Left Flank

It's not spring without the blooming of the cherry blossoms in Busan! A friend snapped these delightful signs of hope and beauty!

Playing with Google Earth, I found my house on White Mountain in Sasang District, Busan.

The day started at 8 am with ddeok mandu guk and side dishes, makgeoli, bowing completely to the floor three times twice in a row, and holding a baby. It's ending quietly with a book.

Interestingly, I found this January 10, 1972 Time article featuring President Richard M. Nixon and the significance of the Year of the Rat,

"…a time of timidity and meanness."

May we all find our fortune somehow this trying year!

(I've spent most of the day it seems making dumplings, upgrading WordPress, and watching Super Tuesday returns. I plan to write reviews as I promised.)

Happy New Year's Eve of the Rat! Along with ddeok mandu guk, my family eats plenty of kimchi dumplings for New Year's Day breakfast. So, here we are all helping my mother-in-law prepare for tomorrow.

I agree with much of Jin Jung-kwon's comments reported in a Chosun Daily article, aside from some of the most sensational rhetoric in the second graph.

He said it was all very well helping students get a better education in English, «but committee members seem to believe that only when students have good command of English will the country become competitive." The reality does not bear this out, he argued. "The Philippines is one of the countries where people can speak English best in Asia, and it's hard to make yourself understood in English in Japan. But compare these two countries and see which is more competitive.

"Of course, nobody can say that a good command of foreign languages isn't helpful to enhancing national competitiveness. But it's not a decisive factor either. Those who need English should study the language hard, while others should study their own majors harder than English. That is how you boost national competitiveness."

He asked how many people in Korea actually meet foreigners and work in a foreign language, and how often they do so in a year. «Students can lag behind in technologies and major courses if they concentrate only on studying English,» he warned. He said the committee's plan to introduce English «immersion» education in 2010, was pie-in-the-sky. "It would be very hard for all current school teachers to participate in such immersion education even if they were given English language training in the U.S. and did nothing else for two full years."

I especially liked the Japan/Philippines comparison!

I ran into a bit of a dizzying moment today, when discussing the recent transition committee proposals on education, students started conflating "learning English" with " learning American-style". Along with the usual canard about globalization and competitiveness, I asked the class what "learning American-style" meant, and how did it compare to "learning Korean-style".

The answer in three separate classes: "American-style" = "free talking"—literally where the teacher prompts students to talk English amongst themselves uninterrupted, with "help" in individual cases. I told them, that "free talk" did not exist in America as they understood. It seems students are so annoyed by South Korean teachers reading composed lectures, that they want as different a learning style as possible.

Students don't need English; they need jobs and better teachers. That requires economic growth and structural reform, not worthless bureaucratic mandates.

I've spent the whole evening, after teaching for six hours, making a video for a job at Pusan National University (PNU). I'm working all this week, and when I got the call to interview, with one week notice, I had to scramble. The expat coordinator suggested I could submit a video presentation, which he claims has been a successful way to apply in the past.

But again, getting the camcorder was a stretch. So, a friend offered to lend me one. After some schedule snafus, he just filmed me earlier this afternoon. But then, we needed a firewire to upload, and then we would have needed to edit the footage, which came in three takes. So, we bought it, but the other end of the firewire didn't plug into my PC at home.

So, my friend will edit it later, and send the video to PNU by courier before the deadline tomorrow at noon. In the process, Frank Beaucher showed me an excellent video he and SpookLarsen did, "Too Late". Frank is the lead actor. Check it out! I hope my video application looks so professional.

I know some readers might not have bid farewell to 2007, but here are some photos of the first dawn of 2008 at Haeundae Beach in Busan.

It was amazing to see so many people - the young, the old, families, couples - at the beach so early. The beach was literally a moving carpet of winter coats and pointing fingers, with all sorts of music blaring from speakers. Also unexpected were the concessions and the police escorts in the subway station. The lines were so long, the trains were running thick and fast, and still refusing passengers.

A note on breakfast: I always eat half of the meal before I remember to take a photo. But, it is a rather inexpensive spread in a little "mom & pop" restaurant near the beach. It's called haejangguk.

Happy New Year!

My wife and I spent a lovely morning together, and then went to the Suyeong Marina for the Third Busan International Tea Festival.

I tried so many types of tea, from China, Japan, and Korea, including white tea, several kinds of green tea, and puerh tea. If you've never had white tea, it's very mild and actually yellow-hued. It's much more pleasant with fruit and also blended well with olfactory cues. I learned how to drink all of the teas in different ways. Years ago, I attended a Korean tea ceremony in Busan, and my wife and I learned about a tea ceremony in Osaka, Japan, but today I received some special attention. As you can see I was called upon to participate in a performance of a royal audience, and drink some more white tea.

I also snapped some good photos of a Korean ceremony for the queen and her ladies. Unfortunately, my batteries seized up and died near the end. My wife and I both participated in a Japanese tea ceremony, so no photos of that.

If anything the honey-coated figs, walnuts, rice cakes, and other confections were delicious. There were vendors, mostly local, selling tea (I bought some puerh tea), and a few teahouses that keep the traditions alive. From a devotee of the southern house wine, Lipton's iced tea, drinking tea has become a hobby of sorts, and now tea, from Assam to Darjeeling, has become my morning and afternoon habit. It's hard to get black tea in Busan, where green tea is the favorite, but I also have found tea shops selling puerh and oolong.

More later, but the caffeine is leaving my system, and I can feel I'm beginning to crash!

War really is the quintessential human activity, bringing out the best and worst. Assembly pits human excellence against bureaucratic hacks. Much was made in the South Korean press about how the ROK's MK Pictures worked on the Chinese film's innovative war scenes. Although those scenes are impressive, it's misleading to compare Assembly with KangJeGyu Films' Brotherhood of War (Taegukgi in Korean), if only because Assembly is not pacifist screed. Assembly is a bit cartoonish, but it has a big heart.

In 1948, Gu Zidi, Assembly's main character, is a salt-of-the-earth, gruff soldier whose popularity, skill, and luck (he has survived since 1939) is the captain of the 9th Company of a Communist regiment fighting the Nationalist armies. He's handed the regrettable task of holding a position while the regiment retreats. His only order is to hold out until the last man until he hears the bugle call «assembly». But Gu is nearly deaf. Gu takes his orders literally, and accomplishes them, but at the cost of all his soldiers and his own freedom and identity. Fighting a decades-long battle with Communist functionaries who do not have his papers, declining health, and his own guilt, Gu moves from civil war to Korea, sinking from captain to cook.

Actually, one scene from the Korean War, portrays succinctly the symptoms of the intelligence failures the CIA created when it failed to predict the Chinese winter offensive in 1950. Gu volunteers for a detail whose task is to cross into the DPRK and reconnoiter the position of units along a key bridge, to direct artillery fire. In the process, Gu's officer steps on a landmine and is stuck when an American tank lumbers up the road. Disguised as ROK troops, the Chinese officer stands put and Gu responds to the Americans' offer of help with comically indecipherable Korean-like sounds. «We don't know Korean. The Americans know even less.» When the American soldier realizes he cannot help the hapless officer, he runs back to the tank. «He's got bigger worries than we do!» Cunning defeats naivete every time.

Gu then heroically devises a plan, and, although shrapnel lodges in his head and blinds one eye, the officer survives intact. The two remain blood brothers, and the younger officer helps Gu with his project to revisit the issue of his heroic company. In the ensuing years, Gu's unit has disappeared from the official histories, and his men's bodies, originally deployed near a coal mine, are also buried under a mountain of coal. Gu lives long enough to see his company honored and each soldier rewarded with medals. He has also fostered the marriage between one of his soldier's widow and his blood brother.

Still, this is a very one-sided story. The Nationalist and American troops are caricatures, well-endowed troops who always lack the skill and heart to win. Bureaucrats are just short-tempered and lack patience. Gu Zidi is the man, and everyone else is just a little less impressive than him. But, at least in his heart, and at the heart of the film, there is a respect for honor.