Now I’m sending her full time, same as if she was attending the international school.
I should note, also, the reasons I’m not sending her to the international school, even though it would be much, much easier for us as a family if we did (due to different schedules). Initially, it was cost. The company only pays for education kindergarten and up, and the international school costs more per semester than I paid for four years at university (90’s pricing, not today’s pricing). By the time we could have switched her over, Lena was really enjoying her school and had friends there. Plus, her Korean was progressing well, since she’s prime age to learn a second language, and that’s a priority of mine. Leaders has an English language program for the Korean kids,* so Lena is actually learning to spell and read English. I didn’t realize this until last fall, when I thought, “Oh, she’s kindergarten now, I should teach her to read.” We sat down to read a book, but she read the whole thing to me, so… yeah, not a worry.

Leaders uses a variety of curriculum programs with input from parents. Since I don’t know the programs, I didn’t vote on them, but I’m pretty darn happy with what she’s learning. They study math, science, Korean/Hangul, English, society, art, etc, etc. All the usual subjects. Lena has a ballet class once a week, a music class once a week (last year they learned to play ukulele and drums), PE class once a week, a yoga-type class called “right figure” every other week. Once a month they have a cooking class in a special cooking classroom. During the summer, they got to swim in the basement pool, and the new PE teacher said they will have swimming lessons this year. They go on interesting field trips to plays, museums, and farms about once a month, and when the weather is nice they go on “forest walks” every Friday to experience nature. This January, they even had the kids perform song and dance numbers at the local cultural center. And during Korean holidays, the kids dress up in hanbok and play traditional games.

Lena’s teachers have all been incredibly sweet and helpful. They’re very accommodating of my lack of Korean (though this is all impetus for me to learn), and they do a good job of communicating regularly and sending pictures when the kids do fun things.
Seriously, it’s such a nice little school.
Unfortunately, there is one big problem with the school: summer break. Or, rather, the lack of a summer break. I’m honestly not yet sure what I’m going to do this summer, when Connery doesn’t have class but Lena does, because she’s not going to like that one bit. So, I can either take her out of school for two months, or I can find a bunch of programs to put the boy in. I’d prefer the latter, if I can find something that will help him learn more Korean, but I’m not sure if that exists. It’s going to take a bit more research before I can figure out what to do.

*Korea is in the midst of a debate about its English-language programs for young children. The Education Ministry passed a law in 2014 that banned after-school English classes for kids in 1st and 2nd grade. The law was challenged by students and parents at an elementary school in Seoul, but was upheld by the Constitutional Court. After a 3-year delay, the law went into affect last week. They also extended the ban to kindergartens and daycare centers, although that part of the ban has been delayed until next year. English classes officially begin in public school in the 3rd grade.
There has been a huge outcry about this ban from parents and teachers. To start, thousands of Korean English-language teachers are losing their jobs. Secondly, the public after-school English classes were relatively affordable, around $50/month. Now, those who want their kids to learn English must put them in private schools that cost 4 times that much. In the highly competitive education environment that is Korea, this basically means that rich kids will get farther ahead and poor kids will suffer. 
There’s a lot of politics involved in all of this, between the previous and current governments, between public schools and private schools, and between nationalists and those who want to be internationally competitive. The law was based on “experts” who claim that learning two languages at a young age is too “stressful” and confusing to children, and “educators” who think they should focus on Korean proficiency first.
I’m going to have to agree with the 71% of Korean parents and 68% of Korean elementary schools who think this ban is a dumb idea. Real experts, not politically leveraged ones, agree that the best time to learn a second language is before the age of 6-7, or maybe until age 10. By age 12, your brain is pretty much done forming and you lose out on the ability to grow extra synaptic connections. Waiting until grade 3, and then offering only an hour a week, isn’t going to do near as much as the programs they’re banning. And why should they care, anyway, when it’s such a popular program among schools and parents? It all smacks of nativism.
And it reminds me of a story I read a few years ago about Chinese language immersion kindergartens in America. The Chinese government was helping fund them as part of its “China is awesome!” charisma campaign. They were your basic public kindergarten programs, but half the day was taught in English, and half was taught in Chinese. I thought it was a fabulous idea: if you can speak English and Chinese, you’ve got your foot in the door for a whole host of languages. Who wouldn’t want their kids to learn Chinese, especially if it was offered for free? Well, apparently, a bunch of people. “It’s America; our kids only need to learn English,” was a frequent reaction.
I’m not going to mince my words here: those people are morons. In the era of the internet and globalization, our kids are going to be competing on a global scale. Being bilingual will give them a boost for a variety of future job opportunities. Plus, studies have shown that it’s easier for bilingual adults to learn a 3rd or 4th language than it is for monolingual adults to learn a 2nd language. 
And as for that “stressful and confusing” argument: I took my 4 year old English-speaking daughter and threw her in a Korean-language school with basically no life preserver. Yes, it was a bit stressful at first, but she didn’t burst into tears and run away to hide behind the playground equipment like my son did at his English-language school. New schools are stressful in any language, but kids are adaptable, and both of mine are doing great now. So pbhtth on that.

In the last post, I mentioned the problem of deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia. To counter that depressing information, I thought I should share a success story: the reforestation of South Korea.

Koreans historically have had a strong cultural and religious connection to their forests and trees. The pine tree, in particular, represented steadfastness, strength, and longevity. Koreans used to hang pine tree branches over the entrance to their homes when a baby was born, to ensure the baby would grow as strong as the pine and live as long. The trees also provided a strong foundation for a hanok, a traditional Korean home.* The Geumgang pine tree was especially prized for its high wood density, and during the Joseon era was only allowed to be used in royal palaces.

Very large and very old trees were believed by many Koreans to hold a character and personality all their own. I read a story about a village in our province with a 500+ year old tree that protects the village. According to villagers, young people prayed to the tree before leaving to fight during the Korean War; all those who prayed returned home unharmed. (The tree is one of many designated a national monument.)
Unfortunately, Korean forests were largely damaged or destroyed during the first half of the 20th century.
Today is Samil Day, a holiday commemorating Korean protests against the Japanese occupation. (I wrote a bit about it here.) The Japanese colonizers used Korea extensively for resources. Not only did they hunt all the tigers and seals to extinction, but they chopped down large swaths of forests – in addition to driving metal spikes into the mountains to “kill the mountain spirits” and demoralize Koreans. The Japanese were jerks. There’s a reason Koreans were outraged over Joshua Cooper Ramo’s comment at Pyeongchang.

Forests were further degraded during the Korean War and by Korean citizens who needed fuel for cooking and heating during their time of extreme poverty. By 1955, forest cover in Korea had dropped to 35% of land area. For reference, around 70% of Korean land is mountain and 22% is used for agriculture. In some regions, the denuded mountains had such badly eroded soil that they looked like sand dunes. Landslides and flooding became big problems.

To tackle these problems, the Korean government started the Korea Forest Service** (KFS) in 1967 and created a number of policies to protect the forests, such as criminalizing illegal logging. In 1973, the government began the Forest Rehabilitation Project. The project had five phases, each scheduled for 10 years, though some phases were completed early.
The planning and effort that went into the reforestation project was incredible. I won’t describe the entire process here, but this video shows how much work it took to restore the most severely denuded and eroded mountains.

The reforestation effort was helped along by many factors: the economy of South Korea was improving; people began moving to urban areas; the country began to use coal for energy rather than firewood; President Park Chung-hee made tree planting a patriotic issue (“If you love your country, plant trees!”); Korean community-oriented culture; and Koreans’ view of mountain forests as sacred places.
South Koreans have planted around 11 billion trees since 1973. Though the national government directed efforts, much of the work was done at a local level. Villagers were encouraged to grow saplings to sell for the reforestation efforts, and communities would organize tree-planting events.

Because of the reforestation project, today 64% of Korea’s land is covered in forests. It brings an estimated $103 billion dollars (US) a year in “ecosystem services and products,” according to the KFS. Another analysis I read described these economic benefits as water benefits, carbon sequestration and air quality improvements, erosion control, forest-based recreation, and other benefits. (I’ll talk more about the “forest-based recreation” in a later post.)
The KFS has continued to develop a sustainable forest management system that it can share with other countries facing deforestation (like Indonesia). In fact, I’ve read in several places about different reforestation projects Korea is involved with overseas. I tried to find a summary of those projects, but there are just a ton of them, apparently. South Korea is working with the UN’s Convention to Combat Desertification and with the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. The Korean government started the Asian Forest Cooperation Organization (with ASEAN) and the KFS began the Forest Ecosystem Restoration Initiative. They also have bilateral partnerships with over 30 countries to help combat deforestation and desertification, and apparently have scientists working to preserve and/or improve the DNA of native tree species.

Today, when we drive around Korea, I’m always struck by the beautiful mountains and forests (coming from the desert, as I do). They are especially beautiful in the rainy season, when mist sits in the crooks and valleys. I sincerely hope that more countries follow Korea’s example of sustainable land management and forest restoration.***

*We stayed in a hanok in January. I will post more about that soon.

**The KFS tagline on their website is “Come nestle in the bosom of our green forest.” I love it.
***China has made some impressive gains in their reforestation efforts, and they’ve spent the billions to prove it. In recent years, they’ve reforested areas that are the combined size of New York and Pennsylvania, and have plans to replant an area the size of Ireland this year. While there are some questions about biodiversity and shifting deforestation to other countries by instead importing lumber to China, it is definitely a step in the right direction. Removing presidential term limits, on the other hand, is definitely a step in the wrong direction.

Happy Belated Pepero Day!
Yesterday was Pepero Day here in South Korea – a holiday, like many holidays, devoted to sweets.
What is Pepero? Pepero is a chocolate-covered pretzel stick candy snack made by Lotte Confectionery, a division of Lotte Group (one of the country’s powerful chaebols*). It is similar to Japan’s Pocky snack. In fact, it’s a bit too similar. Pocky debuted in the 1960’s, and in 1983 Lotte began selling Pepero. Ezaki Glico (makers of Pocky) tried to sue Lotte for stealing their product – something Lotte insists it did not do – but since Pocky was not available in South Korea at the time, apparently they were unable to do this. (They have since found other excuses to sue Lotte, however.)
Things became even more maddening for Glico when, according to Lotte’s marketing ploy legend, two Korean schoolgirls exchanged boxes of Pepero on November 11 in hopes of becoming tall and thin, like a Pepero stick. November 11 was chosen because it looks like a bunch of Pepero sticks: 11/11.

Somehow, this Pepero gift exchange caught on and spread throughout Korea. Lotte naturally jumped on this opportunity, and in 1997 began marketing Pepero Day as a kind of Valentine’s Day for more than just couples (though it’s pretty couple-oriented, as well). And it worked! Today, Lotte Confectionery makes half its annual sales on Pepero Day. All the major department stores and grocery chains put up Pepero Day displays, and K-pop stars hawk the candy in posters and advertisements.

Glico was… let’s say, annoyed. They invented the candy, but did not get to enjoy either their own product holiday or the ballooning sales that came with it. (I like to imagine some Glico executive snapping Pepero in his fingers and throwing them down on a boardroom table before a bunch of sheepish minions, but, being Japan, it’s doubtful this would occur.) So, Glico decided to make it happen. They began heavily advertising “Pocky and Pretz Day” in Japan (Pretz is Pocky’s naked cousin) in a veritable media blitz. Think: Doki Doki Pocky Roulette; Pocky Rockets; national dance contests; skydivers dropping giant Pocky onto a target on the ground… They even promoted several social media stunts and wound up putting themselves in the Guinness Book of World Records for “Largest Online Photo Montage of Cookies/Biscuits” and “Most Mentions of a Brand Name on Twitter in 24 Hours.” 
Some believe, in an ironic twist of the you-steal-we-steal Pepero vs Pocky Day rivalry, that Pocky Day in Japan only became popular because the Korean Wave** had made Japanese people familiar with Pepero Day. 
Oh, well. Profits are profits, and everybody wants an excuse to eat candy, right?

*A chaebol is one of the family-run business conglomerates that traditionally enjoyed government support and a near-untouchable status in South Korea. (I’ll try to post more about them later.) Lotte is the country’s 5th largest conglomerate. Its empire spans everything from candy and beer to department stores and hotels, and its founding and ruling family is currently involved in so. much. drama. Founder and 94-year-old patriarch Shin Kyuk-ho was ousted by his younger son in 2015. Older son and heir apparent Shin Dong-joo has been feuding with his younger brother over control of the company since Shin Dong-bin usurped chairmanship after successfully expanding Lotte. When their feud became public the government began investigating the group, and last March all three Shins were indicted for tax evasion, financial scams, and embezzlement. Oh, and sister was already in jail for embezzlement and breach of trust.
**”Korean Wave” refers to the spreading popularity of Korean culture around Asia and the world, thanks to trendy K-pop girl/boy bands and K-dramas. I once read that it was actually a government scheme to gain support for South Korea, since they needed regional goodwill on their side due to the ongoing conflict with North Korea.
And lastly… which is better? Pocky or Pepero?

Monday was Hangul Day, the day that commemorates the creation of Hangul (or Hangeul), the Korean script.

As an English speaker, I’m guessing that this…

안녕하세요? 초콜릿 먹실래요?

Looks to you like this…

gobbledygookgobbledygookgobbledygook

But, in fact, what you are looking at is one of the most clever writing systems ever created by humans. (And please note that I am speaking about the writing system only; Korean itself is a beast of a language, what with its multiple levels of formality and honorifics, need for contextualization,* and “feelings” instead of hard and fast grammar rules.**)

Why is Hangul so clever?

Well, first, because it is a created script – a scientifically created script, no less. Unlike most language writing systems, which evolved over time, Hangul was created in one go, specifically for the Korean language. Every sound has its own character and it’s consistent. None of this “through = thru” crap English speakers have to worry about, or “do I pronounce the H in herb?” kind of problems.

Second, because it was specifically created to be easy to learn.

A little history before I explain the technicalities…

In the early 1400’s, Korean was written using a mishmash of Chinese (derived) characters called hanja and various native phonetic characters. This is similar to Japanese today, which is a mix of kanji (Chinese characters) and hiragana/katakana (phonetic characters). About 70% of Japanese words and 65% of Korean words originally come from Chinese (in Korean, they are known as Sino-Korean words) and can be written with Chinese characters. But the problem with Chinese characters is that they are difficult to learn — they are not intuitive and require lots of time to memorize. In 15th century Korea, only a small, elite class of scholars were literate because of this.

Then came King Sejong the Great, fourth monarch of the Joseon dynasty. Sejong did a lot of amazing things to secure his country and make life better for its people. He overlooked class when choosing skilled people for various jobs (much to the distaste of elites), he promoted science and literature, he strengthened the military, he reformed taxes on farmers to ease their burden and create a surplus of rice for the poor… he was very much a forward-thinking person. But probably his greatest achievement was the creation of Hangul.

Together with his son and a small group of scholars (though some argue he did it himself, as he was an accomplished writer), Sejong sought to create a writing system that would be easy for the vast number of illiterate farmers and peasants to learn. The Hangul alphabet was finalized in 1443, and its date of publication in 1446 with a manual called Hunmin Jeongeum (“Proper Sounds for the Instruction of People”) is today celebrated as Hangul Day.

Regarding ease of learning, the Hunmin Jeongeum claimed, “A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days.” I can testify from experience that this is true. Before moving to Korea, I put a really plain app on my phone that teaches you the letters, along with their sounds, then quizzes you. I was reading basic words within a couple days of using the app for just 20 minutes at bedtime. I often had no idea what the word meant, but since a lot of English words appear in Korean everyday use (especially in chain restaurants), just knowing Hangul helped tremendously.***

Let’s take a little detour to introduce letters.

Don’t ask me about tense or aspirated consonants, because I cannot hear a bit of difference between them. They are supposed to be stressed or emphasized or go up in pitch or have more force of air behind them or something like that, but they all come out of my mouth the same. 방 (“bang”) and 빵 (“bbang”) are both “bahng” to me.

Letters are combined into “blocks” to create a syllable. Blocks must contain either a vowel with the placeholder ㅇ before it (vowels cannot be first in a block) or a consonant plus a vowel. Blocks usually have 2-3 letters, but can have up to 4-5 (full disclosure: I hate the 4-letter blocks). These blocks can be words or combined to make words.

So 사 “sa” + 람 “ram” = 사람 “saram,” which means person. (사 is also the Sino-Korean number for 4, but numbers are a subject for another day.)

Go ahead and try making your name from the letters above. Mine is 메간. Lena is 리나. Jennifer is 제니퍼. And Robert is 로버트.

Easy, right?

Well, okay, there’s more to it than that. In fact, there’s a whole lot of fancy linguistic terms used for why this system was well designed. I won’t bother with all that, but one fun example of Hangul’s clever design is this: the shape of the letters were meant to be memory cues. Consonants mimic the position of a person’s tongue in the mouth when it is making that sound.

And vowels were designed as horizontal and vertical lines representing earth and human, and the little lines that jut off to the side were originally dots, representing sky. This not only helps make vowels easily distinguishable from consonants, but also represents a yin/yang philosophy of darkness and light. Vowels pointing up or to the right (ㅗ and ㅏ) are light and those pointing down or to the left (ㅜ and ㅓ) are dark. Light vowels combine with other light vowels, and dark vowels combine with other dark vowels, something known as vowel harmony (the Korean language already had strong vowel harmony). In Korean, words with “dark” vowels tend to represent a darker or heavier meaning, compared to those with “light” vowels.

The publication of Hangul had the effect King Sejong intended. Within a relatively short time, a large number of Koreans could read it. That’s not to say Hangul didn’t have a rocky path to prominence, however. The literate elite opposed the new alphabet. Subsequent (less benevolent) kings did not like peasants putting up posters mocking them, so banned the script. Its use came and went over the centuries, usually still mixed with hanja. It wasn’t until the late 1800’s that Hangul was used in an official capacity. And it wasn’t until the 1980’s that hanja began to fade from use. Today, almost all written text in South Korea is in Hangul. (North Korea switched to Hangul at its founding after the war.)

Hanja is still taught in schools here, and there are those who wish to bring it back. Personally, I think that would be stupid. Why take such a fabulous and well-designed writing system and replace it with something unnecessarily difficult and unsuitable. I’m all for maintaining traditions, but some traditions we just don’t need anymore.

*Koreans don’t really use a lot of pronouns; you just kind of have to understand what is being discussed by context. “You,” for example, is 당신 “dangshin.” But even though this is the only word for “you,” it is considered to be overly aggressive, so you’re not supposed to use it unless you’re looking for a fight.

“Well, what if we want to refer to something that belongs to you? Like, ‘your baby’? ‘As in, Your baby is cute,'” we asked our language instructor.

Teacher: “Just say, ‘baby is cute.'”

Aaron: “What if there are two babies? And one is ugly, but yours is cute. I want to say your baby is cute.”

Teacher: “You would never do that. Never. All babies are cute.”

Aaron: “But…”

Teacher: “NO. All babies are cute.”

**While there are many specific grammar rules for Korean, there also are a whole lot of phrases and sentences that are composed a certain way for seemingly no particular reason. I would often ask our language teacher if “xyz” was correct, and she would say, “No… that doesn’t sound right, you should say ‘abc,'” even though there didn’t seem to be any particular rule against “xyz.” Or I would ask her why something must be said a certain way, and her response was, “Well, it just doesn’t sound right.”

At first, I thought it was just me, but I recently read an article in which a native English-speaker university professor who lives in Korea discussed arguments with his Korean teacher over phrases that “just don’t feel right,” even though the teacher could not explain why.

***Learning Hangul is so easy, I believe it lulls one into a false sense of ability when it comes to learning the Korean language. The script can be read in a day or two; to understand its meaning takes years. The U.S. Foreign Service Institute lists Korean as a Category V learning difficulty for English-speakers (the hardest category, requiring 88 weeks to learn). Spanish, by contrast (the language I studied all through school) is Category I (24 weeks).

Everybody is slowly getting back into the swing of things after an extra-long holiday season here in Korea. This last week had three public holidays in a row: Foundation Day on the 3rd, Chuseok from the 4th to the 6th, and Hangul Day on the 9th. Not long after President Moon took office, he declared Monday October 2nd a holiday also, giving Koreans a rare 10-day holiday.

One of President Moon’s stated goals for office was to help improve Koreans’ work-life balance. South Korea has some of the longest working hours in the world. The government only instituted a 5-day workweek in the early-2000s, and President Moon wants to drop working hours from a maximum of 68 hours per week to 52 hours. Some people also want more flexible leave time, so workers aren’t forced to take only public holidays, when travel fares are much higher.

The government’s other goal for the long holiday was to boost domestic spending. The Korean economy has taken a bit of a hit lately due to (1) China’s “unofficial sanctions” against South Korea in protest of the THAAD deployment, (2) America threatening to undo its trade deal with South Korea, and (3) America threatening to start a war with North Korea (which, of course, would inevitably lead to much destruction here). Early figures suggest it worked. Record numbers of Koreans traveled domestically (and internationally) and store sales were up for the period.

Unfortunately, due to my now-recovering broken ankle, we were unable to travel this week. (I enjoyed, with an admittedly small tinge of jealously, all the pictures of our friends’ adventures abroad during this time.) Despite becoming free of the cast, I was still on crutches at the start of the holiday period, and even now cannot walk for too long without it aching and swelling. I thought maybe we could do some day trips around the area, but Aaron instead decided to work throughout the week and move his holiday time to Christmas so we can take a longer home leave in December. In the end, the kids and I spent the week lounging at home, watching movies, playing games, and generally doing nothing productive.

We planned to visit Oktoberfest at the German village on Namhae Island last Saturday, but got a late start. After encountering too much traffic, we decided to abort and try again Sunday at an earlier time (I didn’t want to miss out on the parking lot/shuttle and have to walk for miles). We went instead to Yongdu park to enjoy the beautiful weather and let the kids run around. I was rather surprised with how well I did walking. There’s not a flat path in Korea; this place is all mountains and hills and their paths are decades old, if not older (paving over donkey trails, so to speak). But the next day I had to pay the price (I’m sorry, ankle!!), so Oktoberfest was out. Oh, well. I can’t drink beer right now anyways, and the kids didn’t even care.

A note about Chuseok…

Along with Seollal (Lunar New Year), Chuseok (“Autumn Eve”) is one of the most important holidays in Korea. Also known as Korean Thanksgiving, Chuseok is a harvest festival. As with Seollal, Koreans return to their hometown to gather with family, honor their ancestors in a memorial service called charye, wear traditional clothes, eat traditional food, and play traditional games. Being a harvest festival, however, Chuseok involves freshly harvested rice and other foods.

The extent to which we could celebrate Chuseok was my buying a bag of frozen songpyeon at the grocery store. Songpyeon is the food of Chuseok, and families would traditionally make it together on Chuseok eve. What is it? … Delicious is what it is!

Songpyeon are rice cakes filled with sweet beans and nuts and shaped into adorable little balls. Sometimes the rice flour is colored for variety (e.g., purple with blueberries). After being stuffed and  shaped, the songpyeon are steamed on a bed of pine needles to impart a pine-y flavor. Our frozen Peacock Brand songpyeon unfortunately lacked the pine-yness of fresh songpyeon, but they were nonetheless nummy.

At school, Lena got to make and eat her own songpyeon. Her class also dressed in their adorable little hanbok and visited the local cultural center to play traditional games. I really want to post a photo of them all posing at the center because they are so darn cute, but I’m not sure about the social/legal norms of posting photos with other peoples’ children. (Although, given the fact that the playplace lady used a photo of Lena in the ballpit as her KakaoTalk profile pic for awhile, Koreans may not be picky about these things…)

Today is Gaecheonjeol, Festival of the Opening of Heaven (lit. “Opening Sky Day”), also known as National Foundation Day. Gaecheonwas the day, according to Korean legend, when Hwanung, the son of the Lord of Heaven, descended to live upon the earth in 2457 BC. On the same day in 2333 BC, his son Dangun established the first Korean state of Gojoseon. Originally, it was celebrated on the 3rd day of the 10th lunar month, but has since been fixed on October 3. Gaecheonjeol was designated a national holiday in 1909.

When Hwanung came to earth, he brought with him a few thousands followers and founded the city of Sinsi (“City of God”) on the sacred mountain Baekdu.

Baekdusan is the highest mountain on the Korean peninsula. It is an active volcano with a lake (Heaven Lake) in the caldera at the top of the mountain. Today, Baekdusan is dissected by the border between North Korea and China. Some Koreans claim that Japanese colonizers gave away their sacred territory to the Chinese when establishing boundary lines, and there have been disputes about the border for decades. However, South Korean tourists are able to visit the mountain today because they can access it from the Chinese side.

Once on earth, Hwanung taught humans laws, morals, arts, medicine (e.g., acupuncture), and how to grow food.

In a cave on the mountain lived a tiger and a bear. Every day, they prayed to Hwanung that they might become human. Having heard their prayers, Hwanung called the animals before him. He gave them each 20 cloves of garlic and a bundle of mugwort, and commanded them to eat only this sacred food and to stay out of sunlight for 100 days. If they did this, he would make them human.

The animals returned to their cave. However, the tiger soon grew hungry and impatient and left the cave. Only the bear remained. On the 21st day, the bear transformed into a beautiful woman. Her name was Ungnyeo. She was grateful to Hwanung, and gave him offerings of thanks.

But people avoided the bear-woman, and over time she became lonely. Sitting beneath a sacred sandalwood tree, she prayed to Hwanung that she might have a child. Moved by her sincerity, Hwanung decided to answer her prayers by making himself human and taking Ungnyeo as his wife. Together they had a son, Dangun Wanggeom.

Dangun succeeded his father as a wise and powerful ruler. (Personally, I think it helps to have “Grandson of God” and “Child of a Bear” on your resume for such a position.) He founded a mythical walled city called Asadal that marked the beginning of the Gojoseon Kingdom – the first of many kingdoms on the Korean peninsula.

*South Korean photographer Ahn Seung-il has been photographing Baekdusan for decades. Frustrated that he could only take pictures from the Chinese side of the mountain, he wrote a letter to Kim Il-sung in 1995 asking for permission to visit the North Korean side and delivered it to the North Korean embassy in China. He told “Dear Brother Kim” to not let only Japanese or foreign photographers take pictures of Baekdusan, but a Korean such as himself who understood the soul of the mountain. He has twice held photo exhibitions in Pyongyang. “When political exchanges were almost non-existent,” he said, “we had a few in the field of photography.”

The rice fields outside our window are slowly coming to life. Over the past month, farmers prepared and planted the fields. It’s been an interesting process to watch, because I know next to nothing about rice farming.

First, they flooded the fields, then tilled them. This seemed like an interesting order of events to me, but they obviously know what they’re doing. I also saw a guy walking through the sodden fields throwing around what had to be fertilizer.

It’s hard to see from our apartment, but a walk through the paddy fields revealed that they are, in fact, terraced. Each paddy is about 1-2 feet lower than the one east of it. Directly to the east of us in the mountains is an earthen dam blocking up a small river, and I presume the water is flowing from there, as there is a canal system all throughout the fields around us from the highway to beyond the lotus pond. There are very many earthen dams all over the mountains in this district, due to all the agriculture.

The rice plants were brought in on trucks and dropped along the edge of the fields until the field was ready to be planted. Apparently, rice seeds are planted in March or April in very wet seedbeds. They germinate and grow up thickly, like the grass of a lawn. However, they need more space to mature, so in May and June they are transported to the paddy fields and planted a foot apart in rows.

Historically, planting was done by hand, but today they have a special tractor that plants the rice. It’s called a Rice Transplanter. Unfortunately, I was never in a position to run down and take a closer photo when they were using it, but I wanted to because it is a fabulous little thing. The flats of rice plants are loaded onto an angled platform and gravity feeds them towards a row of spinning forks that grab each little plant and poke it down into the mud. It can plant about six rows at a time. Rice Transplanters were developed by the Japanese in the 60’s and are now fairly common in east Asia, where labor rates are high. This has to be better for the farmers, though, because so many of the old Korean ladies around here are very, very hunched over from years of working in the fields.

Agriculture in South Korea has long been dominated by rice. Koreans have been growing rice for thousands of years, and it even has helped shape Korean culture. Planting and harvesting rice requires the cooperation of an entire community, and some scholars argue that this is one reason why Confucianism, with its emphasis on social harmony, has been so prevalent in Korea.

Today, rice remains one of Korea’s biggest (and most government protected) crops. However, rice consumption is the lowest it’s ever been here, as industrialization and the need for convenience has increased demand for wheat (for bread, noodles, and pastries) and prepackaged foods. And even though there are tons of rice paddies around, I would not describe it as monoculture. Right in the middle of the rice paddies we can see are a couple of wheat fields. There is also barley, many fields of cabbage and onions and soybeans, some pepper and tomato fields, and some kind of fruiting trees I don’t recognize. Kiwis are also pretty common down near Samcheonpo.

The whole planting process definitely seems to be a community or family experience, because we have noticed tractors (and the rice transplanters) being used at multiple (disconnected) fields. I’ve heard that extended families and neighbors will share machines, and also that farmers often have multiple small fields in many locations, so it is not uncommon to see an old farmer driving his tractor down the road (or sidewalk!) from one field to the next. Unlike most developed nations, Korea still has a large number of small owner-operated farms. The average farm size in Korea is 1.2 acres, compared to 71 acres in the U.S. But the country is extremely mountainous, and only 15-20% of its land is arable.

And with increasing urbanization and foreign trade, the number of Korean farmers has shrunk dramatically in the past few decades. Agriculture’s contribution to GDP dropped from 40% in the 1960’s to 2% today. And agricultural labor dropped from 50% to 6%, while the average age of farmers has increased from 45 to over 60. All around the country, you can see farm land being converted into high-rise apartment complexes or industrial buildings.

For the next couple months, the rice paddies around us will remain flooded. Korea’s climate is actually ideal for rice: the rainy season begins soon after transplanting, keeping the land wet. By the time the monsoon ends in late summer, the plants are big enough to switch to dry land growth and the fields are drained. By October, the rice is fully grown and ready for harvest. Chuseok, or Korean Thanksgiving, takes place in October and celebrates the bounty of the harvest. It is one of Korea’s most important holidays.

…Or so I hear. I suppose I’ll find out for certain soon enough.