I call this one "Stitch's cousin made a poopoo"

I don't mind the traditional haechi, but the cartoon one should be adopted by Lilo and sent to Kauai forthwith.

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The Seoul Place Name Project

Call me crazy, but sometimes I think Seoul needs to be a bit more like Hong Kong, or even London. Bear with me a little while I explain.

I sometimes take my Korean skills* for granted living in Korea, until I meet someone like my ex who speaks little Korean and has a struggle getting beyond any basic task outside of Itaewon. While her lack of Korean skills are understandable up to a point (there is little pressure for anglophones in Seoul to learn Korean, and there are surprisingly few affordable and effective classroom resources in which to do so), it is sad that she and others like her are missing so much.

And I'm not just talking about ease and convenience in day-to-day tasks; it's also the discovery of pleasurable tidbits for the brain. To me with my modest knowledge** of hantcha (Chinese characters used in Korean), some of the place names sing with a kind of sweet poetry. That is, many of the places have names with a real meaning beyond something-something-ku, this-dong, or that-ri. For those who don't speak much Korean, maybe Seoul and other Korean locations could benefit with a colorfully evocative English name, akin to the colorful or descriptive place names common in Hong Kong, like Causeway Bay, Prince Edward, North Point, Diamond Hill, Little Whinging, etc. Its Londonesque names are definitely a whiff of Hong Kong's century and a half of British influence.

Some would be more obvious than others. Using literal or slightly altered versions of the meanings, nudged along with a little of each name's history, Yongsan-gu would be Dragon Hill, Chung-gu could be Central City, and Chongno (Jongno) can be Bell Street. Tongdaemun-gu (Dongdaemun) would be East Gate and Sŏdaemun-gu (Seodaemun) would be West Gate, even though the actual gate has long since disappeared.

(a real place, but not in Seoul)

Kangnam (Gangnam) could be a more literal "River South" or "South River," but perhaps also "South Bank" or "South Han." The problem with that is that while Kangdong (Gangdong) would be East Bank and Kangbuk would be North Bank, that makes Kangsŏ (Gangseo) "West Bank." Just that one, we'll call West River.

How about Nowon-gu (蘆原區)? A name that sounds in English like not a single soul is there actually is formed from the Chinese characters for reeds and rushes (蘆) and prairie, meadow, or plain (原). How pleasant it would be to reside on that rocky peak-abutting plain and pass a "Welcome to" sign that says Reed Meadow (just below "Nowon-gu," in English).

No, I'm not crazy. I think such things incline people to discover the roots of where they live and give them ownership over their locale. Much of Seoul was once little tiny rural villages, even just a hundred years ago, and they have a history. Hong•ŭn-dong (Hong-eun), for example gets its name (弘恩) from when the king told women who had been taken by the Mongols (and thus disgraced) that they could regain their honor by washing away their disgrace in the river there, or so I've been told. The name literally means Great Mercy or Great Charity, which could be a fitting name for the neighborhood in English as well. Sure, having names that sound like you're in some odd version of the English countryside might curb some anglophones' desire or need to learn Korean even further than now, but a name like "Great Mercy" might pique the interest of some just enough to try to learn about the period in question.

Of course, we'd have to take poetic license with some of them. The second character in Mapo (麻浦) means shore or beach (since it's along the river), but the first one can be flax, sesame, or even hemp. Though I grind up fresh flaxseed and mix it in with my oatmeal every day, flax just sounds too close to flatulent to be a pleasant-sounding place name. Though the appropriate name would depend on which kind of ma is meant by Mapo, for now I think Sesame Beach or Sesame Shores has a nice ring. Frankly, "Hemp Beach" might attract the wrong kind of people.

* I have virtually no formal training in Korean, as I obtained my Korean skills from early on, listening to friends and family speak and then by being immersed in the language while in Seoul. I am not "fluent" in Korean, and would instead label myself "highly functional." That is, I can adeptly handle, completely on my own if armed with a dictionary, virtually any task I need to in daily life, even complicated things like obtaining a bank loan, including reading a bank loan contract, though I would have to muddle through it by looking up an occasional word. In a complex work situation, I can follow most of what is being said and express what I mean to say as well. Do not get the impression I am bragging about my Korean skills, for it is the opposite: my lack of high-level fluency after having lived in Korea for a total of around fifteen years, on and off since I was a teenager, represents a failing on my part, a testament to my general laziness and lack of drive to go beyond what I need.

** As for Chinese characters, about ten years ago, I tested myself with a Japanese kanji book and I could at that time write 100 and read about 300. However, I have a knowledge of several more hundred characters' pronunciation as word blocks in Korean, even if I am unable to recognize them in their Sinicized form. Again, that I am so piss-poor at hantcha is a personal shortcoming on my part. 

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I guess they don't realize how tough the job market is out there

Well, to our left we have Seoul Mayor Oh Sehoon resigning after failing to muster together enough votes or voters for his egalitarianism-versus-fiscal prudence school lunch referendum. Effective immediately. This was done as promised after Mayor Oh got only one in four Seoulites to vote when he'd promised to quit if it were less than one in three.

And the to our right we have Japanese PM Naoto Kan resigning, echoing the words of Andy Warhol that in the future everyone in Japan will be prime minister for fifteen minutes. Kan's resignation was also to fulfill a promise, which makes me think it sorta sucks that the only politicians we can trust at their word are the ones leaving office.

What does this all mean? My guess is that Oh and Kan have been planning to run away together for sometime. Really, that's the only plausible explanation.

Anyway, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I didn't follow Oh's policies in our fair city while he's been mayor quite as much as I should have, even though they probably have a profound effect on the vector* of my humble-but-takai apartment's market value. Kan, on the other hand, was someone well known for trying to make nice with South Korea and other victims of Imperial Japan's aggression, so I'm a little sad to see him go for that reason.

Also, his departure means I won't have many more opportunities to run this:

Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!

* That's direction and magnitude, in case you've forgotten middle school math, as in will it go up or down and by how much.

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Jobs loss

Although Steve Jobs's health problems have been the source of discussion for quite some time, it was a bit shocking to read the announcement that he is resigning as CEO of Apple, though he said he'd like to remain as the Chairman of the Board:

Steve Jobs, the visionary who remade Apple into the world’s dominant maker of tech gadgets, has resigned as the company’s CEO.

In a letter to the Apple Board of Directors and “the Apple Community” Wednesday, Jobs wrote that Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook will take over his CEO duties.

“I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come. I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee,” Jobs wrote.

“As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple. I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role. I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.”

With Korea-based Samsung being a major competitor of Apple, this news is no doubt of interest to many. Here is the Wall Street Journal's Seoul correspondent Evan Ramstad's take on it, which comes as the good people of Seoul vote on a free lunch plan that pits South Korean deeply engrained post-war egalitarian ideals against recent calls for fiscal prudence:

The fate of Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon is dominating the South Korean media Thursday but the resignation of Steve Jobs from his CEO role at Apple Inc. isn’t far behind.

Mr. Oh presided over a failed referendum Wednesday to reduce the scope of Seoul’s school free-lunch program and strongly intimated that he’d resign as a result. So people are waiting for that shoe to drop.

But Mr. Jobs’ departure from his main operating role at Apple is also getting huge attention. In part, that’s because of a media-driven narrative that Apple and Google are threatening to South Korea’s “national champion” companies Samsung and LG. On the other hand, Mr. Jobs is widely admired in South Korea as a visionary and entrepreneur.

His resignation speech was quickly translated into Korean and posted on the country’s main portal site, Naver. And thousands of South Koreans took to Twitter to write short tributes to Mr. Jobs.

“He was the greatest CEO, a visionary to create the dream, a strong person who practices what he pledges,” Jeong Ji-hoon, a medical doctor and prominent tech blogger in Seoul, wrote via Twitter. “We are paying our respect to the resignation of the greatest giant of our time.”

I guess we're still waiting for a couple sets of shoes to drop. I wish some other long-serving chief executive would resign instead over health reasons.

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Guidelines on how to be a true Seoulite

Over at the Los Angeles Times, writer Hector Tobar lists some rules that designate a true Angeleno* (defined, I guess, as someone who would never do those things "a real Angeleno would never do").

And that got to wondering: what would a similar list look like in regards to Seoul. That is, what are the guidelines on how to be a true Seoulite?

I guess it might include separating your garbage as second nature. Perhaps also turning on your hazard lights when traffic stops up ahead or someone let you into their lane (this is generally true of all Korean drivers, and it's something I miss in Hawaii and California... though that's about all I miss of Korean driving habits).

Using taxis as public transport would be another. And off the top of my head, that's what I've come up with in the Manoa Starbucks.

So have at it: what does a true Seoulite do? (And please, dispense with a list of memes, like a true Seoulite spits on the subway platform or something like that.)

* An Angeleno is someone from Los Angeles. Now who uses that term is open to debate. Those from Los Angeles County probably routinely use the word, though those from the City of Los Angeles proper may cringe at that. If you're from an L.A. County city with its own proud identity — Pasadena, Long Beach, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, etc. — you may also eschew the term. More broadly, some might include those from Ventura County, the Inland Empire, or OCers even though many of those places are an hour or more from Los Angeles. For Orange County, I prefer the term orangelenos. It's not a popular term, however, since I just made it up.

A stroll in Seoul

The South Korean capital's traditional central district was #29 on the New York Times list of thirty-four "Asian Odysseys":

Spend an afternoon wandering through the Samcheong-dong neighborhood, which is filled with traditional houses called hanoks converted into stylish cafes and shops. Try some Korean temple cuisine at Baru, a new Buddhist restaurant that’s part of a temple in the city center, and then sleep over with Buddhist nuns at Jinkwansa, a 12th-century temple in a park in northwest Seoul.

That sounds rather nice, and if the other thirty-three are comparable, I'll give them a try (quite a few are in Japan).

Anyway, enjoy the article while you can, because the NYT is moving toward paid access beginning March 28, 2011.

Trading the rat race for field mice

Take a look at any South Korean metropolis and it's easy to forget that many KoKos (a majority?) are only one or two generations removed from the farm.

The concentration of people in the cities is absurdly high, but who knew that it might be something that it could reach a point where it might actually start to go back in the other direction? Urbanites who are fed up with the crowdedness, expense, and pollution of the cities are part of a growing trend (?) of people moving back to the countryside for the bucolic charm of the farm.

From the Korea Times:

A lot of office workers become sick and tired of urban life and dream about settling down in rural areas to make a living while farming instead. And some people take on the challenge to make this dream come true, though it’s not easy to give up city life and start a completely new one.

Country life is actually far from leisurely or romantic — farming is different from gardening, and the urban community is wholly different from a rural one. Many of the so-called “returnees to farming” make a U-turn back to the city after a bitter experience.

A big reason for this about-face is that the city folk play Frank MacBride to the local yahoos (that's a "Green Acres" reference):

“It is mainly because of the lack of information about rural life. ‘Returnees’ should be a part of the rural community, but they tend to maintain the lifestyle and neighbor relationships they used to have in the city. Some of them look down on rural people, causing conflicts with their new neighbors,” said Heo Nam-don, manager at the Agriculture Technology Center, an affiliated organization of Seoul Metropolitan Government.

And the Seoul Metro government, anxious to relieve at least a little population pressure on the city, is happy to oblige with a kick in the pants in the form of classes that will help them get started:

To minimize such conflicts and help such returnees settle in the country, the city government organized a three-month course on farming and rural life last year. Most of the classes focused on the practical, not theory, such as actual farming techniques, agricultural management and information on farmland as well as facility purchase and registration.

A total of 91 people took the course in two terms — 46 in the first term and 45 people in the second term.

“Almost all of them were office workers. None of them have ever engaged in farming before, although some of those in their 50s and 60s, who were born in farming regions, used to help their parents when they were young,” said Song Im-bong, the team leader of the city government’s Economic Promotion Headquarters.

“Most of the older trainees took the course as they wanted to start a second life in the country after retirement, while the younger ones see farming as a new chance to start a business during an economic crisis,” Song said. Thirteen of the 91 participants were in their 30s and 24 were in their 40s.

This whole back-to-basics farming trend not a new concept to me. I cited such farmers in this post on the korani, a tusked deer that is the bane of tuber and cabbage farmers because it digs up their crops. Still, I guess if I had to be kept up late at night, I'd prefer it to be watching for deer than going to round three of soju with the boss.

Why dream of a high-rise apartment?

A better view and no yard work. Duh.

Of course, there are other reasons, too.

UPDATE:
This is also being discussed at The Marmot's Hole (with cool pictures of Shire-like high-rises with an emphasis on plant life) and Gusts of Popular Feeling.

Reuters on Seoul's status as Global Design Capital for 2010

Reuters has an article on the transformation of the ROK capital from a dreary rock garden of apartment blocks to a more aesthetic mixture of parks and more innovatively conceived residential and business structures:

Long a domain of excessive concrete and drab apartment blocks, Seoul is embarking on perhaps the most ambitious facelift in its 600-year-history, aimed at catapulting it into the top ranks of global cities in terms of architecture and image.

The International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) has praised Seoul's ongoing transformation, naming the city its Global Design Capital for 2010.

But critics wonder at the cost of the change and how much of what distinguishes Seoul will be destined for the wrecking ball.

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, a telegenic politician up for re-election in June and seen as a possible contender in the 2012 presidential race, has staked his fortunes on the design plans he hopes will bring more business and tourism to the city.

"Cities worldwide are entering an era of competition," Oh told Reuters. "We need to have not only the technological and cost competitive edge, but more than anything, the competitive edge in attractiveness."

Under Oh's watch $100 million of the city's budget has been dedicated annually to initiatives such as the Han River Renaissance, which has spruced up the river bisecting the capital with dazzling evening light shows and fountain-spouting bridges.

The project will culminate in the construction of an arts facility on a river islet with a massive symphony hall and opera house, capped with an undulating, photovoltaic-ready roof.

Frankly, this almost certainly means my thirty-year-old Seoul Station-area apartment will be razed and the rise again as a glass and ferro-concrete phoenix. Frankly, I don't mind so much.

Discussion: Would "sharrows" work in Seoul?

The city of Long Beach, California, a community of over a third of a million people sandwiched between Orange County and Los Angeles (and a stand-in for the likes of CSI: Miami and Dexter), is trying to be the most bicycle-friendly city in America.

They will be adopting things like "sharrows," green lanes shared by motorists and bicyclists alike. This makes me think of my own time in Orange County, where every main street has a bike line; Honolulu, where bicyclists share the pothole-filled roads with cars at their own risk; and Seoul, where river courses are being turned into cross-city bike highways, but where bikes wouldn't even show up on the mental radar of many drivers, much less their visual scans.

I always thought an elevated system of bike trails over the median of major roads would be a cool feature, but no one ever listens to me, so it never got off the ground. Seoul's "townhall meetings" are always filled with people asking dumb questions about recycling.

So, anyway, here's the discussion question for the day: Would such green lanes as the "sharrows" work in Seoul? Would they work in other South Korean cities? If they wouldn't work (or even if they would), then what ideas could be adopted that would work in Seoul and elsewhere, so that pedaling to work and/or school, at least from the subway station, could be an option?

Honolulu or Seoul?

It's sort of eerie. I often pass by these apartments that are just off Interstate H1, a bit east of downtown Honolulu. What's weird is that the apartment to the left looks almost exactly like the apartment I own in central Seoul. Same color and everything. Probably just as ridiculously expensive, too.

Oahu has some beautiful places, but Honolulu itself has some drab, cookie-cutter apartment blocks that are not all that attractive. Many parts of the city are a veritable concrete jungle, à la Seoul and many other East Asian cities. Not that I dislike Seoul or Honolulu, but they could do a little better to make high-density housing look a little more attractive. Well, actually, South Korean cities are doing a lot better lately with that: it would be better if they look more like Fukuoka than, say, Taipei (no offense, Taipei). 

And plant more trees!