I Live In Korea

I wish I could tell you there was a rational explanation for this video, but, it's just Korean silliness. These videos were all taken on the same day, within a few hours of each other, within about 10 yards of each other. Just an average day of walking around a busy park in Seoul, and people doing weird things for no reason and having not a care in the world about those watching them. Obviously, it's better with the sound on.

The Boryeong Mud Festival is an annual event which takes place in a city called……Boryeong, which is located on the beach. The festival has been going on since 1998, it’s about 9 days long, and attracts about 2 million visitors each year.

To summarize it quickly, it’s basically a non-stop **** show that involves people getting as muddy as possible and participating in various games/activities. All while being on the beach, wearing bathing suits, drinking, and being around various types of performances. A recipe for fun.

Here’s some pictures and videos, check it out….

My roommates on the trip. Good people.

I already told you about DVD Bangs, those are basically places where (generally) younger couples go for a little action, and people like me go to watch a movie and drink beers before I go out. DVD Bangs are amateur hour, Love Motels are where it’s at.

Love Motels are for couples that live at home still but actually have money, cheating husbands, and foreigners who go to another city for a weekend then meet someone at a bar and need a private place to sleep instead of the one they are sharing with friends. Love Motels are ALL over Korea. Even in my small town there’s a bunch of them.

Watch the video for more….

It’s safe for work by the way….

So, I’ll just get straight to the point. It is believed by some people in South Korea that leaving a FAN on overnight can cause death. I’m not kidding. There’s some strange beliefs people over here have when it comes to health, usually centered around kimchi and how it can cure anything known to man. The fan death takes the cake though.

So, how can leaving a fan on overnight cause you to die? Here’s the 5 explanations:

"1. An electric fan creates a vortex, which sucks the oxygen from the enclosed and sealed room and creates a partial vacuum inside

2. An electric fan chops up all the oxygen particles in the air leaving none to breathe.

3. The fan uses up the oxygen in the room and creates fatal levels of carbon dioxide.

4. That if the fan is put directly in front of the face of the sleeping person, it will suck all the air away, preventing one from breathing

5. That fans contribute to hypothermia, or abnormally low body temperature. Metabolism slows down at night, so you become more sensitive to temperature, and thus more prone to hypothermia. If the fan is left on all night in a sealed and enclosed room, believers in fan death suppose that it will lower the temperature of the room to the point that it can cause hypothermia."

This isn’t just some internet BS that is circulated around either, even a government funded agency has issued a statement on the topic…

“The Korea Consumer Protection Board (KCPB), a South Korean government-funded public agency, issued a consumer safety alert in 2006 warning that "asphyxiation from electric fans and air conditioners" was among South Korea's five most common seasonal summer accidents or injuries, according to data they collected. Also included among the five hazards were air conditioner explosions and sanitation issues, including food poisoning and opportunistic pathogens harbored in air conditioners. The KCPB published the following:

If bodies are exposed to electric fans or air conditioners for too long, it causes [the] bodies to lose water and [causes] hypothermia. If directly in contact with [air current from] a fan, this could lead to death from [an] increase of carbon dioxide saturation concentration [sic] and decrease of oxygen concentration. The risks are higher for the elderly and patients with respiratory problems. From 2003 [to] 2005, a total of 20 cases were reported through the CISS involving asphyxiations caused by leaving electric fans and air conditioners on while sleeping. To prevent asphyxiation, timers should be set, wind direction should be rotated and doors should be left open.

So yeah, leave a fan on for two hours, and YOU MIGHT DIE. Most fans, such as my own, have a timer on them which prevents you from keeping the fan running for more than 2 hours.

Here’s a news report about a fan death happening, you won’t be able to understand the Korean, but the pictures say it all. (no bodies or anything shown, only a 30 second clip which has pictures mostly of fans)

This is one of the most ridiculous and unbelievable things I’ve ever heard, somewhere between Obama being a muslim who wasn’t born in the United States, and the people in Alabama who claimed they saw a Leprechaun.

Don't be mistaken, not every Korean believes this is true. However, a friend here has confirmed that he knows Koreans who believe this. One of his coworkers and one of his friends. I haven’t asked my coworkers or any Korean people I know what they think. I’m worried they’ll tell me they believe it and I won’t be able to speak to them anymore. Some things are better left unknown...

Let’s just get ‘fire cupping’ out of the way.

BEFORE.......................................... AFTER

Fire Cupping is an ancient for of medicine which originated over 5,000 years ago. The procedure is as follows…

1. Loosen muscles around the back/shoulders by giving a ‘massage’
2. Place glass cup, with the opening on the back, against the skin
3. Attach a suction pump to the nozzle which is on the bottom of the glass
4. Pump until air is sucked out of the cup. This acts like a vacuum, now a lot of air has been released. This is what causes the ‘discoloration.’
5. Remove cups

As you can see that despite the name, there’s no fire involved, but that’s only because of modern technology. Back in the day, from 3,000 B.C.-2000 A.D., the air would be removed from the cups by applying heat from fire.

People believe(d) this can cure illnesses (ranging from minor to major) and is a way to relax, even invigorate your body. I found this to be extremely painful, both the massage part and applying the cups. If the person doing this to me was deaf I would’ve been moaning louder than I was last weekend when I had food poisoning. The only pleasure I felt was when it was over. What a crock of BS, this does nothing at all.

Food ended up being a pretty big part of the trip…

As you can see from the picture, there’s some pretty nasty things I ate at ‘Snake Alley.’ I’m not sure if she said ‘Snake PENIS’ or ‘Snake PISS,’ either way it’s gross. Nothing was that rancid, I’m pretty sure everything was diluted so it wouldn’t be toxic. Way too much cash to make off tourists, however there were loads of Taiwanese people in the place eating and drinking everything like it was a regular thing they did. Weird. This didn’t taste horrible, but not good either. Some other meals I had were phenomenal though…

Modern Toilet was also a rather unique establishment. A restaurant where everything is about toilets. Everything. From the table, the dishes you eat from, the chairs you sit on, the crap shaped ice cream, etc., this place lives up to its name.

Sure it’s a cheesy place which is an obligatory stop for any tourist, but the food wasn’t bad and it brought some humor to the day.

Din Tai Fung is home to the best dumplings I’ve ever eaten in my life. Hands down. I was in heaven at this place and the only communication problem I encountered on the entire trip was telling them I did want 20 dumplings, 8 wontons and soup. There is always a line outside of this place and for just cause. Aside from going up Taipei 101, I’m going to have to say this is the next on the list of things you must do if you ever go to Taipei.

What else did I do besides eat from toilet bowls, nearly vomit from overeating dumplings, get tortured and drink snake bile? Well, there was going to Taipei 101 which is the 2nd tallest building in the world (no pictures available due to it raining everyday), going to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall (no pictures available due to it raining everyday), the Longshan Temple (no pictures available due to it raining everyday), and Daan Park (no pictures available due to it raining everyday). The weather was horrific. I couldn’t go to the zoo, the National Palace Museum was closed both times I tried to go to it, I was forced to watch a movie (Wolfman was more painful than fire cupping), and rain cut down on the number of fireworks (it was the Chinese New Year). I was most certainly being punished with bad weather by Confucius for reasons I cannot get into.

Going to the top of Taipei 101 was pretty cool because the elevator is the fastest in the world. It goes 60km/hour (37.4 MPH for those who live in America, Burma and Liberia and don’t use the metric system). That means it travels to the top (1,671 feet) in 35 seconds, that’s 55 feet per SECOND. Intense.

I also managed to find a GREAT tea shop and an outdoor thermal hot-spring which was very relaxing even though the weather sucked. As if I didn’t stand out enough being the only non-Taiwanese person there, I got whistled by a 75 year old ‘lifeguard’ for doing something I shouldn’t have been doing. I suck.

Aside from the Taipei 101 elevator, food and the hot spring, the trip was a pretty big failure. Still, I’m glad I went, now there’s only 180 more countries to visit.

The Seoul Snow Jam was a Big Air Snowboard contest which is part of the Snowboard World Cup. Professional riders from all over the world travel around each year competing on the World Cup circuit, accumulating points in each competition until a winner is crowned at the end of the season. Having the event here is part of Korea's push to get the 2018 Winter Olympics.

This contest took place in the middle of Seoul at a place called Gwanghwamun. Imagine a massive snowboard jump being built around say, the Empire State Building, right in the middle of 34th street with loads of traffic going by on the side. It was pretty impressive. Here are some pictures, GIFs and a video at the end with a dozen or so short clips of the guys going. Really got me psyched to go skiing soon...

Definitely music week here....

This is a pretty typical example of most of the songs I hear in Korea. "K-Pop," as it's dubbed, is similar to most of the nonsense you hear Brittney Spears, N'Sync, etc. come out with. They are catchy, the artists are all young, attractive and can dance. The videos or over the top, well choreographed and directly or indirectly very sexual in nature. Personally, I think the pop songs here are bigger than they are in the US because they dominate the airwaves everywhere. Whether you're in a store, supermarket, bars, etc., when a popular song is out it will be played all over and everyone will know it, from the 20 year old's dancing in a bar or my 8 year old students, they all know.

Anyway, this song is a few months old but it's probably my favorite. Check it out, there's English and Korean subtitles.

And yes, that IS a bomb she attached to the guy she used to like...

Going to try to get another video up like this of some Korean dancers I encountered at some hiphop club. What I witnessed there was RIDICULOUS, hopefully I can edit it this week. Either way, check this video out, it's a good one....

Some schools in Korea still engage in the age old practice of beating students for backtalk, not doing their homework, or whatever reason they feel is in order to "straighten a kid out." I’ve heard stories about kids getting hit with bamboo sticks, something that happened in Catholic schools in the U.S. probably 30+ years ago, which still goes on here in some cases.

My school has a fantastic reputation and our principal and vice-principal are very kind people so something like that would NEVER happen here. However, some of the Korean teachers do “punish” the students who don’t do their homework this way…

(EDIT - the video was removed due to a massive amount of negative comments on Youtube. The video showed kids doing squat thrusts outside of class, a very minor 'punishment' given by one of the teachers in my school.)

Other teachers make you do this…


Neither is bad at all, I think both are pretty funny. The kids don’t complain (they laugh actually as you can see from the picture which I blurred for obvious reasons) and the parents know it comes with the territory. Not only that, I bet the parents are harsh on the kids for not doing their work. I know that for certain because in some of the journals I’ve read the kids talk about being hit hard as punishment for various reasons.

Regarding the squat thrusts, this would NEVER fly in the U.S., not because the schools wouldn’t allow it, but because if no one was watching the kids outside wouldn’t do anything. I know I wouldn’t! I’d just stay in a half-squat pose incase someone came outside, then I would pretend like I was doing them all along. But, that’s the difference between Americans and people from Asia who believe in Confucian principles.

Here’s a link (I’m not embedding the video here because my blog is wholesome and for the family) to a video I found of a kid getting beaten from a teacher pretty hard. Remember, this is NOT at my school and NOT in my city either even though the name looks similar. Turn up your volume if you don't mind watching a kid get hit and screaming.

So yeah, again, I think what "happens" at my school isn't bad, and who knows, maybe the squat thrusts and practice of holding the bag over your head is the answer to why people here are thinner in Korea than they are in America. I wonder…

And for those of you who think that the punishment, even at my school, is cruel and immoral, let me just say that for a variety of reasons the students here work A LOT harder than they do in the U.S. Not doing your homework here is somewhat rare.

PLEASE NOTE - I am NOT allowed to make the kids do squat thrusts or hold a bag over their head (I don't think so at least), only the Korean teachers can. I would have A LOT of fun if I could. The only thing I'm allowed to do is make a kid stand outside class or stand in the corner looking at the wall, something that gives them so much shame that they would rather do 1,000 squat thrusts.