http://busan.cityawesome.com
check out BA on Facebook (and 'like' us too, please!)

I’ve only been to, what, five different jjimjilbangs now? And maybe it’s because I’m starting to like them more and more, but it seems like every new jjimjilbang I go to is better than the ones I visited previously.

My newest favorite, and probably one of the nicest and most unique that I’ve been to is Songdo Haesoopia. Haesoopia is pretty much equidistant from Nampo and Songdo Beach. The building is right on the coast looking out to Busan harbor, so you can be assured of some great views from the jjimjilbang on the 5th floor.

First, the baths. In both the men’s and women’s, there are the typical offerings – standing and sitting showers and all sorts of hot tubs with herbal treatments or salt water. There are nice saunas and nice baths with some intricate tiling on the ceiling.

The jjimjilbang area was impressive. The entire eastern wall is glass and looks out to Busan’s harbor and Yeongdo Island. The jjimjilbang rooms themselves are very unique. In the salt room, you wade through about a foot of salt rocks to get to a spot. In another room, you wade through smooth black stones – so smooth that it actually feels a little like water. I haven’t seen rooms like these anywhere else (and neither have my friends who are more avid jjimjilbang-ers than myself). The ceilings of all the rooms are decorated with different mosaics – and some are pretty impressive.

Great lookin' lobby.

Some small grievances: There is no moisturizer in neither the men’s nor the women’s changing areas. Also, ladies, there’s only a coin-operated hair dryer. Also, the restaurant in the jjimjilbang (co-ed) area closes at 9.

Haesoopia is definitely a quality and unique jjimjilbang, so check it out, especially if you’re out in Nampo or at Songdo Beach this summer!

Entrance 9,500 won for the jjimjilbang. Extras like food and drinks are put on a ‘beeper’ and you pay when you leave. There is also a large fitness center there as well.

DIRECTIONS FROM NAMPO
Taxi: Hop a cab and tell them, “Song-do Hae-soo-pee-ah” – if they’re still confused, tell them “s-pa!”
Public Transport: Metro line 1, Nampo-dong station, exit 1; Walk straight out and take the 30 or the 26 to  the “Daelim APT” stop. It should be directly across the street.

DIRECTIONS FROM SONGDO BEACH
Taxi is easiest; again, just tell them, “Song-do Hae-soo-pee-ah.”
Public Transport: Walk up the street with all the motels on it (From the beach, that’s the street on the east side of the beach with a 7-11 on the corner). When you get to the end of the street, turn right, walk for about 20 meters and the bus stop should be right there. Take ANY BUS from there only one stop (to Daelim APT). It’ll be right in front of the spa.

Jennifer Lind and Daryl Press, looking at the ISIS data Joshua at OFK posted, make a good argument why we shouldn’t give North Korea credit for the Bomb just yet.

North Korea has been working on its nuclear program for many years, and has made real progress. It is clear from the recent uranium enrichment revelations that their leaders are committed to building an atomic arsenal. It’s not at all clear, however, whether Pyongyang has any deployable weapons. Rather than proclaiming North Korea as the world’s latest member of the nuclear club, policy makers and analysts should clarify the facts: North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests. The tests reveal that the program has struggled. It’s not yet clear that North Korea wields any functioning nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s efforts at uranium enrichment may reflect their fear of a U.S. air strike on their nuclear facilities (because uranium enrichment sites are easier to bury and hide than the nuclear reactors that produce plutonium). According to this view, the revelation of the centrifuge site at Yongbyon is a warning that North Korea may have other secret enrichment sites hidden elsewhere.

A simpler interpretation, however, is that Pyongyang is still having trouble with its plutonium program. Perhaps the anomalies in the 2006 and 2009 tests were caused by problems in plutonium reprocessing. Or perhaps the test failures were caused by problems in implosion designs. Continued frustrations with their plutonium designs could have led North Korean leaders to accelerate uranium enrichment efforts.

All that one can conclude from the newly revealed enrichment facility is that despite all of the censure North Korea has received, North Korea remains committed to building nuclear weapons. But the revelations do not demonstrate that Pyongyang has an operational nuclear arsenal.

So what, one might wonder: what difference should it make for policy making toward North Korea whether the country actually has a functioning nuclear arsenal? Indeed, the mere possibility that North Korea has nuclear weapons warrants treating Pyongyang with considerable caution. Furthermore, even a weapon that fizzled and produced “only” a 1-kiloton explosion would cause terrible damage if successfully delivered to a populated location in Japan or South Korea.

Nevertheless, it’s important to highlight the questions raised by North Korea’s tests, and the hurdles the country still may face in building an arsenal. According North Korea membership in the nuclear club may help it peddle its nuclear know-how on international markets. A more skeptical discussion of North Korean capabilities, by contrast, might cause potential customers to think twice before partnering with Pyongyang.

Secondly, by acting as if North Korea’s tests were successful, its adversaries obviate the need for further tests of plutonium devices. More testing would eat up more of North Korea’s small stock of plutonium, and might reveal continuing problems with its bomb program. Presumably, an important reason that Pyongyang conducts tests is to demonstrate its nuclear capabilities to potential adversaries. If North Korea’s adversaries prematurely give it credit for having a functioning arsenal, they will permit Pyongyang to conserve its scarce plutonium.

Finally, by giving North Korea the bomb we miss the opportunity to impart an important lesson to potential proliferators such as Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey: building these weapons is very hard. It’s hard to acquire fissile material. It’s hard to perfect the mechanics of implosion. Tests will fail, and valuable fissile material will be wasted in this process. It will all take a long time, and you’ll be left with delivery systems which themselves will have questionable ability to reach their targets. And throughout this long and uncertain process, your country will be a global pariah. That message would strengthen the U.S. non-proliferation effort, and it also has the virtue of also being true.

NKEW offers a record of Yongbyon developments.

• No Runaround:

  US Decretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has told Pyongyang where the road map leads.

  US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that North Korea must reach out first to South Korea before it can expect any resumption of denuclearization talks involving Washington.

  Clinton met with Japan’s visiting Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto and jointly renewed calls on North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program, a source of decades of tensions with the communist state.

  “We have made consistently clear what we expect from North Korea in its actions in the future,” Clinton told reporters.

  “We would like to see them engaging in meaningful dialogue with the South in the first instance prior to any other steps that might be taken,” she said.

• Recidivist:

  It seems a man previously arrested for posting pro-North Korean material on websites has fallen afoul of South Korean authorities again.

  South Korean prosecutors say they’re investigating whether a former software company worker stole military secrets and handed them over to North Korea.

  Prosecution spokesman Park Gyung-ho said Monday that the man allegedly stole the information from 2005 to 2010 while working for a company tasked with developing military and government computer programs.

• Pyongyang Wants All Their Cellphones:

  North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity said in its latest newsletter police in North Hamkyong and Yangkang provinces bordering Russia and China have started urging residents to voluntarily surrender mobile phones or face punishment. It cited sources in the border cities of Hyesan and Hoeryong. The police warned that special devices to detect mobile phone use had been brought in to punish “those spreading capitalist ideas and eroding socialism”, the group quoted one of the sources as saying.

  North Korea strictly controls access to outside information and fixes the tuning controls of radios and televisions to official stations. But many residents in border areas that can receive mobile reception from China are known to use smuggled phones to talk to relatives and friends who escaped the impoverished state to settle in China or South Korea. At present users restrict conversations to five minutes, the minimum time authorities need to trace a call, said the source.

  South Korean analysts and officials say the reclusive regime has lately tightened controls on outside information to suppress news of popular revolts against despots in the Arab world.

• Kim Jong-un Wants His Defectors Back:

  “I understand Kim Jong-un is involved in security affairs in the method of directly receiving reports and handing down instructions though he does not have any formal titles of related offices,” a source told Yonhap News Agency. “He is especially showing a lot of attention to the issue of defectors.” Kim is also thought to be behind Pyongyang’s persistent demand for the return of four North Korean residents who sought asylum in South Korea after their fishing boat drifted across the tense western sea border into the South in February. The four were part of a larger group of 31 North Koreans. Seoul sent 27 of them back to their homeland in March, but the other four remained after they expressed their desire to defect. The North has since called for their repatriation, a demand that Seoul has spurned. Kim allegedly instructed related government offices to bring the four people home by all means in order to prevent similar recurrences.

  The heir-apparent’s strong commitment to resolving the incident pushed the North’s public security agencies to produce a tangible result in dealing with the matter, according to the sources. Some speculate that the intensified crackdown is driven as part of Pyongyang’s efforts to strengthen Kim’s role in its power hierarchy.

Powered by ScribeFire.

It’s time to move forward.

I do think we need a organization that assists teachers; in fact, I’d be open to sitting in on that future discussion and offering up some ideas. Let’s get the seven or eight or twenty of us interested in moving forward and have a roundtable sort of meeting. Not in a bar, not in a coffeehouse, but a rather sterile, business room of sorts.

To clarify, I’m not talking about shaking ATEK up, using their contacts, or changing ATEK into something else. I’m talking about a completely new organization, because the name ATEK has become irreversibly tainted, and needs to be retired.

I’d also like to point out that this a big endeavor. At the very least you’d need a few people ready to spend at least a few weeks setting things up, working closely to keep things integrated, and then a larger team to canvass the online and offline worlds to spread the word.

What should this new teachers organization look like?

1. Keep it simple – both the website and the message. A simple-to-navigate website can still have any number of features – a bulletin board, updating on-the-fly, etc. As for the message, it needs to be clear which things can be dealt with via information (links or content on a website), via humans (basic life in Korea type questions), and via professional humans (referrals to lawyers, psychologists, police officers, etc.).
2. Cultivate contacts and respect their knowledge. People like Michelle Farnsworth, a manager at Shinhan Bank, already actively answers questions about banking. The folks over at AFEK have decades of combined knowledge in most every aspect of life and culture in Korea – more than a few over there seem happy to help out.
3. The question of the goal – where KOTESOL’s is succinctly written as “To promote scholarship, disseminate information, and facilitate cross-cultural understanding among persons concerned with the teaching and learning of English in Korea.”. While AFEK‘s website doesn’t appear to have a mission statement in so many words, the organization’s purpose seems clear enough from their main page – networking, sharing information, and jobs (for the F-visa holders). What should the goals be? Information, assistance, referrals, bringing the disparate pieces of the puzzle together, responding to the Anti-English Spectrum crowd, etc.?
4. Make it easy for members to contact officials, officials to contact officials, and members to contact other members – without needing to give away personal information. Bulletin board software allows for fairly open communication, while requiring registration to ask questions.
5. How much information does this organization need to collect about its members? E-mail addresses and names are givens, while a picture of some proof that you’re living in Korea as well. Why collect more than that?
6. Roboseyo’s suggestion of a flowchart to help with legal problems is excellent. Original research like that comes from more than one person, of course, but could easily be offered for anyone to use under a Creative Commons license. Other flowcharts might include the basic process for getting a job,
7. Expectations of members might include passing on or updating information – any ideas on a good incentive? Both 10 Magazine and AFEK feature a points-based system, but I’d love to see those points good for something in the real world – a free beer somewhere (courtesy of a sponsor), or a party where the only ones invited are the contributors.
8. With permission, use knowledgeable outside sources and link generously. There are far more sources of information out there now than there ever was before.
9. Create a hotline – a single number for people to call when they need help. It might be worth contacting the Before Babel Brigade to see how their system is set up – by calling one number, you’re connected with a volunteer who’s agreed to be available during that time.
10. Promote, network, repeat. Print up some business cards and flyers – basic ones with the organization’s name and website – and get to work distributing them once things are set up. Aim to meet expats before they have problems, pin or tape them up on the bulletin boards in the real world, yadda yadda yadda.
11. Facebook and Twitter are perfect places to promote the success stories – large and small. Details like people’s names and cities are easily kept anonymous.
12. I personally am picturing a tight, lean, organization that coordinates and assists people online. An offline component might be the part that raises the money that funds things – the same way any number of organizations fund their endeavors.

I’d like to go on record by saying I’d like to be part of this conversation – and in it’s foundation. At the same time, there’s no way in hell I could do this alone.

Some questions for the founders of this thing to answer:

1. Is there any room for the well-meaning ATEK volunteers who had little/no control over the shenanigans?
2. Should the organization focus on being non-profit, or is there a possibility of turning out help on a for-profit basis?
3. What the heck do we call it? Any combination of the letters A, T, E, and K seems either inappropriate or too closely related. If it’s bound to be an information source or aggregator, let’s pick a name to show that off. A few names that are currently available: kaggregator (Korea + aggregator), k411.net, and waygook.info.

© Chris Backe – 2011
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

This post was originally published on my blog, Chris in South Korea. If you are reading this on another website and there is no linkback or credit given, you are reading an UNAUTHORIZED FEED.

With my departure from Korea around the corner, I realize I haven't written quite as much about my life here as I had originally hoped. It seems strange that I could churn out an entry a day when I was working a desk-job in Sydney, but while living abroad and dealing with new challenges everyday - I have sometimes gone weeks without a post.

One of Korea's signature snacks - gimbap. Rice, seaweed, pickle, cheese, and spam. Cheap and fairly healthy.

In an effort to curb that, and to support Hannah DeMilita in her own quest for thirty straight days of posts, I'm going to put up seven posts in seven days detailing some facet of Korean life that I've found fascinating, frustrating, fantastic, or just downright weird.

For my first treatise on the wonders and weirdness of Korea, I've chosen to write about the mind blowing array of street food. So, without further ado...

Street Food in South Korea

Seldom a drunken night in Korea passes with a visit to some kind of street vendor. When the bakeries and galbi joints have closed, sometimes your best option is something suspicious looking being hawked from the back of a trailer by a man or woman whose hygiene standards don't quite match up to what you'd find in a Western country. The snootier travel guides will tell you not to risk a case of 'Delhi Belly' by sampling these delights, but it's not living if you're not willing to chance an hour or two grunting atop the toilet in the name of new experiences. And FYI, I've never once had a nasty reaction to street food eaten in Korea.

The vast majority of street food in Korea tends towards being fried and/or being meat. That's not to say vegetarians are completely out of luck, but it is definitely a carnivore's market when it comes to street peddlers. You can sink your teeth into everything from chicken or beef, to stranger things such as silkworm larvae and man's best friend. There's various fruits on sticks, peanut stuffed pancakes, waffles, and even shaved ice topped with bean paste and fruit for the sweet tooth as well as piping hot cups of fishy water for cold mornings.

On a Stick...

Kimberly enjoys her first ever potato tornado (with powdered cheese) at the 2011 Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival

Sausages and corn-dogs? Oh my!

My cute little brother enjoying some pineapple on a stick in April 2008.

Odeng. Processed fish meat on a stick.

One of the more culinary delights on offer in Korea comes in the form of various foodstuffs on a stick. In summer you'll be able to find various tropical fruits on sticks, but all year round there's a variety of meaty snacks on the menu. I've long been a fan of chicken on a stick - lightly marinated pieces of chicken breast skewered and cooked on a grill. I've occasionally found myself suspicious that mine wasn't cooked all the way through, but when you're paying 1000 won (less than $1), it's really no big deal to throw it away if you don't want to risk a nasty case of salmonella.

Other options 'on a stick' include various kinds of sausage, corn dogs (or Pluto Pups to the Aussies), potato tornadoes (see below), odeng (heavily processed fish that is then soaked in its own juices), and toffee apples. I've not had much experience with the sausage, but the corn dogs are good once you get through the obscene amount of dough on them. Potato tomatoes are amazing and odeng, whilst not particularly flavorful, is often served with a cup of the piping hot water that it is soaked in. It might not sound appealing, but on an icy night in a country without much in the way of good tea, it's going to be your best friend as you shiver by the stand and question the sanity of your move to a country that sees regular snow.

Classier Cuisine?

'On a stick' doesn't really conjure up images of fine food, but there's plenty of other options available to the discerning Korean snack buyer. Many pizza stores sell their pizza by the slice and use a novel delivery system - the paper cup. Anybody who likes pizza and has been here long will have their favorite venue, and I'm quite fond of the Mr. Song's Pizza in my neck of Busan. If you ever find yourself in Daesindong (and I have no idea why you would) - it's right by Tom & Toms and the owner speaks good English. Top bloke.

Not interested in pizza? How about a sweet waffle smeared in strawberry jam and mock cream? A wallet of dough into which peanut butter has been injected? Fish shaped cakes full of sweet red bean paste? The famous ham and cheese (with inexplicable coleslaw) toasted sandwiches?  Plenty of surprisingly good options available for those not feeling like devouring one of our furry friends.

Bondeggi. Boiled silkworm larvae. Tastes even worse than it smells

Smothered in faux cream, these waffles are pretty amazing.

A variety of dried fish and other sea creatures. I'm particularly fond of dried squid.

Toffee apples I've had. But toffee strawberries?

Chewy rice cake, processed fish, and a super spicy sauce make up ddokboki

Sweet fries. My friend Anne calls them picnics, but I call them an abomination.

Enjoying some pizza in a cup in late 2009. A greasy delight.

A variety of deep fried delights. Twigim is a personal favorite of mine when under the influence.

A special note on this last food, my personal favorite when I'm drunk and in need of greasy sustenance. Twigim comes in a variety of forms - but it's essentially something that has been battered and is then deep friend. You then eat it dipping it in some soy sauce. Squid, octopus, gimbap (see above), hard-boiled eggs, stuffed peppers, glass noodles, vegetables, and shrimp are just a few of the things I've had. Twigim's one drawback is that it's everywhere and can be very hit or miss. The best I ever had was at a nondescript tent between my old apartment and the post office - and the worst has been at a little storefront on the walk home from work at my current job.

Word to the wise - It does not reheat at all well. Eat it there or eat it fast, but don't let it go cold. It's just not cricket.

But there you have it. I'm not a food critic, so I'm going to let my brief descriptions and the pictures do it for you. But I've met people who have been here a year and never tried some of the above and I'm just shocked. Why travel halfway around the world to experience another culture if you're not going to just go crazy and embrace it? Sure, bondeggi tastes like ass - but I can put that alongside deep fried grasshopper as one of the stranger things I've eaten and be proud that I had the balls to do it.

The strangest thing I've ever eaten was a live sea cucumber, by the way. Picture a pulsing penis shaped thing resting on your tongue. You bite into it and first it's soft, but there's a hard core. It shoots something down your throat. You gag.

I now feel for every girl everywhere. I felt violated.

But that's another story.