I was fortunate enough to be invited to spend the holiday with a wonderful Korean family. My co-teacher and friend, Brandi, is married to a Korean man (also my friend), Yong Suk, and they invited me to spend the holiday with them in traditional style at his mother's house in Haenam, South Korea. Haenam is a country town located in the south of Jeollanam-do province, South Korea, slightly southeast of the port city of Mokpo.
On Lunar New Year's Eve, Sunday, January 22, we left Gwangju and took a bus to Mokpo. The one-hour bus ride cost ₩5,400 or roughly $5. I continue to be amazed by the insane affordability of transportation in Korea.
We arrived in Mokpo around 2:30pm and took a taxi a few minutes away to Yong Suk's brother's clothing store, Homme One. Having some experience in business and wanting to own my own one day, it is now that I must point out that Korean businesses vary greatly from their American counterparts. In the USA, one must have the proper funding or receive adequate financing to open a business. Once the perfect real estate is found, permits need to be acquired to transform the property to the owner's liking, employees must be hired, which will require some form of professional accounting service, and a business lawyer will need to be on hand should any problems arise. Add in acquiring the product and forming and putting into action a suitable marketing plan, and the business owner has her hands full. In Korea, one can decide to open a business by renting any location, buying a little bit of product to stock the shelves with, and throwing an 'OPEN' sign on the door. I have noticed there is a huge lack of marketing in Korea, especially for local businesses. There is also no such thing as 'location location location', as any hole-in-the-wall shop will do just fine. Shops tend to open and close here fairly frequently, and what was yesterday a coffee shop, will tomorrow be a clothing store, and maybe in six months be a stationary store, or perhaps even 4 different coffee shops within 10 months' time. Turnover happens from lack of sales, but also because owners don't lose their entire life's savings when they change their mind three months later and decide to open a coffee shop or restaurant instead of selling clothing.
We stayed at Homme One for a couple of hours before piling into his brother's and sister-in-law's van and driving a half hour into Haenam. I felt very 'stowaway'-ish because the van only offered seating up front, and the three of us sat on the floor of the van for a short while until his brother and s-i-l switched places with us to give us a more comfortable and scenic ride.
Scenic it was, too. I have long been able to see the beauty in things where others do not, and I believe it is a wonderful gift. The ride from Mokpo to Haenam took us past the Port of Mokpo, and I saw large shipping boats, pieces of large shipping boats, and dry docks. We drove over small river dams that were built to shorten the distance between Mokpo and the outlying countryside towns. We drove through crop covered farmland valleys and around the bottoms of small, frozen mountains. I was took taken with the port to remember to take pictures of it, but the pictures I took of the mountains and farmland don't do the images in my head justice. I'm so fortunate to have somewhat of a photographic memory so that I'll always remember the things that I see.
We arrived to Yong Suk's mother's home in Haenam around 4:30 and I was able to meet his mom, who I had seen at their wedding back in July. She is a very nice woman, and I wished my Korean was better so that I could at least have a brief conversation with her. Instead, I just said 안녕하세요 (an-nyang-ha-sae-yo) and 감사합니다 (kam-sa-hab-ni-da) which mean 'hello' and 'thank you'. Although I do know more Hangeul than that, I am still unable to have a conversation so I kept my Korean speaking to a minimum.
A little while after arriving to the house, which was a traditional Korean farmhouse (with no heating system at all, might I add, not even floor heat, and yes, it was snowing outside - you know there's something wrong when you can see your breath inside a house) and was built by Yong Suk's late father back when Yong Suk was just a small child, the three of us decided to go check out the outside area around the house and see all of the farmland that his family used to own. We walked up to a small lake, and I heard the story of how Yong Suk and his brother learned how to swim in that lake and where they spent many summer afternoons as kids. I also got some amazing pictures and even threw a few pebbles at the lake. Some of them even made it into the water! (Hey, it's harder than it looks!)
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| Yong Suk's mother's traditional Korean farmhouse |
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| Nearby lake |
We walked back down to the house and I soon realized that Koreans really do spend life on the floor. Traditional Korean houses are not meant for entertaining in the way that American homes are meant. There was a small kitchen with a small attached room that is used for food preparation, electric pan frying, and eating, in which a small table 2' long x 3' wide x 8" (yes, inches) high table is brought out and 6 people sat on the floor around it enjoying the New Year's Eve meal. Before eating, the three of us helped prepare the sanjuk, which is the kebab-style food that is made and eaten during celebrations. Five or six different types of food are speared onto a long toothpick, dipped in egg batter, and electric pan fried before eating. These sanjuk had strips of imitation crab meat (of which I am allergic), yellow radish, green onion, pork, and mushroom. I was very proud of the sanjuk we made, but every now and then Yong Suk's brother, sister-in-law, or mother would pick one up and giggle to themselves and say something in Hangeul. It was harmless, and I knew they were just admiring the differences in the sanjuk they normally make and the sanjuk made by the silly foreigners.
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| Sanjuk, raw and being pan fried |
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| Life lived on the floor |
Dinner consisted of the sanjuk we just made, in addition to many other things. There was rice, white radish in a pink marinating-like liquid, the best kimchi I have ever had, a small but whole entire cooked crab broken up into chopstick-friendly pieces in a bowl, oyster soup, chopped vegetables, and several different sauces to add to the food. Directly after eating, everything was cleared away, washed, and the floor re-cleaned so we could sit down normally.
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| Traditional Korean dinner |
We left about 20 minutes after eating and headed back into Mokpo where, after I treated my hosts to a drink in downtown Mokpo, we got hotel rooms for the night. My room was ₩40,000, or roughly $40, and I was very surprised at what that got me when I walked in the room. I had a very clean room about 4x larger than my apartment, king sized bed, a very large, separate bathroom complete with jacuzzi tub and heated toilet seat, a 32" flat screen tv in the room, along with computer with internet, hot/cold water dispenser, warm cabinet for coffee and mugs, stocked mini-fridge (note that it didn't cost extra to drink the coffee and drinks (no alcohol) that were provided in the room), and a remote control that not only worked the tv, but the airconditioner, heat, and lights as well. This is normal for Korean hotels in this price range, and it puts $100/night USA hotels to shame.
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| My W40,000 hotel room |
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| My W40,000 hotel room |
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| Bathroom |
We were supposed to meet at 9am Monday morning, but I got a call from Brandi a few minutes before I headed downstairs. She said the roads were too dangerous to travel right then, and we should meet in a few hours instead. Wondering what she meant, I went to look out of the window and saw one of the most gorgeous scenes I have seen in a long time. Everything I saw outside - the main street outside of the hotel, cars, rooftops of surrounding buildings - was covered in snow. About 200 meters away, I saw the sun rising over the Port of Mokpo, making the still water glisten and sparkle and cause dusty white shadows in the snow.
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| Snow-covered downtown Mokpo |
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| Mokpo Harbour |
A few hours later the snow had melted enough to safely drive back into Haenam for the New Year's Day festivities of visiting the family grave sites and presenting food and prayers. In Korea, it is extremely rare to see a graveyard filled with tombstones of unrelated people like is normal in the USA. Instead, families choose their own burial grounds and entire families are eventually laid to rest in the same area. As land is at a premium in Korea, it is becoming more and more difficult to find suitable spots for this, but Yong Suk's family already has one, and it is quite beautiful.
When we arrived back at the house in Haenam, I met more family members: two uncles, an aunt, and two cousins on top of the mother, brother and sister-in law that I met the day before. Food had already been prepared and was being wrapped up in preparation for the walk up the mountain to the family grave site about 20 minutes away. The three of us drove the van a short distance away and then walked up a more direct route to the grave site, which still required about 15 minutes of walking up a hill and through a tree-lined path to the actual site which was on the side of a mountain and overlooked a valley with snow-covered farmland as well as a beautiful bay of water used by many fisherman. I watched as offerings of food and prayers were presented first to the Yong Suk's great grandfather and great grandmother, then to his grandfather (grandmother is living), and finally to his father. I later asked if there was a system for who offered food and prayers to each of the deceased, because each generation was tended to by more people. The great grandparents were only presented by one of the uncles, the grandparents by everyone except the younger cousins, and the father by everyone including Brandi, but I was told that in their family, family members do it 'free style', which means there is no set rule and they are free to participate as they wish. As I am not family, I stood off to the side and watched. Only 1-2 minutes were spent at each generation, with the food and prayer blanket being moved to each following generation, and the entire presentation lasted no longer than 15 minutes. After wards, I took pictures of the burial mounds and surrounding scenery. I wanted to take pictures during the presentation, but I thought it rude to take pictures and document such a precious family time from an outsider's point of view, and I didn't want to overstep the generosity of being included in such an important event.
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| Small road to burial site |
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| Tree-lined path to burial site |
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| Traditional burial mounds, on the side of a mountain |
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| Traditional burial mounds - farthest away L to R are great grandmother and great grandfather; Middle row is grandfather; Closest is father. |
After taking pictures, we walked back down and went back to the house, where the three of us stayed for several hours while the rest of the family went to visit the grandmother in the assisted living facility where she lives now. With the house not having any heating at all and it being a brisk -4C (24F) outside and snowing, we all piled into Yong Suk's mother bedroom and hung out under blankets on top of a heating pad on the floor and/or bed. We did crosswords and listened to English programs on our cell phones until we all eventually fell asleep for a little while until everyone came back around 4pm and we left to head back into Mokpo.
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| Snow-covered farmland valley |
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| Snow-covered farmland valley |
The 20-30 minute traffic-light-free drive back into Mokpo took 2 hours because of the holiday traffic on a 2-lane road covered with speed bumps. We got to the Mokpo Bus Terminal around 6pm and Brandi and took a bus back into Gwangju while Yong Suk stayed another night with his family and the last Seolnal he will spend with his family for many years.
We got back to Gwangju safe and sound, and took a taxi to our neighborhood where I thanked Brandi for inviting me to such a personal family holiday and giving me the ability to experience the traditional customs with their family. It is an experience I hope to never forget.
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